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The 1962 attack on the Race's Colonization Fleet was a devastating nuclear attack secretly launched by the United States at the order of President Earl Warren.

An orbiting satellite, activated by an US Navy submarine, fired its 12 nuclear missiles at the Colonization Fleet, destroying 12 ships and killing over 10 million colonists as they lay in cold sleep. Only two ships tried to escape, but were believed to have been destroyed.

United States Air and Space Force Lt. Glen Johnson watched the massacre, unaware that his own country had launched it. He was completely horrified, knowing that the colonization ships were unarmed and carried civilians.

As the attack was ordered by Warren and carried out with by a small number of military officers, the identity of the attacker remained a secret until 1965, when Sam Yeager, America's Race expert, obtained documents about the attack and passed them on to exiled Shiplord Straha, who used the documents as collateral to return to his people. When the truth came out, Fleetlord Atvar threatened war unless the United States dismantled its entire nuclear and space-travel capabilities. As the Race-German War of 1965 had just concluded with a costly victory for the Race, and as the Soviet Union had signaled its intent to join the U.S. against the Race, Atvar gave another option: the destruction of a major U.S. city as a "payment" for the Race civilians. Atvar did not believe Warren would accept this option, and would prefer to disarm. Instead, Warren agreed to the destruction of an American city. The Race destroyed Indianapolis and Warren committed suicide.

In later years, much to the dismay of Sam Yeager, most Americans came to believe Warren made the right decision in attacking the Colonization Fleet, as it helped cripple the Race's efforts to dominate the Earth, and Yeager himself was condemned by some humans as a traitor to his own species. By 2031, Indianapolis was rebuilt, and Earl Warren Memorial Park was dedicated to those died in the city's destruction.

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