AH Challenge: Revolt of the Admirals a real coup

[Wolf]

WI if the Revolt of the Admirals was a coup committed by several American admirals? This is your mission.

[midnight77]

Originally Posted by Wolf

WI if the Revolt of the Admirals was a coup committed by several American admirals? This is your mission.

I choose not to accept it.

[Wolf]

Anyone else want to give this a shot?

[Atreus]

Pretty difficult to pull of. A century or more back, when the institutions of the United States were still being defined, this would be feasible. but by this point, there is already a very firm idea that the military is subservient to the civilian government, and a lot of people will not back such a coup.

My one thought is maybe MacArthur gets away with openly defying Truman, and comes out of it strengthened. Throw in a strengthened communist bloc and mass hysteria and/or social upheaval, and I suppose that a coup is theoretically possible. But it is a stretch (any anyways, the navy may not be the most likely service to revolt).

One other thought is that the wet firecracker rebellion finds a different group of military backers rather than appraoching Smedley Butler, although I have my doubts about that as well.

Perhaps your best bet is not a coup, but a mutiny a la the Invergordon Mutiny. maybe the government makes some major budgetary cuts against the navy, and their is a mutiny in several major fleet bases backed by several admirals (that is the tricky part).

[Prince Charon]

Its a slightly obscure fact that in WWII, the U.S. Army operated a few ships, mostly for cargo and transport purposes. The U.S. Air Force still does, for equipment retrieval.

Suppose that it was proposed, when the bill that created the Air Force was being written, that the Navy's aircraft carriers be transferred to the new service. I'm not sure what would have to be changed for that idea to have a chance in hell of passing Congress, but if it did, or even just looked like it would, I could see the Revolt of the Admirals becoming pretty nasty.

OTOH, if the Revolt were bad enough without that (like, if Atreus's scenario happened, and was significantly worse than Invergordon), I could see the transfer of the aircraft carriers happening to punish the Navy.

Either way, if the officers and crews were transferred with their ships, I could see the new USAF using something like RAF officer ranks.