Alternate Invasion of Darwin TL discussion link
- Thread starter CalBear
- Start date
Leej said:
The U.S. economy was in recession while Carter was President. American voters have shown that they will quickly turn on a President if the economy sucks.
In 1992 Bush went from 92% approval to ex-president in about 18 months, and that was with a much better economy than existed in 1980, when everything was still reeling from the 1979 Oil Shock.
Thanks for the feedback.
We have seen that one before... its DMA's work and has already been mentioned in the other recent Australia vs Indonesia threads. I also stumbled across another TL over at CTT... one so utterly absurd that it makes even version 0.01 of Blackmages TL look probable. Hell! the damn git suggests using Microlights to neutralise the RAAF! Hell the microlights would be pressed to carry the warload he suggested let alone hit anything with it.
By the way CalBear you seem to have got the most probable result. I guess that leaves a moderate case to be done...
Lets see... round up some tensions in the Middle East and Korea and run one of the Pacific Fleet's CVNs aground? That should keep the US from direct involvement for things to be interesting... Guess that will be my next project.
Iñaki said:Good timeline and very interesting and plaussible war
And Superb F-14 Tomcat, no doubt that the poor indonesian fighters have any opportunities in confronting the rain of Phoenix that hit them.
The F-14 one of the best fighters of the history.
Thanks for the feedback.
I fear the Fleet may come to regret parking the Tomcat. It was a unique package.
Cockroach said:
Thanks for the feedback.
Even with the Australia/U.K./U.S. involved is full scale war elsewhere I can't think of a way that the Indonesians get to keep what they took, even it had to wait until the war was concluded. The treaties, not to mention the historical ties, between Australia, the U.K. & the U.S. make it unthinkable that any invader would not face the combined forces of all three nations. Once that happens...
Even in a near worst-case scenario, it's hard to see how the U.S. couldn't let loose 12 -15 B-52's, a couple of E-2C or E-3B AWACS & a squadron of F-15's. Combined with the RAAF, that would be enough to encourge anyone to head back to Jakarta.
It would need to be a WW III scenario that the West lost to make it work. Probably why it's never been tried.
backstab said:
It would depend on what they bought. If the bought the Tarantul & Osa missile boats, and used them the way they were meant to be used (either by surprise in littoral waters or in a mob in open water) they would make life tough for the Australian surface units. Even the Perth DDG & Adelaide class FFG had only a rudimentary SAM system (Standard-1 SAM, but only a single arm launcher) back in the early 80's. The good news is that the missile boats didn't have much ASW capacity. Even their version of the Grisha had poor ASW systems (and it wasn't even part of the GDR fleet until 1981). In closing the Timor & Arafura Seas the best systems the RAN had (& has) are the SSK's. Handled properly, they could make crossing from Indonesia exciting for any enemy force. The only flaw with the boats is endurance (which isn't helped by being based on the other side of the continent).
The GDR really didn't have much of a surface force. Now they did have some amphibious forces, pretty nice LST's (each capable of carrying 12 tanks or 600 tons of rolling stock), that would come in handy if you wanted to invade someone.
Waiting until the Wall fell would push the scenario into the late 80's - early 90's. Short of some dramatic rift developing between Australia & the U.S. (because of God know what), it would be truly insane to try anything in that period. That was one of the things I thought BlackMage was dead on with, the time frame. Without a Soviet Union & Cold War to keep things a bit square, the Indonesians would be waxed in a day, especially with the breakthroughs in Stealth & "brilliant" weapons available to the American AND Australian forces as the decade progresses.
Don't forget, the US al;so has the Pine Gap JDF just outside Alice, which has an airstrip that services C141 Starlifters, so the US airmobile forces could land there instead of staging from Brisbane. Pine Gap's satellite tracking capability will also rpovide the US and Australia with massive good electronic intel on the Indon invasion forces. And the Aboriginal trackers and reservists of NORFORCE would harass the Indons pretty bad too, alongside the SAS- these blackfellas know their land far better than any outsiders, and would run rings round the invaders.
I don't think it'd be much good for leaflets to be printed in Dutch, since by 1980 the old colonial language wouldn't have been spoken by Indonesians anymore.
I don't think it'd be much good for leaflets to be printed in Dutch, since by 1980 the old colonial language wouldn't have been spoken by Indonesians anymore.
It is actually a good scenario, CalBear However I've never heard of Indonesia having a casus belli to even consider disturbing what can be considered Australian territory, which in addition, I should remind you that you didn't provide any casus belli for Indo-Australian war of TTL. It's basically a baseless conflict, which is ASB.
However I've never heard of Indonesia having a casus belli to even consider disturbing what can be considered Australian territory, which in addition, I should remind you that you didn't provide any casus belli for Indo-Australian war of TTL. It's basically a baseless conflict, which is ASB.Hope this is still the right forum for posting/bumping.
This time line is easily the best I have seen as far as not being ASB goes. As for the time line, I personally would move the POD up by a few years - getting rid of Carter and Fraser (both of which are nothing special) and bringing in Reagen and Hawke (surely a much cooler leadership coalition).
The one problem really is just how bad Indonesia is. They seem to invade Darwin really well, and from there have no ambition whatsoever, and then get flogged within a few weeks. Surely Suharto is not that dillusional that he thought he could stroll in there and take it all.
Maybe the ending could change a little? I would have increased the reparations, and really divided the area into those regions like Iria Jaya, Bali, Molukas, Timor and company.
Really good TL though.
This time line is easily the best I have seen as far as not being ASB goes. As for the time line, I personally would move the POD up by a few years - getting rid of Carter and Fraser (both of which are nothing special) and bringing in Reagen and Hawke (surely a much cooler leadership coalition).
The one problem really is just how bad Indonesia is. They seem to invade Darwin really well, and from there have no ambition whatsoever, and then get flogged within a few weeks. Surely Suharto is not that dillusional that he thought he could stroll in there and take it all.
Maybe the ending could change a little? I would have increased the reparations, and really divided the area into those regions like Iria Jaya, Bali, Molukas, Timor and company.
Really good TL though.