Chiang Kai-Shek goes to Germany: An Axis China Timeline

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The "Do nothing" raids
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    • CCA

    The "Do nothing" raids

    The Japanese attack had caught China off-guard and she was demoralized and reeling with her armies being forced to cede ground, her navy sunk to the bottom of the Amoy harbour, her air force grounded by her own obsolescence and her cities burned and crumbled under the relentless assaults of Japanese bombs.

    There was only one thing that dominated the national mood and dominated the mind of China's leader Chiang Kai-shek: Revenge.

    It was only natural that China would look for a way to strike back. He would find this in China's Zeppelin force.

    big_akron_emerging_from_hangar_one.jpg


    Chinese Airship Zheng He emerges from her hangar

    China had invested considerable resources - in time, money and skilled manpower in the construction and maintenance of these behemoths. Some have criticized Chiang and his Air Marshall Feng Ru for wasting "enormous resources" in the development of these airships. When the war broke out in 1937, China had 20 of these "Behemoth" class airships.

    What were the use for these airships? Recently classified documents suggest that the main intention for these airships was to continue trade with Germany in the event of total blockade of China. However, the continued trade between China and the United States meant that there was a conduit for German-Chinese trade and it was decided not to risk the airships in long voyages over the Soviet Union and other nations.

    It was decided to use these airships for a military application: to bomb Japan as an act of revenge. The first test would be the voyage of the airship Zhang He the Zhang He took off on January 1 1938 from a secret airfield in Tibet - it was decided to launch it from Tibet to minimize Japanese interception. Zhang He flew at 40000 feet - above the maximum ceiling of most Japanese fighters and carried 5 tons of bombs for the initial "Do Nothing" raid.

    In order to scout out the territory and ensure accuracy, a plane was attached to the Zhang He(which was fitted with a fighter harness) the plan was for the Zhang He to navigate to Tokyo, lower himself to 20000 feet and send out the scout plane to do recoinnasance. With this conducted the Zhang He was authorized to drop the bombs.

    The mission went off without a hitch - the first known attack of the "Behemoths" which would continue to torment Japan with continuing frequency as the war went on.
     
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    • Shogo

    Zhang He, eh?

    This will be beautifulllll!

    He must be rolling in his grave so damn much thanks to Koei.

    ------------

    Anyways . . . Nice little update. Zeppelin bombing runs are always a good choice.
     

    Adam

    Logically, this would probably mean more interceptors assigned to the Home Islands' defense, especially so when the Do Nothing raids start Doing Something like bombing Tokyo, which means they won't have as much fighter squadrons to employ in their mainland campaigns. Interesting to see how this would play out.
     
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    Leistungsfähiger Amerikan

    Great timeline! I just read the whole thing and it's a very interesting timeline due to the butterflies that China has on the entire world. Hell, if the British commit more to their alliance with Japan and Germany is a bit less crazy, it's not impossible that we could see an axis USA...
     

    Hendryk

    Banned
    CCA said:
    China had invested considerable resources - in time, money and skilled manpower in the construction and maintenance of these behemoths. Some have criticized Chiang and his Air Marshall Feng Ru for wasting "enormous resources" in the development of these airships. When the war broke out in 1937, China had 20 of these "Behemoth" class airships.
    Click to expand...
    That's an impressive fleet. In my TL China only has two, and loses one before the war even begins.
     

    CCA

    Hendryk said:
    That's an impressive fleet. In my TL China only has two, and loses one before the war even begins.
    Click to expand...


    It partly explains why the Chinese air force is so obsolete - resources that could have been invested in upgrading and other matters have been diverted to prestige weapons that look good on paper. Largely at the insistence of Chiang.

    Now who does this sound like :p
     

    ComradeTovarich

    Adam said:
    Logically, this would probably mean more interceptors assigned to the Home Islands' defense, especially so when the Do Nothing raids start Doing Something like bombing Tokyo, which means they won't have as much fighter squadrons to employ in their mainland campaigns. Interesting to see how this would play out.
    Click to expand...

    It's not like the Chinese have good planes either, though the large numbers of them might probably be enough to overwhelm the Japanese.

    Maybe the Japs attempt to develop a high-altitude fighter to combat the airships. The Chinese might in turn come up with something to protect the airships. One plane attatched to a zeppelin is just not enough for an escort force. After all, the airship would be vulnerable at 20,000 feet above sea level.

    scourge said:
    This wouldn't be a proper AH.com TL without an appearance by the airship.:D
    Click to expand...

    We also await... the unmentionable sea mammal!
     

    Wyragen-TXRG4P

    Banned
    Yes!

    CCA said:
    It was only natural that China would look for a way to strike back. He would find this in China's Zeppelin force.

    big_akron_emerging_from_hangar_one.jpg


    Chinese Airship Zheng He emerges from her hangar

    China had invested considerable resources - in time, money and skilled manpower in the construction and maintenance of these behemoths. Some have criticized Chiang and his Air Marshall Feng Ru for wasting "enormous resources" in the development of these airships. When the war broke out in 1937, China had 20 of these "Behemoth" class airships.
    Click to expand...

    The mere sight of it is an irresistible delight!
     

    CCA

    OKH_1946 said:
    We also await... the unmentionable sea mammal!
    Click to expand...

    In the future AH.COM will be clogged with threads about China invading Japan:


    "We all know that Operation Sea Turtle couldn't have worked as planned but what if the Chinese invading Japan by using their big submarine fleet?

    I mean - you could fit about 50 people in a submarine - at this point in the war, the Chinese navy had about 1000 submarines of various types so 50x10000 = 50000. That's more than enough for an initial invasion wave"
     

    Unconsensual

    Banned
    Yeah the Japanese OTL were incompetent in homeland defense, and in one of the worst ways.

    Here's a list of things they did wrong

    1. No coordination between the Navy and Army.
    2. Highly centralized defense where everything was routed to the war ministry in Tokyo, and this delayed air defense response time considerably.
    3. Their fighters were designed for ground support, thus low flying ceilings and climb rate.
    4. No proper night-time navigation/spotting system, they were blind at night.
    5. They never developed useful radar due to their feuding Navy and Army and their poor industrial base.
    6. Due to their confidence and emphasis on keeping the fight from Japan they never bothered to stock up and fortify Japan.
    7. The Navy and Army fought, the Army indiscriminately conscripted Navy Technical personal.
    8. The Army withheld oil, something it had little use for, from the Navy.
    9. The Navy withheld freighters from the Army which in return started building their own freighter fleet.
    10. The army and navy both had separate production facilities, separate specifications for the same equipment, and separate areas of occupation.
    11. They never managed to create a fast climbing fighter, the fuel supply was roughly 60 minutes of climb, it took 40 minutes for their best fighters to climb to super fortress height, and they had roughly 20 minutes of warning for most of their cities and bases. So they need to spot planes exceptionally early and they only get one run on the bombers because as soon as they stop climbing for a strafing run they won;t have enough fuel to climb back up and give chase.
    Here's a list of things that went against them

    1. Natural geography makes it easy for plane to do hit and runs, whereas in Germany airplane raids could be tracked from the channel over a few hundred miles of land to Germany most of industrial/military Japan could be reached from the sea in under 20 minutes.
    2. Bad luck (applies for both sides but the inept side gets it worse)
    3. They built their houses out of wood and paper.
    4. Resource poor homeland package with the frequent natural disasters feature.
     
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