The Battle also occurred on May 5th, providential much? I wonder if the first update of the sequel will be Mexico's response to the defeat?
Once I realized that I wouldn't make it to the early 1920s and be able to fit in the whole CEW and close with Max's planned death as I had hoped, making a history-changing battle on May 5th the bookends of the TL made way too much sense.
That's not a bad idea, actually
Yes! That was everything I was hoping for out of this battle, and much more. A truly exceptional job as always, KingSweden.
Can't wait to see the fallout; I'm sure this will be sending shockwaves around the globe
Great stuff! You stuck the landing for sure with that update.
Thank you both! It makes me very glad that the update I was most nervous about writing was the one that stuck the landing the most.
Is the CSS Texas bound for a future as the TSS Texas or am I just assuming that for no reason?
Considering that Texas is probably the state that's most likely to be 'escaping the gauntlet' of the Confederate defeat.....
Nah. And it'd be "TNS" in all likelihood if it were Texan.
In OTL FDR managed to pull off the complicated rigamarole needed to appear to walk normally despite having both legs paralyzed by polio. I think he can deal with a crippled leg just fine. Especially since he’s not trying to act like everything’s just fine.
Besides, the age of peak performance in sprinters is 26. And as of the present FDR is around 33 years old. Which means that he still could’ve been an athlete in college, though.
I expect a USS Murdock sometime in the future. Whether that is a battleship or an aircraft carrier is up to authorial fiat.
I took the sprinter suggestion purely as a dark but very funny joke, haha.
Oh, definitely. Expect a USS
Rodgers, Sims, Roosevelt, Mayo, etc in due time, too. And many streets named after our late friend Joe Murdock as well - perhaps some of those roads once named for people associated with slavery and the Confederacy?
Ratio of US to BS Ships sunk:
1:4.
Holy sh*t, BS got MURKED!
I didn't quite cover every US ship that took severe damage and went down but yeah, we're close to that ratio. It was bad.
You know, with THREE major events occuring on May 5 - I really don't envy newspaper editors in this ATL. First - how bloody thick is the May 6, 1915 edition of most major news papers going to be!? Secondly - what's the lead story? I just imagine them stressing out over whether to pull out the huge font for Nashville falling, for Chile peacing out or Hilton Head: and no matter WHAT they choose, there are going to be people voraciously arguing that they are wrong and it shows how much of a rag they run.
And also - how does the Confederate public deal with learning of these three disasters on the same day? This is a national tragedy on the epic scale and it's going to take a long time to process it, if they ever really do - I don't know what kind of conspiracies can be woven to help explain it all; but I susect May 5, 1915 being a source of conspiracy theories for decades to come, if not into the present day.
The Chilean part probably won't get the public's attention that much, but this is more or less what I'll cover in the next and final update, our denouement (after a Wikibox for at least Hilton Head, and perhaps Nashville too)
360-pt banner headline:
NO!
Then three subheads. (One thing to remember is that at this point, evening papers would still be a thing, so if the full story didn't make it in in time for the morning edition, there'd be a chance to get it in later that day.) I think Hilton Head would be the biggest story. They would've been anticipating the fall of Nashville for a week and Chile is in another hemisphere and has barely been a factor since the Desventuradas, but losing the bulk of your navy (and your strongest remaining ally's navy) in one day within sight of South Carolina?
I can't imagine that after this, there isn't at least some sort of peace movement in the CSA.
Considering Southern culture, a peace movement would probably run the risk of being branded as cowards and traitors, but the idea has certainly been planted if it wasn't before.
Jesus! Hell At Sea indeed. Reading this made me feel the way i felt watching Dunkirk with the oil scene!
i can imagine a newspaper headline just the words THE END and a split picture of Hilton head, Nashville and the surrender underneath
I was thinking a lot about both
Dunkirk and
Titanic (my nod with the
Charleston) when writing this. Both Nolan and Cameron could do wonders with the cinematic nature of the battle.
(I was also thinking about
Midway where they decide Ed Skrein should be a leading man, but even though it's not nearly as bad as its reputation let's not go there...)
Great Chapter!
So in the end, this battle boiled down to slightly better USN Tech, more USN ships (*after* more or less wiping BS Navies in the Pacific) and the USN Admiral outthinking the CSN Admiral. While the Naval textbooks of the future will analyze the battle and what the CSN Admiral could have done better, there weren't any *idiots* in the battle. (In fact, given the fact that this battle *required* that the Chilean Navy was wiped out, you could argue that the Chileans were the cause of the loss at Hilton Head!)
Frankly this battle boils down to the fact that the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards (and Philly and Boston, I guess) could produce more ships than Block Sud could, which boils down to money. (Honestly, iOTL, the US Navy was *completely* nerfed from the end of the civil war until 1890-ish).
Were any of the Dreadnaughts for the Confederacy actually *built* in the Western Hemisphere?
That's a good way of looking at it.
And no, indeed all Bloc Sud dreads were built in British, French, German or perhaps even Spanish (not the CSA's lol but Mexico's or somebody else's) shipyards. Smaller boats were built domestically, though.
