HMS EAGLE in the Falklands

Reader mode

flasheart

22nd of September 1980. 39 years ago today the former HMS ARK ROYAL (R09) left Devonport for the final time and began her final voyage to the ship breakers so ending an era in RN naval aviation. Today a new R09 HMS PRINCE OF WALES cleared the Forth bridge and went to sea for the first time marking the beginning of a new era.
FB_IMG_1569168561529.jpg
FB_IMG_1569168558549.jpg
FB_IMG_1569168555427.jpg

The smoke coming from her funnel was curtesy of Chief Petty Officer Ahern setting of some smoke charges so the ship did not look completely lifeless and to give the old girl some dignity.

ITTL Ark is still tied up in the Tamar awaiting her fate. Meanwhile her sister EAGLE is steaming home victorious but facing an uncertain future.

Having spent the last few weeks drunk on a beach in Malta I'm only just now able to get back to this.
New update on its way soon.
 
Last edited:
Athelstane

Athelstane

Starfox5 said:
A beautiful ship. I hope there'll be some stories with her and her sister ship thrown back in time to sink Axis ships.
Click to expand...

This kind of ASB timeline would be far more fun than the far more likely reality, save possibly whilst Sealion was still a genuine danger: Any tactical or strategic advantage that could possibly be gained from deployment of even both Queen Elizabeths with maximum F-35 air wings would be seen as not nearly as valuable as hiding the things and their crews off a Scottish island and relentlessly picking them apart to reverse engineer all the available technology for maximum long term economic and military advantage - or worth the risk of any of it falling into enemy (or Allied!) hands.
 
Starfox5

Starfox5

Athelstane said:
This kind of ASB timeline would be far more fun than the far more likely reality, save possibly whilst Sealion was still a genuine danger: Any tactical or strategic advantage that could possibly be gained from deployment of even both Queen Elizabeths with maximum F-35 air wings would be seen as not nearly as valuable as hiding the things and their crews off a Scottish island and relentlessly picking them apart to reverse engineer all the available technology for maximum long term economic and military advantage - or worth the risk of any of it falling into enemy (or Allied!) hands.
Click to expand...

Have them appear in a Final Countdown Scenario. perhaps in the middle of the Pacific, right after Pearl Harbor - and close to the route Kido Butai took to return to Japan...
 

Spencersj345.346

Starfox5 said:
Have them appear in a Final Countdown Scenario. perhaps in the middle of the Pacific, right after Pearl Harbor - and close to the route Kido Butai took to return to Japan...
Click to expand...
Well at least Singapore would have a chance in this timeline(the Japanese barely pulled it off otl, now imagine what happens if the bulk of their supply ships are sent to the bottom of the sea) if the task force booked it there after sinking the Kiel Butai.
 
Athelstane

Athelstane

Spencersj345.346 said:
Well at least Singapore would have a chance in this timeline(the Japanese barely pulled it off otl, now imagine what happens if the bulk of their supply ships are sent to the bottom of the sea) if the task force booked it there after sinking the Kiel Butai.
Click to expand...

Yes, if it showed up right before the war started . . . it might be worth the risk to deploy one of them behind Sumatra, have the F-35's dogleg over southern Malaya to ensure neither pilot or plane falls into Japanese hands, and turn Hashimoto's entire invasion fleet into coral reefs before they reach the beaches. Heck, you could load up all the hardpoints with ordnance, too, because Hashimoto didn't even have radar. Saving the British position in SE Asia in 1941 might just be worth the risk.

After that, though - find a place to hide that carrier and pick it apart, stat. Perhaps keep one of the two ready and available for emergency deployment, but only in the last resort.
 
theg*ddam*hoi2fan

theg*ddam*hoi2fan

Starfox5 said:
Have them appear in a Final Countdown Scenario. perhaps in the middle of the Pacific, right after Pearl Harbor - and close to the route Kido Butai took to return to Japan...
Click to expand...

There was a scenario somewhere out there on the Interwebs that did much the same thing: an RN carrier from the 70s that's cruising near Singapore ends up getting zapped to just before the invasion of Malaya happens. After some debate, the captain sends up a Buccaneer with a nuke and, well, nukes the entire invasion force. The ship then ends up returning to the then-present day...and finds that because the invasion of British colonies in SE Asia was thwarted by them, decolonisation went completely differently, the Royal Navy still operate a major base in Singapore, and the Royal Navy is now much bigger with more carriers and IIRC at least one 'Iowa-ised' battleship. Something that delights quite a few of them.
 
HesitatedEye

HesitatedEye

theg*ddam*hoi2fan said:
There was a scenario somewhere out there on the Interwebs that did much the same thing: an RN carrier from the 70s that's cruising near Singapore ends up getting zapped to just before the invasion of Malaya happens. After some debate, the captain sends up a Buccaneer with a nuke and, well, nukes the entire invasion force. The ship then ends up returning to the then-present day...and finds that because the invasion of British colonies in SE Asia was thwarted by them, decolonisation went completely differently, the Royal Navy still operate a major base in Singapore, and the Royal Navy is now much bigger with more carriers and IIRC at least one 'Iowa-ised' battleship. Something that delights quite a few of them.
Click to expand...



Sounds like an enjoyable read.
 
Athelstane

Athelstane

HesitatedEye said:
You are a gentleman and a scholar thank you.
Click to expand...

Worth noting that the timeline is split up into multiple threads, so you'll need to go dig out the other parts if you want to read it all.

Part 2: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...the-world-turned-upsidedown-part-2-t8670.html
Part 3: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-3-t8775.html
Part 4: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-4-t8795.html
Part 5: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-5-t8841.html
 
Athelstane

Athelstane

Athelstane said:
Worth noting that the timeline is split up into multiple threads, so you'll need to go dig out the other parts if you want to read it all.

Part 2: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...the-world-turned-upsidedown-part-2-t8670.html
Part 3: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-3-t8775.html
Part 4: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-4-t8795.html
Part 5: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...he-world-turned-upside-down-part-5-t8841.html
Click to expand...

This was a fun timeline - technically very well researched - though I think some of the commenters at the NavWeaps forum were right in thinking that the author has underestimated just how many butterflies you would get out of nuking the entire Japanese Malaya Invasion Force off the face of the Earth. Specifically, I think it's unlikely that Malaya would even fall.

It's not just that diverting the necessary troops, ships and shipping for a second attempt won't be quick or easy, and will in turn gravely jeopardize other strategic objectives, or that IJN just lost an entire squadron of precious heavy cruisers it cannot replace, or two years worth of destroyer production in one fell swoop. It's that Yamamoto will be confronted with the mystery of the loss of one of his major invasion task forces, with not a clue as to how it happened. Entire fleets don't just vanish into thin air, and the most unavoidable assumption is going to be that the British had some powerful new capability - previously kept perfectly secret - which they exercised, lethally, and worse, that they had perfect intelligence about the task force and its objective. There's no precedent in history for it. Dare he divert 16th Army and the accompanying assets (his only real alternative to hand) without knowing what the hell the British can unleash on them? Dare he even send the Kido Butai, once it returns? The IJN will pause to frantically gather intel first. The more the Japanese learn about the fate of Yamashita's force, the more disturbed they're going to be - a handful of scorched sailors jibbering about the sun itself being unleashed on their fleet, some bits of floating half melted wreckage . . . it will be like the mystery of the Franklin Expedition times one hundred, with the fate of the entire empire at risk.

It could well be that by the time the Japanese finally decide to risk it and assemble the requisite force, Percival will probably so reinforced and dug in (and quite possibly, one hopes, replaced) that the Japanese can manage no better than a stalemate in Malaya. Meanwhile, Burma is a lost cause, and even the East Indies will jeopardized, with more thorough sabotage of the oil wells and refineries the Japanese so desperately need. And a Britain that can avoid disaster at Singapore is definitely going to be in a considerably different, and better, situation in the postwar than in OTL.

Now just imagine a 1967 Eagle that can stick around to face the Kido Butai. Even without Red Beards, it would be sheer carnage. And a considerably shorter war.
 
Last edited:

JamesHunter

Athelstane said:
This was a fun timeline - technically very well researched - though I think some of the commenters at the NavWeaps forum were right in thinking that the author has underestimated just how many butterflies you would get out of nuking the entire Japanese Malaya Invasion Force off the face of the Earth. Specifically, I think it's unlikely that Malaya would even fall.

It's not just that diverting the necessary troops, ships and shipping won't be quick or easy, and will in turn gravely jeopardize other strategic objectives, or that IJN just lost an entire squadron of precious heavy cruisers it cannot replace, or two years worth of destroyer production in one fell swoop. It's that Yamamoto will be confronted with the mystery of the loss of one of his major invasion task forces, with not a clue as to how it happened. Entire fleets don't just vanish into thin air, and the most unavoidable assumption is going to be that the British had some powerful new capability - previously kept perfectly secret - which they exercised, lethally, and worse, that they had perfect intelligence about the task force and its objective. There's no precedent in history for it. Dare he divert 16th Army and the accompanying assets (his only real alternative to hand) without knowing what the hell the British can unleash on them? Dare he even send the Kido Butai, once it returns? The IJN will pause to frantically gather intel first. The more the Japanese learn about the fate of Yamashita's force, the more disturbed they're going to be - a handful of scorched sailors jibbering about the sun itself being unleashed on their fleet, some bits of floating half melted wreckage . . . it will be like the mystery of the Franklin Expedition times one hundred, with the fate of the entire empire at risk.

It could well be that by the time the Japanese finally decide to risk it and assemble the requisite force, Percival will probably so reinforced and dug in (and quite possibly, one hopes, replaced) that the Japanese can manage no better than a stalemate in Malaya. Meanwhile, Burma is a lost cause, and even the East Indies will jeopardized, with more thorough sabotage of the oil wells and refineries the Japanese so desperately need. And a Britain that can avoid disaster at Singapore is definitely going to be in a considerably different, and better, situation in the postwar than in OTL.

Now just imagine a 1967 Eagle that can stick around to face the Kido Butai. Even without Red Beards, it would be sheer carnage. And a considerably shorter war.
Click to expand...
Probably one flight of Buccaneers could do for the Kido Butai actually, the zeros can't catch them and don't have the weapons to bring them down. Meanwhile the IJN's legendary crappy Damage control means all they'd need is roughly one anti-shipping missile per carrier and the 1943 Japanese naval estimates are slashed considerably.
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top