The guys at Brewster will be handled by Lucky Luciano, as part of his arrangement with the government.
How do you get all six Midway class carriers built?
- Thread starter Father Maryland
- Start date
I'd have suggested using one of the Jewish Mob bosses the US had a similar arrangement with. Tell them that Brewster are knowingly selling defective weapons in the fight against the Nazis and effectively aiding the Nazi War Effort.
Giving them to Luciano would be a kindness in comparison.
One thing I'm thinking, maybe one or two Japanese kamakazi pilots that where successfully shot down OTL before hitting anything manage to reach their targets and one or two additional Essex class ships suffer damage equal to or worse then the Franklin and Bunker Hill. Maybe even unlike those two another Essex class ship isn't so lucky and does end up sinking or having to be scuttled. That or maybe another Jap sub gets lucky and duplicates the success of the I-19, only instead of the ill fated USS Wasp CV-7, it's an Essex class ship that eats multiple torpedoes.
And the souls behind the USN's torpedoes as well, I'm assuming. Oh and whoever didn't replace the fuses in the shells since some of those were WWI vintage
There will be more than a few careers that come to a skidding stop. Problem is that there are only so many REALLY craptastic places to assign people pre WW II. Now AFTER the war gets going, there are MANY really Godawful behind the lines logistical bases in the South Pacific that are simply crying out for Permanent Latrine Inspectors.
Can you use a few British liaison officers? There's a chap in Singapore in dyer need of a new job.
Could use a liaison in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
I actually knew someone who enlisted right before the Korean war because he was afraid of getting drafted and figured that if the joined up voluntarily he could get placed somewhere nice.
Somehow he ended up spending the entire Korean war as either a sentry or some sort of low grade logistical duties in the Aleutian Islands for the entire war. I mean I guess it's better then getting sent directly into the fight but the Aleutians have to be the worst possible non combat posting.
Meh. I'd take the Aleutians any day over tropical rainforest.
I can't breathe when it's hot and humid.
I have a cousin in the Maryland Air National Guard who did had to do two tours in a row. One tour was in Qatar the hottest country on Earth during the hotter bits of the year. The next tour was to the McMurdo base in Antarctica. So he literally went from the hottest place in the world to the coldest. Apparently his specialty as a Pallet Packer (or might have been a parachute packer) was considered that vital.
Personally I wonder who he managed to piss of that badly.
Probably made some serious bank between the per diem and the tax benefits.
McPherson
Banned
https://weaponsandwarfare.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/de9404de75bc114f09759da90ccd2fe2.jpg?w=584
Deutschland class ‘pocket battleship’
Lutzow (rear) and Admiral Scheer at Wilhelmshaven in 1939. Both ships survived until April 1945 when crippled (Lutzow) or destroyed (Scheer) by RAF bombing. Whats the difference?? Deutschland class…
weaponsandwarfare.com
From the same citation as comes the photo...
The admiral who was CNO when those (^^^) started bobbing around was this guy. Admiral William V. Pratt - United States Navy
He had to come up with an answer to the armored cruiser/raiders the Germans appeared to be building.
Think of where he sat as a responsible naval officer?
The USN had no scouting force worthy of the name. Remember that the first aircraft carriers were four years old and the USN was testing a whole slue of concepts from scouting to actual battle method with the two good ones they had.
--There was no such thing as radar.
--The last of the USN armored cruisers had been stricken in 1930.
--The USN heavy cruiser force was just starting to ramp up. What was there afloat in 1930?
--NOTHING. The Pensacolas and the Northamptons (9 of them) were an emergency program built to
a. Bodyguard the aircraft carriers,
b. Chase enemy commerce raiders.
They come into service between 1929 and 1934.
Meanwhile the General Board has to figure out the German armored raiders right now. Not in 1941 when the wonders of naval aviation, the heavy cruiser force and radar are out of the land of concept and being turned into actual artifacts.
This is from where the 30 cm bore gun armed "battlecruiser" comes. It is a first class cruiser to supplement the second class heavy cruiser force as a commerce protector and commerce destroyer.
The requirement was pegged at what the Germans were perceived to be doing. 6 Nassaus were to be replaced by Lutzows? Six American "battle cruisers" would be there to meet them.
Pratt figured somewhere around 1935-1938 would be the dates in service.
He left the Alaskas as a legacy paper program for his successors because Congress was not going to fund capital ship tonnage into those program ships. The WNT and LNT were also inhibitors. Figure 1935 onward.
Admiral William H. Standley - United States Navy
He did not want them. He believed in better enemy dying through naval airpower.
So who pushed for them?
Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy - United States Navy
By now...
Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sighted
and
WW2Ships.com: Dunkerque Class Battlecruiser
Are afloat.
Why would the FRENCH be part of Leahy's calculations?
Force de Raid, (1è escadre), Marine Française, 03.09.1939
Force de Raid - Wikipedia
The ostensible reason for Dunkirk and Strasbourg at Brest was because they were the only equivalents to the Scharnhorsts for speed, armor and gunpower among the Franco-British. But think like an American admiral and wonder about the South American trade routes from the Atlantic sea frontier ports? Well... TORCH illustrates the reason.
Now should Leahy and after him Stark (Both of whom I consider to be derelict in their duties as Bu-Ord and CNO in succession, when they were the actuals, but for a whole host of interlocked reasons that have to do with major failures to prepare for Atlantic Sea Frontier, Caribbean Sea, South American SLOCs defense and of course the shambles of the Pacific War and the material and personnel failures to get the PACFLT ready.) be blamed for the wastage of steel and personnel and MONEY to build the Alaska and Guam with what they knew from 1938 onward?
No. What they knew was that the naval world was still battleship-centric and that it was the gun that decided issues at sea. Never mind that they were total IDIOTS, they thought they had a lot of evidence from the North Atlantic actions such as Denmark Strait and River Plate or even Narvik. clear up to Pearl Harbor that it was the battle-line; supported by the scouting force (aircraft carriers) instead of the other way around as the naval war college was screaming at them at the time.
How are aircraft carriers supposed to protect the trade lanes against surface raiders? You use cruisers to do that work. Actually you use long range maritime patrollers to guard against surface raiders (Again the NWC is screaming this little giblet of naval wisdom from 1835 forward as a lesson learned from the fleet problems at the top of their lungs at whoever will listen.).
Now, as ships, were the Alaskas botched? As a slapdash panic build in 1939 forward, since the money is there, and something has to hit the water in a hurry before Congress stops feeding the money tree? Sure one can say that is the case. When you consider that C and R and Bu-Eng has to work up detail work for 400 vessels for Senator Carl Vinson's wet dream and now the Europeans are shooting at each other and Murphy, we need a Navy because France is GONE! The clowns who Spring-sharped the Alaskas were not America's best and brightest. Those bright people were sweating over building a naval air force and trying to get the subs down the Mississippi River and out through the Great Lakes.
The Alaskas were left to the second raters to draft out to the requirements. How did they do? Well, neither Alaska or Guam was sunk, and their charges were bodyguarded and not sunk either (USS Franklin was one of their charges.). Their foreign equivalents were blasted into scrap.
Could the wastage be invested better? Sure. Want another couple of Iowas? How about two dozen Balaos? Or a complete Essex? That is what you could do instead if you were Foresight War perfect. But given the gonzos in charge (GICs) present and the knowledge base and the resource pools available, the Alaskas were about as good as could be expected. 1943? Yeah, it makes no sense from lessons learned to build them after those lessons learned, but that is 1943 and you still have politics, so they are going to be built. Just two of them.
McP.
Edit: 1835 should be 1935.
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I'm guessing the Iowas, Montanas, and Midways all competed for the same building slips, based on what I've read up-thread. I don't know if we can get the USN with a much earlier decision that they will need Midway-sized carriers. Perhaps it is decided to accelerate battleship construction, so more large building slips are constructed? The oldest battleships may be wearing out faster than in OTL. Or the RN gets pounded even harder in the early war.
Might also have the government push to have more big liners built in the USA. Throwing these ideas out there for us to play with.
Might also have the government push to have more big liners built in the USA. Throwing these ideas out there for us to play with.
The Iowas weren't competing for slips with those classes. They came in at under 900 feet, so they were competing with Essex-class for slips. And we had so many of those slips we didn't even bother to clear Kentucky and Illinois off the stocks until after the war.