It's A Long Way To Nagasaki: The Anglo-Japanese War
- Thread starter SealTheRealDeal
- Start date
This is a non-starter. The UK crews would have to be trained on unfamiliar ships, that aren't easily supported by the UK. By the time you are ready to do that, the situation has changed. Without hostilities, the Germans can't really send ships in support manned by German crews either. With HMS Canada, at least the ship was built by the UK, and was operated by them for a time, so you might be able to find some crew that were on her the first time.
The main reason why the RN is expanding is to fight the Japanese while still keeping the Germans and Italians in check. Germany's blatant aggression isn't being ignored just because the Poles aren't complaining about it anymore
I know this is pretty late but Hitler would probably be happy to sell armaments to the UK for hard currency - Nazi issue was their foreign reserves were running low and they were attempting their full rearmament at the same time. By selling the UK war materiel Hitler solves his foreign reserve issue and helps build up the armament industries helping ameloriate German's financial position. (An OTL example is Nazi Germany's agreement with Romania selling them weapons for raw materials in 1938.)
Abt, Parker (2017) "The Nazi Fiscal Cliff: Unsustainable Financial Practices before World War II,"The Gettysburg Historical Journal:Vol. 16 , Article 5
Perhaps, but then, in all those cases they were expecting to sink major naval targets not a pair of cruisers. Shrugs, perhaps a dramatic fight to the death scene with significant misses by inexperienced crews?
Yes, but when those aviators have returned to base, those cruisers, will have transformed into the biggest battleships in the world LOL.....
The UK could easy buy War Material from the US and France, so why would they buy from Germany and give its armament industry a boost?
nbcman
Donor
Because the US armament industry was small relative to the US economy in 1938 as opposed to how big it became after 1940/1941. The US would have a bunch of WW1 surplus stuff that was virtually given away as OTL 1940 after the fall of France that could be sold (edit): but very little modern equipment that the British would want ITTL. Germany had a large armament industry and a desperate need for foreign exchange.
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Another good chapter, well written and planned there @SealTheRealDeal
It's realistic the Allied forces don't have everything going their way, although in time we'll be seeing the RN and IJN clash again no doubt which many of us will look forward to in anticipation.
By the way, for other readers of this thread, HMS Canada/Almirante Latorre did get a thorough beyond Italian style rebuild in my Naval Battles work. But special circumstances are in play there.
Keep up the good work here!
Sargon
It's realistic the Allied forces don't have everything going their way, although in time we'll be seeing the RN and IJN clash again no doubt which many of us will look forward to in anticipation.
By the way, for other readers of this thread, HMS Canada/Almirante Latorre did get a thorough beyond Italian style rebuild in my Naval Battles work. But special circumstances are in play there.
Keep up the good work here!
Sargon
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16. April gives way to Mayhem
Disaster In High Command III: Landfall
On the 25th of April the 14” shells of HMS Canada fell upon the shores of Bougainville, flattening the Japanese beach defences and allowing the Canadians to land unopposed.
Any jubilation the Canadians may have felt upon making landfall was misplaced and unwarranted. The Japanese had enjoyed about three days' notice of the fleet’s approach. While not enough time to meaningfully reorganize their assets or get reinforcements, it was more than enough time to build decoy trenches near the shoreline and better camouflage their actual fortifications further inland.
Just beyond the tree-line, Japanese soldiers carefully observed as their opponents waded ashore. They continued their observations, noting how slowly they advanced, and where gaps formed in their patrols. During the nights, the Japanese made daring raids, dragging Canadians soldiers off into the jungle for interrogation. Sometimes, they would leave a grizzly mess for the Canadians to discover the next morning.
The knowledge gained from these observations and interrogations lead the Japanese to believe the Canadian officers to be both incompetent and unconfident. Furthermore they painted a quite clear picture of the corruption and cronyism that plagued the Canadian Militia.
The Japanese acted accordingly. Confident that their enemy would always act in the absolute most predictable manner the Japanese laid ambushes, conducted flanking maneuvers, and generally dictated the course of the conflict despite being a mere company confronted by a Brigade sized detachment.
Soldiers of the 1st Canadian Division with bayonets affixed.
What these lessons and assumptions did not account for was the quality of the Canadian soldier. While the sixth division had experience in spades, having participated in many campaigns in China, the months spent cooling their heels occupying the island may have taken their edge off. They found themselves taken aback by the speed with which Canadian artillery dismantled their carefully laid killboxes. They were astonished by how aggressively the Canadians moved in battle, even more so to find that their enemies were as willing to resort to the bayonet as they were.[1] Those Japanese that surrendered didn’t live long enough to be amazed by the Canadian’s penchant for vengeance.
How much longer the Canadian soldier would be able to compensate for the inadequacies of their officers remained to be seen.
Across the island chain things played out similarly, with the Canadians slowly and disorderly winning battles that should have never been in doubt to begin with.The division’s poor leadership had failed to swiftly take the islands. Worse, many of the IJA’s outlying personnel had managed to escape to the as of yet untouched island of New Britain, where they rallied with their main force. By mid May the window for Churchill’s planned swift campaign was closing, and it was clear a protracted battle for New Britain was unavoidable.
Revolution vs Electoralism: India’s Fabians Add Fuel To the Flames
India was restless. This wasn’t necessarily due to the war: India had been a prickly subject ever since the Amritsar Massacre twenty years prior. The war had however made things somewhat worse.
The militant leader of the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose, advocated a hardline of mass civil disobedience, but found it hard to find firm enough footing to enact it. His leadership of the congress was strongly challenged by a clique led by Mahatma Gandhi. In an effort to rejuvenate his base, he took a more extreme line, going so far as to threaten revolution against the British, and was arrested for sedition.
Realizing the colony had been brought to the brink of civil war, the British quickly bowed to popular pressure to release Bose, allowing him to escape abroad in November.
The Ghandi-clique quickly filled the power vacuum in the Indian National Congress, which was still quite miffed by the lack of consultation between the Viceroy and the Congress in the declaration of war. While there had been some consultations prior to the Great War, this time the colonial authorities hadn’t reached out to any of the subcontinent’s political groupings. Accordingly, civil disobedience continued.
Adding to matters, India’s sectarian streak was flaring up again. While the secular, yet overwhelmingly Hindu, INC advocated disobedience, the Muslim League offered its unconditional support to the colonial authorities. This ramped up tensions considerably further as both sides accused the other of exploiting the conflict to grab power, and riots in Bengal over the winter months forced the Indian 5th Division to forego its planned deployment to Borneo.
Beneath all these problems a more obscure matter took place. Since the mid-30s, the Congress Socialist Party[2] had absorbed many more radical left wing movements, yet their leadership remained devoted to the democratic process, and quite skeptical of Bose’s authoritarian tendencies. This rift between the party centre and its newer cadres would only grow as the drama around Bose’s fall from grace played out.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came in April, when the party line was to endorse Gandhi's leadership of the INC. The newer cadres still believed that they owed their loyalty to Bose and voted accordingly, going so far as to denounce their “spineless” leaders during the INC’s annual session. The old guard were not interested in stooping down to the level of their new peers, and turned the other cheek, for the time.
The Congress Socialist Party was ready when the new cadres persisted in advocating for a general strike to paralyze the Raj and even encouraged preparations for an armed rebellion. On the first of May, the Congress Socialist Party banned all communists from its ranks and initiated a purge of the New Cadres.
Unfortunately for all involved, the New Cadres had done more than advocate a revolutionary line, they stockpiled weapons for it. On May 3rd a pipe bomb was lobbed through the window of party founder Acharya Narendra Deva’s residence, killing him and a family member.
Acharya Narendra Deva was a founding member of the CSP. Having been jailed by British authorities many times none would have assumed that fellow nationalists would be the ones to take his life.
While the upper ranks of the CSP mourned the loss of their beloved pacifist, the lower ranks of the party took matters into their own hands. On May 11, a worker walked off the line at the Ishapore Rifle Factory with an SMLE, met up with a colleague who provided him with ammunition. Together they shot and killed a local labour agitator who had come out in favour of the newly formed Revolutionary Socialist Party. A wave of tit-for-tat killings erupted across cities and the countryside alike.
The British authorities were concerned, but altogether clueless how to respond.
Both Feet In The Grave: Skirmishes Around Nomonhan
Far to the north, the Soviets prepared to once more test their unwanted neighbour’s readiness and resolve. While they’d come up short in previous engagements, Stalin had given Far Eastern commander Grigori Shtern the directive to pursue another confrontation should Japan experience any setbacks in its war with Britain.
Opportunity for such a confrontation was a bit harder to find than in prior years. The Soviet-Manchukuo border had been settled in the talks that followed the Battle of Lake Khasan, meaning that border disputes were harder to come by.
The Mongolia-Manchukuo border on the other hand remained rather ill defined, especially in the area of the Khalkhin River. In early May this area flared up as a Mongolian border patrol crossed the Khalkhin River and moved to occupy the village of Nomonhan. It was however intercepted and driven back by a Manchukuoan cavalry detachment, which in turn prompted a more substantial Mongolian force to enter the disputed territory. Forces of Japan’s 23rd Division entered the disputed area and found that the Mongolians had already withdrawn to the other side of the river. The 23rd division commander, Lieutenant General Michitarō Komatsubara, requested an air strike on the Mongol forces across the river. This alarmed the Mongols who requested the support of their patron, the Soviet Union.
Predicting that this would be where tensions flared up next, the Soviets had already stationed a mechanized corps in the area. This force consisted of one motorized rifle division, one tank brigade, and three armoured car brigades, and was under the command of Nikolai Feklenko.
A knocked out Soviet BA-10M armoured car. These vehicles boasted armour, armament, and off road mobility comparable to contemporary light tanks, yet their debut at Khalkhin Gol left much to be desired.
Feklenko, however, was not in position to organize his men. From distant Ulaanbaatar he arranged for a portion of his motorized infantry and artillery to accompany the Mongolians into the disputed zone. A series of skirmishes allowed the Soviets to build a bridge across the river. On the 28th of May 2,250 men of the joint Soviet-Mongol force swept through the disputed region and seized the village of Nomonhan, encountering only a Japanese reconnaissance force along the way.
A regiment of the 23rd Division succeeded in forcing the Soviets out of the village, but failed to push the Soviets back across the river. This was very bad, especially from Moscow’s perspective.
By now, Stalin had lost his patience with Feklenko’s hands off leadership. It was clear that war with Germany was inevitable, and he needed to give Japan a reason to think twice about opening a second front. Red Army Headquarters dispatched Russian Civil War veteran Georgy Zhukov to relieve Feklenko, and allocated additional mechanized forces as well as a substantial air component.
On the other side, Michitarō Komatsubara requested assistance from his parent unit, Hitoshi Imamura’s 4th Army.[3] It was time for the victor of Hong Kong to step up to the plate.
---
[1] A consequence of the Canadian militia’s excessive focus on its artillery arm was that its neglected infantry retained some outdated facets, including a somewhat outsized focus on bayonet drill.
[2] Yet another clique within the INC.
[3] The need to reallocate units from Manchuria to China resulted in an expansion of the 4th Army’s area of responsibility, such that it was responsible for the northern and northwestern frontier.
A/N:
It’s baaaaaaack~
I hope you can forgive me for taking some time off over the holidays (no I wasn’t traveling!), and just a bad case of writer’s block afterwards. Hopefully I can get back to more frequent updates now.
If not, I’ll make a discord channel titled It’s A Long Way To The Next Update where you can pester me to work on the TL.
On the 25th of April the 14” shells of HMS Canada fell upon the shores of Bougainville, flattening the Japanese beach defences and allowing the Canadians to land unopposed.
Any jubilation the Canadians may have felt upon making landfall was misplaced and unwarranted. The Japanese had enjoyed about three days' notice of the fleet’s approach. While not enough time to meaningfully reorganize their assets or get reinforcements, it was more than enough time to build decoy trenches near the shoreline and better camouflage their actual fortifications further inland.
Just beyond the tree-line, Japanese soldiers carefully observed as their opponents waded ashore. They continued their observations, noting how slowly they advanced, and where gaps formed in their patrols. During the nights, the Japanese made daring raids, dragging Canadians soldiers off into the jungle for interrogation. Sometimes, they would leave a grizzly mess for the Canadians to discover the next morning.
The knowledge gained from these observations and interrogations lead the Japanese to believe the Canadian officers to be both incompetent and unconfident. Furthermore they painted a quite clear picture of the corruption and cronyism that plagued the Canadian Militia.
The Japanese acted accordingly. Confident that their enemy would always act in the absolute most predictable manner the Japanese laid ambushes, conducted flanking maneuvers, and generally dictated the course of the conflict despite being a mere company confronted by a Brigade sized detachment.
Soldiers of the 1st Canadian Division with bayonets affixed.
What these lessons and assumptions did not account for was the quality of the Canadian soldier. While the sixth division had experience in spades, having participated in many campaigns in China, the months spent cooling their heels occupying the island may have taken their edge off. They found themselves taken aback by the speed with which Canadian artillery dismantled their carefully laid killboxes. They were astonished by how aggressively the Canadians moved in battle, even more so to find that their enemies were as willing to resort to the bayonet as they were.[1] Those Japanese that surrendered didn’t live long enough to be amazed by the Canadian’s penchant for vengeance.
How much longer the Canadian soldier would be able to compensate for the inadequacies of their officers remained to be seen.
Across the island chain things played out similarly, with the Canadians slowly and disorderly winning battles that should have never been in doubt to begin with.The division’s poor leadership had failed to swiftly take the islands. Worse, many of the IJA’s outlying personnel had managed to escape to the as of yet untouched island of New Britain, where they rallied with their main force. By mid May the window for Churchill’s planned swift campaign was closing, and it was clear a protracted battle for New Britain was unavoidable.
Revolution vs Electoralism: India’s Fabians Add Fuel To the Flames
India was restless. This wasn’t necessarily due to the war: India had been a prickly subject ever since the Amritsar Massacre twenty years prior. The war had however made things somewhat worse.
The militant leader of the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose, advocated a hardline of mass civil disobedience, but found it hard to find firm enough footing to enact it. His leadership of the congress was strongly challenged by a clique led by Mahatma Gandhi. In an effort to rejuvenate his base, he took a more extreme line, going so far as to threaten revolution against the British, and was arrested for sedition.
Realizing the colony had been brought to the brink of civil war, the British quickly bowed to popular pressure to release Bose, allowing him to escape abroad in November.
The Ghandi-clique quickly filled the power vacuum in the Indian National Congress, which was still quite miffed by the lack of consultation between the Viceroy and the Congress in the declaration of war. While there had been some consultations prior to the Great War, this time the colonial authorities hadn’t reached out to any of the subcontinent’s political groupings. Accordingly, civil disobedience continued.
Adding to matters, India’s sectarian streak was flaring up again. While the secular, yet overwhelmingly Hindu, INC advocated disobedience, the Muslim League offered its unconditional support to the colonial authorities. This ramped up tensions considerably further as both sides accused the other of exploiting the conflict to grab power, and riots in Bengal over the winter months forced the Indian 5th Division to forego its planned deployment to Borneo.
Beneath all these problems a more obscure matter took place. Since the mid-30s, the Congress Socialist Party[2] had absorbed many more radical left wing movements, yet their leadership remained devoted to the democratic process, and quite skeptical of Bose’s authoritarian tendencies. This rift between the party centre and its newer cadres would only grow as the drama around Bose’s fall from grace played out.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came in April, when the party line was to endorse Gandhi's leadership of the INC. The newer cadres still believed that they owed their loyalty to Bose and voted accordingly, going so far as to denounce their “spineless” leaders during the INC’s annual session. The old guard were not interested in stooping down to the level of their new peers, and turned the other cheek, for the time.
The Congress Socialist Party was ready when the new cadres persisted in advocating for a general strike to paralyze the Raj and even encouraged preparations for an armed rebellion. On the first of May, the Congress Socialist Party banned all communists from its ranks and initiated a purge of the New Cadres.
Unfortunately for all involved, the New Cadres had done more than advocate a revolutionary line, they stockpiled weapons for it. On May 3rd a pipe bomb was lobbed through the window of party founder Acharya Narendra Deva’s residence, killing him and a family member.
Acharya Narendra Deva was a founding member of the CSP. Having been jailed by British authorities many times none would have assumed that fellow nationalists would be the ones to take his life.
While the upper ranks of the CSP mourned the loss of their beloved pacifist, the lower ranks of the party took matters into their own hands. On May 11, a worker walked off the line at the Ishapore Rifle Factory with an SMLE, met up with a colleague who provided him with ammunition. Together they shot and killed a local labour agitator who had come out in favour of the newly formed Revolutionary Socialist Party. A wave of tit-for-tat killings erupted across cities and the countryside alike.
The British authorities were concerned, but altogether clueless how to respond.
Both Feet In The Grave: Skirmishes Around Nomonhan
Far to the north, the Soviets prepared to once more test their unwanted neighbour’s readiness and resolve. While they’d come up short in previous engagements, Stalin had given Far Eastern commander Grigori Shtern the directive to pursue another confrontation should Japan experience any setbacks in its war with Britain.
Opportunity for such a confrontation was a bit harder to find than in prior years. The Soviet-Manchukuo border had been settled in the talks that followed the Battle of Lake Khasan, meaning that border disputes were harder to come by.
The Mongolia-Manchukuo border on the other hand remained rather ill defined, especially in the area of the Khalkhin River. In early May this area flared up as a Mongolian border patrol crossed the Khalkhin River and moved to occupy the village of Nomonhan. It was however intercepted and driven back by a Manchukuoan cavalry detachment, which in turn prompted a more substantial Mongolian force to enter the disputed territory. Forces of Japan’s 23rd Division entered the disputed area and found that the Mongolians had already withdrawn to the other side of the river. The 23rd division commander, Lieutenant General Michitarō Komatsubara, requested an air strike on the Mongol forces across the river. This alarmed the Mongols who requested the support of their patron, the Soviet Union.
Predicting that this would be where tensions flared up next, the Soviets had already stationed a mechanized corps in the area. This force consisted of one motorized rifle division, one tank brigade, and three armoured car brigades, and was under the command of Nikolai Feklenko.
A knocked out Soviet BA-10M armoured car. These vehicles boasted armour, armament, and off road mobility comparable to contemporary light tanks, yet their debut at Khalkhin Gol left much to be desired.
Feklenko, however, was not in position to organize his men. From distant Ulaanbaatar he arranged for a portion of his motorized infantry and artillery to accompany the Mongolians into the disputed zone. A series of skirmishes allowed the Soviets to build a bridge across the river. On the 28th of May 2,250 men of the joint Soviet-Mongol force swept through the disputed region and seized the village of Nomonhan, encountering only a Japanese reconnaissance force along the way.
A regiment of the 23rd Division succeeded in forcing the Soviets out of the village, but failed to push the Soviets back across the river. This was very bad, especially from Moscow’s perspective.
By now, Stalin had lost his patience with Feklenko’s hands off leadership. It was clear that war with Germany was inevitable, and he needed to give Japan a reason to think twice about opening a second front. Red Army Headquarters dispatched Russian Civil War veteran Georgy Zhukov to relieve Feklenko, and allocated additional mechanized forces as well as a substantial air component.
On the other side, Michitarō Komatsubara requested assistance from his parent unit, Hitoshi Imamura’s 4th Army.[3] It was time for the victor of Hong Kong to step up to the plate.
---
[1] A consequence of the Canadian militia’s excessive focus on its artillery arm was that its neglected infantry retained some outdated facets, including a somewhat outsized focus on bayonet drill.
[2] Yet another clique within the INC.
[3] The need to reallocate units from Manchuria to China resulted in an expansion of the 4th Army’s area of responsibility, such that it was responsible for the northern and northwestern frontier.
A/N:
It’s baaaaaaack~
I hope you can forgive me for taking some time off over the holidays (no I wasn’t traveling!), and just a bad case of writer’s block afterwards. Hopefully I can get back to more frequent updates now.
If not, I’ll make a discord channel titled It’s A Long Way To The Next Update where you can pester me to work on the TL.
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Based on how Italy's combo of "good soldiers/crap officers" worked out in North Africa.... it will not work long at all. Especially once larger-scale operations happen.
Ah ha! Japan has made one of the three classic blunders! The first is to never get involved in a land war in Asia, the second is not to make a bet with a Sicilian when death is on the line, and the third is to never make a Hoser or an Aussie mad at you!
Fortunately for Canada, while they always start a war with less-than-impressive officers the bad ones get weeded out pretty quick once the bullets start flying.
Fortunately for Canada, while they always start a war with less-than-impressive officers the bad ones get weeded out pretty quick once the bullets start flying.
To the best of my knowledge it's pretty close, to the point where I think the biggest alterations to the timeline so far has just been of timing.
Regarding the Poor leadership of the Canadians
This was common - even the mighty Germans in 1939 and 1940 made some serious fuck ups
OTL the Germans had the opportunity to learn from them
For example between the Polish Campaign and the defeat of the Western Democracies in 1940 they identified mistakes in training, doctrine and application and ran a staff school that every Regimental commander and above attended with the intention that they would cascade said knowledge to their commands.
Here the Canadians (like everyone else) would have learned some fast and harsh lessons, the best lessons being learned by the survivors and identified those commanding officers that needed....."urgent promotion"....to somewhere else....and place younger leaders who could absorb the lessons learned in their place.
It is the way
This was common - even the mighty Germans in 1939 and 1940 made some serious fuck ups
OTL the Germans had the opportunity to learn from them
For example between the Polish Campaign and the defeat of the Western Democracies in 1940 they identified mistakes in training, doctrine and application and ran a staff school that every Regimental commander and above attended with the intention that they would cascade said knowledge to their commands.
Here the Canadians (like everyone else) would have learned some fast and harsh lessons, the best lessons being learned by the survivors and identified those commanding officers that needed....."urgent promotion"....to somewhere else....and place younger leaders who could absorb the lessons learned in their place.
It is the way
Pretty close, but a bit compressed, and with less time between major events things are a lot more heated.
The fortunate thing is that Canada does have plenty of good (or at least competent) officers in waiting, the unfortunate thing is that where as iotl they sorted that manner out on the training field in Britain, here they're having to sort that out during an actual campaign, which is naturally going to be rough and messy.
Let's see if they can avoid the temptation to invade Russia in winter
Yeah, basically.
Thanks!
Germany would accept Sterling, the US wouldn't. Germany needs raw materials, and the British will supply them, or others will and accept payment in pounds.