Zheng He has a task force approaching Norwegian waters now. Tirpitz was sunk by USS Washington and Home Fleet January 1942 (KGV and DoY) after airstrikes by the Bathhouse carrier forces.
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Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2
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Those who are on the historically privileged side are the only ones who bitch about PC. The folks who've been on the receiving side of dubious "humor" aren't so keen on it....
How will the Italian campaign proceed in this TL? One would hope the arduous slog up the boot of Italy could be avoided. Bloody costly battles like Ortona and Monte Cassino would not have to happen.
What with the more powerful and capable Allied forces, including more carrier air, available in the Mediterranean a bigger landing could be carried out successfully somewhere near the top of the Italian peninsula to cut off the German forces from resupply and reinforcement. At this point the Italian government will depose of Mussolini and switch sides if they haven't done so already. These events catches the isolated German forces between Allied forces to their North and to their South.
What with the more powerful and capable Allied forces, including more carrier air, available in the Mediterranean a bigger landing could be carried out successfully somewhere near the top of the Italian peninsula to cut off the German forces from resupply and reinforcement. At this point the Italian government will depose of Mussolini and switch sides if they haven't done so already. These events catches the isolated German forces between Allied forces to their North and to their South.
formion
Banned
I doubt that the Allies would risk to land in Tuscany or in any place north. A few more carriers cannot mitigate that risk. What can be done though, is an early landing in Rome , especially if the Royalists and Fascists turncloaks promise any kind of support. In OTL the airlanding in Rome was cancelled after the Italian generals couldn't commit to actively support it. The tiniest amount of competency of the coup leaders would see Rome occupied in summer 1943.
In OTL it was discussed in Berlin the options of either protecting the vital Po Valley (read Gothic Line) or fighting in the south. Even very small butterflies can see the Allies bashing their heads against the Gothic Line in August-September 1943. The butterflies from there can be dozens, but here are 4 top of my head:
a) Bomber bases in Tuscany besides Foggia?
b) Earlier breakout to the Po Valley, in spring or summer 1944 instead of spring 1945?
c) Earlier loss for the Nazis of the North Italian industry and agriculture? (interesting paper on the italian war economy of 1943-1945
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58826031.pdf)
d) What will happen with the Ljubljana Gap opening the road to Hungary, Austria and Croatia?
In OTL it was discussed in Berlin the options of either protecting the vital Po Valley (read Gothic Line) or fighting in the south. Even very small butterflies can see the Allies bashing their heads against the Gothic Line in August-September 1943. The butterflies from there can be dozens, but here are 4 top of my head:
a) Bomber bases in Tuscany besides Foggia?
b) Earlier breakout to the Po Valley, in spring or summer 1944 instead of spring 1945?
c) Earlier loss for the Nazis of the North Italian industry and agriculture? (interesting paper on the italian war economy of 1943-1945
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58826031.pdf)
d) What will happen with the Ljubljana Gap opening the road to Hungary, Austria and Croatia?
Glyndwr01
Banned
Try being a Welsh kid in an English school, I learned not to whine but I became a bloody good fighter!
Story 2053
Palawan, May 18, 1943
A dozen 155 millimeter guns started to fire. The bombardment plan was simple. The battalion attached to the corps would fire for twelve minutes, and each gun was allocated sixteen heavy shells fused for instant detonation. The lighter guns attached to the 7th Infantry Division would be firing far more rapidly. The 105 millimeter battalions were firing a mix of slightly delayed fuse and contact fused high explosives as well as plentiful smoke. As the gunners humped shells into the breach, a company of Shermans along with a regiment of riflemen would begin attacking up the hill that was the linchpin of the Japanese position on the northwestern coast of the long island. Take the hill, and the Japanese would either have to retreat or die ineffectively and in place.
Moments after the corps artillery ceased, half a dozen A-20 Havocs screeched low over the supply road that connected the front to the ever growing supply stockpile to the rear. The light bombers came back over the guns minutes later, lighter and faster now. On the sun baked ground, gunners were clearing the barrels and preparing for another fire mission. They were now on call for the infantry. Slowly they were advancing north, and slowly they were winning.
Fifteen miles to the rear, the engineering and construction battalion which had built a fighter strip at Rizal was ambling out of trucks. They had a big, long, flat piece of land with decent drainage. Within a month, medium bombers would be flying missions and within two months, heavy four engine beasts would be willingly landing on the field that was overflowing with grass.
Story 2054
Thessaloniki, Greece, May 18, 1943
It would have been easy to shoot the German. The sentry was tired, he was hot, and he was bored. Very little had happened in the northern Greek port. Partisans and commando groups flown in from Crete had been setting the countryside on fire over the past two weeks. Stand-up battles between German, Italian and Bulgarian infantry companies and once a battalion were now an almost daily occurrence. Prisoners were seldom taken and if they were, neither side tried to keep them seldom alive for long. Yet the fighting had not touched the northern port city. This was the cushiest garrison in all of Greece. As long as the ships were loaded and unloaded at the piers and the channels were swept daily for mines, life continued as it had for the past two years. The private guarding the dockyard entrance knew he had it good.
Eighty yards away, a man who had been trained as a sniper smiled. It was a smile of a predator and in no way was it gentle or warm or inviting. It was a smile of anticipation, it was a smile of the hunt. He could have taken down the German sentries in a few seconds if he had a well calibrated rifle, but that was not his mission, at least it was not his mission today. Instead, he continued to count and he continued to watch. Soon, his patience would be rewarded, but until then, hsi fingers did their job and made another tally mark in the left hand column.
This actually could be quite acceptable given the work done by labour historians on unfree and unpaid workers in the last twenty years. What’s core to the analysis is that wages are often paid in truck (goods, board) and “free” labour usually sits somewhere on the scale of bondage. This authorial trend emphasises the differences in how labour control and subsistence operates for slaves and owners between the slaveries in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modernity. The film would of course describe them as slaves in dialogue, but the story and shooting / mis en scen would produce a contrast between slaves, indentures and “free” labourers. I think N Stephensons baroque does just this with three brothers, one part African, all of whom were *meant* to be indentures.
Probably with exactly the opposite results that a PC liberal would want in that slavery rather than being an issue that was put to bed would be demonstrated as still politically current through the bondage of prison labour and the debt bonded worker and student in the US.
Academia: weirder than you probably expected.
Sam R.
formion
Banned
I have not studied the geography, but it seems plausible. I base this due to these differences to OTL in naval and air assets:
a) Mustang has been introduced earlier. So, it is possible that the Allies would have slightly easier land-based fighter cover for Salerno or any other operation south of Napoli.
b) OTL, the OOB of Avalance included Illustrious, Formidable, Unicorn and 4 escort carriers. As far as I know, Slapstick didn't have any carriers supporting the Taranto landing. Now, there are the following extra carriers available at least for Husky:
- HMS Glorious (last seen in the Clyde preparing for the Med to deliver fighters). If in OTL the brand new Unicorn was risked in Avalance, why not the Folly if replacement aircraft are found?
- HMS Indomitable (in OTL torpedoed in the initial phase of Husky).
- HMS Victorious (in OTL coming back from the SWP)
- USS Ranger (in OTL was in Scapa in OTL to attack Tirpitz)
- USS Wasp
- USS Independence
- MN Rochambeau
Lastly, it seems that the RN has more escort carriers. I have no idea if it means that there are more than the 4 of OTL or not.
There are even more battleships available in TTL for shore bombardment and escorting the carriers. Remember the Hood !
All and all, an Anzio landing doesn't seem ASB.
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And in OTL between March 15 and May 10 1943, the grand majority of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki was shipped off to concentration camps in Poland, with 16 out of 19 train shipments taking place, the last three were in June 1, August 2 and August 10. If the Greek resistance, Allied air forces and commandos are making a mess of things over the whole area are the Germans still able to allocate train shipments to the holocaust? Or do things get postponed... with some luck long enough for allied armies to show up?
Given that the trains supplying the German and Italian garrisons are heading north mostly empty AND the Germans were still using scarce resources in late 1944 and early 1945 to kill Jews as a matter of priority, I would not be too hopeful.
My vague recollection of the SeaBees construction rates was that they were even faster than that. Am I misremembering?
SsgtC
Banned
So will CV-10. She'll either keep her original name of Bon Homme Richard or get renamed Saratoga for CV-3. CV-16 will also have a different name as Lexington is still afloat ITTL. She'll likely keep her original name of Cabot or be named for a carrier that is lost between now and her launch.
Story 2055
Chapel Hill, North Carolina May 19, 1943
“Crack” the bat battered the ball. The Marine aviation cadet took two steps out of the batter’s box before he dropped the bat. The centerfielder had started to move even before contact, he saw the pitch was hanging high and the opponent’s left fielder loved the power alleys in the park a few blocks away from the college campus that had been transformed into a preliminary flight training center for the East Coast. The right fielder only started moving when the strong shoulder muscles uncoiled. He too knew that his only chance to get to the soon to be perfectly hit line drive was anticipation.
They ran, and they failed. The ball screamed over the head of the second baseman and found a hole in the outfield’s defense. The batter was approaching second as the ball landed in the ankle high grass. It skipped like a perfectly thrown stone across a still pond on a lazy August day before rattling around to the back of the ballpark and hard against the wooden slat fence. Two runners had already made it home as the batter pulled up at third. He knew the centerfield had an arm made for throwing grenades or eliminating over-confident runners.
The next man up was inferior to the clean-up hitter; he had only made it Triple-A before being called to the colors. He was caught on high inside heat, but could salvage enough of the contact to get the ball high and deep enough to right field to score the runner. The game continued as the want to be pilots enjoyed their structured and strongly encouraged recreational time before they headed to Franklin Street to talk about pitchers and maneuvers with their hands.
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