Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Well, to be fair they mostly were OTL; even the United States didn't completely eliminate propeller fighters until after the Korean War (see the service of the Twin Mustang in that war, and we kept prop attack aircraft in front-line roles well into the 1960s (the A-1 Skyraider). Of course, things look different if it's "wow we have a lot of surplus P-51s/P-47s/F6Fs/F8Fs/A-1s/etc. etc. etc." versus "P-51s are the best aircraft money can buy (more or less)"
There's liable to be more experimentation with rocket-propelled aircraft in that case, now that I think about it, or hybrid rocket/piston propulsion, since it offers a potentially significant boost to some areas of performance. Rocket/piston, in particular, like OTL rocket/turbojet, offers the allure of a significant (if short) boost in speed while curing the major faults of pure rocket propulsion (ie., short range). Without a war to quickly show up the technology's faults and divert resources away from it (I mean in the sense that the British would probably have rather had 100 more Spitfires than 10 super-rocket planes), it's likely that there will be more operational units fielded than just the Me-163...or at least that there will be more investigation outside of Germany.
And that gets me thinking about space exploration (as you might expect), but that's a big subject...suffice it to say that while I think it might be fairly reasonable to delay the first spaceflights somewhat, the development of nuclear weapons will be a huge spur to rocket development once they're starting to get small enough to be reasonably usable on top of a missile. Even better, since Europe is still the center of the universe here instead of everything being about the Soviet Union and the United States, IRBMs are much more usable than in reality, and IRBMs are simpler and easier to develop than ICBMs, while still just as useful for launching things into space (see: Jupiter-C, a modified IRBM. Or Delta, derived ultimately from the Thor IRBM. Or the Soviet/Russian Kosmos, derived from the R-12 and R-14 IRBMs. Or etc. etc.). That means that the technical bar that needs to be crossed to get a useful weapons system is lower, which means that it will be practical sooner, which means it will be investigated sooner, which finally means that it will be introduced sooner than in reality, relatively speaking. When you couple that with nuclear weapons being a bit later and slower to develop than in reality, I suspect that the first satellites will be launched about the same time as IOTL. All of the same military motivations (spy satellites!!!!) will be present ITTL as well, after all. And the other practical motivations will doubtlessly come up pretty soon, just like in reality.
And with multiple powers (America, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia for sure, almost certainly India and China as well, possibly Brazil, maybe South Africa or one of the West African states) able to engage in space exploration, any space race is likely to be much more complicated and more thorough-going; different powers will have different goals, and one or two powers giving up on space exploration still leaves many others who might be willing to push things further. Mars seems at the edge of possibility for the present-day, but a permanent presence on the Moon and much more development in orbit seem eminently doable.
So my prediction is that the beginnings of space exploration won't be delayed too much, if at all, and that there's likely to be more space development and exploration than in reality, both in robotic areas (that is, after all, cheaper) and in human exploration, due to the world being richer and more developed, and having more countries that can reasonably run their own space programs.
Sulemain
Banned
I suspect we will see more things like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.177
In the 50s/60s. In fact, if this is the main Anglosphere fighter in the 60s, I will be very happy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.177
In the 50s/60s. In fact, if this is the main Anglosphere fighter in the 60s, I will be very happy.
That is a lot to take in!
I kind of like the odd mixing of the legalistic/war and external external intervention/ promising in many ways
I kind of like the odd mixing of the legalistic/war and external external intervention/ promising in many ways
That's what I was getting at, although I think the same factors that made the hybrids die out IOTL will tend to make them unsuccessful ITTL, particularly once you get jets. Perhaps if the technology is developed for piston aircraft and then refined or transferred to jets when those come around...
This just goes to show the need for the Oxford comma
Yes. Never underestimate the havoc a missing Oxford comma can wreak. I expected better from a lawyer, Jonathan.
Reading it as "the dominions, Sokoto, and Ilorin", it makes a lot more sense. Even having just won independence a few years ago, Sokoto and Ilorin would be very predisposed to supporting the British against Natal. The experience might, in fact, be a great way of reconciling relations between them and Britain -- and, of course, of developing more links between the Niger Valley states and dominions, especially if they fought together like OTL's ANZACs.
That's more or less what I was thinking, actually - the first satellites in the late 1950s or early 60s (military followed quickly by communications and weather), manned space flight by the early 70s, and more enduring, multipolar and practically-focused progress thereafter. Most milestone events will happen later than OTL, but they won't be flash-in-the-pan prestige projects. We're probably looking at more sustained development of LEO facilities and maybe something on the moon, with more in the works by 2015.
It's a precedent, which will take its place in the context of other conflicts of the 1940s and early 50s.
Yes. Never underestimate the havoc a missing Oxford comma can wreak. I expected better from a lawyer, Jonathan.
Yeah, I've seen the cartoon.
It will have that effect, somewhat like India's participation in the relief of Trinidad did for British-Indian relations (although Sokoto and Ilorin parted from the British Empire with much less bitterness than India did). And as you say, it will give the Niger Valley states a story in common to offset their frequent past antagonism toward each other. Whether that's enough to overcome all differences remains to be seen.
I would put the first crewed flights earlier, actually; the jump from launching satellites to launching humans is smaller than most people think, and there will be obvious prestige benefits and scientific interest in doing so (and aerospace engineers being aerospace engineers, it's a given that there will be plans for doing so, even if not funded). It's not terribly well known, but the Vostok was actually derived from/developed in parallel to one of the Soviet Union's first film spy satellite designs, and is substantially identical in overall design and configuration. Similarly, both the United States and China studied (though did not actually implement) utilizing the design of their own film satellites, the Discoverer/CORONA and FSW, respectively, for crewed flights. In the late 1950s and early 1960s film is really the only reasonably practical technology for spy satellites, so you end up forced to do most of the work needed for a human program anyways.
Alternatively, the first spaceflights (for a certain definition of spaceflight) could grow out of high-altitude research aircraft like the X-15. There were a whole series of proposals for X-15 follow-ons, some of which could have made orbit, that never materialized for one reason or another, among them being the space race; if some of the possible players don't feel involved or decide that slow and steady wins the race, then some of those could pan out to at least some extent. At the least, there could reasonably be X-15-type suborbital hops similar to the first two Mercury flights by the mid-1960s.
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Regarding the path forward from WWII type piston-prop planes, I had some different thoughts and wrote a post (in a hurry, so it's not well-edited for conciseness) then I forgot to go past preview and never posted it.
My notion was that pure turbojet development is somewhat backward (relative to the "aviation 10 years ahead of OTL" norm that seems to prevail since the Great War ITTL, so only half a decade or so ahead of OTL) and more restricted to interceptor fighters, due to the geopolitical situation generally (with some important exceptions, mainly regarding Russia) favoring the timeline's well-developed pacifist movement. For both technical and political reasons, interceptors which are basically defensive weapons are less disfavored and more justifiable, whereas the advantages early jet engines have favor that mission while the drawbacks (unreliability, heavy fuel consumption) are less daunting for that mission.
OTOH, Britain still wants to be able to project power far overseas, via the Navy, but there is little reason to anticipate a slugfest against a comparable power--by the momentum of tradition from the last generation and the objective situation in the 1940s, they want to be ready to strike at second-tier or lower powers in asymmetric warfare, at any of many unpredictable points around the world.
Therefore they might have been motivated to develop moderate enhancements of their established prop-driven airpower. Workable Goblin's suggestions of rocket-enhanced piston-prop planes would fit that scenario but I was thinking more along the lines of developing turbo-props and turbo-shaft power plants for helicopters.
So in the case of Britain, I'd think that jet interceptors along the lines of the Meteor or Vampire of OTL might be state-of-the-art for home defense of the British Isles and perhaps also in the most advanced Dominions--Australasia, perhaps Canada (depending on what the USA is deploying) and possibly South Africa--but note these are not much developed for air strike or troop close support, so even if the South Africans have some, they might not figure much in the Natal intervention. I'd expect the French to have something comparable and Germany to be somewhat more advanced due to the potential threat from Russia.
But operating from RN carriers, ultimate upgrades of the propeller-driven types using turbine-cored engines. These are somewhat more fuel-hungry than piston engines but lighter and more easily maintained (once basic turbine tech advances beyond the primitive years) and deliver lots of power, whereas propulsion by a propeller makes carrier deck operation easier. They could indeed have rocket engines for speed bursts, or perhaps mainly to enhance rate of climb--OTL WWII piston planes were already pushing the speed limits of propeller planes. You'd have to shut down and feather the prop(s) to take full advantage of the speed bursts a rocket could offer.
Helicopters would also be very attractive, giving non-carriers some aerial capability without the constraints of seaplane operations.
So I'd think the Natal intervention might be characterized by a mix of legacy piston aircraft and turbine-driven ones including helicopters of various kinds.
---
I see the evolution of jets ITTL going on two tracks. For one, there is the desire to achieve the goal of bypassing the limits of a propeller, which are imposed because the tip speed of a prop blade is the Pythagorian sum of the forward air speed plus the rotary speed of the prop. At the tips, well, OTL propeller tips started pushing the speed of sound during WWI! Adding forward airspeed to approach the speed of sound for the whole airplane means either gearing down the RPM of the prop (impeding efficiency) or tolerating considerable shock wave loss--the latter also makes props noisier, while the former implies gearboxes which add to weight and complexity.
Meanwhile, aside from the mere desire to achieve speed for its own sake, was the consideration that a given wing lift area and optimum lift angle could yield the same lift at a higher altitude if the plane is going faster (up to sonic compressibility limits which were ill-understood) so the same thrust would propel the same airplane at the higher speed. Power requirements would rise with speed of course, but since time to go given distance is cut down in proportion the net fuel consumption for a given range might be comparable, and the payload gets to its destination sooner. Hence the quest for more powerful engines and higher airspeeds at high altitudes.
Therefore long before airplanes came anywhere near the speed of sound OTL, visionaries were dreaming up schemes to get reaction force from the air by other methods, basically creating a high-speed, low mass jet by some means or other. A method that was tried with little success OTL was to simply use a piston engine to compress intake air and then either simply exhaust that or burn more fuel in the compression chamber for a sort of piston-powered ramjet--I'm not sure whether this yielded unspectacular results for fundamental reasons or merely because it was executed poorly.
Meanwhile, the demand for ever-more-powerful engines capable of high performance over a range of altitudes hence air densities led to development of supercharging, and systems that over a range of altitudes automatically improved compression with height--that is, turbosuperchargers. The metallurgy and machining involved in these has a lot in common with turbojet compressor and turbine technology. And indeed, as these superchargers were developed for the main purpose of enhancing air intake for piston engines at high altitudes, they also proved capable of capturing more power from the engine exhaust than they needed to provide the compression, thus adding net horsepower to the engine as a whole, something like 10-20 percent of the output of late-1940s "compound engines" as they were called. The notion of growing them and adding a combustion chamber would soon become obvious.
Thus, even with no military demand whatsoever, I'd expect pure turbojets and turboprops to evolve from purely civil demands soon enough, with no more than a decade's delay versus general state of the art--which ITTL is advanced by about a decade, so by the first half of the 1940s at the latest. Becoming economically competitive with piston engines should then take no more than a decade--and that's without military development. Since ITTL there is still some military demand I expect jet tech on at least OTL's schedule and probably 5 years in advance, perhaps a full decade, and for the reasons I gave with interceptor type small jets on the sooner end of the spectrum. The fact that turboprops are more complex, being added machinery onto a turbojet core, is offset by the fact that the jets might evolve from superchargers which are already installed in prop-driving machinery, and given special demand for conservative military prop planes and for helicopters, might be even more accelerated than the general decade bonus of the timeline.
And I've never heard of a bimodal turboprop, that can drive a prop for takeoff and low-speed cruise and loiter, then shift power over to drive the jet more powerfully (all turboprops produce some portion of their thrust through residual jet exhaust) and feather the prop for high speed action. Is that a possibility here?)
Whereas rockets produce much higher thrust to weight ratios, meaning a small parasitic mass for regular use can come in handy for high thrust on takeoff, climbing, and high-speed dash. The drawback, as you well know, is that the propellant mass is really high and gets consumed rapidly, only good for a few minutes operation. OTL between improvements of the power and efficiency of the core turbojet and other augmentation schemes such as water injection and afterburning, the fashion for jet enhancement soon passed. Though not without a cool legacy--Comet airliners with built-in rockets for takeoff, the various interceptors we've been gossiping about.
Augmenting piston prop planes, or turboprops, they might have a longer development arc.
And leading up to pure rocketry as you are, I'd like to point out that a peculiar hobbyhorse of mine, this past half year or so, is favored by more experience with airplane rocket enhancement--namely, rockets using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant! OTL, despite the abandonment of high-test peroxide rockets for pure rocket systems by most developers, they were the norm for many liquid-fueled airplane rockets. The Germans of course used other forms of "storable" hypergolics as well, with often horrible results, whereas American work on jet-assisted takeoff centered on expendable solid rockets. But the Comet and various experimental interceptors used peroxide, either as a catalyzed monopropellant or in some cases to burn hydrocarbon fuel. Since even in the latter case, the vast majority of the mass of the propellant was peroxide, whereas the hydrocarbon could be the same fuel the airplane main engines used, it was essentially a matter of loading on a single additional propellant. And I have the impression that as a relatively low-temperature (hence lower efficiency to be sure) fuel mix, it was easier to get a given amount of thrust out of peroxide-hydrocarbon rockets than most other combinations.
So this renews my hope that ITTL, some major space launch systems might go with peroxide for the first stages.
Well, Workable Goblin left out the Ottomans, who I'd think would be a possible space contender before Italy or Brazil or the West Africans or South Africa on her own. (The latter two might be roped back into a Commonwealth general program quite early though). And Japan I gather is well behind the OTL curve, putting her down with Italy and so on.
Here's the geopolitical picture I'm getting spanning the middle decades of the 20th century:
Russia might well be in the driver's seat of advanced tech with military applications, despite relative poverty. The Western European major powers, Germany, France, and Britain in roughly that order, are satisfied powers with little immediate threat to their core territories (Germany is at some risk from Russia but this is offset by her great wealth and potential power) and plenty of power projection (or potential) to deter designs on their smaller, more far-flung possessions. The USA is considerably less developed in military capability than OTL and has very few distant entanglements. Australasia is also quite self-satisfied; India is coming from far behind though vigorously, as are the West African lands. The Ottomans are farther along on that spectrum (of developing powers) but not seriously threatened except potentially by Russia. China is developing fast but from a low level and suffers from internal dissents.
Earlier upthread I suggested a low-key arms race between the Russians and Germans, but many factors conspire to limit it. That was before I heard about the nature of the conflicts between Russia and China though. We're all looking anxiously at that flashpoint now, and it would motivate the Russians to go ahead and push their military preparedness to higher levels than either the Ottomans or Germans, in their current peaceable mood, would justify. This in turn would make those two nations more nervous and drive the sort of arms race WG alludes to, with IRBMs on everyone's agenda even before nukes come into play. The Germans need not dig too deep into their pockets to match Russian capabilities enough to deter them from wanting to do anything rash in Eastern Europe I suppose. (But a higher level of German readiness might in turn divert the French and British and various smaller European powers to upgrade their own preparedness beyond levels they'd otherwise settle at.)
However ITTL there is a rather high development of pacifist sentiment. Never and nowhere enough to veto armament completely, but enough I think for significant publics in each great power to raise questions about the dangers of an arms race. (Except in China!) There is also a high development of an international legal order, which is a forum various publics might urge their governments to meet in and work out agreements meant to head off runaway arms races and world wars.
In particular, with Russia feeling the need to guard against China, I can see them overcoming typical Russian reluctance to involve outsiders in their own affairs to approach and reassure the Germans that there is no intention to make any trouble in Europe. And perhaps more grudgingly to extend similar reassurance to the Ottomans, though the latter might also be considering some sort of alliance with China.
Meanwhile, as a more or less patriotic American, I've been trying to figure out how the USA could be involved in the space ventures without stumbling first into some ill-conceived imperial schemes. It's tricky!
But here's how my thinking of the evolution of the US high-tech industrial complex evolves intertwined with a larger dose OTL of pacifist-isolationist internationalism:
As Britain was burning itself with the Imperialist fiasco, so the USA was reeling from the aftermath of the Central American war of the 1910s, with the imperialist US faction suffering disgrace and eclipse due to the controversial war and President Lodge's high-handed refusals to cooperate with a nay-saying Congress. The US military in particular suffered some disgrace, with the Army taking the brunt of it. In particular, the relatively new Army aviation arm would have performed at a much higher level than the OTL fiascos of the Mexican intervention under Wilson, but neither distinguished itself as a war-winning branch of the military in its own right nor gaining much romantic sympathy, since Mexico had very little air power and the American Army flyboys would mainly be involved in reconnaissance and possibly some aerial terror-bombing, analogous to the British use of air power against the Iraqi insurgency of the 1920s OTL. Such inglorious usages would be known ITTL from British misadventures as well.
So, with Lodge out of office, I'd expect a backlash against the Army, with Army aviation taking a hard hit. In fact I have this fancy of quite contrary to the general trend of establishing a separate Air Force, what happens in the USA for decades to come is that the Army air craft that are procured are requested and run by separate, traditional branches of the Army--fighter type planes by the Cavalry, for instance, attack planes by the Artillery, transports by the Quartermaster Corps, and so on. It is a generation or more before Army aviation is organized under an autonomous Air Corps, and talk of an Air Force remains utopian.
Meanwhile IIRC part of the general leftist-populist-pacifist movement in US politics causes the foundation of a Department of Peace. As part of the general discomfiture of the military in general and Army aviation in particular, versus a populist sentiment for aviation as part of the "Electric Age," the D of P is given a mandate to review military (naval as well as Army) pleas for developing new forms of weaponry and updating older ones, with a skeptical eye. The Department sends commissioners to a commission, balanced by military experts and general Congressional appointees, to determine which advances are warranted by the general defense situation of the USA and which are merely provocative or pork-barrel schemes.
As a political entity, and with even the Dept of Peace quite politicized, the commission is not as opposed to pork-barrel projects as it theoretically ought to be, nor does the Peace delegation get its way as often as it would like. As part of the general political give and take, the pacifist delegates find that the military aviation faction is not composed entirely of warmongers--flyboys, first of all, want to fly. Whereas the public is keen to see progress in aviation, and like the military flyers don't care so much about how many guns the planes sport as long as they fly faster, higher, and more often.
Thus a common interest is found between the peace faction and the axis of aviation enthusiasts and industrialists. In lieu of major military expenditures for aviation, a consensus builds to develop a civil department combining the OTL functions of the regulatory mission of the Civil Aeronautics Board and the research and development facilitation of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). As a research bureau, the department will (as much as limited funding allows) push the boundaries of science and engineering in aid of the US domestic aviation industry. Instead of encouraging the civil air firms to specialize in military hardware the agency will examine the state of the art of current foreign capabilities and commission, with Navy and Army participation, suitable design studies and contingency plant conversion schemes, and subsidize a minimal number of current-state-of-the-art warplanes for Army and Navy use, while promoting the growth and development of American civil aviation, in US territory and as far as feasible reaching overseas.
Thus as the rocket age approaches, this aeronautics department, with ties to both the War and Naval departments but also to the Department of Peace, responds to grassroots air-mindedness evolving to rocket-mindedness, along with military nervousness about being left behind, by considering the diplomatic and military balance between the major rocket-developing powers and proposing a voluntary world treaty before the world court system; the great powers (and as many smaller ones as care to join) will negotiate terms for sharing knowledge about rocket systems capable of inflicting long-range damage with an international commission of their own members. Foreseeing some of the possibilities of orbital spacecraft (at least as well as say Arthur C. Clarke did a decade before they began to be realized) the consortium members will pledge not to make territorial claims on the Moon and beyond, to hold orbital space as open to navigation by all, to jointly construct and launch spacecraft to share such utilities as Earth observation and communications with all members. Thus there need not be a race for spy satellites for instance if all powers capable of launch get on board and share the observations of one system of satellites. Communications satellites can be designed for all nations to use, with all member nations contributing part of the cost and effort to put them up. International sites for shared spaceports can be chosen, negotiated for and developed.
Thus, a missile race might be diverted and deterred, and its threat minimized by universal surveillance defusing fear of surprise attacks.
Thus, a pacifist world power with only a fraction of the military infrastructure of OTL might procure national funding and an international role for American industrial interests, while developing capability of major American military capabilities on the back burner should the world situation, or the US one in particular, turn dangerous.
It may be completely improbable, with the multipolar competition suggested above being more likely, but I thought it was worth throwing out there.
) then I forgot to go past preview and never posted it.My notion was that pure turbojet development is somewhat backward (relative to the "aviation 10 years ahead of OTL" norm that seems to prevail since the Great War ITTL, so only half a decade or so ahead of OTL) and more restricted to interceptor fighters, due to the geopolitical situation generally (with some important exceptions, mainly regarding Russia) favoring the timeline's well-developed pacifist movement. For both technical and political reasons, interceptors which are basically defensive weapons are less disfavored and more justifiable, whereas the advantages early jet engines have favor that mission while the drawbacks (unreliability, heavy fuel consumption) are less daunting for that mission.
OTOH, Britain still wants to be able to project power far overseas, via the Navy, but there is little reason to anticipate a slugfest against a comparable power--by the momentum of tradition from the last generation and the objective situation in the 1940s, they want to be ready to strike at second-tier or lower powers in asymmetric warfare, at any of many unpredictable points around the world.
Therefore they might have been motivated to develop moderate enhancements of their established prop-driven airpower. Workable Goblin's suggestions of rocket-enhanced piston-prop planes would fit that scenario but I was thinking more along the lines of developing turbo-props and turbo-shaft power plants for helicopters.
So in the case of Britain, I'd think that jet interceptors along the lines of the Meteor or Vampire of OTL might be state-of-the-art for home defense of the British Isles and perhaps also in the most advanced Dominions--Australasia, perhaps Canada (depending on what the USA is deploying) and possibly South Africa--but note these are not much developed for air strike or troop close support, so even if the South Africans have some, they might not figure much in the Natal intervention. I'd expect the French to have something comparable and Germany to be somewhat more advanced due to the potential threat from Russia.
But operating from RN carriers, ultimate upgrades of the propeller-driven types using turbine-cored engines. These are somewhat more fuel-hungry than piston engines but lighter and more easily maintained (once basic turbine tech advances beyond the primitive years) and deliver lots of power, whereas propulsion by a propeller makes carrier deck operation easier. They could indeed have rocket engines for speed bursts, or perhaps mainly to enhance rate of climb--OTL WWII piston planes were already pushing the speed limits of propeller planes. You'd have to shut down and feather the prop(s) to take full advantage of the speed bursts a rocket could offer.
Helicopters would also be very attractive, giving non-carriers some aerial capability without the constraints of seaplane operations.
So I'd think the Natal intervention might be characterized by a mix of legacy piston aircraft and turbine-driven ones including helicopters of various kinds.
---
I see the evolution of jets ITTL going on two tracks. For one, there is the desire to achieve the goal of bypassing the limits of a propeller, which are imposed because the tip speed of a prop blade is the Pythagorian sum of the forward air speed plus the rotary speed of the prop. At the tips, well, OTL propeller tips started pushing the speed of sound during WWI! Adding forward airspeed to approach the speed of sound for the whole airplane means either gearing down the RPM of the prop (impeding efficiency) or tolerating considerable shock wave loss--the latter also makes props noisier, while the former implies gearboxes which add to weight and complexity.
Meanwhile, aside from the mere desire to achieve speed for its own sake, was the consideration that a given wing lift area and optimum lift angle could yield the same lift at a higher altitude if the plane is going faster (up to sonic compressibility limits which were ill-understood) so the same thrust would propel the same airplane at the higher speed. Power requirements would rise with speed of course, but since time to go given distance is cut down in proportion the net fuel consumption for a given range might be comparable, and the payload gets to its destination sooner. Hence the quest for more powerful engines and higher airspeeds at high altitudes.
Therefore long before airplanes came anywhere near the speed of sound OTL, visionaries were dreaming up schemes to get reaction force from the air by other methods, basically creating a high-speed, low mass jet by some means or other. A method that was tried with little success OTL was to simply use a piston engine to compress intake air and then either simply exhaust that or burn more fuel in the compression chamber for a sort of piston-powered ramjet--I'm not sure whether this yielded unspectacular results for fundamental reasons or merely because it was executed poorly.
Meanwhile, the demand for ever-more-powerful engines capable of high performance over a range of altitudes hence air densities led to development of supercharging, and systems that over a range of altitudes automatically improved compression with height--that is, turbosuperchargers. The metallurgy and machining involved in these has a lot in common with turbojet compressor and turbine technology. And indeed, as these superchargers were developed for the main purpose of enhancing air intake for piston engines at high altitudes, they also proved capable of capturing more power from the engine exhaust than they needed to provide the compression, thus adding net horsepower to the engine as a whole, something like 10-20 percent of the output of late-1940s "compound engines" as they were called. The notion of growing them and adding a combustion chamber would soon become obvious.
Thus, even with no military demand whatsoever, I'd expect pure turbojets and turboprops to evolve from purely civil demands soon enough, with no more than a decade's delay versus general state of the art--which ITTL is advanced by about a decade, so by the first half of the 1940s at the latest. Becoming economically competitive with piston engines should then take no more than a decade--and that's without military development. Since ITTL there is still some military demand I expect jet tech on at least OTL's schedule and probably 5 years in advance, perhaps a full decade, and for the reasons I gave with interceptor type small jets on the sooner end of the spectrum. The fact that turboprops are more complex, being added machinery onto a turbojet core, is offset by the fact that the jets might evolve from superchargers which are already installed in prop-driving machinery, and given special demand for conservative military prop planes and for helicopters, might be even more accelerated than the general decade bonus of the timeline.
But the last big war the British were in was the Venezuela intervention, and that was decades ago. They would not have developed a massive accumulation of WWII level piston planes, just a moderate inventory to stay on the cutting edge of competitive military tech, shuffled in with older marks. When the latest thing becomes turbine cored engines they'll demote the piston planes to second-string and replace them.
Rockets certainly have some advantages as auxiliary add-ons; having both a piston and turbine engine, even if the latter is small, is pretty cumbersome.
And I've never heard of a bimodal turboprop, that can drive a prop for takeoff and low-speed cruise and loiter, then shift power over to drive the jet more powerfully (all turboprops produce some portion of their thrust through residual jet exhaust) and feather the prop for high speed action. Is that a possibility here?)
Whereas rockets produce much higher thrust to weight ratios, meaning a small parasitic mass for regular use can come in handy for high thrust on takeoff, climbing, and high-speed dash. The drawback, as you well know, is that the propellant mass is really high and gets consumed rapidly, only good for a few minutes operation. OTL between improvements of the power and efficiency of the core turbojet and other augmentation schemes such as water injection and afterburning, the fashion for jet enhancement soon passed. Though not without a cool legacy--Comet airliners with built-in rockets for takeoff, the various interceptors we've been gossiping about.
Augmenting piston prop planes, or turboprops, they might have a longer development arc.
And leading up to pure rocketry as you are, I'd like to point out that a peculiar hobbyhorse of mine, this past half year or so, is favored by more experience with airplane rocket enhancement--namely, rockets using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant!
OTL, despite the abandonment of high-test peroxide rockets for pure rocket systems by most developers, they were the norm for many liquid-fueled airplane rockets. The Germans of course used other forms of "storable" hypergolics as well, with often horrible results, whereas American work on jet-assisted takeoff centered on expendable solid rockets. But the Comet and various experimental interceptors used peroxide, either as a catalyzed monopropellant or in some cases to burn hydrocarbon fuel. Since even in the latter case, the vast majority of the mass of the propellant was peroxide, whereas the hydrocarbon could be the same fuel the airplane main engines used, it was essentially a matter of loading on a single additional propellant. And I have the impression that as a relatively low-temperature (hence lower efficiency to be sure) fuel mix, it was easier to get a given amount of thrust out of peroxide-hydrocarbon rockets than most other combinations.So this renews my hope that ITTL, some major space launch systems might go with peroxide for the first stages.
Well, Workable Goblin left out the Ottomans, who I'd think would be a possible space contender before Italy or Brazil or the West Africans or South Africa on her own. (The latter two might be roped back into a Commonwealth general program quite early though). And Japan I gather is well behind the OTL curve, putting her down with Italy and so on.
Here's the geopolitical picture I'm getting spanning the middle decades of the 20th century:
Russia might well be in the driver's seat of advanced tech with military applications, despite relative poverty. The Western European major powers, Germany, France, and Britain in roughly that order, are satisfied powers with little immediate threat to their core territories (Germany is at some risk from Russia but this is offset by her great wealth and potential power) and plenty of power projection (or potential) to deter designs on their smaller, more far-flung possessions. The USA is considerably less developed in military capability than OTL and has very few distant entanglements. Australasia is also quite self-satisfied; India is coming from far behind though vigorously, as are the West African lands. The Ottomans are farther along on that spectrum (of developing powers) but not seriously threatened except potentially by Russia. China is developing fast but from a low level and suffers from internal dissents.
Earlier upthread I suggested a low-key arms race between the Russians and Germans, but many factors conspire to limit it. That was before I heard about the nature of the conflicts between Russia and China though. We're all looking anxiously at that flashpoint now, and it would motivate the Russians to go ahead and push their military preparedness to higher levels than either the Ottomans or Germans, in their current peaceable mood, would justify. This in turn would make those two nations more nervous and drive the sort of arms race WG alludes to, with IRBMs on everyone's agenda even before nukes come into play. The Germans need not dig too deep into their pockets to match Russian capabilities enough to deter them from wanting to do anything rash in Eastern Europe I suppose. (But a higher level of German readiness might in turn divert the French and British and various smaller European powers to upgrade their own preparedness beyond levels they'd otherwise settle at.)
However ITTL there is a rather high development of pacifist sentiment. Never and nowhere enough to veto armament completely, but enough I think for significant publics in each great power to raise questions about the dangers of an arms race. (Except in China!
) There is also a high development of an international legal order, which is a forum various publics might urge their governments to meet in and work out agreements meant to head off runaway arms races and world wars.In particular, with Russia feeling the need to guard against China, I can see them overcoming typical Russian reluctance to involve outsiders in their own affairs to approach and reassure the Germans that there is no intention to make any trouble in Europe. And perhaps more grudgingly to extend similar reassurance to the Ottomans, though the latter might also be considering some sort of alliance with China.
Meanwhile, as a more or less patriotic American, I've been trying to figure out how the USA could be involved in the space ventures without stumbling first into some ill-conceived imperial schemes. It's tricky!
But here's how my thinking of the evolution of the US high-tech industrial complex evolves intertwined with a larger dose OTL of pacifist-isolationist internationalism:
As Britain was burning itself with the Imperialist fiasco, so the USA was reeling from the aftermath of the Central American war of the 1910s, with the imperialist US faction suffering disgrace and eclipse due to the controversial war and President Lodge's high-handed refusals to cooperate with a nay-saying Congress. The US military in particular suffered some disgrace, with the Army taking the brunt of it. In particular, the relatively new Army aviation arm would have performed at a much higher level than the OTL fiascos of the Mexican intervention under Wilson, but neither distinguished itself as a war-winning branch of the military in its own right nor gaining much romantic sympathy, since Mexico had very little air power and the American Army flyboys would mainly be involved in reconnaissance and possibly some aerial terror-bombing, analogous to the British use of air power against the Iraqi insurgency of the 1920s OTL. Such inglorious usages would be known ITTL from British misadventures as well.
So, with Lodge out of office, I'd expect a backlash against the Army, with Army aviation taking a hard hit. In fact I have this fancy of quite contrary to the general trend of establishing a separate Air Force, what happens in the USA for decades to come is that the Army air craft that are procured are requested and run by separate, traditional branches of the Army--fighter type planes by the Cavalry, for instance, attack planes by the Artillery, transports by the Quartermaster Corps, and so on. It is a generation or more before Army aviation is organized under an autonomous Air Corps, and talk of an Air Force remains utopian.
Meanwhile IIRC part of the general leftist-populist-pacifist movement in US politics causes the foundation of a Department of Peace. As part of the general discomfiture of the military in general and Army aviation in particular, versus a populist sentiment for aviation as part of the "Electric Age," the D of P is given a mandate to review military (naval as well as Army) pleas for developing new forms of weaponry and updating older ones, with a skeptical eye. The Department sends commissioners to a commission, balanced by military experts and general Congressional appointees, to determine which advances are warranted by the general defense situation of the USA and which are merely provocative or pork-barrel schemes.
As a political entity, and with even the Dept of Peace quite politicized, the commission is not as opposed to pork-barrel projects as it theoretically ought to be, nor does the Peace delegation get its way as often as it would like. As part of the general political give and take, the pacifist delegates find that the military aviation faction is not composed entirely of warmongers--flyboys, first of all, want to fly. Whereas the public is keen to see progress in aviation, and like the military flyers don't care so much about how many guns the planes sport as long as they fly faster, higher, and more often.
Thus a common interest is found between the peace faction and the axis of aviation enthusiasts and industrialists. In lieu of major military expenditures for aviation, a consensus builds to develop a civil department combining the OTL functions of the regulatory mission of the Civil Aeronautics Board and the research and development facilitation of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). As a research bureau, the department will (as much as limited funding allows) push the boundaries of science and engineering in aid of the US domestic aviation industry. Instead of encouraging the civil air firms to specialize in military hardware the agency will examine the state of the art of current foreign capabilities and commission, with Navy and Army participation, suitable design studies and contingency plant conversion schemes, and subsidize a minimal number of current-state-of-the-art warplanes for Army and Navy use, while promoting the growth and development of American civil aviation, in US territory and as far as feasible reaching overseas.
Thus as the rocket age approaches, this aeronautics department, with ties to both the War and Naval departments but also to the Department of Peace, responds to grassroots air-mindedness evolving to rocket-mindedness, along with military nervousness about being left behind, by considering the diplomatic and military balance between the major rocket-developing powers and proposing a voluntary world treaty before the world court system; the great powers (and as many smaller ones as care to join) will negotiate terms for sharing knowledge about rocket systems capable of inflicting long-range damage with an international commission of their own members. Foreseeing some of the possibilities of orbital spacecraft (at least as well as say Arthur C. Clarke did a decade before they began to be realized) the consortium members will pledge not to make territorial claims on the Moon and beyond, to hold orbital space as open to navigation by all, to jointly construct and launch spacecraft to share such utilities as Earth observation and communications with all members. Thus there need not be a race for spy satellites for instance if all powers capable of launch get on board and share the observations of one system of satellites. Communications satellites can be designed for all nations to use, with all member nations contributing part of the cost and effort to put them up. International sites for shared spaceports can be chosen, negotiated for and developed.
Thus, a missile race might be diverted and deterred, and its threat minimized by universal surveillance defusing fear of surprise attacks.
Thus, a pacifist world power with only a fraction of the military infrastructure of OTL might procure national funding and an international role for American industrial interests, while developing capability of major American military capabilities on the back burner should the world situation, or the US one in particular, turn dangerous.
It may be completely improbable, with the multipolar competition suggested above being more likely, but I thought it was worth throwing out there.
Interlude: scenes from the fall
Natal, March 1945:
“More of them,” said Sergeant Fraser.
Private Ivan Vujović, Sixth Territorial Reserve, had already heard. As he watched, six bombers marked with the Ashoka chakra screamed overhead, three fighters above and behind them. Another squadron with the same markings followed – Indians from the Viraat, no doubt – with two British and one more Indian close behind.
They saw Vujović’s coastal defense station – he was sure of that – but they paid not the slightest attention to it, nor did they deign to notice the scattered anti-aircraft fire sent their way. The fleet would take care of that; they had other missions and other targets.
“Five wings?” Fraser asked formally, and Ivan confirmed. The sergeant thumbed his radio. “Richmond, this is Scottburgh Station. Forty-five, headed your way. Thirty bombers, fifteen fighters.”
“Acknowledged. Out.”
“Well, now they know,” he said conversationally, as Richmond broke radio contact. “A lot of good it’ll do ‘em.”
“Not many fighters, at least.”
“Probably don’t need ‘em.”
You’re probably right, Vujović reflected. Forty-five planes in just this group – the whole Natalian air force only had thirty. No, scratch that – we probably don’t have them anymore.
“You know,” he said, “they’ll have the fight the recruiter promised us. ‘Not a real war, Ivan, it’s a shooting gallery against natives with hunting rifles.’ Didn’t work out that way for us, but it looks like it will for them.” He repeated the last sentence, suddenly aware that he was alive at that moment only because the incoming bombers had other things to do.
“More fool you believing a recruiter, then?”
“Oh, I didn’t believe him. I just wanted land of my own, and I figured a little fighting would be easier than waiting for the bastards in Belgrade to get around to land reform. This, though…”
Ivan trailed off and picked up his rifle. He’d suddenly had enough of a hopeless fight, and he’d had more than enough of what the Specials were doing behind the lines. He’d never cared for that even in the bush war – he’d tried to stop it when he could – and now, when there was no purpose to it at all…
“I’m going home. Can’t do any more good here than there.”
Fraser looked at him sharply, then shrugged. He’d never been any more fond of the bush war than Ivan had. “Been thinking the same thing,” he said. “I think I’ll go with you – wait a minute while I get my pack.”
The lieutenant at the duty desk heard that. “Stop that right now!” he shouted. “That’s desertion in the face of the bloody Kaffirs. One more step and I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
“Will you, Bill?” Vujović’s rifle was already up and pointed at the officer, and it spoke more loudly than his lack of military courtesy. “Bet you can’t before I shoot you first. And I’m not worried about a court-martial either – there won’t be an army to court-martial me in a few more days, and I’ll take my chances till then.”
“The Kaffirs’ll…”
“Damn the Kaffirs. I’ve got a family and a farm, if they let me keep it.”
He hoped they would. He’d have to live under African rule, but that didn’t bother him, or at least not much. His people had lived under the Turks for centuries – some of them still did. That had become better, but they’d survived even when it was bad. Africans could hardly be worse. Let the British settlers bang on about them, as long as they let him stay.
With his rifle still on the lieutenant, he backed out of the room, and Sergeant Fraser followed.
“You’ve got to go, ma’am,” John Hughes said.
“I’ve told you before, John, I will not desert my country.”
“Ma’am, there won’t be a country very much longer. The British command has told me, unofficially, that they’re delaying the blockade of Durban harbor for twenty-four hours so you can leave. But if you’re not out today, you won’t get out at all.”
Hughes exhaled heavily and looked at the woman who had been his queen for more than twenty years – she had never shrunk from the royal title even when her husband had never dared use it. The British were sincere about letting her leave – the last thing they wanted was the embarrassment of capturing their own former queen consort in arms against them. But they’d do it if they had to, and if the Indians got here first, they wouldn’t hesitate at all. That was every bit as written in stone as the delayed blockade.
The problem was persuading her. The old hands who’d followed her from England said that coming to Natal had been at least as much her idea as Albert’s, and where he’d been a supporter of the Imperials, she’d been a fanatic. They said she was half the reason Albert hadn’t followed the racial views of his father and grandmother, and from listening to her these twenty-four years, he could believe it.
“Your Majesty,” he said; the formal title broke through the moment’s silence. “There’s nothing to save. We’re fighting the whole British Empire, and India too…”
“Kaffirs.”
“Kaffirs they may be, but there are twenty of them for every one of us. More than that, with the territorial reserve deserting in droves. You have no more duty to this country, ma’am – and think of your other one. Do you really want to put the British government in the position of deciding what to do with you?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
He could see she believed that. It wasn’t true, but there would be no convincing her. “What if it isn’t them, ma’am?” he asked, taking a different tack. “Most of the units closing on the city are Indian… and there are also Sotho and Xhosa regiments out there. What if one of them is first into the palace?”
That got to her where the nation’s plight hadn’t. She’d spent many evenings talking about what Kaffirs would do if they got their hands on an Englishwoman for a minute, and she believed that just as she believed the British people still held her sacred. She’d have stayed while the city fell and invited the conquering British general to tea, but facing an Indian or African one…
“It seems,” she said at last, “that people everywhere will eventually rebel against their betters. The British did so twenty years ago and the Kaffirs now, so I must bow to my fate again.”
“Very good, ma’am. The ship is ready.”
Hughes wondered where it would take them – Switzerland, maybe, or Sweden. They’d let Queen Mary stay, and with the money she still had, she could live well there. It would be exile, though, and that would hardly be pleasant: women in her family lived a long time, too, so she might look forward to ten years of regret or even twenty.
At least she’s been exiled before, he thought. This isn’t the country where she was born, so maybe leaving it is easier. That wouldn’t be true of him: he had been born here, and three generations of his family before him. This was the land he loved, the only one he had known – and he would be leaving it too. The British had been polite about that, but they’d been very, very firm.
He took the bags that had been packed for the queen, one in each hand, and followed her past silent servants who wouldn’t miss her at all. There was a fiacre outside, and he loaded the bags in the boot and held the rear door open. Queen Mary got in, and he beside her, and the driver started for the harbor.
“They’re coming,” Bhekizizwe Dlamini whispered.
Manelesi Zuma nodded and hand-signaled to the men on the other side of the road. Those who had rifles readied them, and the others prepared what weapons they had. Zuma himself had a rifle that a Mosotho supply sergeant had arranged to lose, and he fixed his bayonet to the end – Specials weren’t worth bullets.
A few kilometers west, bombers pounded the front lines as the invading troops tightened the ring around Durban. Here, the Specials acted like none of that mattered. They were going into villages as they’d always done and shooting anyone who looked like they might cause trouble, or anyone they just didn’t care for. They’d passed a dozen bodies already this morning – men, women and children, shot in the middle of the road or hanging from trees beside it.
Preventing sabotage, they called it. Maybe that would make sense if the army had a chance of holding on – but as things were, it was just murder for the fun of it.
“Wouldn’t expect anything else from the Specials,” he murmured. Bhekizizwe nodded quickly: he knew exactly what his comrade meant.
Manelesi touched his bayonet again, testing its sharpness against his fingertip. They would stop the murder here. It would be revenge also – there’d been plenty of that in the years of bush war – and…
“It doesn’t matter who fights,” Dlamini said, echoing his thoughts. “It matters who wins.”
Exactly. If they stood aside and held the British and Indians’ coats, then all the bush fighting wouldn’t matter. The only way they’d have a say in what would happen to this country after the Imperials fell would be if they were in at the kill. Take out the Specials now, then link up with the allied regiments…
There was a sharp report as the first of the Specials entered the kill zone, and then others from both sides of the road. Half of them went down before they ever knew they were under attack, and the others started firing at random. It would take them seconds to react, but those were seconds they didn’t have.
Zuma broke cover with a shout and saw that others all along the roadside were doing the same. He held his bayonet in front of him and charged, and he felt it drink blood.
General Chatterjee heard his name called and turned to see a British adjutant with a paper in his hand. “We have word from the 37th, sir. They’ve taken the parliament building.”
“Very good. That’s the last of the center city, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Just the perimeter around the harbor…”
“And the buildings on side streets.” Gunfire a block or two away gave testament to the resistance of one such building, its staccato rhythm cutting into the boom of the artillery pounding the harbor. “How many are we still facing?”
“Sixteen at last count, but I’m expecting another report within the hour.”
Chatterjee nodded. “It would be nice if they’d bloody well realize they’ve lost.” Durban was all but taken, and the scattered resistance in the hinterland could be mopped up in detail, but as long as the redoubts by the harbor held out and the fortress buildings blocked access to neighborhoods, more soldiers and innocent civilians would die.
Not that too many haven’t done so already. Durban already looked like Calcutta when he’d taken it in ’21, and some of the things he’d seen on the way to the city reminded him of nothing more than the siege. Bombed-out villages, burned fields, bodies by the side of the road – Natal was evidently determined to go out the way the Imperials did everywhere they ruled.
He remembered how they’d dealt with the people who’d burned houses and fields back home. The guerrillas in the bush were dealing with the Specials the same way, and his troops weren’t in a very different mood. He’d ordered them to take prisoners, and they had no problem letting the Natalian regulars or reservists surrender, but the Specials always seemed to get shot before they could raise their hands. They were trying to give up to the British troops now, but most of them weren’t feeling very kind-hearted either.
It’s a damn bloody business, and the sooner it’s over, the better. Let the Congress – funny they call it that – decide what to do with this place when we’re done.
Chatterjee walked out of the command tent onto the bombed-out street, and it was suddenly a blur of different wars. He’d learned his trade fighting for the British Empire in the Great War and perfected it fighting against them in the war of independence, and here he was, not fighting for them again but at least on the same side. The world had turned upside down one more time before he retired: at his age, he supposed he should be used to it.
“Can we get the 39th into the harbor from the sea side?” he asked the adjutant.
“I think so, sir. They’ve still got some Anastasias in the warehouses, but between the Edward VII's guns and the air cover, we can keep their heads down enough to get landing craft in.”
“Do it, then.” The 39th was one of the old Congress regiments – it had been Chatterjee’s regiment in the Great War, the one in which he’d enlisted as a private and come home a major. Its men wouldn’t thank him for this job, but it would be easier than many of the things they’d had to do then. And if they could clean out the harbor, they’d be that much closer to taking the city.
“And Morrison?” he added.
“Yes, sir.”
“You were in Bengal in the last war, weren’t you? Fighting my army?”
“I was, yes,” Morrison said guardedly. The world turned upside down one more time, and he doesn’t know which way it’ll shake him.
“In case I haven’t said so before, it’s good to have you back.”
Natal, March 1945:
“More of them,” said Sergeant Fraser.
Private Ivan Vujović, Sixth Territorial Reserve, had already heard. As he watched, six bombers marked with the Ashoka chakra screamed overhead, three fighters above and behind them. Another squadron with the same markings followed – Indians from the Viraat, no doubt – with two British and one more Indian close behind.
They saw Vujović’s coastal defense station – he was sure of that – but they paid not the slightest attention to it, nor did they deign to notice the scattered anti-aircraft fire sent their way. The fleet would take care of that; they had other missions and other targets.
“Five wings?” Fraser asked formally, and Ivan confirmed. The sergeant thumbed his radio. “Richmond, this is Scottburgh Station. Forty-five, headed your way. Thirty bombers, fifteen fighters.”
“Acknowledged. Out.”
“Well, now they know,” he said conversationally, as Richmond broke radio contact. “A lot of good it’ll do ‘em.”
“Not many fighters, at least.”
“Probably don’t need ‘em.”
You’re probably right, Vujović reflected. Forty-five planes in just this group – the whole Natalian air force only had thirty. No, scratch that – we probably don’t have them anymore.
“You know,” he said, “they’ll have the fight the recruiter promised us. ‘Not a real war, Ivan, it’s a shooting gallery against natives with hunting rifles.’ Didn’t work out that way for us, but it looks like it will for them.” He repeated the last sentence, suddenly aware that he was alive at that moment only because the incoming bombers had other things to do.
“More fool you believing a recruiter, then?”
“Oh, I didn’t believe him. I just wanted land of my own, and I figured a little fighting would be easier than waiting for the bastards in Belgrade to get around to land reform. This, though…”
Ivan trailed off and picked up his rifle. He’d suddenly had enough of a hopeless fight, and he’d had more than enough of what the Specials were doing behind the lines. He’d never cared for that even in the bush war – he’d tried to stop it when he could – and now, when there was no purpose to it at all…
“I’m going home. Can’t do any more good here than there.”
Fraser looked at him sharply, then shrugged. He’d never been any more fond of the bush war than Ivan had. “Been thinking the same thing,” he said. “I think I’ll go with you – wait a minute while I get my pack.”
The lieutenant at the duty desk heard that. “Stop that right now!” he shouted. “That’s desertion in the face of the bloody Kaffirs. One more step and I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
“Will you, Bill?” Vujović’s rifle was already up and pointed at the officer, and it spoke more loudly than his lack of military courtesy. “Bet you can’t before I shoot you first. And I’m not worried about a court-martial either – there won’t be an army to court-martial me in a few more days, and I’ll take my chances till then.”
“The Kaffirs’ll…”
“Damn the Kaffirs. I’ve got a family and a farm, if they let me keep it.”
He hoped they would. He’d have to live under African rule, but that didn’t bother him, or at least not much. His people had lived under the Turks for centuries – some of them still did. That had become better, but they’d survived even when it was bad. Africans could hardly be worse. Let the British settlers bang on about them, as long as they let him stay.
With his rifle still on the lieutenant, he backed out of the room, and Sergeant Fraser followed.
*******
“You’ve got to go, ma’am,” John Hughes said.
“I’ve told you before, John, I will not desert my country.”
“Ma’am, there won’t be a country very much longer. The British command has told me, unofficially, that they’re delaying the blockade of Durban harbor for twenty-four hours so you can leave. But if you’re not out today, you won’t get out at all.”
Hughes exhaled heavily and looked at the woman who had been his queen for more than twenty years – she had never shrunk from the royal title even when her husband had never dared use it. The British were sincere about letting her leave – the last thing they wanted was the embarrassment of capturing their own former queen consort in arms against them. But they’d do it if they had to, and if the Indians got here first, they wouldn’t hesitate at all. That was every bit as written in stone as the delayed blockade.
The problem was persuading her. The old hands who’d followed her from England said that coming to Natal had been at least as much her idea as Albert’s, and where he’d been a supporter of the Imperials, she’d been a fanatic. They said she was half the reason Albert hadn’t followed the racial views of his father and grandmother, and from listening to her these twenty-four years, he could believe it.
“Your Majesty,” he said; the formal title broke through the moment’s silence. “There’s nothing to save. We’re fighting the whole British Empire, and India too…”
“Kaffirs.”
“Kaffirs they may be, but there are twenty of them for every one of us. More than that, with the territorial reserve deserting in droves. You have no more duty to this country, ma’am – and think of your other one. Do you really want to put the British government in the position of deciding what to do with you?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
He could see she believed that. It wasn’t true, but there would be no convincing her. “What if it isn’t them, ma’am?” he asked, taking a different tack. “Most of the units closing on the city are Indian… and there are also Sotho and Xhosa regiments out there. What if one of them is first into the palace?”
That got to her where the nation’s plight hadn’t. She’d spent many evenings talking about what Kaffirs would do if they got their hands on an Englishwoman for a minute, and she believed that just as she believed the British people still held her sacred. She’d have stayed while the city fell and invited the conquering British general to tea, but facing an Indian or African one…
“It seems,” she said at last, “that people everywhere will eventually rebel against their betters. The British did so twenty years ago and the Kaffirs now, so I must bow to my fate again.”
“Very good, ma’am. The ship is ready.”
Hughes wondered where it would take them – Switzerland, maybe, or Sweden. They’d let Queen Mary stay, and with the money she still had, she could live well there. It would be exile, though, and that would hardly be pleasant: women in her family lived a long time, too, so she might look forward to ten years of regret or even twenty.
At least she’s been exiled before, he thought. This isn’t the country where she was born, so maybe leaving it is easier. That wouldn’t be true of him: he had been born here, and three generations of his family before him. This was the land he loved, the only one he had known – and he would be leaving it too. The British had been polite about that, but they’d been very, very firm.
He took the bags that had been packed for the queen, one in each hand, and followed her past silent servants who wouldn’t miss her at all. There was a fiacre outside, and he loaded the bags in the boot and held the rear door open. Queen Mary got in, and he beside her, and the driver started for the harbor.
*******
“They’re coming,” Bhekizizwe Dlamini whispered.
Manelesi Zuma nodded and hand-signaled to the men on the other side of the road. Those who had rifles readied them, and the others prepared what weapons they had. Zuma himself had a rifle that a Mosotho supply sergeant had arranged to lose, and he fixed his bayonet to the end – Specials weren’t worth bullets.
A few kilometers west, bombers pounded the front lines as the invading troops tightened the ring around Durban. Here, the Specials acted like none of that mattered. They were going into villages as they’d always done and shooting anyone who looked like they might cause trouble, or anyone they just didn’t care for. They’d passed a dozen bodies already this morning – men, women and children, shot in the middle of the road or hanging from trees beside it.
Preventing sabotage, they called it. Maybe that would make sense if the army had a chance of holding on – but as things were, it was just murder for the fun of it.
“Wouldn’t expect anything else from the Specials,” he murmured. Bhekizizwe nodded quickly: he knew exactly what his comrade meant.
Manelesi touched his bayonet again, testing its sharpness against his fingertip. They would stop the murder here. It would be revenge also – there’d been plenty of that in the years of bush war – and…
“It doesn’t matter who fights,” Dlamini said, echoing his thoughts. “It matters who wins.”
Exactly. If they stood aside and held the British and Indians’ coats, then all the bush fighting wouldn’t matter. The only way they’d have a say in what would happen to this country after the Imperials fell would be if they were in at the kill. Take out the Specials now, then link up with the allied regiments…
There was a sharp report as the first of the Specials entered the kill zone, and then others from both sides of the road. Half of them went down before they ever knew they were under attack, and the others started firing at random. It would take them seconds to react, but those were seconds they didn’t have.
Zuma broke cover with a shout and saw that others all along the roadside were doing the same. He held his bayonet in front of him and charged, and he felt it drink blood.
*******
General Chatterjee heard his name called and turned to see a British adjutant with a paper in his hand. “We have word from the 37th, sir. They’ve taken the parliament building.”
“Very good. That’s the last of the center city, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Just the perimeter around the harbor…”
“And the buildings on side streets.” Gunfire a block or two away gave testament to the resistance of one such building, its staccato rhythm cutting into the boom of the artillery pounding the harbor. “How many are we still facing?”
“Sixteen at last count, but I’m expecting another report within the hour.”
Chatterjee nodded. “It would be nice if they’d bloody well realize they’ve lost.” Durban was all but taken, and the scattered resistance in the hinterland could be mopped up in detail, but as long as the redoubts by the harbor held out and the fortress buildings blocked access to neighborhoods, more soldiers and innocent civilians would die.
Not that too many haven’t done so already. Durban already looked like Calcutta when he’d taken it in ’21, and some of the things he’d seen on the way to the city reminded him of nothing more than the siege. Bombed-out villages, burned fields, bodies by the side of the road – Natal was evidently determined to go out the way the Imperials did everywhere they ruled.
He remembered how they’d dealt with the people who’d burned houses and fields back home. The guerrillas in the bush were dealing with the Specials the same way, and his troops weren’t in a very different mood. He’d ordered them to take prisoners, and they had no problem letting the Natalian regulars or reservists surrender, but the Specials always seemed to get shot before they could raise their hands. They were trying to give up to the British troops now, but most of them weren’t feeling very kind-hearted either.
It’s a damn bloody business, and the sooner it’s over, the better. Let the Congress – funny they call it that – decide what to do with this place when we’re done.
Chatterjee walked out of the command tent onto the bombed-out street, and it was suddenly a blur of different wars. He’d learned his trade fighting for the British Empire in the Great War and perfected it fighting against them in the war of independence, and here he was, not fighting for them again but at least on the same side. The world had turned upside down one more time before he retired: at his age, he supposed he should be used to it.
“Can we get the 39th into the harbor from the sea side?” he asked the adjutant.
“I think so, sir. They’ve still got some Anastasias in the warehouses, but between the Edward VII's guns and the air cover, we can keep their heads down enough to get landing craft in.”
“Do it, then.” The 39th was one of the old Congress regiments – it had been Chatterjee’s regiment in the Great War, the one in which he’d enlisted as a private and come home a major. Its men wouldn’t thank him for this job, but it would be easier than many of the things they’d had to do then. And if they could clean out the harbor, they’d be that much closer to taking the city.
“And Morrison?” he added.
“Yes, sir.”
“You were in Bengal in the last war, weren’t you? Fighting my army?”
“I was, yes,” Morrison said guardedly. The world turned upside down one more time, and he doesn’t know which way it’ll shake him.
“In case I haven’t said so before, it’s good to have you back.”
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The difficulty is that turboprops and turboshafts are rather more technically difficult than mere turbojets; both the Navy and the Air Force invested heavily in them (especially the Navy) after World War II in an effort to get around the limitations of turbojets, and they were actually invented before the turbojet, but turboprops were nevertheless overtaken by the rapid advance of the latter technology. That is why I largely ignore turboprops; once jets are demonstrated, I expect that investment will be high on both civilian and military sides, and turboprops will soon be sidelined as less technically mature and capable (except in certain applications, of course).
Helicopters perhaps, but they're more likely to be piston-powered. Until the 1960s in reality, most were.
I quite forgot about the Ottomans, oops
Just an error on my part. I would put them on about the same level as Japan and Italy; they certainly have the ability to mount a space program of some size. I worded that very carefully, to indicate ability rather than actually doing so. The ones I ranked lower have lower levels of industrial and especially technical development or resources, or have tended not to show much interest IOTL (for Brazil, this was one factor in ranking them as low as I did). Most of the European powers would benefit from an ESA-type organization, except possibly for Russia, but none of them will agree to it ITTL, so more's the pity for them.Note that South Africa did mount an (aborted) space program IOTL, though. During apartheid! It was canceled because of the advent of majority government, so here there's a decent chance they (and a joint West African program, perhaps part of the trend towards international organizations in this timeline) could really get something going, especially if they got involved in a Commonwealth/British program. It's liable to be pretty minor, though, I don't see them having the resources to do much independently.
Also, while the United States may be somewhat more pacifistic and much less imperial than IOTL, ICBMs and IRBMs are rather non-imperial weapons--I mean, they can be strongly justified on the basis of protecting against other powers with nuclear weapons, they're based within the United States, and they have little role past deterring nuclear attack (I expect attitudes will shift towards this as it becomes clear they are not just "big bombs," but even then "big bombs" are a clear deterrent without all the other nuclear characteristics they bring in). Combine that with civilian interest a la Goddard or the German rocket societies in rocket technology and obvious commercial interest in air technology, and there shouldn't be much trouble in doing the basic research necessary.
Another cracker of an update. How this timeline balances politics, personal struggle and adventure so well is remarkable.
So are the Imperials in the Queensland Parliament the last ones standing?
So are the Imperials in the Queensland Parliament the last ones standing?
And so ends the Dominion of Natal. Wonder how will the moderate die-hards (the ones who don't like Kaffirs much but don't want to die in the bush) do now. Move? Accept the times? Go to the minority-majority republics in S.A?
Huh, didn't realize that. I wonder if they would encourage the moderate die-hards to settle there. That would at least delay the inevitable for a few years (though that would just make their fall all the more spectacular).
Huh, didn't realize that. I wonder if they would encourage the moderate die-hards to settle there. That would at least delay the inevitable for a few years (though that would just make their fall all the more spectacular).
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Thanks for the thoughts on air and space development, which I'll file away for the future.
Queensland and Ulster are the last places where the Imperials are in power, although there are Imperial Party branches all over the place that make a lot of noise and occasionally snag a parliamentary seat or two.
The Queensland Imperials are odd ducks - they're part of a state government rather than a national one, so they have to abide by the Australasian constitution and (for the most part) follow democratic norms. They've accepted an opposition role when they lost elections, and have largely given up advocating extra-constitutional measures or fundamental change in the political structure. The racism is still there, though, and you still don't want to live in Queensland when the Imperials are in power.
Some of the moderate die-hards may well go there - Queensland would be better from their standpoint than the Transvaal, where the Boers wouldn't welcome British immigration and which seems destined for majority rule within a few years. In Queensland, they'd at least be part of an ethnic majority, if not always an ideological one. Some might go to Ulster too, although they wouldn't be as good a fit there, or to Matabeleland or Nyasaland (the last of which is a major white elephant by now but is likely to stay British for now because it needs protection). But most of them will probably stay in Natal and reluctantly adapt or else withdraw into their own world and pretend they still run the place.
They never were going to stand a chance, once other countries decided to act against them - even an invasion by South Africa alone, let alone the rest of the British Empire and India too, would have been a short one.
I figured "air cover" was shorthand, but consider the update amended.
She certainly isn't going to be remembered like Princess Diana, either in the UK or Natal. Fortunately, she was a figurehead, which didn't entirely prevent her from doing damage but meant that the damage was localized.
The next update will either be Russia-China or Central Africa - probably the latter, since I still need to sort out some of the Russia-China conflict and its aftermath.
Queensland and Ulster are the last places where the Imperials are in power, although there are Imperial Party branches all over the place that make a lot of noise and occasionally snag a parliamentary seat or two.
The Queensland Imperials are odd ducks - they're part of a state government rather than a national one, so they have to abide by the Australasian constitution and (for the most part) follow democratic norms. They've accepted an opposition role when they lost elections, and have largely given up advocating extra-constitutional measures or fundamental change in the political structure. The racism is still there, though, and you still don't want to live in Queensland when the Imperials are in power.
Some of the moderate die-hards may well go there - Queensland would be better from their standpoint than the Transvaal, where the Boers wouldn't welcome British immigration and which seems destined for majority rule within a few years. In Queensland, they'd at least be part of an ethnic majority, if not always an ideological one. Some might go to Ulster too, although they wouldn't be as good a fit there, or to Matabeleland or Nyasaland (the last of which is a major white elephant by now but is likely to stay British for now because it needs protection). But most of them will probably stay in Natal and reluctantly adapt or else withdraw into their own world and pretend they still run the place.
They never were going to stand a chance, once other countries decided to act against them - even an invasion by South Africa alone, let alone the rest of the British Empire and India too, would have been a short one.
I figured "air cover" was shorthand, but consider the update amended.
I suppose Queen Mary will be known as one of ATL's most hateful pieces of shit, maybe even more so than her husband... she seems as delightfully unhinged as your average tinpot African dictator, if they were white and obscenely racist.
She certainly isn't going to be remembered like Princess Diana, either in the UK or Natal. Fortunately, she was a figurehead, which didn't entirely prevent her from doing damage but meant that the damage was localized.
The next update will either be Russia-China or Central Africa - probably the latter, since I still need to sort out some of the Russia-China conflict and its aftermath.
Sulemain
Banned
Thanks for the change based on my suggestion (which I note haven't been made yet )
I would suggest that by the nuclear age, the US military will be very different from our OTL, with what tactical units they have mainly based on small scale expeditionary warfare, but a strong strategic nuclear force based on the triad. Less carriers and tanks, more boomers and bombers.
(which I note haven't been made yet ) I would suggest that by the nuclear age, the US military will be very different from our OTL, with what tactical units they have mainly based on small scale expeditionary warfare, but a strong strategic nuclear force based on the triad. Less carriers and tanks, more boomers and bombers.
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Good riddance to Imperial Natal; one less sliver of nastiness in this world.
The developing Anglo-Indian relationship seems to be turning into a healthier version of OTL's US-UK alliance, too - if ever a Commonwealth-type institution evolves, I imagine India (and the Malê states) taking a prominent role in it.
(Speaking of tyrannies, what's happened in places like Belgium and Spain?)
The developing Anglo-Indian relationship seems to be turning into a healthier version of OTL's US-UK alliance, too - if ever a Commonwealth-type institution evolves, I imagine India (and the Malê states) taking a prominent role in it.
(Speaking of tyrannies, what's happened in places like Belgium and Spain?)