New compile, part 4
OK, so I got ambitious...
It's never happening again.
Did I miss anything? I have a feeling I put in the wrong versions of the WFP characters, & of the Hoover/Rothstein gangsters...
1940:
January 1940: Liberty (with a Captain Lightning-like magic flag), created by Bill Parker & Alfred Andriola at Fawcett, debuts in
Fantastic Adventures #6. He disppeares in March 1943.
January 11, 1940: Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani of Iraq signs a trade deal with the GEACPS, repealing customs restrictions with the
yen bloc. The Japanese, in turn, agree to purchase Iraqi exports using pounds sterling, rather than U.S. dollars.
January 19, 1940: Shamar Bayarmaa is elected as the third prime minister of Tibet, after Anil Shamar's two terms.
January 21, 1940: The so-called "Eastern Migration" begins in Oklahoma: hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans leave poverty-stricken and desertified western and central Oklahoma for the comparatively prosperous and greener lands in the east, especially Tulsa.
February 1940:
Captain Freedom #1 appears. It introduces Cap's nemesis, Dr. Victor von Hammer, as well as the first continuing story in comics. With a guest appearance by The Crusader, it heralds the "National System" of interlocking stories & titles.
7 February 1940: Fawcett founder William Fawcett dies.
February 21, 1940-June 12, 1940: As the snow begins to thaw and the spring campaigning season begins, Pact forces continue their offensive into Italy. However, the tide suddenly turns against them at Bologna, where Pietro Badoglio defeats a much larger Communist-Romanian-Austrian force, forcing Raza to withdraw north, towards Trento. In the west, De Bono conquers much of Lombardy, finally being halted thirty miles from Milan on May 3. Badoglio pushes into Friulia Venezia Giulia, capturing Udine on June 11. Italo Balbo and Emilio De Bono decide to hold off on their planned coup, seeing as the Italians have met unforeseen success.
1 March 1940: Gloster Thunderbolt makes her maiden flight, powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce
Irwells.
31 March 1940: Siegel & Shuster, realizing they've lost their rights to Super-man, quit WFP to work for Fawcett.
April 1940: Gambling the character can sustain two books, Fawcett launches
The Crusader. By year's end, its sales are matching
Thrilling Detective's. In the debut issue, at the suggestion of Finger, undercover cop Leon "The Cat" Turco is introduced. He will be Watson to Brett Shane's Holmes for decades. (A proposal to add a young sidekick, hoping to capture the Captain Lightning audience, is rejected by Kane.) Also introduced, at the suggestion of editorial director Ralph Daigh (because a recurring villain keeps interest), is the first continuing villain in comics & The Crusader's nemesis,
The Boss. Wealthy & unscrupulous, he controls an army of thugs & supercrooks, & proves extremely elusive; it will be 1960 before The Crusader even learns his name is Joe Chill. (Finger later admits modelling him in part on Brain Rothstein.)
3 April 1940: Victory Aircraft's
Manchestrian airliner makes her maiden flight. Converted from the Lancaster bomber, she is powered by four Rolls-Royce
Denes and seats 15.
April 23, 1940: Peter Dmitrievich Grushin, a Soviet aeronautic engineer and scientist, founds the People's Society for the Exploration of Outer Space (PSEOP). Grushin begins work on his own spaceplane, backed by the Soviet government.
April 1940 on: Kirby's energetic art brings in even more fans than before, and spurs many imitators. It will be considered groundbreaking, setting new standards for comic book art. Simon's scripts also give Superman (the hyphen dropped after his second apearance,
Mystery #2) a character and feel very distinct from the lighter, more "kid-friendly" Cap'n Lightning of Parker & Beck.
May 1940: Siegel & Shuster's
Steele debuts in Fawcett's
Whiz Comics #4. With magical armor, he is clearly aimed at Super-man; the name is no accident.
May 1940: Quality introduces Red Hawk in
Cool Comics #1, as an aviator fighting for the British against the Japanese, having been raised by a race of winged people.
May 19, 1940: Doris Miller is made an Ensign in the USN.
June 1940: Fawcett answers LSA with The Fabulous Five, created by Siegel & Shuster, in
All-Star Comics #12: Dr. Fate, Ant-man, Blackhawk, Wondergirl, & The Question.
June 11, 1940: Kurt Tank and Willy Messerschmitt secure government funding for a project to develop a supersonic airplane.
July 1940:
The Black Hood debuts in
All-Star Comics #13. Created by Cliff Campbell and Al Camerata, he becomes one of Fawcett's top-selling characters.
July 1940: Quality Comics debuts
Teen Romance #1 (cover date September), under the Prize Comics label. Created by Joan Blalock and Carmine Infantino, it is the first romance title. It sells a mllion copies an issue beginning in August, & has a staggering return rate of just 8%. It is one of Quality's most profitable titles.
July 20 - August 4, 1940: The Games of the XII Olympiad are held in Helsinki, Finland. These games become notable for the introduction of gliding as a sport.There was talk of cancelling the games due to the war in the Pacific, but it was decided to disbar Japan from competing instead. Hungary, the US, and Germany take home the most gold.
July 29, 1940-August 13, 1940: The stalemate that has, again, settled over the war is broken when a combined Turkish-Greek force makes an amphibious assault on the Salento peninsula, in Apulia. They quickly force their way north, and are halted only by Badoglio's hastily-moved force at Monte Gargano on August 7. Even with this temporary respite, the northern front begins to collapse as Emilio De Bono cannot hold it himself.
August 1, 1940: Karl Schuschnigg, former Chancellor of Austria, now in exile in Poland-Lithuania, releases his memoirs,
My Austria, a book glorifying fascism and extorting the Corporatists to start a second war against the Balkan Pact.
August 4, 1940: Sabiha Gokcen, a pilot in the Turkish Air Force, becomes the first female pilot to shoot down an enemy plane in combat, downing an Italian CR.30 attempting to intercept her Vultee V-11 during fighting in Apulia.
August 4, 1940:
Mr. Moto Takes A Vacation, the latest entry in the Mr. Moto serials, is released by Republic Pictures. Richard Loo plays the titular Japanese agent, who visits San Francisco to see his nephew Kentaro (Fred Korematsu, playing the same character as in the
Green Hornet serials). At the same time, Soviet Admiral Korsakoff (Sig Ruman, playing a character clearly inspired by Admiral Viktorov) is in the city to take delivery of a new Soviet cruiser,
Mir, from Mare Island... and is being trailed by a number of men, including the mysterious agent Mr. Sakamoto (Sojin Kamiyama) and a White Russian
femme fatale, Ivanova Yashukova (Vera Hrubá Ralston, a Czech figure skater in her debut role as an actress). Kentaro takes a liking to Korsakoff, and begins to suspect that his uncle is plotting to kill the admiral; he approaches a friend of his on the police force, Detective Grant (Buster Crabbe), to help keep an eye on Moto. In the climax, Moto - helped, somewhat unintentionally, by Grant - stops an assassination attempt against Korsakoff and a plot to sabotage the
Mir, then has a conversation with Korsakoff and Kentaro aboard the cruiser.
August 14, 1940: Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary, begins building the "Horthy Wall", a huge series of fortifications completely encircling the nation to defend it from the quadruple threats of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Romania.
September 1940:
Teen Romance goes monthly, & sales per issue stay steady.
September 16, 1940: Italo Balbo, Emilio De Bono, and Pietro Badoglio stage a coup. Badoglio's army leaves the front and captures Rome from the Blackshirts, while Balbo and De Bono secure the rest of the nation. Mussolini is captured by Badoglio, while Victor Emmanuel is kept under house arrest.
September 17, 1940: A temporary ceasefire as the Italians restabilize the nation is declared.
September 18, 1940-October 1, 1940: As chaos engulfs Italy, the rest of the corporatist bloc vies for control. Brazil proposes that an International Council of Corporatists is created, which Portugal refuses. An informal vote is held among the bloc members (Brazil, Southern Ireland, Portugal, Italo Balbo's Italy (represented by Cesare de Vecchi), Japan, and Sichuan), which comes out as 4-2, with Southern Ireland, Japan, and Sichuan voting with Brazil. Getulio Vargas is elected as the first chairman, and invites the members of GEACPS to the Council.
20 September 1940: the
DH.100 Scorpion makes her first flight.
October 5, 1940: The Treaty of Udine is signed in northern Italy by the new Italian government and the Balkan Pact nations. This treaty annexes Trento Alta Adige to Austria (it was taken in WWI), the province of Trieste to Yugoslavia, the Dodecanese and Rhodes to Greece and forces Italy to hold referendums in its colonies on whether or not they wish to a) become Pact-ruled mandates, b) become free nations now, or c) become free nations in 5 to 10 years. It also forces Italy to pay large-scale war reparations. This war has been the costliest since WWI, with around 800,000 Italians dying, 825,000 Balkanites dying, and 1,035,000 Austrians dying (over an eighth of the nation's population.
October 10, 1940: Italian colonial referendums are held. Libya chooses to become a free nation now: the State of Libya is founded, nominally an independent state, but, in reality, an Italian puppet state ruled by Muslim corporatists. Somaliland chooses independence now as well and becomes a non-puppet Republic, while Eritrea chooses to become a Pact-ruled mandate.
October 13, 1940: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia declares Trieste and the surrounding countryside the "Free Territory of Trieste", and invites the Italian Communists who aided the Pact war effort to settle there. The Italian Communists do so, though they are rather unhappy, and Amadeo Bordiga, one of the founders of the party, becomes the first Premier of the Territory.
October 13, 1940: GEACPS again begins pressuring the French and British to leave Indochina and grant independence to "the oppressed people of Indochina."
October 22, 1940: Under pressure from his Pact-mates, King Alexander of Yugoslavia is forced to release his hold over the nation and allow parliamentary elections once again. The Yugoslavian Communist Party wins a comfortable majority, and Josip Tito becomes the first Prime Minister in almost ten years.
October 27, 1940: Under heavy pressure by the British, Regent Abd al-Ilah of Iraq rescinds the trade deal with the GEACPS negotiated by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. The same day, al-Gaylani resigns as Prime Minister.
November 2, 1940: The Free Territory of Trieste is almost immediately faced with a huge overpopulation problem, as nearly 3 million Italian Communists leave Fascist Italy and migrate to the Territory.
November 5, 1940: In cooperation with the Yugoslavian government, the Triesten government begins building massive temporary settlement camps in Slovenia, while also initiating a huge clearance and reconstruction (read: tear everything down and rebuild in an ultramodern, Constructivist and thus Communist manner) project of the entire Free Territory. The benevolent government of Josip Broz Tito begins pumping funds into the Free Territory for the project.
November 5, 1940: Farley and Long are elected on a shoestring, with 57% of the popular vote. At the same time, a whole new crowd of freshmen Democrats is swept into office, giving the Dems a comfortable majority in the two houses. John Nance Garner agrees to resume his role as Secretary of Agriculture and Jesse H. Jones becomes Senate Majority Leader.
November 9, 1940: Suddenly made aware of their fragile position in Europe by the hard-won victories of the Balkan Pact, Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary, and Edvard Rydz-Smigly, Chief of State of Poland-Lithuania, both join the International Council of Corporatists, and begin the rapid, forced industrialization of the two nations, to counter the Balkan Pact.
November 10, 1940: The Free Territory of Trieste joins the Balkan Pact.
November 13, 1940: The government of Czechoslovakia, realizing that they are now surrounded by potential enemies, begins increasing the size of the Czechoslovak army. Also, they enter into negotiations with the Balkan Pact about a possible defensive alliance.
November 16, 1940: The so-called "Reconstruction Act" is passed. The RA creates several new federal institutions to give jobs to the unemployed through major public projects, as well as attempting to solve the widespread lack of amenities throughout the nation. Long has emerged as the "power behind the throne" in the Farley administration, with much of his pro-interventionist legislation being pushed through by Jesse Jones.
December 1, 1940: Leopold Amery and the Conservatives are swept into power in Britain after nearly ten years of coalition between the Liberal Conservatives and Labour. Amery immediately announces his intention to the Empire much closer together and increase tariffs in the name of Imperial Preference--a decision that the Canadian Prime Minister objects to, as Canada is highly dependent on their southern neighbor.
December 3, 1940: Eddie Lang and the Melody Boys release
A Night in Trieste, a bluesy album commemorating the intensely fought-over and gutted city of Trieste.
December 5, 1940: In a joint interview with the New York Times, Eddie Lang and Joe Ventinari both publicly declare their support for the Soviet Union and worldwide communism, sparking public interest.
December 13, 1940: Amery journeys to Canada to begin talks with the Canadian government.
December 20, 1940: The Social Protection Act is passed. It grants a hefty federal salary to the unemployed, elderly, and disabled, and also creates the Federal Social Regulation Agency (FSRA), tasked with aiding those unemployed to gain a new job quickly. While the legislation is highly popular among the common people, the Republicans fight against it viciously (led largely by the rising star Wendell Willkie), with the Democrats fighting back just as viciously.
December 22, 1940: The French and British, concentrating on the war in the Balkans, impatiently refuse the GEACPS. As a result, Siamese troops begin massing on the border with French Indochina, while Yunnanese troops begin massing on the border with British Indochina. In the west, the restored EAAPF, with Agvan Dorzhiev as commander, deploys near the border with British protectorates Nepal and Bhutan, even as snow blocks up the Himalayan passes.
1941:
January 1, 1941: After more than two months of debate and work, the Provisional Federal Government of Somaliland accepts the final draft of the Somali Constitution: the constitution is a bizarre mix of the Somali concept of "xeer", the American constitution, and Sharia law, creating a nation that is incredibly decentralized, highly individualistic and democratic, and yet harsh in punishment for what acts are banned. Elections are set for February 5. Three parties are rapidly formed for the elections: the Somali Xeerist Party (SXP), a party espousing xeer as a form of government, high civil rights and economic rights, as well as rapid industrialization and headed by former soldier Abdirashid Ali Shermarke: Fascist Party/Republic of Somalia (FP/ROS), an Italian-style fascist party headed by Qur'anic scholar Abdullahi Issa: and the Brotherhood of Islam, an Islamic fundamentalist party espousing authoritarian rule, Sharia law, a command economy, and a return to the traditional pastoralist Somali lifestyle, headed by Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, a writer.
January 4, 1941: After many days of deadlocked talks, Amery finally unleases the anger that's been building up for days in a public speech (soon known as the "Christmas Fiasco") in Ottawa condemning the Canadian government and their unwillingness to "see reason". Only an hour later, he leaves on a zeppelin to London.
January 5, 1941: Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King announces his government's intention to steer their own path from now on, away from the wishes of the Home Islands. Later that day, King indicates his receptiveness to a North American Free Trade Zone.
January 11, 1941: American Vice President Huey Long holds a press conference in DC, where he harshly criticizes Leopold Amery's actions and, further, calls on Amory to give "India back to the Indians". However, Long also firmly states that the Farley administration will only debate, criticize, and observe, but not act in international incidents beyond the Americas. Further, Long outlines the plan for the next year, involving increasing Federal spending on welfare and social services, as well as an increased focus on the police force to combat crime, combined with a military budget cut. This speech is an example of the (for America) far left-wing nationalist, isolationist course the Democratic Party has begun to steer under the leadership of Farley and Long.
January 13, 1941: The Agricultural Reconstruction Act is passed, creating the Federal Bureau of Agriculture (FBA), headed by John Nance Garner. The bureau is tasked with reclaiming desertified land in the Midwest, reestablishing widespread small-farmer-based agriculture there, and monitoring said agriculture to ensure the avoidance of another Dust Bowl. Again, the Republicans oppose the legislation, but the Democratic majority pushes it through.
January 16, 1941: Josip Broz Tito presents a complicated economic plan for the Balkan Pact to increase efficiency and integration between the nations: the plan proposes the creation of a Balkan Peninsula Trading Company (BPTC) which will, endowed with capital by the various Balkan governments, buy up farmland and oil fields in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, mineral deposits in Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, and begin constructing massive industrial districts in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Trieste. All of these resources will be, of course, exploited, and shipped to other locations throughout the Pact nations by the Pan-Balkan Shipping Company, then sold on the global market. The profits will then be spread equally among the Balkan governments for their general use. The so-called "Tito Scheme" appeals to both economic conservatives and economic leftists: while it gives the state(s) a large share in the internal and external economy in the Pact, it leaves most business intact.
January 20, 1941: The Balkan Pact members vote to implement the Tito Scheme.
January 20, 1941: The so-called "Great Tariff Act" is pushed through, raising tariffs once again to pre-Hull levels to ensure economic growth. However, VP Long also begins pushing for a North American Free Trade Zone between Mexico, the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean nations and colonies.
January 23, 1941: The failure of Germany's center-right government to deal with the Depression successfully once again sweeps many SPD and KPD deputies into office. Paul Levi, leader of the KPD, is named Chanceller of a SPD-KPD coalition government by the new president, SPD member Arthur Crispien, though rightist parties remain a significant minority in the Reichstag.
January 24, 1941: The Indochina War begins with a bang as Tibetan, combined Yunannese-Chinese, and combined Japanese-Siamese forces launch a massive strike into, respectively, Nepal and Bhutan, British Indochina, and French Indochina. In the early hours of the morning, the Japanese airforce near-simultaneously strikes Singapore, Saigon, Hanoi, and Rangoon, destroying a large portion of the British Royal Navy in Asia and near-decapitating the French Colonial Forces in Asia. The British and French governments are stunned by this sudden move, and struggle to reply in kind.
January 25, 1941: Among other governments to declare war on Japan and the GEACPS in response to the January 24 attacks is that of Nuri as-Said, Prime Minister of Iraq.
January 26, 1941: As part of the next phase of "War Plan Green", Japanese-trained Thai and Chinese paratroopers are dropped on Rangoon, Saigon, and Hanoi, while the three cities are still struggling to recover from the strike two days before. After a short fight, Hanoi is easily taken, while the French Colonial Forces twenty miles to the west struggle to hold off the Siamese advance. Saigon proves harder to take, with significant resistance from the
tirailleurs indochinese still alive in the city, who fear the replacement of French masters by Siamese masters. However, the city still falls to the Siamese by nightfall: the still-loyal
tirailleurs retreat into the jungle to conduct a guerilla war against the Siamese, led by a soon-to-be-famous Major, Duong Quy Xuan. Meanwhile, the Siamese army, led by the King himself, begins a lightning advance down the Malayan peninsula, striking rapidly towards Singapore.
January 27, 1941: In the People's Republic of China, Ho Chi Minh, a prominent Vietnamese communist, extorts his countrymen to rise up against the GEACPS forces in Vietnam, smearing them as neo-colonialists.
January 28, 1941: German
Bundeskanzler Paul Levi (KPD) introduces the SPD-KPD coalition government's new economic program in a speech in Berlin. The program, entitled
Das Programm für die Wiederbelebung des Deutschen Volkes or
Das Neues-Programm for short, is an ambitious revamping of the German governmental and economic system, abolishing many of the old regional rights and responsibilities (namely the Prussian Free State) of the German states, as well as nationalizing much of the essential parts of the German economy, mostly first-sector industries. The new program causes a large outcry among the rightist minorities in the Reichstag, though they can do little to nothing about it but protest.
February 1, 1941: The new German SPD-KPD coalition government passes its first piece of legislation: the First Nationalization Bill. After two weeks of negotiations and debate, nationalizations have been restricted to "economic areas essential to the survival of the German nation", i.e. agriculture, mining, etc. The multiple small agricultural businesses are bought up and grouped into one large state-owned company, Die Deutsche Agrikulture-Gesellschaft (DAG).
February 1, 1941: In a speech in Luang Prabang, Sisavang Vong, King of Laos, urges the Laotians to rise up against the GEACPS, reminding them of the prosperity and safety under the French and of GEACPS brutality in Mongolia and the Russian Far East. Afterwards, Vong is forced to flee from the royal palace as Siamese troops come to arrest him. He travels to Singapore, where he begins organizing the Free Laotian Army from Laotian emigrants and refugees from the war.
February 3, 1941: Events in Germany cause the Polish-Lithuanian leader, Edvard Rydz-Smigly, to begin the construction of a line of fortresses along the two borders with Germany, as well as one along the border with the Soviet Union. Poland-Lithuania is rapidly turning into a isolationist, fascist "fortress" state.
February 3, 1941: In contrast to the Laotian King, Cambodian monarch Sisowath Monivong declares full support for GEACPS and expresses a wish for Indochina to be united under a "Union L'Indochine", with Siam at the helm.
February 3, 1941: Tibetan forces meet Nepalese Gurkhas in a battle in northern Nepal, ending in a difficult Tibetan victory.
February 4, 1941: French-Vietnamese Major Duong Quy Xuan and his Nhu'ng Ngu'o'i Trung Thanh (Loyalists) launch their first major assault on a GEACPS supply caravan traveling to Hanoi, killing 20 Chinese soldiers and capturing almost $20,000 worth of supplies, including weapons and ammunition.
February 4, 1941: Jigme Wangchuk, 2nd King of Bhutan, announces that the Bhutannese Royal Army will "resist Tibetan expansionism to the last man" and commands the Royal Army to hold the nation's northernmost network of
dzongs (fortresses) at all cost.
February 5, 1941: Four regiments of Gurkhas, led by the Nepali-British General Narendra Bahadur Singh, manage to halt the Tibetan advance north of Kathmandu. Agvan Dorzhiev, commander of the Tibetan West Army, begins digging his forces in, as does Singh. Dorzhiev also requests aerial support from the EAAPF (East Asian Army for Peace and Freedom).
February 7, 1941: With difficulty, the British Army under General Alexander Frank Philip Christison (A.F.P. Christison) halts the Siamese advance down the Malayan Peninsula at the town of Kangar, roughly halfway down the peninsula.
February 8, 1941: Captain Raizo Tanaka scores another victory against the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Gulf of Thailand in a night assault
. The worst losses for the British are HMS
Hood, sunk by a combined assault from IJN
Jintsu and IJN
Kagero, and the already-damaged HMS
Hermes, sunk in a one-on-one battle with
Jintsu. However, DesRon2 loses a destroyer and
Jintsu, Tanaka's flagship, is again heavily damaged. Tanaka sends
Jintsu to Formosa to be repaired and transfers his flag to
Kagero for the time being.
February 9, 1941: With the money provided to the state by these new nationalized corporations, the German government begins a massive program to employ the unemployed German citizens themselves, using them to build massive public works and infrastructure projects throughout Germany, especially in the backwards East Prussia.
February 9, 1941: South Africa establishes low-level trade and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
February 9, 1941: Four bills are introduced by Paul Levi's agent in the Reichstag, the East Prussian deputy Hugo Eberlein. The first is a piece of legislation calling for the creation of a new governmental agency,
Die National Business Hilfswerk (The National Business Aid Agency). The next bill, having emerged via a compromise between Crispien and Levi, will give the new agency a fluid monthly income with which to provide subisidies to small businesses and poor farmers: further, it is given the responsibility and ability to buy goods from those struggling businesses that the agency's higher-ups believe are worthy of the money, so as to keep them and the economy afloat. Friedrich Reinhold Pieck is designated as the head of the possible agency. The third bill creates
Der Bundesrat Architektur-Agentur (The Federal Architecture Agency). The fourth also gives the FAA a fluid monthly income, with which to begin the construction of massive housing and federal projects throughout the nation: only those who are certifiably unemployed will be hired for these projects, and they will be paid (in the words of the bill) "the amount of money they and their dependents need to survive and prosper". Albert Speer and the Russian Constructivist Alexander Vesnin are designated as dual heads of the possible agency.
February 10, 1941: Colonel Bernard Montgomery is recalled to India to lead his former command, the 1st Regiment of the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers.
February 10, 1941: Nhu'ng Ngu'o'i Trung Thanh (NNTT) bombs a temporary Siamese government building in Saigon, killing an approximate 33 people.
February 11, 1941: The British Indian Army finally mobilizes and, led by General Sir Robert Archibald Cassels, begins moving northwards to relieve the Bhutannese and Nepalis.
11 February 1941: RN moves eight squadrons of U- & S-class submarines (& four sub tenders) to Perth, for operations against Japan.
February 13, 1941: Hong Kong falls to the Army of the Republic of China (ARC). However, HMS
Hood, docked in Hong Kong, bombards the city with impunity before retreating south to Singapore, leaving Hong Kong a shattered, burning hulk of a port.
February 15, 1941: Shamar Bayarmaa, aging commander of the East Asian Army for Peace and Freedom (EAAPF), begins the siege of Bhutan, shelling the northernmost network of
dzongs with impunity.
February 16, 1941: NNTT initiates a shootout with Siamese troops in Saigon after a botched bombing: six Siamese soldiers and nine NNTT
tiralieurs are killed, while one and two respectively are wounded.
February 16, 1941: The four bills slide out of the German Reichstag easily due to the KPD/SPD majority, though some minor adjustments are made. The rightist minorities protest loudly, but are ineffectual.
February 17, 1941: The Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party), led by Pan Boi Chau, condemns the recent actions of NNTT, but urges the GEACPS to release Vietnam to independence as soon as possible.
February 17, 1941: Imperial Japanese Navy Destroyer Squadron 2, commanded by Captain Raizo Tanaka, wins a stunning victory against Royal Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam. After ambushing the RN ships in the early hours of the morning, DesRon2 manages to sink the RN aircraft carrier HMS
Anson and near-cripple the aircraft carrier HMS
Hermes, forcing the six ships to retreat. However, DesRon2 does lose two destroyers to aerial bombing, while a third is crippled. The squadron's flagship, the light cruiser
Jintsu, is heavily damaged as well, and the squadron returns to Formosa to repair.
February 22, 1941: Bropan, a collection of four dzongs in the northwest of Bhutan, falls to the Tibetans, leaving Thimphu, the capital, open to Tibetan attack.
February 23, 1941: Agvan Dorzhiev's Tibetan West Army overwhelms the Nepalese army at Kathmandu, forcing the remaining Gurkha regiments (led by Nahadur Barender Singh) to retreat to Narayani and Janakpur to wait for British reinforcements.
February 25, 1941: The Royal Bhutan Army desperately attempts to halt the Tibetan advance in the Battle of Bropan Pass, twenty miles from Thimphu. The six-hour battle is the deadliest in the Indochina War to date, with almost a third (8,000 men) of the RBA dead or missing in action, and a quarter (11,000 men) of the EAAPF dead. It ends in a defeat for the RBA, and Jigme Wangchuk orders the raising of reserves and the fortification of Thimphu in a desperate attempt to defend the capital.
March 1941: Quality debuts
Young Love #1, also by Blalock & Infantino. It, too, sells around a million a month. Quality's books are soon joined by competitors from WFP, Fox Features, Fawcett, & National.
March 1, 1941: The Battle of Thimphu begins as Tibetan shells begin to fall on Thimphu.
March 3, 1941: The British Army in Nepal (BAN), a third of the British Indian Army, arrives in Narayani under the hastily-promoted Lieutenant-General Montgomery just in time to defeat the Tibetan West Army and reinforce the embattled Gurkhas. This battle marks the first use of BIS-built rockets in combat by the aerial wing of BAN. Agvan Dorzhiev withdraws to Kathmandu, which he begins fortifying in preparation for the Nepalese-British counterattack.
3 March 1941: GM begins expansion of its plants in Canada, Australia, & New Zealand to take advantage of military orders, in particular for the
Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) truck. The expansion attracts thousands of unemployed workers from Michigan (mainly), Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, & New York. It also attracts considerable numbers of Negroes from the southern U.S.
March 4, 1941: The British Army in Bhutan (BAB), another third of the British Indian Army, arrives in Bhutan under Robert A. Cassels. Half of the EAAPF, under the command of Sub-General Andruk Gonpo Tashi, ambushes BAB 6 miles south of Thimphu. Cassels manages to fight the Tibetans to a draw, though it is clear he will not be able to advance further north and relieve the embattled Bhuttannese.
March 7, 1941: The British Burmese Expeditionary Force (BBEF), led by Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, attacks the combined Chinese-Japanese-Yunnanese army near Hakha in Chin province, Burma, halting their advance into British India.
10 March 1941: Socony-Vacuum Oil & Jersey Standard Oil's joint venture, Stanvac, begins expansion of production facilities in DEI, including a plant to produce aviation gasoline.
March 10-16, 1941: The Order of the Dragon holds a massive six-day rally in Birmingham, Alabama, in support of the Entente and urges the Soviet Union and the US both to enter the war against the "Yellow Peril".
12 March 1941: RN moves four squadrons of T-boats, plus the
Grampus class minelayers, to Prince Rupert, BC, for operations against Japan.
March 14, 1941: William Slim's supply lines are severely compromised when Bhupendra Kamar Datta, commander of the Indian resistance group Jugantar in Bengal, launches a massive uprising. Bengal quickly descends into chaos as the British Raj's police forces struggle to crack down.
March 15, 1941: Only a day after the beginning of the Bengalaese Revolt, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) revolts against their own police force in the Punjab. Again, the British struggle to get a hold on the region.
May 18, 1941: Aroused by the recently Commonwealth'd Puerto Rico, the various British West Indies islands begin agitating for their own independent status in the Commonwealth.
22 March 1941: HMS
Thunderbolt (N25, better known as
Thetis), commanded by Lt. Cdr. C. B. Crouch RN, is the first RN submarine to patrol off the coast of Japan. Covering the Bungo Suido, she will be joined by the other T-boats in Home Waters, the Yellow Sea, & (main chokepoint for Japanese trade & supply south) the Luzon & Formosa Straits.
March 23, 1941: Seeing the British Raj's weakness, Afghanistan declares for the GEACPS and invades Balochistan--though they are held off by British border guards, the invasion causes a massive uprising in the native Baloch population, which is violently crushed.
23 March 1941: HMS
Porpoise (N14, Lt.Cdr. J. G. Hopkins RN) lays mines off the entrance to the main IJN anchorage at Truk, beginning an intensive RN/RAN/RCN campaign of mining of fleet anchorages. With a capacity of 50 mines each, the six
Grampuses create havoc for IJN, as Japanese minesweeping proves quite perfunctory & ineffectual.
March 27, 1941: Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, founder of the All India Kisan Saba (All-India Communist Party), leads his party in a revolt against British rule in the United Provinces and Bihar, cutting William Slim off from all supplies. Almost all of northern India has now collapsed into anarchy, though former Mysore and Ceylon remain peaceful.
April 1942: The Scarab is introduced by National Comics in
Space Comics #17
April 1, 1941: Realizing the untenability of the British Raj's position, Robert A. Cassels orders all expeditionary forces in Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma to retreat back into the Raj and restore order.
April 3, 1941: In light of the British retreat, Bhuttanese King Jigme Wangchuk surrenders Thimphu to GEACPS. He is immediately arrested and placed under house arrest at the Royal Palace in Thimphu. The Bhutan Royal Army is interned in large POW camps around the city. Shamar Bayarmaa begins chasing Robert Cassels south into Bihar.
April 4, 1941: Bernard Montgomery prepares a massive evacuation of southern Nepal, aided by the surviving Gurkha regiments.
April 4, 1941: Hari Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir, throws his lot in with the Afghanis and GEACPS, declaring the independence of the Princedom of Kashmir. He agrees to recognize nominal Afghan suzerainity over Kashmir in exchange for
de facto independence and Afghan support.
April 5, 1941: Before Montgomery can adequately evacuate Nepal, Agvan Dorzhiev ambushes his army in Lumbini province, killing or capturing nearly two-thirds of the BAN. The remaining troops, still led by Montgomery, fight their way out, back into the rebelling Punjab.
April 9, 1941: William Slim, having retreated to the Seven Sister States in the far eastern Raj, begins fortifying the seven states, which are now surrounded on all sides by enemies (Free Burma, China, Free Bengal) and cut off from all support. Though his prospects look bleak, the intrepid commander vows to never surrender.
April 10, 1941: Sichuanese forces begin building up on all of their frontiers with China, Yunnan, and Tibet, alerting GEACPS to their militaristic aims. The GEACPS advance in northern India halts as forces are redirected to contain any Sichuanese breakout in support of their Entente allies.
April 11, 1941: The aircraft carrier HMS
Anson is torpedoed off the coast of Bengal; 400 crew and ten airplanes go down with the ship. The rest of
Anson's airgroup was already airborne, conducting a raid against GEACPS positions in Bengal in conjunction with land-based Royal Indian Air Force planes.
April 16, 1941: Montgomery and his bedraggled forces finally return to loyalist India--specifically, to the princely state of Rajaputana, as all provinces to the west and north (half of Bombay province, Kashmir, Baluchistan, the Frontier Provinces) have been lost to rebels or GEACPS. The erstwhile commander begins fortifying the province with what troops he has left, using delaying tactics and trench warfare from the Great War.
17 April 1941: Pratt & Whitney Canada begins tooling up for production of the R2800.
April 19, 1941: Robert A. Cassels and BAB, having fought their way out of "Communist India", as the rebelling United Provinces and Bihar are now being called, begin fortifying in the Central Provinces. Reinforcements are hurriedly raised from the Indian reserves and added to the Indian Army, split between Montgomery and Cassels.
April 20, 1941: The mass production of military rockets is begun in British Ceylon by BIS.
April 21, 1941: The Commonwealth Act passes the American Senate, creating the American Commonwealth and elevating Puerto Rico and the Phillipines to free commonwealth nation status. This gives the two states a high amount of autonomy, while still highly-tied to the US. Manuel Quezon is inaugurated as the first president of the Phillipines, while Jesus T. Pinero becomes the first president of Puerto Rico. The move is highly criticized by Wendell Willkie and his Republican ilk.
April 23, 1941: Surprising many, Fulgencio Batista requests a similiar status in the American Commonwealth to the Phillipines and Puerto Rico, so as to help his nation through the Depression.
April 23, 1941: The Chinese Front of the Indochina War explodes into action as Sichuanese forces overrun the Tibetan and Yunnanese borders to the west and south, striking rapidly towards Tsheg Bar and Kunming. Their advance into China, however, is rapidly contained and forced back by the superior Army of the Republic of China (ARC).
April 25, 1941: The hastily-mobilised Tibetan East Army (TEA) manages to slow the Sichuanese advance towards Tsheg Bar in the Second Battle of Nyingchi: the Sichuanese are completely halted at the 1200-year-old Monastery of Pemako, which rapidly becomes the scene of vicious hand to hand fighting as the Sichuanese attempt to force their way through the canyon containing the monastery.
28 April 1941: Chrysler follows GM's example. Critics claim the companies are violating the Neutrality Act, but leading Republican Congressmen [insert names here
] call it good business.
May 1941: Quality Comics'
Police Comics #1 introduces
Plastic Man, created by Jack Cole. His wacky sense of humor makes him one of the most popular Golden Age characters. (He also takes the most unusual approach to secret identities: he doesn't need one, simply re-arranging his features.) The same issue introduces
The Human Bomb.
1 May 1941: Ford announces it will not copy GM & Chrysler, due to founder Henry's opposition to war.
May 1, 1941: Hu Hanmin and the Sichuanese Nationalist Army overrun Chuxiong City in northern Yunnan--only one province now lies between the Sichuanese and a breakout into Burma.
2 May 1941: Studebaker reopens its Canadian branch plant & begins construction of an Australian factory.
March 4, 1941: The State Aviation Works (PZL) in Warsaw and the Fiat combine in Turin begin production on several large orders for Brazil - 150 PZL.43B light bombers and 300 PZL.38B heavy fighters, both powered by license-built Mitsubishi Kinsei engines, 250 Fiat BR.30 medium bombers (license-built Ki-21s), and 400 Fiat CR.42 biplane fighters. The orders are secretly financed by Japan, the actual intended recipient.
5 May 1941: Electric Boat purchases North Vancouver Shipbuilding in Vancouver, BC.
May 6, 1941: The Yunnanese army, bolstered by hastily-brought-up Siamese and Japanese reinforcements, manages to halt the Sichuanese advance with great difficulty at the Yunnanese city of Jinghong, just a few miles north of the Siamese border. While GEACPS has stopped Yunnan from being cut in half, it is only with intense difficulty.
March 6, 1941: Freshman Senator Wendell Willkie, a Republican from Indiana, calls for increased defense spending in light of the Brazilian arms purchase.
April 11, 1941: The small Brazilian freighter SS
Itagiba arrives in Yokohama with a load of disassembled CR.42 fighters (rather than the reported cargo of scrap metal).
April 12, 1941: Polish freighter MS
Stalowa Wola arrives in Yokohama, carrying 20 disassembled PZL.38B heavy fighters.
May 9, 1941-June 3, 1941: The Aerial Corps of the Republic of China (ACRC), led by General Kao Chih-Huang (a noted ace), carries out an intense bombing campaign in northern Sichuan. The campaign is intended to soften up the Sichuanese forces before the Chinese offensive planned in early June.
May 21, 1941: Liberia joins the American Commonwealth, encouraging American investors to put their money in Liberia.
4 June 1941: Electric Boat begins conversion of North Vancouver Shipbuilding to enable construction of submarines. The new yard attracts hundreds of highly-skilled builders, many trained in idled USN yards in San Francisco and Norfolk.
June 5, 1941: Li Jishen, Commander of Army of the Republic of China, begins a slow, grinding offensive into northern Sichuan. His slow-moving behemoth, spearheaded by heavy armored divisions and supported by infantry, moves inexorably towards the center of Sichuan.
June 11, 1941: Raizo Tanaka meets his first defeat in a battle near British Ceylon with a group of eight British destroyers. Commanded by the Australian lieutenant Alfred Brian "Pedlar" Palmer after the unexpected death-by-heart-attack of the commanding officer, the group of destroyers manages to quickly counterattack once ambushed by DesRon2. A full four Japanese destroyers are lost and
Kagero is damaged. Only two undamaged ships remain in DesRon2 and so Tanaka withdraws to Formosa to repair. Pedlar Palmer is promoted to Captain and given command of the new "Sea Wolf" Destroyer Squadron.
June 15, 1941: Japanese Admiral Hiroaki Abe arrives in Bengal, taking control of all GEACPS aerial and naval operations in the Indian Ocean. With him comes several Japanese battleships (I'll leave it to anon to decide which ones) and many heavily armored and armed cruisers. Abe orders a change from Raizo Tanaka's tactics of hit-and-run towards heavy and intense confrontation with the Royal Navy off the coast of India, as well as heavy bombardment of the British ports by the air force and the battleships.
June 16, 1941: The Royal Air Force begins wresting aerial control over northern India from GEACPS with the arrival of the new supreme aerial commander Marshal Arthur Travers Harris. Harris changes the RAF's posture from one of passive defense to aggressive offensive action. At the same time, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery is replaced as commander of the British Army of Western India by Lieutenant General William Henry Ewart Gott. Gott immediately begins pushing for a more aggressive strategy against GEACPS. General Robert A. Cassels is also replaced by General Alan Brooks, one of the Royal Army's more talented generals. Brooks acts as counterpoint to Gott, embarking on a course of strong defence and deepening of British hold over the remainder of British India.
June 23, 1941: The Union of Indian Socialist States (UISS) is declared in Patna, Bihar province. Sahajanand Saraswati is the first General Secretary.
June 24, 1941: Admiral Hiroaki Abe's task force, centered around the battleship
Musashi, the battlecruisers
Kirishima and
Haruna, and the carriers
Hiryu and
Soryu, attacks the port of Madras, wrecking facilities at one of the main British ports on the Bay of Bengal. Six A5M4 fighters and four D3A dive bombers were shot down, but so were 9 RIAF Gladiators and an RAF Hurricane.
25 June 1941: Panamanian-flagged tanker
Charles Pratt (operated by Esso {Standard Oil of New Jersey} subsidiary Panama Transport Co.) is discovered transferring 100 octane aviation gasoline to Japanese tanker
Asanagi Maru, in violation of the Neutrality Act. (It is well-known among oil company insiders this is a frequent occurence.) Esso is fined $100,000.
June 27, 1941: Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, backed by the 'Golden Square' - a group of four anti-British Iraqi officers - and their troops, stages a 'march on Baghdad,' forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. Meanwhile, elements of the Iraqi Mechanized Brigade take control of RAF Habbaniya.
June 28, 1941: Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, returned to the post of Prime Minister of Iraq by force, announces that Iraq is withdrawing from the war with the GEACPS and closing its borders to Anglo-French troops. As a result, Iraqi troops stop a French troop train in Baiji, demanding that it return to Syria rather than proceeding on to Basra.
July 1, 1941: March on Washington; A. Philip Randolph and T. Arnold Hill organize some 100,000 African-Americans in a march on Washington D.C., demanding equal rights in employment and voting.
July 1, 1941: In response to the recent actions by the Iraqis, Reza Shah, Shah of Iran, closes his borders to Entente troops and, furthermore, begins supplying GEACPS with oil. Furthermore, he sends out diplomatic feelers to Iraq to sound out the possibility of an alliance between the two nations.
July 3, 1941: The Iraqi government follows Iran's lead and begins selling oil to GEACPS. As well, they agree to think about the establishment of a regional alliance similiar to GEACPS.
July 10, 1941: The Democratic Republic of the Punjab is declared in Amritsar. Manmath Nath Gupta is the first President.
12 July 1941: RN & RAN MTBs begin riverine operations on the Irrawaddy, Indus, & Mekong Rivers in support of Allied forces in Asia. They are joined by
Marine nationale Vedettes Lance Torpilles (VLTs) & RCN MTBs. Their 40mm prove too slow-firing, & RAN & RCN crew quickly scavenge 20mm guns from wrecked D.520s, modifying them with belt feed.
July 13, 1941: The Bengal State is declared in Calcutta. The first Leader of the Bengali People is Bhupendra Kamar Datta.
July 15, 1941: Lieutenant-General Gott launches a raid into Punjabi territory in retaliation for the declaration of the Republic. The attack, which leaves around 1,900 Punjabis and around 300 Brits dead, gives Gott's army the nickname "The Jungle Rats". His army begins to call Gott "The Rat King" in response to this. Gott is severely reprimanded for the action by his superior, Alan Brooks.
July 18, 1941: Jean Tassigny and Claude Auchinleck, the respective commanders of the French and British forces in the Middle East, launch a surprise attack into Iraq to secure the Entente's oil supply. The attack, spearheaded by rapid light armor divisions followed by heavy armor and infantry, rapidly pushes the Iraqi army back.
July 19, 1941: To the utter surprise of the Entente, Iran declares war on them and Iranian troops begin moving into Iraq to aid the Iraqi army.
July 26, 1941: The
First Battle of Tikrit. The Iraqi 3rd Infantry Division attempts a night attack on the 17th Senegalese
Tirailleurs, who had seized Tikrit the day before. The Iraqi advance is disorganized, and the Senegalese manage to hold on long enough for the arrival of the 16th Tunisian
Tirailleurs from Mosul.
July 28, 1941: The
Second Battle of Tikrit. The Iraqis renew their offensive, having brought up elements of the 2nd Division from Kirkuk. Nine Gladiators stationed at Kirkuk joined the attack, but two were shot down by ground fire from the Tunisians and Senegalese, and the others proved mostly ineffectual. The French once again held on, and the second attack ended around 4 AM on July 29.
July 29, 1941: The
First Battle of Diwaniyah. Iranian and Iraqi forces, including the Iraqi Mechanized Brigade (moved by truck), hold off the first Entente attack on Diwaniyah, in part due to Iraq and Iran taking local air superiority. Tassigny, having outrun his supply lines, pulls back to Samawah.
August 4, 1941: The
Battle of Kirkuk. The 6th Foreign Legion Regiment, supported by Lebanese light infantry and Circassian cavalry, conducts a dawn attack on Kirkuk, catching the remnants of the 3rd Iraqi Division (still struggling to reform after the two battles of Tikrit) by surprise. By midmorning, Kirkuk falls to the French offensive.
August 18, 1941: The
Second Battle of Diwaniyah begins. Anglo-French forces under the overall command of Auchinleck invest the Iraqi/Iranian positions around Diwaniyah. After six days of fighting, the Iraqis and Iranians defending Diwaniyah - including the elite Iraqi Mechanized Brigade - are forced to surrender.
22 August 1941: Japan introduces armored
daihatsu on the Irrawaddy & Indus. Their 70mm & 80mm guns vastly outrange the standard 40mm of MTBs &
VLTs. It rapidly becomes clear they need more firepower, & their torpedo tubes are put ashore, replaced by 57mm, but depth charges are very effective against the barges.
When moonsoon season arrives, road & air movement are halted, but Allied patrol boats continue to operate, delivering troops & supplies, as well as interdicting IJA operations. So do
daihatsu, threatening Allied supply lines. The Allies turn to river minelaying, with small convoys of patrol boats: one or two minelayers, two to four MGB escorts. The success of the mining leads RAF to adopt aerial minelaying, using Hampdens otherwise unsuited for combat operations. Japanese minesweeping again proves quite ineffectual.
August 31, 1941: Professor Alexander Lippisch joins Tank and Messerschmitt's supersonic project.
September 1941:
Police Comics #5 introduces
Green Flash, created by Paul Gustavson & Art Pinajian. Granted super-speed & a protective shield by a magic ring & lantern (named for the green lanterns once hung outside NYPD precinct houses), former policeman Scott Allen sets out to fight crime. He becomes one of the most-recognizable Golden Age heroes.
September 1, 1941: The first squadrons of Ki-27b fighters arrive in Ahwaz, Persia, delivered via Afghanistan, providing much-needed aerial reinforcement to the beleaguered Persians. Within a week, No.21 & No.24 Hiko Sentai of the IJAAF would go into their first battles over the skies of Khuzestan, stymieing an Anglo-French advance from Basra.
September 4, 1941: The
Fall of Baghdad. Entente forces advance into Baghdad itself, facing relatively light resistance. Rashidi al-Gaylani is caught attempting to flee the city.
September 9, 1941: Hughes Aviation finishes Manila Aerodrome in the Phillipines, two months after finishing Miami and San Juan Aerodromes in, respectively, the USA and Puerto Rico. This marks the connection of all of the American Commonwealth sans Liberia.
September 12, 1941: After a short cessation of hostilities to let both sides recuperate, the GEACPS continues its push into Sichuan. Now on the offensive, TEA, ARC, and RTA (Royal Thai Army) rapidly crush Sichuanese defenses.
September 15, 1941: Operation Subtle Cobra, the last major Sichuanese attempt to expell the GEACPS forces from their territory, fails spectacularly at the
Battle of Chengdu. Over 20,000 Sichuanese soldiers are killed during the battle--one of the most infamous killing zones is the historic Anshun Bridge (which is destroyed during the conflict). Hu Hanmin, President of Sichuan, is captured by the ARC during the battle. General Chen Jitang declares himself temporary President of Sichuan and, rallying the remaining Sichuanese forces, decides to make a final stand against the GEACPS at Kangding in Garzê Prefecture.
September 20, 1941: Two wings of the South African Air Force, 3 Wing SAAF (operating Martin 167 Maryland bombers) and 7 Wing SAAF (operating Hawker Hurricane IIb fighters), deploy to bases in Hyderabad.
September 22, 1941: The final, tumultuous battle of the Chinese Front is fought at the
Battle of Kangding. 16,000 Sichuanese soldiers led by Chen Jitang face off against over 90,000 GEACPS soldiers from all areas of China, Siam, East Turkestan, Yunnan, Tibet, and Japan. The battle lasts almost 30 hours--the Sichuanese use their superior defensive position, cutting down thousands of GEACPS soldiers as they advance on the town. When the city is finally reached, the Sichuanese turn every house into a bunker and every street into a killing zone. The Sichuanese also refuse to give ground as much as possible. By the end of the two days, Kangding is soaked in the blood of East Asia. 48,000 GEACPS soldiers have died at Kangding, while only 97 Sichuanese soldiers remain alive. Chen Jitang himself is dead, killed by a Siamese soldier in hand-to-hand combat. The Nationalist Republic of Sichuan has fallen, the Kuomintang gutted beyond belief. This battle will soon enter the annals of mythical Fascist last stands, along with the
Battle of Vienna and the
Battle of Dublin.
28 September 1941: Panamanian-flagged [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]
Socony-Vacuum tanker Mobillight[/FONT] is discovered transferring oil to Imperial Oil (Esso Canada) ta
nker [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Calgarolite[/FONT], in violation of the Neutrality Act. Socony is fined $115,000.
September 30, 1941: GEACPS troops begin to be rushed south to break the stalemate that is the Indian Front and send aid to their co-belligerents in the Middle East.
October 3, 1941: Paul de Montgolfier, flying a French Air Force Dewoitine D.520, becomes an ace in a day, scoring five kills (two Ki-27 fighters and three Ki-21 bombers) in an ambush of a 27-plane bombing raid against Pondicherry. The nine available fighters in Montgolfier's squadron, coming from out of the sun and taking advantage of their speed advantage, down eleven of the Japanese raiding force - three fighters and eight bombers - to only two losses of their own.
October 9, 1941: GEACPS begins pushing to the south once again, on both the Malaya Front and the Indian Front. While Gott and the Jungle Rats manage to slow them down a bit in the west (mostly due to lack of good infrastructure), the Indian Red Army (IRA) and Jugantar, aided by EAAPF, manages to push Alan Brooks further south with heavy losses.
October 22, 1941: In the Seven Sister States in the northeastern Raj, William Slim begins secret negotiations with GEACPS--while he cannot simply surrender for fear of humiliation, his men have begun to starve as all supply lines to the Sister States have been cut off.
November 1, 1941: French guerrillas in Indochina begin talks with the Montagnards of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, hoping to enlist additional manpower for their cause.
November 4, 1941: Rostislav Alexeev, after successfully presenting his Master's thesis, "A Planing Boat with Hydrofoils," is assigned to OKB-49, under the direction of Georgy Beriev, where he will begin putting his work on hydrofoils into practice.
November 8, 1941: Felix Eboue, governor of Chad, in an official directive titled
La nouvelle politique indigène ('the new native policy'), offers the status of 'notable evolue' - acceptance within the social elite of the colony, accompanied by lowered taxes and other benefits - to the families of black volunteers for the army. Eboue, himself a notable evolue from French Guiana, not only seeks to provide large amounts of manpower for the war effort against Japan, but also wants to further his own goals in support of negritude.
November 8, 1941: Qasim Razvi, a former advisor to the Nizam of Hyderabad, begins organizing a Muslim militia, the Razakars, to support the GEACPS in Hyderabad, having been promised a key role in the postwar government of Hyderabad for his support.
November 11, 1941: The Canadian Corps arrives in Bombay, and is soon thrown into the fighting over southern India.
November 12, 1941: With Hyderabad in danger of being cut off, 3 Wing SAAF and 7 Wing SAAF are withdrawn to Madras, though both still remain involved in the fighting over south India.
November 15, 1941: GEACPS forces begin besieging Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. Alan Brooks has been pushed far south, while Gott, managing to defend Rajaputana against all odds, is slowly being encircled.
November 17, 1941: William Slim officially relinquishes control over the Seven Sister States to GEACPS. Understanding that this will cause a huge outcry in Britain if he should return, he offers himself and his army as the armed forces of the new Federation of the Seven States (led by Ambikagiri Raichoudhury).
November 20, 1941: Singapore is captured by GEACPS forces--it is one of the greatest losses for the British yet, with several ships destroyed in the harbor and 17,000 troops captured or dead. GEACPS now controls the waterways from Formosa to the Dutch East Indies to northern India, and the Royal Navy is rapidly losing ground near Guinea and southern India.
December 1, 1941-February 19, 1942: While Agvan Dorzhiev remains in Hyderabad, besieging the city, the EAAPF launches a rapid offensive westward, south of Rajaputana. Though Gott fights heavily to defend himself, he is in unfamiliar territory, and the EAAPF reaches the sea by February 15. Gott now controls only Rajaputana and southern Bombay Province. However, the Royal Navy is still able to supply him, with GEACPS naval forces being spare in the Persian Gulf.
December 2, 1941: Commonwealth troops win a major victory outside of Pondicherry in southern India, halting the GEACPS advance. GEACPS now holds all of India except for Tamil Nadu, Ceylon, the Andaman Islands, and Bombay Province. The British, however, will not be dislodged from their remaining areas and continue to challenge GEACPS air supremacy using BIS-made rockets and jet planes.
7 December 1941: "Viva Villa!" is released. Starring Anthony Wayne as Villa and directed by C. B. DeMille (the second of only two films they made together), it is an epic tale Villa's life & death. It rivals "Gone With the Wind" in scope, and it makes over $2 million. It will be criticized for both lionizing Villa &, later, fabricating events.
1942:
January 9, 1942: A Siamese government building is bombed in Kuala Lumpur. A Islamist Malay Nationalist group known as "Sons of the Prophet" claims responsibility and demands that GEACPS free the Malaya Peninsula.
January 11, 1942: James Roosevelt, son of noted New York politician Franklin Roosevelt, begins considering a run for one of the two at-large House seats allocated to New York, intending to replace retiring Democrat Caroline O'Day.
January 13, 1942: Raizo Tanaka, his DesRon2 rebuilt, launches an invasion of the Andaman Islands from Bengal, codenamed Operation Monkey's Paw. Though the Japanese manage to surprise the British garrison of the heavily-defended islands, the Commonwealth troops defend staunchly. Two days later, however, the Andaman Islands will fall, and Britain will have lost more land in Asia.
January 19, 1942: Occupied Western Iraq is thrown into chaos after Shia clerics urge resistance against the Entente.
January 22, 1942: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, French Syria, and Yemen explode into open revolt after British troops fire on a demonstration in Cairo.
January 28, 1942: The so-called "Iraq Revolt" is crushed by Tassigny and his men, who quickly return to Syria to deal with the rebels there.
February 1, 1942: Professor Ludwig Prandtl, of the University of Gottingen, is brought in for consulting work on the Tank/Messerschmitt supersonic airplane project, tentatively designated the BFW. M.50.
February 24, 1942: The GEACPS offensive is stopped by Alan Brooks just south of Hyderabad, after the city is taken. An order is issued from the highest levels of government to defend the rest of British India at all costs.
March 1, 1942:
The Battle of Tulagi, a notable British/Australian naval victory. An Anglo-Australian squadron under VAdm. John Gregory Crace, centered around the carriers
HMS Howe and
HMS Rodney and bolstered by the newly-commissioned light carrier
HMAS Vengeance, intercepted a Japanese invasion force en route to Tulagi, which had been spotted by the French submarine
Surcouf on the evening of February 27th. British Fairey Fulmars and Australian CAC Martens managed to overwhelm the
Zuiho's A5Ms screening the Japanese squadron, then Roc dive bombers and Swordfish torpedo bombers sank the light carrier
Zuiho, the cruisers
Aoba and
Niigata, the destroyers
Kamikaze and
Oboro, and six destroyer-transports (though not without loss - 10 of 15 Swordfish and 9 of 25 Rocs were shot down).
March 2, 1942: An Anglo-French offensive breaks through Persian lines at Khurram Shahr; over the next few days, the British and French make rapid progress through Khuzistan.
March 3, 1942: After suffering heavy losses, 3 Wing SAAF is withdrawn to South Africa.
March 6, 1942: Persian troops hold off a French light mechanized brigade just outside the small port of Bandar Shahpur, stopping their advance temporarily. Bandar Shahpur is a key city for the Persians, as it's the Persian Gulf terminus of the Trans-Iranian Railway.
March 8, 1942: Bandar Shahpur is stormed by two battalions of the Essex Regiment, supported by the French troops that had been stopped on the 6th and by the 237th Battery, Royal Artillery Regiment. The Anglo-French victory allows them access to the Trans-Iranian Railway leading straight to the Persian capital.
March 11, 1942: Montagnard guerrilla bands begin operating throughout Indochina, extensively disrupting supply lines and harassing the Siamese and Japanese occupiers.
March 12, 1942: The Cairo Cavalry Brigade's A10 Cruisers reach Ahwaz, the next major city along the Trans-Iranian Railway leading to Tehran.
March 13, 1942: General Dentz and the Army of the Levant break through the weakened Persian lines near Khanaqin in northern Iraq. The Persians, forced to pull troops from what had been a fairly quiet front to try to stabilize the lines in Khuzestan, now found themselves forced to deal with a second invasion.
March 13-April 1, 1942: GEACPS forces launch Operation Overlord, a massive amphibious assault on the coast of British Borneo. The fleet, protected by Raizo Tanaka's DesRon2, manages to offload an estimated 200,000 East Asian soldiers, who quickly assault strategically important points along the shore. However, to their surprise, they are opposed by approximately 500,000 Malay militiamen fighting under the banner of the Sons of the Prophet alongside the British. Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo, a Java-born Islamic cleric and leader of SOTP, encourages Malays in Malaya itself to rise up against GEACPS. The British have promised to give Malaya independence if they win the war against GEACPS. Thusly, while the superiorly-trained GEACPS forces quickly capture much of the ill-defended coastline, the Malay fighters manage to hold onto inner Northern Borneo, Bintulu, Kota Kinabalu, and Brunei. During this time, the guerilla warfare by loyalist
tiralieurs, Laotians, Burmese nationalists, and SOTP in Malaya intensifies, forcing Siam to spread its armed forces thin throughout the occupied nations. This action is noticeably felt in India, where "Rat King" Gott actually begins to gain ground into Hyderabad. The GEACPS heavies begin pushing Siam to rectify the situation.
March 15, 1942: The Arab Legion (now incorporating the camelry of the Transjordan Frontier Force), moving ahead of the main body of General Dentz's advance, seizes the Pai Tak Pass, controlling the route to Kermanshah and Hamadan and cutting off the line of retreat for Persian forces fighting Dentz's Army of the Levant at the Naft-i-Shah oilfield. Early in the afternoon, the Legion is joined by a company of French R35 tanks commanded by Captain Philippe Hautecloque. Through the evening and into the night, Hautecloque's tankers and the Arab Legion hold out against Persian attacks. This, the
Battle of the Pai Tak Pass, made Hautecloque's reputation.
March 16, 1942: Ion Antenescu is shot dead by an NKVD agent.
April 4, 1942: Field Marshal Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, orders planning for a fall offensive, after the monsoon rains and guerrilla activity throughout India and Indochina have made a mess of Japanese supply lines.
April 5, 1942: The Parliament of Greater Thailand calls a conference of the leaders of nations in the occupied territories with the Parliament, to work on peace terms. Duong Quy Xuan and Pan Boi Chau represent Vietnam: Sisavang Vong represents Laos: Sisowath Monivong represents Cambodia: Yusof Rawa, Kartosuwirjo's foremost lieutenant, represents Malaya and the Sons of the Prophet: Aung San, commander of the Burmese Communist Party's military forces, represents Burma: while the Indian states are represented by their various heads of state as observers.
April 7, 1942: After two days of arguing, bargaining, and threats, the various delegates leave Bangkok with a new treaty, a new nation, and a new attitude to the Entente. The Indochinese Federation is officially declared, with the nations of Burma, Malaya, Siam, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam existing as its member nations. The Federation is a loosely-held entity--each of the nations has its own governmental system and has control of its own foreign policy. However, they are tied together by pacts of common defence and a commonly-raised and supplied army, as well as an imperative to consult the rest of the Federation in matters of foreign policy. All of the delegates agree to declare war on the Entente and expunge every last bit of the stink of colonialism from Asia--a statement that causes feelings of uneasiness in Dutch and American politicans.
April 20, 1942: The last British troops in Borneo surrender. Malaya is now fully independent and united under the Islamist government of Sekarmadji Kartosuwirjo.
May 1942: Quality's
Plastic Man #1 debuts.
May 3, 1942: The Princedom of Mysore declares independence from the British Raj and requests aid from GEACPS to secure its independence.
6 May 1942: EB completes conversion of NVS. RCN orders 5 improved T-class submarines as the
Cocytus class. With six bow and four stern tubes & 26 torpedoes (18 forward, 8 aft) or 16 mines (all aft), they owe a lot to USN
Dolphin &
Sargo class boats. They are powered by Canadian-licenced Alco & GM-Winton supercharged diesels.
11 May 1942: RN orders 30
Cocytuses.
14 May 1942: RAN orders 10
Cocytuses.
10 June 1942:
Cocytus is laid down at Vancouver.
July 1, 1942:
Operation Dynamo. ANZAC and French forces seize the port of Lae, supported by Vice-Admiral Crace's squadron operating from Rabaul.
July 10, 1942:
First Battle of the Huon Gulf. Vice-Admiral Crace's squadron, supporting the Entente's invasion of northern Papua New Guinea, intercepts a Japanese invasion force under Admiral Hosogaya in a night action. Hosogaya loses the cruisers HIJMS
Nachi and HIJMS
Tama, both sunk by the British large cruiser
HMS Kent, suffers significant damage to his flagship, the large cruiser HIJMS
Nachi, among other ships, and is forced to turn back; in turn, Crace loses his flagship, the cruiser HMAS
Canberra, and the rest of his cruisers are pretty badly damaged, with
Kent and
MN Lamotte-Piquet needing to withdraw to Sydney for repairs. Still, the first Japanese attempt to recover Lae fails.
10 July 1942: L/Cdr
M. D. Wanklyn in
Upholder sinks five IJN destroyers in a single patrol in the South China Sea. It earns him a VC.
July 11, 1942: Bad weather prevents a follow-up air attack on the remnants of Hosogaya's fleet, but the submarines MN
Surcouf and HMS
Vampire continue to pursue the Japanese, picking off the damaged light cruiser HIJMS
Abukuma and her escorting destroyer HIJMS
Ikazuchi.
July 12, 1942: HMS
Kent and MN
Lamotte-Piquet, along with one of their escorting destroyers, HMAS
Vampire, are torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine squadron operating from Moresby.
July 13, 1942: The 1st Malagasy Division, raised over the past eighteen months, is finally assembled for deployment overseas. The division will be sent to Tellicherry as part of the Corps Expéditionnaire Afrique.
July 14, 1942:
Battle of Dondra Head. An attempt by the Japanese navy to break into the Arabian Sea around Ceylon is thwarted off Dondra Head (the southern tip of Ceylon) by Admiral Cunningham's Force H, a combined task force including elements of the French Navy.
July 20, 1941: In response to the Iranian declaration of war, the French Army of the Levant, under the command of Henri Dentz, is ordered to move into northern Iraq; Colonel John Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion in the Transjordan, is attached to Dentz's command.
July 20, 1941-September 3, 1941: GEACPS launches a counteroffensive, codenamed
Operation Golden Tiger, into Sichuanese-held Yunnan. Siamese Marshal-General Plaek Pibulsonggram is supreme commander of the southern push, and uses heavy armored divisions to cut off the Sichuanese pocket at the
Battle of Yuxi. The Sichuanese Second and Third Armies, trapped in the pocket, are forced to surrender by August 19. Pibulsonggram and his Chinese counterpart, Li Jishen, push into Sichuan proper, going for the throat.
July 22, 1941: President Hull meets with the leaders of the march, telling them that many Southern members of Congress won't allow African-Americans to have their rights, but that he will fight for them, and condemn any violence made against "These people who only wish to have the ability to vote. I will not allow anyone to harm these peaceful protesters."
July 22, 1941: The
Battle of Nasiriyah. Anglo-French armor and cavalry take Nasiriyah from the Iraqi 4th Infantry Division, which had detrained in the city from Diwaniyah; Iranian troops arrive too late to affect the outcome of the battle, and move north to Diwaniyah.
July 24, 1941: The
Battle of Rutbah. John Glubb's Arab Legion's advance into Iraq, supported by camelry elements of the Transjordan Frontier Force, comes to a temporary halt at Rutbah, where his 2000 troops are forced to uproot 700 irregulars and police entrenched in the city and led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. After five hours, Glubb's forces, backed by six Breguet 693s operating with the Army of the Levant, take control of Rutbah.
July 24, 1942: Orson Welles, a young filmmaker and actor, releases his first movie with Paramount: the war epic
Brothers. Set during the Balkan War in Slovenia, the film follows three points of view and three groups of characters: firstly, a group of Yugoslav soldiers forced into hiding while the Italian army ravages Slovenia: secondly, the various members of the People's Sword and their Blackshirt opponents: thirdly and finally, Kurt Schuschnigg and his close-knit group of advisors as they fight a running battle across Austria. Starring Bela Lugosi as Max Fezryscki (a Yugoslav sergeant), Anthony Wayne as Josip Broz Tito, and Welles himself as Kurt Shuschnigg, the film is an instant success, with Welles and being lauded for both intelligent use of camera and excellent acting ability.
August 1, 1942: The American Interplanetary Society holds their first (and unfortunately, only) airship-launched rocket test over Los Angeles. As predicted by several members of the American Rocketry Society, including Qian Xuesen and Frank Malina, the airship explodes spectacularly the moment the rocket is launched, killing six people and costing almost 500,000$ in damages. One of this six is Laurence Manning, who had been funneling information to VfR for weeks. This disaster not only kills some of the most talented members of AIS, it also forces the Society and Pan Am to start from scratch.
August 1, 1942: Author Graham Greene and playwright George Burnett finish a screenplay for a story set in Saigon,
Everybody Comes to Rick's, about Rick, a cynical American barkeeper in Saigon, a beautiful White Russian refugee (and old flame of Rick's), her French husband, a leader of an anti-Japanese resistance movement, and the local Vietnamese constable, a man of cheerfully flexible loyalties.
11 August 1942: HMCS
Unforseen (ex-HMS
Umpire, Lt. Mervin
Wasaczi RCN) is directed by Bletchley Park to intercept
Mogami, returning to Japan after being mined departing Truk. Wasaczi makes contact 30nm off the Kii Suido as
Mogami goes by at 16 kt, & fires all six bow tubes at 9200yd. He gets two lucky hits on
Mogami, & has one intercepted by escort DD
Asakaze.
Mogami sinks in under 45min. It earns Wingfield a DSC & is the biggest ship sunk by RCN submarine in the war.
August 19, 1942: The Damnyankees begin a tour across the Midwest and the West, stopping notably in Tulsa, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and Seattle. Their popularity and that of Dixie and Midwestern music overall soars massively as they do so.
August 21, 1942: Just 20 days after AIS's disaster in Los Angeles, the VfR contracts Hans von Ohain and Kurt Tank to build a powerful jet engine for their balloon/spaceplane/rocket combination.
August 30, 1942:
Second Battle of the Huon Gulf. A new GEACPS task force, centered around the recently refit battlecruiser
HIJMS Kongo, makes a second attempt at clearing the Huon Gulf and retaking Lae from the Entente force assembled there. A confused night action develops. Though Vice-Admiral Crace is forced to temporarily retreat by daybreak, sufficient losses were inflicted on the GEACPS task force to prevent a landing.
August 31, 1942: HIJMS
Kongo is torpedoed by the French submarine
Surcouf.
Kongo survives, and her escorts mercilessly depth-charge the area, successfully killing the French cruiser submarine, but
Kongo will be forced to undergo repairs at Truk for at least a month, maybe longer.
September 1942: Quality's
Green Flash #1 debuts.
September 3, 1942: The first bombing raids on Australia, conducted by Japanese G3M3s out of Moresby, hit targets around Townsville and Cairns.
September 3, 1942: Admiral Somerville takes command of the
Entente fleet in the Southwest Pacific from Vice-Admiral Crace, bringing with him the newly-commissioned fleet carrier HMS
Majestic and her accompanying escorts.
September 15, 1942: A fleet centered around the Japanese carriers
Akagi,
Amagi,
Hiryu and
Soryu arrives in Truk; its commander, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, has been ordered to destroy Entente naval forces in the Huon Gulf, retake Lae, and seize Rabaul.
17 September 1942: a Gloster Thunderbolt first flies under turboprop power, with a pair of Denes.
September 28, 1942:
Battle of the Bismarck Sea. The largest carrier-on-carrier battle of the Pacific War, pitting four Japanese fleet carriers against one French fleet carrier, an Australian light carrier, three British fleet carriers and three British light carriers, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea was a success for Admiral Nagumo and the Imperial Japanese Navy. British and French strikes were uncoordinated, and dive and torpedo bombers arrived separately.
The French Breguets and their escort arrived first; the French fighters tangled with and lost to the Japanese CAP, but four Breguets pushed through and torpedoed
Soryu. The British Rocs arrived next, right as the Japanese were launching their strike, and were slaughtered. The LN-401s and Australian Rocs came next, their escort tangling with the CAP; the
Hiryu and the battlecruiser
Haruna took the brunt of attacks by the dive bombers, who in turn suffered severe losses to Japanese AA. The Albacores and Swordfish arrived last, failing to find the Japanese carriers, though they managed to put a torpedo into the stricken
Haruna, sinking her, and to torpedo
Nachi, a large cruiser detached to cover the battlecruiser.
The Japanese, by contrast, launched a single, massed strike, with D3A dive bombers and B5N torpedo bombers escorted by A6M and A5M4 fighters. The strike was well-coordinated, with the dive bombers and torpedo bombers arriving around the same time; this split the Entente fleet's CAP, allowing the escort to make short work of it.
The sole French fleet carrier,
MN Joffre, was sunk, along with two French cruisers (
Suffren and
Jean de Vienne - damaged badly by torpedoes and scuttled) and HMAS
Vengeance, while the British fleet carriers
HMS Hermes and HMS
Majestic took severe damage, the light carrier HMS
Howe was struck by a bomb (severely hampering, but not completely preventing, flight deck operations), and the destroyers HMS
Electra and HMS
Express were sunk; on the other side of the ledger, the
Hiryu lost the use of her flight deck, the
Soryu was damaged badly, the battlecruiser
Haruna was sunk, and the large cruiser
Nachi was sunk by torpedoes from Fleet Air Arm Albacores.
September 29, 1942: Admirals Nagumo and Somerville began to take stock of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Nagumo detached
Hiryu's task force to escort the limping
Soryu; the survivors of
Hiryu's own airgroup had landed on
Akagi and
Amagi. His aviators reported sinking all Entente carriers, which, while not completely accurate, was not far from the truth - the British had just HMS
Furious and HMS
Ark Royal capable of launching and recovering aircraft, and most of their airgroups had been hurt badly, to the point that the
Akagi alone currently had a larger airgroup (80, including 12 A6Ms, 6 D3As and 6 B5Ns from
Hiryu) than the remaining British ships. Admiral Somerville, transferring his flag to HMS
Ark Royal, didn't know the full details, but realized that the Japanese fleet was stronger than his own. Somerville ordered a retreat to Rabaul and recommended that Operation Goodwind (the planned invasion of Buna-Gona) be canceled.
October 1, 1942: Nagumo's fleet arrived in the Huon Gulf. A desultory strike by British Blenheims out of Rabaul was swatted down, and the
Akagi and
Amagi launched air strikes to destroy the French and RAAF aircraft based out of Lae. Landings near Lae began on October 2.
October 1, 1942: The
Battle of Uran. Three regiments of Royal Marines storm the fishing village of Uran, just south of besieged Bombay, the first move in Operation Grand Slam, General Edmund Ironside's fall offensive. Supported by naval gunfire and carrier aircraft, the Marines defeat the local garrison, a regiment of locally-raised militia supported by a Chinese infantry regiment.
October 2, 1942: With GEACPS supply lines damaged by mines and monsoons, and with enemy attention focused on the fighting in the Zagros Mountains, General Edmund Ironside's planned fall offensive,
Operation Grand Slam, opens up in earnest. An army of over half a million British, French, Canadian and colonial troops, with 400 tanks and 2,000 artillery pieces in support, attacks a relatively thin section of the Chinese lines southeast of Bombay. Initial gains are modest, but by midday, the 7th Armoured Division breaks a hole in the Chinese line, which the First Canadian Infantry Division moves to exploit. Though Chinese general Bai Chongxi shifts a corps to deal with the breach in the lines, it's not enough, and by nightfall, he has ordered a retreat.
October 4, 1942: With Somerville unable (or unwilling) to contest Japanese control of the Huon Gulf, Australian and French troops are forced to surrender the port of Lae.
October 4, 1942: Copying the Damnyankees, the Arctic Wonders begin a trans-national tour. The tour is a reasonable success, though not as good as the Damnyankees' tour. They begin considering a tour of GEACPS, owing to their popularity in East Asia.
October 5, 1942: A wildcat strike begins at the Hawker factory in Kingston, London. The strikers object to management's orders for mandatory overtime, implemented due to increased quotas from the RAF.
October 6, 1942: Sympathy strikes begin in various factories in London, and by the end of the week, the strikes have morphed into full-fledged anti-war protests.
October 6, 1942: The
First Battle of Poona begins. Chinese troops, reinforced by the Tibetan Eastern Army, hold off the Entente breakout from Bombay at Poona, to the southeast, though Ironside continues to batter Chinese positions in the city until early morning on October 8. Poona is devastated in the fighting; so are the Tibetan Eastern Army and the French 4th Army Corps.
October 8, 1942: The West India Regiment, recently landed in Bombay, moves to garrison Panvel, 45km south of Bombay, seized by the French 32nd Infantry Division on October 4 during the breakout.
October 9, 1942: The
Battle of Murud-Janjira. After being checked at Poona, Ironside moves the Second French Army, including the attached Canadian Corps, to the southwest, hoping to extend the breakout along the coast even if he can't push further inland. On October 9, the Canadian Corps storms the fort of Murud-Janjira south of Bombay, incurring only modest losses.
October 10, 1942: The
Battle of Ratnagiri begins. The Marine regiments that stormed Uran on October 1 attack the port of Ratnagiri, but soon find themselves besieged by the Japanese Imperial Guards Division. The 1st East African Brigade is landed on the 11th, but British troops are in danger of being overwhelmed.
October 12, 1942: The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) is ordered by the Australian government to develop an emergency fighter - an airplane that can be built quickly and cheaply, and that can be used against Japanese bomber raids.
October 14, 1942: The
Battle of Ratnagiri ends with the arrival of the lead elements of General Charles Huntziger's Second French Army outside the city, overcoming difficult terrain and a lack of roads to break through to the besieged Marines and East Africans.
October 15, 1942: Ironside orders the 2nd French Army to begin an overland offensive west, with the intent of ultimately cutting GEACPS supply lines to Poona. Meanwhile, the 3rd Nigerian Brigade and 22nd East African Brigade, initially directed to reinforce the garrison of Bombay, are redirected to Ratnagiri, where they will be joined with the 1st East African Brigade to form the nucleus of the 1st African Division.
October 21, 1942: Nagumo's fleet, in a lightning strike on Rabaul, seizes the port and destroys Somerville's fleet in harbor. Somerville himself manages to escape in a fast cruiser. Northern Papua now belongs to the GEACPS.
October 23, 1942: The 2nd French Army arrives in Kolhapur. The regency council ruling for Maharajah Shivaji V Bhonsle of Kolhapur, who had sided with the GEACPS, is arrested. Huntziger and the 2nd French Army turn north towards Solapur, a key railway junction in central India.
October 25, 1942: Commonwealth troops begin fortifying the small island of Daru in western Papua New Guinea in a desperate bid to halt the GEACPS from invading Australia.
November 16, 1942: The Royal Australian Air Force launches a massive raid on Port Moresby, led by Corporal Roberts Christian Dunstan. While Nagumo's fleet, preparing to assault Daru, is completely caught by surprise and is heavily damaged, several Australian planes are still shot down. Unfortunately for the Japanese, however, the carrier
Hiryu is sunk by Dunstan's planes, and
Soryu is heavily damaged. It will be many months before the GEACPS task force will be ready to attack Daru.
December 4, 1942: The
Battle of Kiunga occurs when GEACPS forces commanded by Tomoyoku Yamashita invade the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, which is still under Entente control. Australian forces under Sir Thomas Blamey, however, manage to resist the GEACPS invasion and contain the attack to a small area around the village of Kiunga.
December 7, 1942: The
Battle of Kiunga ends when Australian forces, after first having heavily bombed and mortared the village, swarm over the surviving GEACPS forces, recapturing the last of Western Province.
December 11, 1942: With Broadway showing no interest, Greene and Burnett sell film rights for their screenplay
Everybody Comes to Rick's to Warner Brothers for $10,000.
December 14, 1942: Hal Wallis is named producer of the film adaptation of
Everybody Comes to Rick's, which is renamed
Miss Saigon.
1943:
January 9, 1943: The Japanese Interplanetary Society launches their ten-rocket spaceplane: however, at around 59 miles up, the rockets begin failing and the pilot, Hideo Shima himself, is forced to bail out to keep from getting killed. The JIS begins working on more powerful rockets. This is the most successful attempt to get to space yet.
March 1943: Liberty makes his final appearance, in
Fantastic Adventures #43. The book is cancelled two issues later.
March 11, 1943: The Gloster Thunderbolt F.1, the first turboprop fighter to enter service, has its combat debut over Indian skies.
13 March 1943:
Cocytus is launched.
April 22, 1943: Nagumo's task force, finally rebuilt and based now around the last carrier,
Soryu, launches an attack, not on Daru, but on Cairns in Queensland, Australia. Though the Australians are surprised, they staunchly defend, slowing down Nagumo's attack.
April 25, 1943: The USSR, alarmed by GEACPS reach in Southeast Asia, threatens to invade China, Xinjiang, Turkmenistan, and Tibet if the GEACPS does not immediately sign a peace treaty with the Entente. At the same time, the USSR pressures Leo Amery to make peace, threatening to cut off the flow of Soviet weapons (which has been the largest supplier of weapons to the Entente since the strikes in late '42).
May 1, 1943: Diplomats from the Entente, the GEACPS, the USSR (as a mediator), the Netherlands (as an observer), and the various Indian states meet in neutral Sevastapol to discuss the end of the war.
May 9, 1943: The Treaty of Sevastapol is signed by the Entente, GEACPS, and the various Indian states (including Afghanistan), ending the Pacific War. The treaty allows Siam to keep everything they have gained in southeast Asia, sans Singapore, which becomes a "free city" under the joint administration of the British and Siamese, and sans Papua New Guinea, which will be officially relinquished by the British and given to the Australians as an external territory. However, the Indian states which have arisen as a result of the Pacific War (Bengal, The Punjab, Communist India, Hyderabad, the Seven States) are banned from aligning with or supporting either the GEACPS or the Entente for at least fifteen years: further, any hostile actions taken by any of these states towards either a GEACPS state or an Entente state will force all of the other states, and both the GEACPS and the Entente to declare war on said state: vice versa, as well. The Andaman Islands are returned to the British, while Tamil Nadu, Ceylon, Rajaputana, and southern Bombay province remain in British hands. Bhutan and Nepal become Tibetan puppet states, while Afghanistan is allowed to keep the territories it seized during the war. Though this war has been a resounding GEACPS victory, the Sphere is now deeper in debt than ever before, and new tensions have arisen between China and Japan over which one is truly the dominant state in the GEACPS. Siam, meanwhile, is forced to keep its armed forces spread thin over its new, massive border, and must quell tensions between the various ethnicities and religions in Indochina. On the Entente side, France has been effectively finished as a great power, with all of their Asian provinces lost and hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen dead in Indochina. With revolts rising in French West Africa and Syria, it is all the French can do to hang on. Britain, meanwhile, has been forced deep down into the grips of another depression by the war and, to boot, is now heavily indebted to both the USSR and the Balkan Pact for providing Entente forces with weapons. Further, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, now untrusting of the motherland that pushed them into this war, are seeking new alliances and moving away from the old Commonwealth.
May 12, 1943: Leo Amery calls snap elections in Britain in response to pressure from strikers, Labour, and the Liberal Conservatives.
June 1, 1943: As predicted, the Labour party is swept into power with 300 seats, with Arthur Greenwood becoming Prime Minister. Austen Chamberlain's Liberal Conservatives make a fine showing as well, now taking up 273 seats in Parliament. The Conservatives are, shockingly, reduced to 70 seats.
June 20-22, 1943: Detroit Riots: race riots erupt on Belle Isle, Detroit, Michigan, over the lack of opportunities for African-Americans.
16 July 1943:
Cocytus is commissioned, L/Cdr Edmund Gigg in command. She is too late for Pacific War service.
July 26, 1943: Using Rolls-Royce's J.3 jet engine, the first British spaceplane launches from British Ceylon: however, it does not reach even 50 miles up before it begins overheating.
August 1-3, 1943: Harlem Riots: race riots erupt in Harlem, New York after a 21-year old African-American is shot by a police officer, sparking tensions throughout the Northeast.
September 12, 1943: Leni Riefenstahl's
The Mountain War (released in Germany and Austria as
Götterdämmerung im Süden) is released across Europe, backed by UFA. The film is based off of Erwin Rommel's book of the same name, recounting his adventures on the Great War's Italian front. The film, starring the famed German actor Ernst Busch as Rommel and Riefenstahl as Rommel's wife, is a fantastic success throughout Europe, though less so in France. Strangely for a movie from Europe proper,
The Mountain War becomes quite popular in the Soviet Union.
October 1, 1943: Mock-ups of the M.50 supersonic plane undergo wind-tunnel tests for the first time.
October 15, 1943: Hughes Aviation finishes the construction of Monrovia Aerodrome in Liberia, marking the first aerodrome in Africa and the connection of Liberia to the rest of the American Commonwealth by air.
1944:
January 24, 1944:
Miss Saigon, a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the old French colonial city of Saigon, under Japanese occupation, starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa, is released to theaters.
May 16, 1944: After eight years of work, NOSEP finally finishes the Mt. Fuji Space Catapult, including a large power station at the bottom of the mountain to apply power to the massive space catapult. Motoharu Okamura is selected as the first test pilot of the rocket-powered spaceplane to be fired from the Catapult.
May 19, 1944: The first test of the Mt. Fuji Space Catapult begins. At 9:00 AM, Motoharu Okamura buckles into the spaceplane, surrounding by cheering crowds. The test goes smoothly at first: the spaceplane is fired successfully from the catapult and the spaceplane's rocket fires successfully at 43 miles up. However, just five minutes later, the engine, amazingly, bursts into flame and Okamura is forced to bail at 63 miles up (technically sub-orbital spaceflight). Though he rapidly loses consciousness, he makes it to the ground safely, while the spaceplane crashes in the ocean near Sakhalin and is recovered by the Japanese Imperial Navy. While the spaceplane did fail, NOSEP has proved the viability of space catapults and has become the first space pioneer to reach outer space. Okamura is the first man to reach space. NOSEP begins working on discovering what caused the engine to burst into flame.
June 9, 1944: A BFW M.50 piloted by Kurt Tank himself achieves supersonic flight.
July 13, 1944: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band disbands after releasing their second LP,
Biloxi Blues. Nick LaRocco cites "artistic differences".
July 21-August 5, 1944: The Games of the XIII Olympiad, aka the Jubilee Olympics, are held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Japan is reallowed to compete in the Games. These games also mark the return of Spain to the Games. The US, Germany, and Japan carry home the most gold.
August 17, 1944: The clearance and reconstruction of the Free Territory of Trieste finishes in record time. The Free Territory has essentially been converted from hinterland servicing a small port to a gigantic modern megacity encompassing a full 90% of the Free Territory's land area. The new, hugely tall city is a steel-and-glass Constructivist marvel, built by the Soviet architect Moisei Ginsberg. The clear centerpiece of the city is the massive Triesten People's Palace, based off the Vesnin brothers'
first concept drawing for the People's Comissariat for Heavy Industry in Moscow.
September 10, 1944: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) establishes its Youth League in Atlanta, Georgia.
September 19, 1944: Nick LaRocco, Bismarck Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, J.B. Fuselier (another Cajun musician, a fiddler), and Eddie Lang team up to create an LP called
New Dixie Fusion. The duet-solos of Venuti and Fuselier as well as Beiderbecke's hot jazz trumpet and LaRocco's unique, folksy resonater guitar riffs combined with Lang's smooth jazz skills creates a sound quite unlike any heard before.
New Dixie Fusion becomes quite popular throughout the American Commonwealth and the West Indies as well.
October 3, 1944: Eddie Lang disbands the Melody Boys and creates a new band with Beiderbecke, Venuti, LaRocco, and Fuselier. The name? The Damnyankees.
October 30, 1944: While wrapping up the filming of his first feature film,
From The Earth To The Moon (an adaptation of H.G. Wells' book on the subject), Elia Kazan slips on a loose piece of scenery and hits his head on the concrete floor. He is dead instantly.
November 9, 1944: From The Earth To The Moon, Elia Kazan's first and only film, is released only ten days after his death. It is widely regarded as one of the era's iconic films--Kazan's untimely death will become a favorite subject among alternate history buffs.
November 13, 1944: Kurt Schuschnigg, ex-Chancellor of Austria, now in exile in Poland, publishes his memoirs,
My Austria. The book, condemning the Balkan Pact for their so-called "war crimes" in Austria and extolling the virtues of prewar Austrofascism, becomes a controversial bestseller, published in thirteen languages. Schuschnigg becomes a minor celebrity throughout the corporatist nations.
1945:
February 10, 1945: J. Russell Robinson (formerly of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band), Mayeus LaFleur, Joe Falcon, and Falcon's wife Cleoma Breux form the Dixie Devils, a combination cajun/jazz band. Though their sound is far more folksy and guitar-oriented than the Damnyankees, the two will soon become lumped together in the rising genre of New Dixie Fusion.
March 4, 1945: Walt Disney Productions releases
Hansel and Gretel, their latest animated feature film, to rave reviews. The film, an adaptation of the classic fairy tale about a brother and sister lost in the woods who come across a house made of candy and its owner, a witch who tries to fatten them up and eat them, will become the highest-grossing movie of 1945.
15 March 1945: Elia Kazan wins a posthumous Oscar for "From the Earth to the Moon", beating Billy Wilder for "Double Indemnity" & Alfred Hitchcock for "Lifeboat". It is the first, and to date only, posthumous Oscar. Star Fred MacMurray narrowly beats Bing Crosby for Best Actor.
June 22, 1945: Sadao Yamanaka, Japanese filmmaker and science hobbyist, releases
From the Earth to the Heavens, a sci-fi/documentary with the first part chronicling the space race up to the present day, while the second part continues on with a fictional story of the end of the space race. According to Yamanaka, NOSEP will again reach space in 1948. The film popularizes outer space and aeronautics throughout East Asia.
June 25, 1945: Tibetan Prime Minister and former general Shamar Bayarmaa founds the Tibetan Interplanetary Society (TIS) in Tsheg Bar. In collaboration with NOSEP, they begin work on a Himalayan Space Catapult.
July 1945: In
Green Flash #18, he faces Konfetti King, a villian (created by Jack Cole) with an air-powered gun able to fire clouds of yellow confetti, exploiting GF's two major weaknesses, wood & the color yellow, at the same time.
July 3, 1945: Percy Ludgate approaches his backer, Chikuhei Nakajima, with a design for an Analytical Engine to fit in the NOSEP spaceplane, to measure air pressure, outside air density, engine heat, and to apply cooling sprays of water onto the rocket engine at intervals. Nakajima authorizes the research and Ludgate begins working on the project.[/QUOTE]
1946:
January 7, 1946: During a snap election called in Spain, the National Front, an umbrella right-wing party, is swept into power, gaining a massive majority. Jose Antonio Primo de Riviera becomes prime minister.
January 8, 1946:
Hansel und Gretel, a dubbed version of the Disney film, is released in German theaters, distributed by UFA.
July 4, 1946: Prime Minister de Riviera bans unionization in Spain, causing massive riots and protests.
July 4, 1946: The American Rocketry Society, in commemoration of Independence Day, launches their new rocket, with a primitive spaceplane attached to it manned by Qian Xuesen himself. Surprising everyone, the rocket reaches space, and Qian will spend approximately three hours out of the atmosphere before landing in the Pacific Ocean. The Americans have reached space.
29 July 1946: Canadair's
CL.11 Jetliner makes her maiden flight. Powered by four Irwells and seating 40, she is the world's first jet airliner, beating de Havilland's DH.106 by just three days. (Canadair coins the term "jetliner" for her; it enters the lexicon for all similar types.) By 1955, the CL.11 is the most common jet transport in the world, though the later GS.70 (Pan Am's
Pacific Clipper) dominates transcontinental and transoceanic travel.
August 11, 1946: VfR, scrambling to replicate the American feat, launches their own spaceplane, two weeks before schedule. While the spaceplane (designed by Hans von Ohain and Kurt Tank) does have a few minor malfunctions, the pilot, Luftwaffe pilot Hans-Joachim Marseille, reaches outer space and remains there for approximately five hours before returning to Chile. The launch is a major propaganda coup for the Germans, as most other nations did not believe they could do it.
August 21, 1946: Battle of Blair Mountain; Members of the NAACP and the American Communist Party (ACP) announce their solidarity with the miners strike in the region of Blair Mountain, West Virginia, further angering many Southerners.
September 5, 1946: The so-called "September Massacre" occurs in Barcelona: a crowd of anarchist protestors is fired on by state forces with live rounds, killing at least 39 people.
December 25, 1946: A meeting is held in Ceuta between the leaders of the various communist and anarchist parties of Spain to discuss the course of action. At this meeting, the "Christmas Front" is formed, a coalition of the communists and anarchists created to oppose de Riviera, the Falange, and the National Front.
1947:
April 19, 1947: NOSEP launches their first successful spaceplane--equipped with Percy Ludgate's Anayen Computing Machine to control trajectory and fuel usage--from the Mt. Fuji space catapult, piloted by Motaharu Okamura. Motaharu will remain in space for the next two days before landing back in Tokyo.
August 10, 1947: The various leaders of the Balkan Pact meet in Belgrade to discuss a possible union of the six states under one federal state. Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey are all opposed, while Austria, Yugoslavia, Trieste, and Greece are the main proponents of the plan.
September 22, 1947: A Soviet rocket is launched successfully from the Kazakh SSR. While it doesn't near space, it is a landmark in Soviet rocketry.
1948:
May 3, 1948: The British Interplanetary Society launches a successful spaceplane from British Ceylon.
June 16, 1948: Only a month and a half after the British enter space, the Japanese Interplanetary Society enters space as well: the first intranational competition between corporations for space prestige has begun.
June 17, 1948: A protest in Catalonia suddenly erupts into a full-fledged, spontaneous revolution after police fire on a teenaged group of protestors. Encouraged by the anarcho-syndicalist Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo-Federacion Anarquista Iberica (CNT-FAI), workers throughout Barcelona seize control of various governmental and police buildings, as well as capturing weapons and executing police officers and government officials "in the name of the people". By that night, Barcelona is in the hands of CNT-FAI and the workers.
June 20, 1948: Inspried by the spontaneous revolt in Catalonia, a nationalist, separatist revolution erupts in the Basque country, largely led by Jose Antonio Aguirre y Lecube, a Basque nationalist politician and former soldier. Though the nationalists manage to seize control of much of the countryside, as well as the port city of Bilbao, the major Basque city of Pamplona remains in government hands.
June 21, 1948: The Union General de Trabajadores calls a massive strike throughout Spain in solidarity with the Basques and CNT-FAI, along with Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxquista (POUM) and Partido Communista Espana (PCE). The nation's industry collapses.
June 23, 1948: Jose Antonio de Riviera attempts to handle the rapidly worsening situation in Spain by ordering live rounds fired on striking workers: however, the soldiers ordered to do so refuse, and join the strikers in defying the government.
June 27, 1948: Riots break out in French Morocco in solidarity with the Spanish revolutionaries: the French colonial army has difficulty putting them down.
July 1, 1948: Realizing that he can no longer remain in Madrid, where most of the army has defected, de Riviera and 4,000 of his Falangist followers flee mainland Spain from Cordoba and travel to the Canary Islands and the Spanish Sahara, where Falangist general Francisco Franco retains control.
July 3, 1948: Though he has been effectively ousted from Spain, de Riviera declares that his is the only legitimate government of Spain--however, under pressure from his corporatist allies, who favor a quick, diplomatic settlement to the affair to spare the corporatists further embarrasement, he agrees to negotiate with CNT-FAI, which has declared itself the legitimate representative of the people of Spain.
July 3, 1948: The first Japanese rail-fired rocket, equipped with the Ludgate engine, reaches orbit. It is a propaganda victory for both Kawasaki and the Japanese Empire.
July 8, 1948: Buenaventura Durruti, CNT-FAI's representative, and de Riviera agree to the separation of Spain into two separate states: Cape Juby, the Canary Islands, Western Sahara, and Ifni into the
Nationalist Republic of Spanish Africa, under de Riviera, and the
Third Spanish Republic, under CNT-FAI and POUM's joint leadership, occupying the Spanish mainland, the Balearic Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla. The short Spanish Revolution has ended.
July 10, 1948: The various revolutionary parties in Spain meet in Madrid to decide on a new form of government.
July 29-August 14, 1948: The Games of the XIV Olympiad are held in Philadelphia, USA. The US, France, and Hungary carry home the most gold.
August 1, 1948: After almost a month of deliberation, CNT-FAI, POUM, and the separatist parties finally agree on an arrangemen of Spain. The government is based off the USSR's, with a Central Executive Committee acting as the highest state body. The CEC elects a Presidium to wield power between its plenary sessions (twice a year), as well as newly-formed Advisory Council of Ministers. The new republic is divided into several sub-republics based on region and ethnicity with high degrees of autonomy. However, unlike the USSR, the Spanish Republic lacks the unipartite dominance that the CP holds, and instead is based on a free, democratic system, provided that each party is approved by the CEC. Further, the Basque country is given its freedom as the Basque Republic, under Jose Aguirre.
August 9, 1948: Buenaventura Durruti is inaugurated as the first Chairman of the Presidium of the Third Spanish Republic in a large ceremony in Madrid.
1949:
August 13, 1949: The American states of Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado begin the
Five-State Inititive. This is an attempt to rectify the Dust Bowl catastrophe in each of the five states by planting trees and replanting the old prairie grass that held the soil down. As such, the Dust bowl will slowly revert to its original state.
December 26, 1949: The Tibetans, aided by the Japanese, reach space, the second GEACPS nation to do so.
1950:
January 1950: Packard introduces the
Panther. It replaces the Pomona, and its fiberglass monocoque startles the industry. So does the 270hp 400ci V12.
1951:
10-21 January 1951: New York Auto Salon. In answer to the Packard Pomona, Olds debuts the
Starfire, with a supercharged version of the '49 OHV 303ci V8; it shares a chassis with the
LeSabre, which is powered by Buick's new 264ci "nailhead" V8. Lincoln re-introduces the
Zephyr nameplate, with the 292ci V12.
22 March 1951: Nash is approached with an offer of a friendly takeover of Studebaker.
July 1951: In
Green Flash #75, Konfetti King returns. He is revealled to be running a
secret training facility for supervillains in an
abandoned paper factory where he
used to work.
6 July 1951: Nash realizes Studebaker management has lied about the state of Studebaker's finances and cancels the merger deal.
19 July 1951: Studebaker declares bankruptcy.
September 25, 1951: The Soviets, after many, many failed tests, finally reach space: they are the last competitor in the space race to do so.
1956:
17 February 1956: James Dean stars in
"Kid Champion", an uninspired boxing movie.
10 September 1956: James Dean stars in "Walk the Proud Land", the true story of Indian Agent
John P. Clum. Costarring Jay Silverheels (better known from "The Lone Ranger"), it is one of the first films to treat Indians as anything but savages, and earns Dean an Academy Award nomination.
