A B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bomber of the US 4th Strategic Bomber Squadron drops its payload on a Pacifican strongpoint in the Colorado Rockies, 1937. Following Douglas MacArthur’s coup, the Pacific States of America had broken away from the US, seeking to preserve democracy, and the state of Utah had fairly quickly sided with the Sacramento government. Pacifican guerrillas had fairly quickly advanced over the border from Utah into Colorado, and MacArthur, who had largely been forced to cede the western US without much of a fight due to the substantially more threatening Union State and Syndicalist forces, decided to draw a line in the sand. His troops were ordered to dig in and heavily fortify Denver. Much of the United States Army Air Corps had already melted away or defected to one of the other warring factions with their aircraft, but MacArthur still had enough, including a few dozen B-17 heavy bombers, to give his troops a degree of air support. The B-17s were ordered to conduct strikes against logistical supply lines running through the Rockies in order to slow the Pacifican advance towards Denver and buy time for MacArthur’s troops to fortify the city. The aircraft continued to operate against Pacifican forces from the brand new Lowry Air Force Base until Pacifican troops overran the airstrip in April of 1938, capturing fourteen of the Squadron‘s thirty one remaining B-17s intact. The fall of Lowry Air Force Base spelled the beginning of the end for the MacArthurite forces in the West, and the city of Denver itself would be captured in early June 1938. AUS forces would eventually drive the Pacificans out of Colorado late in the war, but their troops had expended the last of their strength in pushing the PSA’s soldiers into Arizona, Utah and Idaho, and a ceasefire agreement saw the Pacificans retain the states of California(which was divided into two separate stages during post war administration), Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Alaska(in return for formally joining the Entente) and a small chunk of Montana, as well. The borders in western North America would remain the same until the Kansas City Agreement and the eventual reunification of the United States.
A column of German “Kriegsengel”(War Angel) main battle tanks advance down a road in Alsace Lorraine, April 1944. The Kriegsengel was the culmination of years of German tank development. German troops had greatly struggled to counter the sloped armor of the Russian T-43, which had contributed importantly to their defeat on the Eastern Front; rounds from German anti tank guns tended to ricochet right off the Russian vehicle from the front. The 76mm gun of the T-43, meanwhile, possessed little difficulty handling the Donnerschlag and even the Donnerschlag-IV tanks which composed the bulk of the German armored forces, which likewise were at a serious disadvantage in head to head combat with the Russian tanks. The Tiger, with its 88mm cannon, was an exception to this rule, but Tigers were desperately needed on the Western Front to hold off the French and British forces grinding their way through the Rhineland and relatively few had been seen on the Eastern Front by the time the Riga Armistice was signed, ceding Georgia, Karelia, Ukraine and White Ruthenia to the Russians. Germany had learned from its mistakes, however, and incorporated the sloped armor in its own newest tank design, which first entered combat in late 1943, proving a nasty shock for Third Internationale forces. Far superior to any existing British or French tanks the Kriegsengel combined the sloped armor of the T-43 with a high velocity 75mm gun(along with machine gun) capable of knocking out the French Souma S-35 and British Medium Mark VIII tanks at long range. It carried a crew of five, and was fairly universally described as the best German tank of the war(the Tiger coming in a close second). The Kriegsengel was so successful, in fact, that although its official designation was the “Panzer Mark V”, German infantrymen and tankers soon began referring to it as the “War Angel“. The Kriegsengel would continue to remain in active service with units in the German Army until 1960, when the last of them were phased out in favor of newer models, but they would continue to serve with various other Reichspakt nations as late as the mid 1970s. The last active duty Kriegsengels anywhere in the world were phased out of service by the Republic of Korea in the early 1980s.
A Canadian instructor shows a group of New England Army conscripts how to operate a Browning M1917 machine gun. When Canadian troops entered New England to provide support to the fledgling new state they found its military in disarray. The New Englander Army was composed of the various national guards of the member states, many of whom lacked any sort of support weapons like heavy machine guns or mortars. One Canadian major from the 16th “Toronto Scottish” Infantry Division who had served in the First Weltkrieg described it as “feeling like falling through a time portal back to 1914”. The Canadian government, realizing that the forces of the Boston government were ill prepared to do much more than crowd control, began to supply the New England Army with increasing numbers of heavy equipment such as tanks and aircraft, as well as having advisors begin the process of training up the newly recruited conscripts in order to ensure that they would actually be capable of defending New England’s borders. The bulk of New England’s army would remain at home in order to act as a deterrent to Syndicalist forces until the defeat of the Combined Syndicates of America and therefore would not participate in the Entente‘s Indian and European campaigns. However, the exception to this rule were the elite troops of the New England Army. The troops of “Rogers’ Rangers”, New England‘s elite paratrooper forces, would serve during the Indian Reunification Wars with distinction, and along with New England‘s Marine Commandos would take part in Entente operations in southern France.