By the way, what's the status of the British Empire? I remember reading about them leaving India and troubles in Africa, but what about their South East Asian possessions? Are they still the largest naval power in the world? Who's the PM?
Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
The general impression from the piece as a whole seems to be they're not the superpower they once were, but they're still a major power and capable of power projection.
ferdi254
Banned
27 years from tank commander (or company commander the sentence can be read both ways) to Major is not the most stellar career I dare say.
And afair Louis has done nothing that comes under an even very loose definition of playing with someone. But that might be an American thinking. In Germany three dinners together are not defining or automatically starting a romantic relationship.
And afair Louis has done nothing that comes under an even very loose definition of playing with someone. But that might be an American thinking. In Germany three dinners together are not defining or automatically starting a romantic relationship.
Or he was someone who didn't pursue a career in the post-war Russian military.
Seriously, Kiki and Ben's wedding had better have some explosions between Louis and Zella.
I came across this story when it was at around 1930 or so, and went through the same experience as you.
King Michael is DOOMED!!! DOOMED, I say! DOOMED!!!
I'd say within 12 months of Birdie completing her studies, if not sooner, Michael is suddenly going to find himself changing his first born's nappy, while Birdie & the nanny are arranging everything for a picnic somewhere. His aides & cronies, along with the entire kingdom, sniggering amongst themselves as they settle the side bets on how long it took Birdie to domesticate him.
In one way, this could be good. It could be the catalyst for Zella & Louis Jr. to finally sort out just what their relationship is and whether or not it has a future. On the other hand, this is also a case of Kiki projecting. I mean, even her own father accused her of toying with Ben's affections, one he realised that it wasn't Ben doing the toying, that is.
I'd say there is no true super power ITTL, but there are a few Great Powers that are roughly equal. The respective commonwealths/empires of Britain, France, Germany & Russia and the United States. China is broken (again) and India will be on the path towards becoming one
27 years from tank (company) commander to major could also be explained by the major in question being a sergeant at the time. Add in the typical suspicion & paranoia prevalent in Soviet and post-war Imperial Russia, as well as budget cuts (resulting in career congestion), and you could easily have a very slow path of promotion. Especially if the person in question is unable, or unwilling, to catch the eye of their superiors.
There is a reason that a popular British toast in the officers' mess back in the day was: "To a bloody war, or deadly pestilence"
(I think that's it anyway)
You know, if Zella threw that back in Kiki's face it would be something...
Part 117, Chapter 1959
Chapter One Thousand Nine Hundred Fifty-Nine
16th January 1970
Hong Kong
Water slopped over the low-slung aft deck of the HMS Darner, the latest in a long line of River Gunboats in the service of the British Navy. That might have alarmed anyone who wasn’t as familiar with the Darner as the First Lieutenant, Reginald Smythe was. Whenever the boat was at flank speed, as she presently was, the back tended to be awash. He watched with amusement as the crew of the aft four-inch gun started yelling at the Helmsman as their feet were soaked. The Darner’s wide beam and shallow draft made her able to operate on the rivers of China year-round as well as be a stable gun platform. It was the two marine diesel engines that drove the pump-jets that lent the Darner her great maneuverability, though the innovative system couldn’t propel her at more than a moderate pace. However, crew comfort had been a secondary consideration. The layout reflected her relatively slow top speed and expected mission.
Shifting his focus back to the congested waters of Victoria Harbor, Smythe knew that he couldn’t allow his mind to wander. The Captain tended to come up to flying bridge at the worst possible moments and would yell at Smythe if he thought his First Officer was daydreaming. That stood in direct contrast to how the Darner’s Captain spent the vast majority of his time, locked in his cabin, and totally plastered. This left Smythe having to mind the day-to-day operations of the Darner. However, the instant the shooting started the Captain made a point of being seen on the bridge.
The Darner was returning from an eventful patrol up the Yangtze River. Unlike previous patrols, she had been a small part of a larger flotilla that had been dispatched by the China Station. They had shelled the Northern Faction positions in support of the Southern Faction. Personally, Smythe couldn’t care less what the Chinese did to each other. He was happy that their civil war had gotten the Darner out of port for a few weeks because the tedium of Hong Kong in the wintertime had become a great annoyance. Now, if only the Captain would have one too many shots of gin and stagger overboard, sans a gangplank. Here in China the Fleet would have little choice but to leave Smythe in charge as acting commander for the foreseeable future. Glancing back at the ladder, half expecting the angry red face of the Captain to appear.
“Go below and see if the Captain needs anything” Smythe said to the Chief Petty Officer who nodded. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened last time, now would we.”
The Chief nodded and went below. The previous autumn the Captain had been unconscious, either asleep or passed out, when the Darner had returned to port and the crew had been forced to cover for him. The last thing the crew needed was word to get out that the Captain of the HMS Darner was a mean drunk.
Cape Town, South Africa
Nelson Mandela had found the essay that had been written Moses Newton fascinating and had arranged for it to be reprinted in his newspaper months earlier. The point of Newton’s essay had been that he had needed to leave America to be considered an American. It had been a part of a larger series that Mandela had done about what it meant to be Black in world at the end of the 1960’s. The arrival of Newton to South Africa had been a welcome diversion for Nelson. He was increasingly being leaned on to take up a greater position of leadership in the ANC as fissures within that organization were turning into bottomless rifts. According to the Party Leadership, being the Editor-in-Chief of what had gone from a Party newspaper to a National Daily no longer cut it.
The things he had predicted two decades earlier had come to pass with the rise of a middle-class within the townships. Once someone had full stomach and a house that wasn’t made of tin and pasteboard, or God forbid, a car, the expectations changed. This was a problem because the attempt of that South African branch of the ANC to shed revolutionary politics had not been as successful or as complete as it had needed to be. It was hard to argue liberation with someone who was more bent out of shape about the textbooks in their children’s school being rubbish, or the train being a few minutes late. The classic question in politics; What have you done for me lately? Pie in the sky talk about revolution in the future wasn’t the right answer.
The entire time they were looking over their shoulders at the nightmare that was unfolding in Southern Rhodesia as the path that South Africa had almost gone down was playing itself out. Ironfisted White minority rule and increased militancy among the majority Blacks had resulted in increasing rounds of bloody atrocity. What they were watching wasn’t the glorious revolution of liberation that had been promised. That much was certain. Nelson had found himself among those concerned that the violence would eventually spill across the borders.
Today, all of that seemed extremely far away as he entered the radio booth. In a curious twist, Nelson had tried to get an interview with Moses Newton only to find himself being the one who was being interviewed. One of the wonders of modern technology was that Newton could do his radio show from any point on the globe and be rebroadcast in nearly real time. Many would have found it strange that had resulted in a true global Pan-African movement with music at its center. Nelson had realized that was probably the only sort of glue that could have held such a movement together.
Nelson felt oddly nervous as Newton introduced him to the audience. It was estimated that there were hundreds of millions of listeners spread across four continents. This was possibly the moment when he would have the largest reach at any point in his career and his only thought was that he had better not mess it up.
16th January 1970
Hong Kong
Water slopped over the low-slung aft deck of the HMS Darner, the latest in a long line of River Gunboats in the service of the British Navy. That might have alarmed anyone who wasn’t as familiar with the Darner as the First Lieutenant, Reginald Smythe was. Whenever the boat was at flank speed, as she presently was, the back tended to be awash. He watched with amusement as the crew of the aft four-inch gun started yelling at the Helmsman as their feet were soaked. The Darner’s wide beam and shallow draft made her able to operate on the rivers of China year-round as well as be a stable gun platform. It was the two marine diesel engines that drove the pump-jets that lent the Darner her great maneuverability, though the innovative system couldn’t propel her at more than a moderate pace. However, crew comfort had been a secondary consideration. The layout reflected her relatively slow top speed and expected mission.
Shifting his focus back to the congested waters of Victoria Harbor, Smythe knew that he couldn’t allow his mind to wander. The Captain tended to come up to flying bridge at the worst possible moments and would yell at Smythe if he thought his First Officer was daydreaming. That stood in direct contrast to how the Darner’s Captain spent the vast majority of his time, locked in his cabin, and totally plastered. This left Smythe having to mind the day-to-day operations of the Darner. However, the instant the shooting started the Captain made a point of being seen on the bridge.
The Darner was returning from an eventful patrol up the Yangtze River. Unlike previous patrols, she had been a small part of a larger flotilla that had been dispatched by the China Station. They had shelled the Northern Faction positions in support of the Southern Faction. Personally, Smythe couldn’t care less what the Chinese did to each other. He was happy that their civil war had gotten the Darner out of port for a few weeks because the tedium of Hong Kong in the wintertime had become a great annoyance. Now, if only the Captain would have one too many shots of gin and stagger overboard, sans a gangplank. Here in China the Fleet would have little choice but to leave Smythe in charge as acting commander for the foreseeable future. Glancing back at the ladder, half expecting the angry red face of the Captain to appear.
“Go below and see if the Captain needs anything” Smythe said to the Chief Petty Officer who nodded. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened last time, now would we.”
The Chief nodded and went below. The previous autumn the Captain had been unconscious, either asleep or passed out, when the Darner had returned to port and the crew had been forced to cover for him. The last thing the crew needed was word to get out that the Captain of the HMS Darner was a mean drunk.
Cape Town, South Africa
Nelson Mandela had found the essay that had been written Moses Newton fascinating and had arranged for it to be reprinted in his newspaper months earlier. The point of Newton’s essay had been that he had needed to leave America to be considered an American. It had been a part of a larger series that Mandela had done about what it meant to be Black in world at the end of the 1960’s. The arrival of Newton to South Africa had been a welcome diversion for Nelson. He was increasingly being leaned on to take up a greater position of leadership in the ANC as fissures within that organization were turning into bottomless rifts. According to the Party Leadership, being the Editor-in-Chief of what had gone from a Party newspaper to a National Daily no longer cut it.
The things he had predicted two decades earlier had come to pass with the rise of a middle-class within the townships. Once someone had full stomach and a house that wasn’t made of tin and pasteboard, or God forbid, a car, the expectations changed. This was a problem because the attempt of that South African branch of the ANC to shed revolutionary politics had not been as successful or as complete as it had needed to be. It was hard to argue liberation with someone who was more bent out of shape about the textbooks in their children’s school being rubbish, or the train being a few minutes late. The classic question in politics; What have you done for me lately? Pie in the sky talk about revolution in the future wasn’t the right answer.
The entire time they were looking over their shoulders at the nightmare that was unfolding in Southern Rhodesia as the path that South Africa had almost gone down was playing itself out. Ironfisted White minority rule and increased militancy among the majority Blacks had resulted in increasing rounds of bloody atrocity. What they were watching wasn’t the glorious revolution of liberation that had been promised. That much was certain. Nelson had found himself among those concerned that the violence would eventually spill across the borders.
Today, all of that seemed extremely far away as he entered the radio booth. In a curious twist, Nelson had tried to get an interview with Moses Newton only to find himself being the one who was being interviewed. One of the wonders of modern technology was that Newton could do his radio show from any point on the globe and be rebroadcast in nearly real time. Many would have found it strange that had resulted in a true global Pan-African movement with music at its center. Nelson had realized that was probably the only sort of glue that could have held such a movement together.
Nelson felt oddly nervous as Newton introduced him to the audience. It was estimated that there were hundreds of millions of listeners spread across four continents. This was possibly the moment when he would have the largest reach at any point in his career and his only thought was that he had better not mess it up.
Last edited:
If one of the senior CPO's on board the Darner knows someone in a certain position in Naval HQ, things could be arranged for an unannounced visit by someone who has the ear of a senior staff member or flotilla commander or even CinC of the station or fleet. It just takes one person seeing what is going on to pass it on the the proper person to take care of it.
It is good to see how far Moses Newton has come since he first became a local Buenos Aires Disc Jockey to being the worldwide public voice of African-American music and culture.
With the IOTL growth of FM radio in the United States going on he should be raking in the dough with various syndication programs on radio stations across America.
He is also probably on of the most influential people in the world in bringing new talent to the spotlight and as we are seeing with his interview with Nelson Mandela he is branching out of the music pigeonhole and having newsworthy guests on his show reaching an audience that would probably never thought of tuning in to a "serious" interview show.
With the IOTL growth of FM radio in the United States going on he should be raking in the dough with various syndication programs on radio stations across America.
He is also probably on of the most influential people in the world in bringing new talent to the spotlight and as we are seeing with his interview with Nelson Mandela he is branching out of the music pigeonhole and having newsworthy guests on his show reaching an audience that would probably never thought of tuning in to a "serious" interview show.
Better the devil you know. A river gunboat on the China station is probably going to be the place where unsatisfactory officers get dumped. If they manage to get rid of a captain whose habits they know and can work around who knows what the next one will be like. Better a drunk that keeps to his cabin then a nosy busybody martinet.
Bill Hamilton and his pump-jet engines. Good to see New Zealand pop up ITTL.
Oh, crap. I had hoped that the idiots in Southern Rhodesia had been sorted out ITTL by the results of the earlier South African campaign. Sadly, I suspect they decided to double down on the stupidity and probably even imported some disgruntled Afrikaners who had avoid arrest in South Africa to help do so.
This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.