And don't forget the combined power of the German, French, Italian and Soviet air forces which are focused west ITTL. Look what they're doing to the bombing campaign at this stage of the TL. They're inflicting some huge losses since they've managed to keep air superiority. How big are the chances of one bomber getting through the air defences of western Europe all the way to Berlin, Dresden or Hamburg with German mass produced jet fighters patrolling the skies and (likely) Germany having radar by now?
The Great Mistake - a Winter War escalates TL
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
And don't forget the combined power of the German, French, Italian and Soviet air forces which are focused west ITTL. Look what they're doing to the bombing campaign at this stage of the TL. They're inflicting some huge losses since they've managed to keep air superiority. How big are the chances of one bomber getting through the air defences of western Europe all the way to Berlin, Dresden or Hamburg with German mass produced jet fighters patrolling the skies and (likely) Germany having radar by now?
I wouldn't discount the Soviets that much, a lot of the stuff Fuchs gave them was just progress updates and how to do things more efficiently, of course this helped greatly but the effect of the Soviet Union being barely scratched in this TL will have a much more positive effect than Fuchs did OTL. The B-36 won't be available in big numbers until later on, so even if the Axis don't have a bomb they still have the clear upper hand in a WMD fight.
Eurofed
Banned
Exactly. Not to mention that ITTL Nazi Germany isn't the only vital part of the European Axis. The Allies would have to nuke at least Soviet Russia, too, and to be sure Fascist Italy and Vichy France, too, in order to secure a victory. This means they have to penetrate the quite good air defenses of Europe at least a handful of times, all the way to European Russia. They are going to need at least the 100-200 nukes they had in 1948-49, and by that time the Axis could easily have their own nukes, or at the very least, a fully developed chemical-radiological WMD deterrent with intercontinental delivery.
If the Allies manage to win this war, it shall be by winning the WMD deterrent race by an hairsbreadth and amassing all of its luck and skill. If not, MAD shall lock in and force descalation to a Cold War.
Eurofed
Banned
Quite possibly, but then I do not see these factors (Russia being almost whole and losing Fuchs' data) doing much more than canceling themselves out. However, I can see the combined effect of the German, Soviet, and Italian teams (I dunno if France would have a wortwhile team of nuclear researchers in WWII) and the four Axis countries being in much better condition leading to an Axis nuke an year or two in advance of the OTL Soviet schedule.
True, it is not going to take too much yet for this Axis to assemble a worthwhile chemical-radiological WMD deterrent to blackmail Britain with total destruction, and once they do, North America is powerless until they can churn out B-36s and nukes by the hundreds.
Well, they can fly above the arctic circle. There's hardly a living soul out there and you do know how American coastal defences were in WW2, right? It wasn't exactly like the Atlantic Wall, and not every place had radar. This isn't yet the Cold War when radar covered every square inch of US soil. IOTL, the Americans kinda dropped their guard as the Germans couldn't touch them anyway which explains why some U-boats got very close to the coast, the same way this bomber force got in as well. By 1945, American coastal defences were largely asleep. ITTL, America has been in the war since early 1942 and not a single attack on the American mainland has happened so they dropped their guard. This bombing was a wake up call and a taste of their own medicine. You can rest assured that the Axis can't pull off another stunt like that.
I hope this explanation suffices.
Last edited:
Something similar happened IOTL, just on a much smaller scale. Two words: Operation Drumbeat (or, for the German-speakers, Unternehmen Paukenschlag). One of the books I read about the Battle of the Atlantic, "Operation Drumbeat" written by Paul Gannon, paints a very vivid picture of complacency, arrogance and underestimation of the enemy by the Americans. Granted, Drumbeat took place a very short time after Pearl Harbor but why should this be different. In any case, BECAUSE of Pearl Harbor, readiness should have been at an absolute peak but it wasn't! As a consequence, the US suffered her single biggest naval defeat of all time, tonnage-wise.
ITTL the Axis Navies have largely kept to their side of the pond and no serious attempts of attacking the US on their own turf have been made in years. So why should widespread radar coverage exist? Why would anybody seriously think an attack on US soil, by aircraft, would be imminent or even realistic? After all, there is thousands of miles of ocean between the Axis and the US...I do think this isn't even remotely ASB. It isn't even a handwave...
Wyragen-TXRG4P
Banned
Surprise attacks, one of the circumstances where intercontinental bombing attack would be sucessfull. Had there been only a handfull of fighters counter-attacking, there would have been some significant losses even over coastal cities like Washington and New York, full readiness and the bomber fleets could have been totally destroyed well before reaching their targets or forced to turn back hundreds of kilometers off the coast.
Now, how would unescorted bombers working with propellers far against fully prepared air defences that includes a good number of jet fighters?
Germany was also working on anti-aircraft missiles IOTL, in this timeline there would be much more ressources devoted to such researchs.
Also, if atomic bombings becomes a strategy, there will be plenty of volunteers for kamikaze attacks on bombers in Germany and even in France.
Yes, now Kamikaze pilots have acess to jets aircrafts!
Also they wheren´t cooperationg and their countries spend most of their ressources fighting each other.
Now, how would unescorted bombers working with propellers far against fully prepared air defences that includes a good number of jet fighters?
Germany was also working on anti-aircraft missiles IOTL, in this timeline there would be much more ressources devoted to such researchs.
Also, if atomic bombings becomes a strategy, there will be plenty of volunteers for kamikaze attacks on bombers in Germany and even in France.
Yes, now Kamikaze pilots have acess to jets aircrafts!
Also they wheren´t cooperationg and their countries spend most of their ressources fighting each other.
Last edited:
Another update. Enjoy .
America had tested its nuclear weapon called Trinity to great success and by August 1945 the Americans had no less than two nuclear weapons ready for deployment and the only question was where to use them. Europe was deemed risky to first deploy these weapons since the air defences of western Europe were so powerful, stronger than those of Japan anyway. Germany was already beginning to field the first primitive anti-aircraft missiles while the number of Me 262s increased in numbers with successors being developed. Neither the British nor the Americans wanted to lose a nuclear armed bomber over Europe considering the cost of only one such bomb, not to mention the fact that it would put a functioning (if damaged) nuclear warhead in the hands of Stalin’s and Goering’s nuclear physicists. Japan was already teetering on the brink thanks to Allied offensives in the Pacific and Asia. The new president of the United States was Harry S. Truman who had succeeded Roosevelt after he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage on April 12th 1945, leaving him president since he had been vice president at the time of Roosevelt’s death. He issued an ultimatum to Japan, demanding a total and unconditional surrender lest the Japanese government wanted to face total annihilation, but the military junta under Emperor Hirohito ignored the ultimatum which expired unanswered. Most Japanese government members called the Americans fools as they had already razed Japan to the ground more or less with incessant and terrible low altitude fire bombings by B-29 bombers stationed on Iwo Jima, the Northern Marianas and the Philippines for months, destroying sixty-seven Japanese cities in devastating fire storms. Japan had already been utterly destroyed, even more so than German cities which had built with brick, stone and concrete, making them sturdier and therefore easier to repair from bomb damage.
With Tokyo ignoring the ultimatum, Truman issued the order for ‘Little Boy’ to be deployed against the large arsenal of Kokura on August 6th 1945. Little Boy was of the gun-shot type design which simply functioned by shooting on piece of fissile material into another, initiating a chain reaction which took place in nanoseconds. The design was so simple that it hadn’t been tested. At around eight o’clock in the morning local time, a B-29 bomber dropped Little Boy and seconds later an artificial sunrise lit up the morning sky, blinding anyone who was up at the time and happened to look straight at the explosion. The blast had a yield of 16 kilotons and managed to completely level everything in a 1.6 kilometre radius and causing severe damage in a two kilometre radius, killing tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, instantly. Many more would die in the days and weeks following the attack due to radiation sickness, flash burns and other injuries compounded by illness and infections. The Japanese refused to surrender after the attack, believing the Americans didn’t have more than a few of such weapons and because Tokyo felt supported by Moscow. The Red Army was deploying the 47th and 52nd Armies to Kyushu and the 3rd Guard Tank Army to Honshu in anticipation of an invasion. The Red Air Force also sent forces to Japan. Therefore Truman ordered ‘Fat Man’ to be deployed against Yokohama. Fat Man was of the implosion-type design which worked by placing a sphere of fissile material in a ring of explosives which would explode simultaneously, setting off the nuclear reaction. The bomb was deployed against Yokohama and with a yield of 22 kilotons it was even more destructive than Little Boy had been.
It did not have the effect that Truman had desired as the military junta that ruled Japan still refused to surrender. Their fleet had been beaten, but their army was still capable of operating and defending Japan thanks to Axis support. The Home Islands were also well fed thanks to deliveries of Ukrainian grain. Also, neither Stalin nor Goering were cowed into submission like Churchill and Truman had hoped. They were rather unimpressed as western Europe had been suffering one thousand plane raids for at least four years, attacks which were equally destructive if not worse than nuclear weapons. Goering had already seen many cities destroyed and that hadn’t killed Germany’s ability to fight on. Instead, both Goering and Stalin ordered their scientists to find a means of retaliation. The joint nuclear program that resorted under Reinhard Heydrich’s Gestapo and Lavrenti Beria’s NKVD received more funding and the scientists doubled their efforts out of fear for Beria and Heydrich. Germany also possessed stockpiles of nerve gas, including the deadly nerve agent tabun and Goering ordered several V2 missiles and V1 flying bombs to be retrofitted with chemical warheads in the event of a nuclear strike against Germany. Stalin did the same with German supplied stocks of the tabun nerve agent and also ordered for the production of bombs with this chemical weapon. Both sped up research into the intercontinental ballistic missile A9/A10 which was already far in the development stage at the time.
In the meantime, Truman ordered the invasion of Japan to commence on November 1st 1945. The operation was called Operation Downfall and consisted of two parts: the invasion of Kyushu called Operation Olympic and the invasion of Honshu known as Operation Coronet. The ones in charge foresaw the use of nuclear weapons in the tactical sense to clear the landing areas of Japanese forces and tried to rush nuclear weapons production while amassing an invasion force. Two dozen battleships, forty-two carriers, dozens of cruisers and 400 destroyers were to be part of the enormous invasion force which was supported by the US Twentieth Air Force as a strategic bomber force and the Fifth, Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces to provide tactical support to cover for the Sixth Army which would invade at three points, namely Miyazaki, Ariake and Kushikino. Miyazaki was virtually undefended, but Kushikino was heavily defended and Ariake was weakly defended, but had imposing terrain which would slow the advance of the marines that were supposed to take the city. Japanese generals had expected the invasion and had concentrated a large number of divisions on the island with the support of no less than two fully supplied and combat ready Soviet armies. They, however, couldn’t prepare for the use of more nuclear weapons of which the Americans now had six. All six were deployed against the areas immediately inland behind the landing areas to clear them of enemy forces which could otherwise have counterattacked against American beachheads. This mostly destroyed any immediate opposition against the initial landings, but the Americans hadn’t expected the presence of Soviet forces on the island, certainly not two armies. American planners had deployed three corps in these landings which were expected to outnumber the Japanese, but now the Americans were actually at a disadvantage on the ground. Soviet armour attacked the American beachhead. US forces kept a tenuous hold over the beaches until the arrival of American armour in large numbers although they found that Soviet tanks were superior. Fortunately, they were only on Kyushu in limited numbers. Japanese troops resisted heavily, using the mountainous landscape to wage a guerrilla war, often resisting to the last man and forcing Allied troops to clear out defensive positions at severe death tolls. The infamous banzai charges (human wave attacks, basically) overwhelmed a number of American battalions, but in spite of the heavy casualties they managed to conquer the southern third of the island, establishing air fields to bomb Honshu from in preparation of Coronet.
The war to finish off Japan continued while Europe remained a stalemate for now. In the meantime, Germany slowly started to phase out its piston engine bombers in favour of the new jet powered Ju 287 against which only now the first Allied jetfighters were being fielded and even they had trouble intercepting this plane powered by six jet engines. In January 1946, the Germans also tested a modified Junkers Ju 390 bomber retrofitted with external racks with which it could carry V1 flying bombs with chemical warheads as a stopgap solution until the A9/A10 ballistic missile was ready for testing a few months later. By early 1946, the Americans had the capacity to produce a maximum of two to three atomic bombs a month and they would deploy them in Operation Coronet. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu at the Kanto Plain south of the capital, was to begin on "Y-Day", which was scheduled for March 1st, 1946. Coronet was the largest amphibious operation of all time, with 25 divisions, including the floating reserve, earmarked for the initial operations. The US First Army would have invaded at Kujukuri Beach, on the Boso Peninsula, while the US Eighth Army invaded at Hiratsuka, in Sagami Bay. Both armies would then drive north and inland, meeting at Tokyo. The invasion went ahead as planned, but didn’t take into account the presence of the 3rd Guard Tank Army under general-colonel Pavel Rybalko. These forces equipped with T-34-85 and IS-1 tanks managed to push back American forces to their beaches and prevent them from taking Tokyo even if they couldn’t drive them back into the sea although their tanks did prove superior to both the M4 Sherman and the M26 Pershing. Only regional air superiority allowed them to keep the beachhead even while Soviet and Japanese planes struggled to regain control. The divas of the Pacific, generals George S. Patton and Douglas Macarthur, in the meantime, were both major proponents of using more nuclear weapons in a tactical role against Red Army and Japanese forces. Truman remained hesitant due to fear of chemical or biological retaliation against US forces, but advancing Soviet armoured spearheads convinced him that there was a serious threat of the American invasion force being driven back into the ocean. American bombers released two ‘Fat Man’ style bombs with a yield of between 20 and 22 kilotons, destroying the main body of the Soviet-Japanese forces which had already wrought ten percent losses on the invasion force.
Japan possessed copies of the V2 ballistic missile and now they finally invoked ‘mutually assured destruction’. Japan possessed chemical and bacteriological weaponry and they put it into one tonne warheads and Hirohito personally authorized their use against American forces as vengeance for their ‘demonic fire that rained from the skies’. On May 1st, labour day in the Soviet Union and Day of the German People in the Third Reich, the Japanese launched around a dozen V2 ballistic missiles filled with tabun gas and anthrax, killing 80.000 American forces while many tens of thousands more were so critically injured that emergency hospitals were erected on the beaches no less. Truman was infuriated as were the rest of the American people even though US forces had started it with nuclear weapons. The ensuing offensive put on the pressure, but Soviet-Japanese forces had been scattered by the atomic attacks and couldn’t make enough of a fist to exploit American weakness. By late June, American forces could finally begin their advance to Tokyo. American forces surrounded the Japanese capital and prepared to raze it to the ground. Through prefabricated harbours, the Americans had managed to bring in troops rapidly after they had recovered from the chemical and biological weapons attacks in May. Japanese troops resisted virulently, learning the art of urban warfare from Soviet troops which retreated north. They used trenches, barbed wire entanglements, anti-tank obstacles, land mines, bunkers and buildings transformed into fortifications with sandbags and barbed wire to fight the attackers. Emperor Hirohito chose to remain in Tokyo to lead the defence of his capital while the Imperial court and the government retreated to Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido. The Americans brought powerful artillery and tanks. They also established clear air superiority over Tokyo although the Japanese air force continued a campaign to relieve the city with Soviet support. After three weeks of intense, even brutal combat, the city was taken on July 20th 1946 while Hirohito committed ‘seppuku’ (ritual suicide).
Akihito was crowned as the 125th Emperor of Japan a few days later although he was little more than a figurehead monarch to the militarists that ruled the country. Now, the Americans controlled everything within a one hundred kilometre radius of Tokyo. Frontlines were running in a triangle from Shizuoka to Maebashi to Mito. American forces under the command of general Patton aimed to make a drive for the west coast and cut Japanese forces on Honshu in two and he would do that by capitalizing on his superior forces. The offensive commenced on August 5th 1946, but his supply lines suffered from guerrilla attacks. Large numbers of Japanese civilians resisted fanatically in suicide bombings and raids, using any weapon available, even bamboo spears and 18th century muskets. Patton’s attacks, however were very aggressive and surprised Japanese generals. American forces succeeded in splitting Honshu in half and his forces even swept north, but Japanese forces covered their retreat with mustard gas which provoked Patton’s retaliation with his own chemical weapons. In the meantime, Macarthur’s conquest of Formosa, begun on July 1st, ended on September 1st. In an unheard act of defiance, the young Emperor Akihito ordered peace negotiations to begin. In such a situation, the junta dared not flaunt the Emperor. Japan surrendered unconditionally on September 6th 1946. Soviet troops responded by immediately occupying Hokkaido while Akihito fled south. They followed and took northern Honshu up to Niigata while several Japanese generals in occupied China refused to recognise the order as Akihito was a minor and was supposed to have a regent. The same applied to a few scattered remnants of the Imperial Japanese Navy which sailed for Vladivostok. Nevertheless, the Home Islands, the heart of the Empire of Japan, themselves had surrendered to American forces while Japanese communists under Stalin’s thumb proclaimed the People’s Republic of Japan with Sapporo as its capital. Japanese loyalist forces joined the fight against the Red Army and their puppet government. The first Axis member had been defeated.
.Chapter VI: Nuclear War, Retaliation and the End for the Empire of the Rising Sun, July 1945 – September 1946.
America had tested its nuclear weapon called Trinity to great success and by August 1945 the Americans had no less than two nuclear weapons ready for deployment and the only question was where to use them. Europe was deemed risky to first deploy these weapons since the air defences of western Europe were so powerful, stronger than those of Japan anyway. Germany was already beginning to field the first primitive anti-aircraft missiles while the number of Me 262s increased in numbers with successors being developed. Neither the British nor the Americans wanted to lose a nuclear armed bomber over Europe considering the cost of only one such bomb, not to mention the fact that it would put a functioning (if damaged) nuclear warhead in the hands of Stalin’s and Goering’s nuclear physicists. Japan was already teetering on the brink thanks to Allied offensives in the Pacific and Asia. The new president of the United States was Harry S. Truman who had succeeded Roosevelt after he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage on April 12th 1945, leaving him president since he had been vice president at the time of Roosevelt’s death. He issued an ultimatum to Japan, demanding a total and unconditional surrender lest the Japanese government wanted to face total annihilation, but the military junta under Emperor Hirohito ignored the ultimatum which expired unanswered. Most Japanese government members called the Americans fools as they had already razed Japan to the ground more or less with incessant and terrible low altitude fire bombings by B-29 bombers stationed on Iwo Jima, the Northern Marianas and the Philippines for months, destroying sixty-seven Japanese cities in devastating fire storms. Japan had already been utterly destroyed, even more so than German cities which had built with brick, stone and concrete, making them sturdier and therefore easier to repair from bomb damage.
With Tokyo ignoring the ultimatum, Truman issued the order for ‘Little Boy’ to be deployed against the large arsenal of Kokura on August 6th 1945. Little Boy was of the gun-shot type design which simply functioned by shooting on piece of fissile material into another, initiating a chain reaction which took place in nanoseconds. The design was so simple that it hadn’t been tested. At around eight o’clock in the morning local time, a B-29 bomber dropped Little Boy and seconds later an artificial sunrise lit up the morning sky, blinding anyone who was up at the time and happened to look straight at the explosion. The blast had a yield of 16 kilotons and managed to completely level everything in a 1.6 kilometre radius and causing severe damage in a two kilometre radius, killing tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, instantly. Many more would die in the days and weeks following the attack due to radiation sickness, flash burns and other injuries compounded by illness and infections. The Japanese refused to surrender after the attack, believing the Americans didn’t have more than a few of such weapons and because Tokyo felt supported by Moscow. The Red Army was deploying the 47th and 52nd Armies to Kyushu and the 3rd Guard Tank Army to Honshu in anticipation of an invasion. The Red Air Force also sent forces to Japan. Therefore Truman ordered ‘Fat Man’ to be deployed against Yokohama. Fat Man was of the implosion-type design which worked by placing a sphere of fissile material in a ring of explosives which would explode simultaneously, setting off the nuclear reaction. The bomb was deployed against Yokohama and with a yield of 22 kilotons it was even more destructive than Little Boy had been.
It did not have the effect that Truman had desired as the military junta that ruled Japan still refused to surrender. Their fleet had been beaten, but their army was still capable of operating and defending Japan thanks to Axis support. The Home Islands were also well fed thanks to deliveries of Ukrainian grain. Also, neither Stalin nor Goering were cowed into submission like Churchill and Truman had hoped. They were rather unimpressed as western Europe had been suffering one thousand plane raids for at least four years, attacks which were equally destructive if not worse than nuclear weapons. Goering had already seen many cities destroyed and that hadn’t killed Germany’s ability to fight on. Instead, both Goering and Stalin ordered their scientists to find a means of retaliation. The joint nuclear program that resorted under Reinhard Heydrich’s Gestapo and Lavrenti Beria’s NKVD received more funding and the scientists doubled their efforts out of fear for Beria and Heydrich. Germany also possessed stockpiles of nerve gas, including the deadly nerve agent tabun and Goering ordered several V2 missiles and V1 flying bombs to be retrofitted with chemical warheads in the event of a nuclear strike against Germany. Stalin did the same with German supplied stocks of the tabun nerve agent and also ordered for the production of bombs with this chemical weapon. Both sped up research into the intercontinental ballistic missile A9/A10 which was already far in the development stage at the time.
In the meantime, Truman ordered the invasion of Japan to commence on November 1st 1945. The operation was called Operation Downfall and consisted of two parts: the invasion of Kyushu called Operation Olympic and the invasion of Honshu known as Operation Coronet. The ones in charge foresaw the use of nuclear weapons in the tactical sense to clear the landing areas of Japanese forces and tried to rush nuclear weapons production while amassing an invasion force. Two dozen battleships, forty-two carriers, dozens of cruisers and 400 destroyers were to be part of the enormous invasion force which was supported by the US Twentieth Air Force as a strategic bomber force and the Fifth, Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces to provide tactical support to cover for the Sixth Army which would invade at three points, namely Miyazaki, Ariake and Kushikino. Miyazaki was virtually undefended, but Kushikino was heavily defended and Ariake was weakly defended, but had imposing terrain which would slow the advance of the marines that were supposed to take the city. Japanese generals had expected the invasion and had concentrated a large number of divisions on the island with the support of no less than two fully supplied and combat ready Soviet armies. They, however, couldn’t prepare for the use of more nuclear weapons of which the Americans now had six. All six were deployed against the areas immediately inland behind the landing areas to clear them of enemy forces which could otherwise have counterattacked against American beachheads. This mostly destroyed any immediate opposition against the initial landings, but the Americans hadn’t expected the presence of Soviet forces on the island, certainly not two armies. American planners had deployed three corps in these landings which were expected to outnumber the Japanese, but now the Americans were actually at a disadvantage on the ground. Soviet armour attacked the American beachhead. US forces kept a tenuous hold over the beaches until the arrival of American armour in large numbers although they found that Soviet tanks were superior. Fortunately, they were only on Kyushu in limited numbers. Japanese troops resisted heavily, using the mountainous landscape to wage a guerrilla war, often resisting to the last man and forcing Allied troops to clear out defensive positions at severe death tolls. The infamous banzai charges (human wave attacks, basically) overwhelmed a number of American battalions, but in spite of the heavy casualties they managed to conquer the southern third of the island, establishing air fields to bomb Honshu from in preparation of Coronet.
The war to finish off Japan continued while Europe remained a stalemate for now. In the meantime, Germany slowly started to phase out its piston engine bombers in favour of the new jet powered Ju 287 against which only now the first Allied jetfighters were being fielded and even they had trouble intercepting this plane powered by six jet engines. In January 1946, the Germans also tested a modified Junkers Ju 390 bomber retrofitted with external racks with which it could carry V1 flying bombs with chemical warheads as a stopgap solution until the A9/A10 ballistic missile was ready for testing a few months later. By early 1946, the Americans had the capacity to produce a maximum of two to three atomic bombs a month and they would deploy them in Operation Coronet. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu at the Kanto Plain south of the capital, was to begin on "Y-Day", which was scheduled for March 1st, 1946. Coronet was the largest amphibious operation of all time, with 25 divisions, including the floating reserve, earmarked for the initial operations. The US First Army would have invaded at Kujukuri Beach, on the Boso Peninsula, while the US Eighth Army invaded at Hiratsuka, in Sagami Bay. Both armies would then drive north and inland, meeting at Tokyo. The invasion went ahead as planned, but didn’t take into account the presence of the 3rd Guard Tank Army under general-colonel Pavel Rybalko. These forces equipped with T-34-85 and IS-1 tanks managed to push back American forces to their beaches and prevent them from taking Tokyo even if they couldn’t drive them back into the sea although their tanks did prove superior to both the M4 Sherman and the M26 Pershing. Only regional air superiority allowed them to keep the beachhead even while Soviet and Japanese planes struggled to regain control. The divas of the Pacific, generals George S. Patton and Douglas Macarthur, in the meantime, were both major proponents of using more nuclear weapons in a tactical role against Red Army and Japanese forces. Truman remained hesitant due to fear of chemical or biological retaliation against US forces, but advancing Soviet armoured spearheads convinced him that there was a serious threat of the American invasion force being driven back into the ocean. American bombers released two ‘Fat Man’ style bombs with a yield of between 20 and 22 kilotons, destroying the main body of the Soviet-Japanese forces which had already wrought ten percent losses on the invasion force.
Japan possessed copies of the V2 ballistic missile and now they finally invoked ‘mutually assured destruction’. Japan possessed chemical and bacteriological weaponry and they put it into one tonne warheads and Hirohito personally authorized their use against American forces as vengeance for their ‘demonic fire that rained from the skies’. On May 1st, labour day in the Soviet Union and Day of the German People in the Third Reich, the Japanese launched around a dozen V2 ballistic missiles filled with tabun gas and anthrax, killing 80.000 American forces while many tens of thousands more were so critically injured that emergency hospitals were erected on the beaches no less. Truman was infuriated as were the rest of the American people even though US forces had started it with nuclear weapons. The ensuing offensive put on the pressure, but Soviet-Japanese forces had been scattered by the atomic attacks and couldn’t make enough of a fist to exploit American weakness. By late June, American forces could finally begin their advance to Tokyo. American forces surrounded the Japanese capital and prepared to raze it to the ground. Through prefabricated harbours, the Americans had managed to bring in troops rapidly after they had recovered from the chemical and biological weapons attacks in May. Japanese troops resisted virulently, learning the art of urban warfare from Soviet troops which retreated north. They used trenches, barbed wire entanglements, anti-tank obstacles, land mines, bunkers and buildings transformed into fortifications with sandbags and barbed wire to fight the attackers. Emperor Hirohito chose to remain in Tokyo to lead the defence of his capital while the Imperial court and the government retreated to Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido. The Americans brought powerful artillery and tanks. They also established clear air superiority over Tokyo although the Japanese air force continued a campaign to relieve the city with Soviet support. After three weeks of intense, even brutal combat, the city was taken on July 20th 1946 while Hirohito committed ‘seppuku’ (ritual suicide).
Akihito was crowned as the 125th Emperor of Japan a few days later although he was little more than a figurehead monarch to the militarists that ruled the country. Now, the Americans controlled everything within a one hundred kilometre radius of Tokyo. Frontlines were running in a triangle from Shizuoka to Maebashi to Mito. American forces under the command of general Patton aimed to make a drive for the west coast and cut Japanese forces on Honshu in two and he would do that by capitalizing on his superior forces. The offensive commenced on August 5th 1946, but his supply lines suffered from guerrilla attacks. Large numbers of Japanese civilians resisted fanatically in suicide bombings and raids, using any weapon available, even bamboo spears and 18th century muskets. Patton’s attacks, however were very aggressive and surprised Japanese generals. American forces succeeded in splitting Honshu in half and his forces even swept north, but Japanese forces covered their retreat with mustard gas which provoked Patton’s retaliation with his own chemical weapons. In the meantime, Macarthur’s conquest of Formosa, begun on July 1st, ended on September 1st. In an unheard act of defiance, the young Emperor Akihito ordered peace negotiations to begin. In such a situation, the junta dared not flaunt the Emperor. Japan surrendered unconditionally on September 6th 1946. Soviet troops responded by immediately occupying Hokkaido while Akihito fled south. They followed and took northern Honshu up to Niigata while several Japanese generals in occupied China refused to recognise the order as Akihito was a minor and was supposed to have a regent. The same applied to a few scattered remnants of the Imperial Japanese Navy which sailed for Vladivostok. Nevertheless, the Home Islands, the heart of the Empire of Japan, themselves had surrendered to American forces while Japanese communists under Stalin’s thumb proclaimed the People’s Republic of Japan with Sapporo as its capital. Japanese loyalist forces joined the fight against the Red Army and their puppet government. The first Axis member had been defeated.
Last edited:
Holy Shit If taking Japan is going to be this bloody I can only imagine what things will look like once we get to Europe.
If taking Japan is going to be this bloody I can only imagine what things will look like once we get to Europe.*bump*
To get it to the top.
Btw, I just found out I was nominated twice for a Turtledove award. Thanks to those who nominated me and those who voted for me. I appreciate it very much.
To get it to the top.
Btw, I just found out I was nominated twice for a Turtledove award. Thanks to those who nominated me and those who voted for me. I appreciate it very much
.Oh f***! Japan will not be a very healthy place to live in for the next couple of decades. Eight (if I counted correctly) nukes detonated, tons of chemical agents released...oh my...
Generations of cancer-ridden Japanese, and of course not forgetting the poor American soldiers having to fight through the irradiated areas...
I don't really want to know what is going to happen in Europe, really...I guess it's not too pessimistic to assume a handful aof Axis cities incinerated with nuclear bombs and the whole south of Britain gassed and maybe nuked too...
Generations of cancer-ridden Japanese, and of course not forgetting the poor American soldiers having to fight through the irradiated areas...
I don't really want to know what is going to happen in Europe, really...I guess it's not too pessimistic to assume a handful aof Axis cities incinerated with nuclear bombs and the whole south of Britain gassed and maybe nuked too...
How much of the Japanese population even survived the invasion and nukage, and how many will survive the war to expel the Soviets?
If you want to get a dark, have casualties be so bad that Japanese culture ceases to exist (one board member said this is what "Downfall" would have done) and the dead be disproportionately male. The female survivors marry American soldiers en masse and the US annexes Japan due to it essentially becoming Americanized.
If you want to get a dark, have casualties be so bad that Japanese culture ceases to exist (one board member said this is what "Downfall" would have done) and the dead be disproportionately male. The female survivors marry American soldiers en masse and the US annexes Japan due to it essentially becoming Americanized.
Not sure. Two nukes were used to destroy Kokura and Yokohama. How many people lived there in 1945? Six were used against the landing areas near Miyazaki, Ariake and Kushikino and a further two were deployed in the Kanto Plain. How many people lived here in '45/'46?
EDIT: Do remember that we're talking about nukes in the 10-20 kt range and not the multi megaton Luxembusters that they built in the 50s and 60s.
Update . Enjoy .
Japan had been knocked out of the war as the first Axis member, but if the Japanese campaign was telling then the war to liberate Europe would be much, much harder. Germany and the Soviet Union guarded ‘Fortress Europe’ well, so well that the Allies so far had failed to attain air superiority over the continent. In Asia, large numbers of Japanese forces had refused to recognise the surrender of the Home Islands since they viewed the young Emperor Akihito as incapable of making such a decision at his age, but in reality they refused to see that they were defeated. The commander in chief of the Kwantung Army had declared himself commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces and they rallied around the Emperor of Manchukuo who was made Emperor of all of Japanese occupied China. To defeat the remaining Japanese forces, Truman ordered an invasion of China to begin as soon as possible in cooperation with British Commonwealth and Nationalist Chinese forces who had now liberated French Indochina with relative ease since Japanese forces had retreated to defend the Home Islands and occupied areas that were deemed more important than the former French colony. British forces had executed a successful amphibious operation to capture Hainan Island with about eight divisions. The remnants of the Japanese navy based in Vladivostok only had one operational fleet carrier left, namely Shokaku, and two battleships (Ise and Hyuga). Therefore they couldn’t challenge total Allied naval supremacy in the Pacific Ocean or elsewhere such as the South China Sea. With rule of the seas uncontested, the naval force to support the invasion didn’t have to be very large although admiral Chester Nimitz took no chances since he knew that the Red Army was operating in China albeit further west.
The landing forces included several elite armoured divisions equipped with the M26 Pershing, the only Allied tank that stood something of a chance against newer heavy Soviet tanks. The American invasion force totalled twelve divisions and they were to land in Zhejiang province, south of the Yangtze river delta where the coast had a larger number of plains and valleys, unlike the more rugged coast of the Fujian province further south. The invasion was supported by all four Iowa-class battleships, which were known as Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin, and two new aircraft carriers of the Midway-class namely USS Midway and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt named after the late president and war leader. Both could carry some 130 aircraft and would support the invasion by achieving air superiority. Other carriers that participated in the invasion were USS Essex, Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Intrepid and Randolph and the battleships of the South Dakota-class were also part of this taskforce to provide fire support and clear the landing areas. Nuclear weapons were not used since the coastal regions of Zheijing were meagrely defended compared to Kyushu and Honshu and because the Chinese were allies. Intelligence told that most Japanese forces were located further north. The invasion went ahead as planned in October 1946 and American forces set foot on Chinese soil. In the meantime, Chiang Kai-Shek had travelled to Formosa where he proclaimed the Republic of China (again) as opposed to the Empire of Manchukuo and the People’s Republic of China in the west and south of China. The latter had been founded after Mao Zedong’s mysterious death and Japan’s surrender; Stalin had Mao replaced by the more compliant Zhou Enlai as secretary-general, Deng Xiaoping as Premier and general Peng Dehuai as commander in chief. All of them were young leaders and more controllable, or so Stalin hoped. The landings succeeded as American forces defeated the weak defences of the enemy. They were followed by Chiang Kai-Shek who had reformed his army with Anglo-American assistance. He claimed the province for the Republic of China while British troops invaded from the south into Guangdong, both by land and by sea. Guangdong province was also claimed by Chiang’s interim government which had set up a provisional capital in Hangzhou.
Truman was also preparing to begin a nuclear campaign against the Germans and Soviets to enforce a surrender. Their people weren’t fanatical diehards like the Japanese had been. He guessed that the German people wouldn’t want such destruction, but he had underestimated the German people who had already seen so much destruction that they had been hardened enough to be able to deal with some more. Their opinions on the Americans had also dropped a great degree since their use of no less than ten nuclear weapons against Japanese cities had been condemned by Berlin and Moscow as a war crime. As for the Soviet Union, Stalin was such a ruthless and sociopathic dictator with such a lack of empathy that he didn’t mind the loss of a city or two. Besides, Germany and the Soviet Union were working on means of retaliation and it would take many nuclear weapons to break their continental hegemony. In April 1947, they would first test their A9/A10 ICBM which would have a successful test launch from the Peenemunde test site before impacting in the sea east of Vladivostok (albeit without a warhead since the guidance system was less than reliable). This weapon could bring the war to America if produced in larger numbers like the “Amerika Bomber” had already done except that this weapon could not be defended against. Goering ordered missiles to be fitted with tabun gas and anthrax warheads, to be used as soon as the Americans used nuclear weapons against Europe. The German-Soviet atomic bomb project was also nearing completion.
American and British forces conquered Fujian, linking their territory, but when they attempted to continue into the province of Jiangxi in the west and the city of Shanghai to the north, they encountered the Red Army led by general Ivan Konev which not only fielded the powerful IS series and T-34-85 tank, but a brand new design as well. This tank was known as the T-54 which had not yet entered full production, but was undergoing testing on the battlefield to estimate the design’s combat readiness. The T-54 had the 100 mm gun which, although having a smaller calibre, had a higher penetrating capability than the IS series’ 122 mm gun; this new 100 mm gun had a 290 mm armour penetration capability at a distance of 2.000 metres or 80 mm of armour angled at sixty degrees. The new T-54 also had 203 mm turret armour and 90 mm armour plating on the hull. Soviet forces were much better equipped to resist the US Army than the Japanese with a number of elite units stationed in China, among them was the 1st Guard Tank Army which inflicted a significant defeat upon Sino-British-American forces near Nanchang in a very large pincer movement where the T-54 proved nearly invincible for American tanks who frequently called in air support to deal with this new weapon. Shanghai, as a whole municipality, was located on a peninsula between the Yangtze river and Hangzhou Bay, China’s largest island Chongming and a number of smaller islands. Here too, the Red Army inflicted a severe defeat upon American forces. Red Army troops and tanks had dug into heavily fortified positions on the banks of the Huangpu river, a tributary of the Yangtze that bisected the city and American troops that reached the peninsula were cut off while a paratrooper attack against Chongming also failed because of the heavy anti-air defences on the island and the presence of Soviet armour. Air power was fair with both sides fielding jet fighters. The fact that American forces couldn’t defeat the Red Army as easily as expected contributed to Truman’s decision to begin a nuclear campaign against the Axis and also to invade Korea as well. He had underestimated the Axis based on Japan’s performance. This invasion was larger with twenty divisions with massive air support from bases in Honshu and Kyushu where the USAF had managed to secure the skies and contain the puppet ‘People’s Republic of Japan’ to just Hokkaido, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The Americans landed near Busan in February 1947, using three nuclear devices to clear the beaches from a bunch of ill equipped Japanese garrisons and unwilling Korean auxiliaries who soon defected en masse. American forces managed to create a large beachhead despite counterattacks with chlorine gas which caused only a few casualties since American soldiers had been issued new and improved gasmasks. These forces commanded by general Patton established a line of up to one hundred kilometres inland in four weeks thanks to vigorous, sudden and very aggressive offensives against battered Japanese forces. Unfortunately for them, the nearest Soviet troops were 800 kilometres away in Vladivostok and would need to be redeployed which would be very time consuming.
In Europe, an American B-29 bomber left its base in Scotland headed for German occupied Europe with a single atomic bomb of the ‘Fat Man’ type with an estimated yield of about 20 kilotons. The chosen target was Schweinfurt which was deemed a valid strategic target since it was a major production centre of ball bearings and a large industrial city in general; it was also a city right in the middle of Germany and was chosen for a psychological effect as the Americans would show they could strike in the heart of Germany. The bomber managed to penetrate the air-defences of Germany by taking a route by sea for as long as possible and with Allied naval superiority it would take very long for them to be spotted. Even then, the Germans didn’t necessarily have to assume it was a nuclear armed bomber since there were so many bomber sorties by the Allies and this bomber certainly didn’t look any different. They could believe the plane had gotten of course, or so the Allied leaders wishfully thought. The Allied bomber reached the target area, fortunately for the Allies. It dropped its bomb which exploded in a 20 kiloton blast, incinerating thousands of people instantly although casualties were noticeably lower than in Japanese cities which had many wooden structures whereas German cities were mostly built with brick, stone and concrete. Goering was infuriated and ordered the launch crews in the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France to launch their V2s against the city centre of London in retaliation, but these were no ordinary V2s as they were loaded with tabun nerve gas. Six V2 ballistic missiles were launched against London in retaliation and British radar operators saw them coming and tried to predict their trajectories, but there was no way for the British to stop these weapons flying at an altitude of 80 kilometres. They impacted in a semicircle from Camden Town to Vauxhall, releasing the deadly nerve agent, killing 50.000 Londoners in two hours time. New leader Clement Attlee who had succeeded Winston Churchill survived the attack although some unfortunate MPs living here or driving to work at the time perished. The Allies retaliated against Bremen with another nuclear weapon and bombings with mustard has against several other cities. The German government distributed gasmasks to their people and Goering ordered more chemical attacks, not only against London, but other southern cities such as Portsmouth, Southampton and Dover as well, killing tens of thousands more British civilians. The Americans retaliated once more, but this time their bomber was shot down west of Hamburg. The weapon inside was retrieved by the Gestapo, but was irreparably damaged, but still useful to the German and Soviet scientists. NKVD and Gestapo leaders Beria and Heydrich increased the pressure to achieve results in both the atomic bomb program and the ICBM program. The A9/A10 had already been tested and Werner von Braun and his team started mass production while an American bomber stationed in India destroyed Tashkent in May, disrupting the oil production in the region.
Truman and Attlee increased pressure on the Axis by destroying Hannover, and Bremerhaven in nuclear fire while carrying out several more chemical attacks. Another nuclear bomber attacked Leipzig while another was shot down over Magdeburg where a large German uranium stockpile was located. In early June 1947, the project leaders of the Axis atomic bomb project announced that they had a warhead ready for testing. Unlike the Americans they had only researched the ‘Fat Man’ type warhead which was arguably the more powerful design. On June 18th 1947, they tested their atomic bomb at a site in Central Asia known as the Semipalatinsk test site. With an estimated blast yield of 25 kilotons, the test was a complete success for the Axis. After a nuclear attack against Düsseldorf, Stalin and Goering authorized retaliation against a British city and the use of the A9/A10 missile against an American city on the east coast. German atomic bombs destroyed Colchester, Manchester, Hull and Liverpool over the period August-September 1947 while the Allies destroyed Wilhelmshaven and Vladivostok. In August of that year, Goering gave the go order to launch an A9/A10 missile against New York and another against Washington DC, both loaded with the tabun nerve agent. The missiles were launched and reached semi orbit before descending into the atmosphere again. The A9 second stage released from the A10 and flew the last few hundred kilometres by itself. American radar operators watched in horror, unable to act. After a thirty-five minute flight time they impacted, the first one in Arlington and the other on Staten Island.
The Allies decided to expand the nuclear campaign to the minor Axis members as well. They targeted the city of Calais, the most heavily fortified point of the Atlantic Wall, destroying the port immediately. Several more missile attacks against both Britain and America took place, but on both sides, the public was growing war weary. The war had been going on for eight years without respite. In the Axis countries, the days of the amazing victories of Rommel ‘The Desert Fox’ and general Zhukov seemed a distant memory while in the Allied countries, the promised victory seemed further away than ever. Officious contacts were made via embassies of neutral countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal. In Britain, which was bankrupt and exposed to German nuclear and chemical retaliation, prices were soaring and American credit was the only thing keeping Britain from bailing out and seeking a separate negotiated peace while in America, Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey was appealing to popular sentiment with his most popular catchphrases being ‘a fair peace’, ‘bring our boys home’ and ‘this isn’t our war’. He blamed Truman for provoking German missile attacks by using atomic bombs against German civilians. The Americans were suffering civilian death tolls like they had never experienced before, unlike the Europeans. To the general populace it was quite a shock. One hundred thousand people had died due to nerve gas attacks so far and morale was dropping. In Britain, the situation grew critical with anti-war protests erupting in Leicester and Birmingham. These soon escalated into looting and food riots as Britain was suffering steep price increases as the economy went into a deep downward spiral. Attlee officially contacted Berlin, Moscow and Rome on January 7th 1948, requesting an armistice. The Americans didn’t feel much for continuing the war alone and did the same on January 9th with Truman cursing Attlee. For the first time in almost nine years the guns fell silent and peace reigned over the battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa.
. Enjoy .Chapter VII: Vengeance and Peace, September 1946 – January 1948.
Japan had been knocked out of the war as the first Axis member, but if the Japanese campaign was telling then the war to liberate Europe would be much, much harder. Germany and the Soviet Union guarded ‘Fortress Europe’ well, so well that the Allies so far had failed to attain air superiority over the continent. In Asia, large numbers of Japanese forces had refused to recognise the surrender of the Home Islands since they viewed the young Emperor Akihito as incapable of making such a decision at his age, but in reality they refused to see that they were defeated. The commander in chief of the Kwantung Army had declared himself commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces and they rallied around the Emperor of Manchukuo who was made Emperor of all of Japanese occupied China. To defeat the remaining Japanese forces, Truman ordered an invasion of China to begin as soon as possible in cooperation with British Commonwealth and Nationalist Chinese forces who had now liberated French Indochina with relative ease since Japanese forces had retreated to defend the Home Islands and occupied areas that were deemed more important than the former French colony. British forces had executed a successful amphibious operation to capture Hainan Island with about eight divisions. The remnants of the Japanese navy based in Vladivostok only had one operational fleet carrier left, namely Shokaku, and two battleships (Ise and Hyuga). Therefore they couldn’t challenge total Allied naval supremacy in the Pacific Ocean or elsewhere such as the South China Sea. With rule of the seas uncontested, the naval force to support the invasion didn’t have to be very large although admiral Chester Nimitz took no chances since he knew that the Red Army was operating in China albeit further west.
The landing forces included several elite armoured divisions equipped with the M26 Pershing, the only Allied tank that stood something of a chance against newer heavy Soviet tanks. The American invasion force totalled twelve divisions and they were to land in Zhejiang province, south of the Yangtze river delta where the coast had a larger number of plains and valleys, unlike the more rugged coast of the Fujian province further south. The invasion was supported by all four Iowa-class battleships, which were known as Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin, and two new aircraft carriers of the Midway-class namely USS Midway and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt named after the late president and war leader. Both could carry some 130 aircraft and would support the invasion by achieving air superiority. Other carriers that participated in the invasion were USS Essex, Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Intrepid and Randolph and the battleships of the South Dakota-class were also part of this taskforce to provide fire support and clear the landing areas. Nuclear weapons were not used since the coastal regions of Zheijing were meagrely defended compared to Kyushu and Honshu and because the Chinese were allies. Intelligence told that most Japanese forces were located further north. The invasion went ahead as planned in October 1946 and American forces set foot on Chinese soil. In the meantime, Chiang Kai-Shek had travelled to Formosa where he proclaimed the Republic of China (again) as opposed to the Empire of Manchukuo and the People’s Republic of China in the west and south of China. The latter had been founded after Mao Zedong’s mysterious death and Japan’s surrender; Stalin had Mao replaced by the more compliant Zhou Enlai as secretary-general, Deng Xiaoping as Premier and general Peng Dehuai as commander in chief. All of them were young leaders and more controllable, or so Stalin hoped. The landings succeeded as American forces defeated the weak defences of the enemy. They were followed by Chiang Kai-Shek who had reformed his army with Anglo-American assistance. He claimed the province for the Republic of China while British troops invaded from the south into Guangdong, both by land and by sea. Guangdong province was also claimed by Chiang’s interim government which had set up a provisional capital in Hangzhou.
Truman was also preparing to begin a nuclear campaign against the Germans and Soviets to enforce a surrender. Their people weren’t fanatical diehards like the Japanese had been. He guessed that the German people wouldn’t want such destruction, but he had underestimated the German people who had already seen so much destruction that they had been hardened enough to be able to deal with some more. Their opinions on the Americans had also dropped a great degree since their use of no less than ten nuclear weapons against Japanese cities had been condemned by Berlin and Moscow as a war crime. As for the Soviet Union, Stalin was such a ruthless and sociopathic dictator with such a lack of empathy that he didn’t mind the loss of a city or two. Besides, Germany and the Soviet Union were working on means of retaliation and it would take many nuclear weapons to break their continental hegemony. In April 1947, they would first test their A9/A10 ICBM which would have a successful test launch from the Peenemunde test site before impacting in the sea east of Vladivostok (albeit without a warhead since the guidance system was less than reliable). This weapon could bring the war to America if produced in larger numbers like the “Amerika Bomber” had already done except that this weapon could not be defended against. Goering ordered missiles to be fitted with tabun gas and anthrax warheads, to be used as soon as the Americans used nuclear weapons against Europe. The German-Soviet atomic bomb project was also nearing completion.
American and British forces conquered Fujian, linking their territory, but when they attempted to continue into the province of Jiangxi in the west and the city of Shanghai to the north, they encountered the Red Army led by general Ivan Konev which not only fielded the powerful IS series and T-34-85 tank, but a brand new design as well. This tank was known as the T-54 which had not yet entered full production, but was undergoing testing on the battlefield to estimate the design’s combat readiness. The T-54 had the 100 mm gun which, although having a smaller calibre, had a higher penetrating capability than the IS series’ 122 mm gun; this new 100 mm gun had a 290 mm armour penetration capability at a distance of 2.000 metres or 80 mm of armour angled at sixty degrees. The new T-54 also had 203 mm turret armour and 90 mm armour plating on the hull. Soviet forces were much better equipped to resist the US Army than the Japanese with a number of elite units stationed in China, among them was the 1st Guard Tank Army which inflicted a significant defeat upon Sino-British-American forces near Nanchang in a very large pincer movement where the T-54 proved nearly invincible for American tanks who frequently called in air support to deal with this new weapon. Shanghai, as a whole municipality, was located on a peninsula between the Yangtze river and Hangzhou Bay, China’s largest island Chongming and a number of smaller islands. Here too, the Red Army inflicted a severe defeat upon American forces. Red Army troops and tanks had dug into heavily fortified positions on the banks of the Huangpu river, a tributary of the Yangtze that bisected the city and American troops that reached the peninsula were cut off while a paratrooper attack against Chongming also failed because of the heavy anti-air defences on the island and the presence of Soviet armour. Air power was fair with both sides fielding jet fighters. The fact that American forces couldn’t defeat the Red Army as easily as expected contributed to Truman’s decision to begin a nuclear campaign against the Axis and also to invade Korea as well. He had underestimated the Axis based on Japan’s performance. This invasion was larger with twenty divisions with massive air support from bases in Honshu and Kyushu where the USAF had managed to secure the skies and contain the puppet ‘People’s Republic of Japan’ to just Hokkaido, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The Americans landed near Busan in February 1947, using three nuclear devices to clear the beaches from a bunch of ill equipped Japanese garrisons and unwilling Korean auxiliaries who soon defected en masse. American forces managed to create a large beachhead despite counterattacks with chlorine gas which caused only a few casualties since American soldiers had been issued new and improved gasmasks. These forces commanded by general Patton established a line of up to one hundred kilometres inland in four weeks thanks to vigorous, sudden and very aggressive offensives against battered Japanese forces. Unfortunately for them, the nearest Soviet troops were 800 kilometres away in Vladivostok and would need to be redeployed which would be very time consuming.
In Europe, an American B-29 bomber left its base in Scotland headed for German occupied Europe with a single atomic bomb of the ‘Fat Man’ type with an estimated yield of about 20 kilotons. The chosen target was Schweinfurt which was deemed a valid strategic target since it was a major production centre of ball bearings and a large industrial city in general; it was also a city right in the middle of Germany and was chosen for a psychological effect as the Americans would show they could strike in the heart of Germany. The bomber managed to penetrate the air-defences of Germany by taking a route by sea for as long as possible and with Allied naval superiority it would take very long for them to be spotted. Even then, the Germans didn’t necessarily have to assume it was a nuclear armed bomber since there were so many bomber sorties by the Allies and this bomber certainly didn’t look any different. They could believe the plane had gotten of course, or so the Allied leaders wishfully thought. The Allied bomber reached the target area, fortunately for the Allies. It dropped its bomb which exploded in a 20 kiloton blast, incinerating thousands of people instantly although casualties were noticeably lower than in Japanese cities which had many wooden structures whereas German cities were mostly built with brick, stone and concrete. Goering was infuriated and ordered the launch crews in the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France to launch their V2s against the city centre of London in retaliation, but these were no ordinary V2s as they were loaded with tabun nerve gas. Six V2 ballistic missiles were launched against London in retaliation and British radar operators saw them coming and tried to predict their trajectories, but there was no way for the British to stop these weapons flying at an altitude of 80 kilometres. They impacted in a semicircle from Camden Town to Vauxhall, releasing the deadly nerve agent, killing 50.000 Londoners in two hours time. New leader Clement Attlee who had succeeded Winston Churchill survived the attack although some unfortunate MPs living here or driving to work at the time perished. The Allies retaliated against Bremen with another nuclear weapon and bombings with mustard has against several other cities. The German government distributed gasmasks to their people and Goering ordered more chemical attacks, not only against London, but other southern cities such as Portsmouth, Southampton and Dover as well, killing tens of thousands more British civilians. The Americans retaliated once more, but this time their bomber was shot down west of Hamburg. The weapon inside was retrieved by the Gestapo, but was irreparably damaged, but still useful to the German and Soviet scientists. NKVD and Gestapo leaders Beria and Heydrich increased the pressure to achieve results in both the atomic bomb program and the ICBM program. The A9/A10 had already been tested and Werner von Braun and his team started mass production while an American bomber stationed in India destroyed Tashkent in May, disrupting the oil production in the region.
Truman and Attlee increased pressure on the Axis by destroying Hannover, and Bremerhaven in nuclear fire while carrying out several more chemical attacks. Another nuclear bomber attacked Leipzig while another was shot down over Magdeburg where a large German uranium stockpile was located. In early June 1947, the project leaders of the Axis atomic bomb project announced that they had a warhead ready for testing. Unlike the Americans they had only researched the ‘Fat Man’ type warhead which was arguably the more powerful design. On June 18th 1947, they tested their atomic bomb at a site in Central Asia known as the Semipalatinsk test site. With an estimated blast yield of 25 kilotons, the test was a complete success for the Axis. After a nuclear attack against Düsseldorf, Stalin and Goering authorized retaliation against a British city and the use of the A9/A10 missile against an American city on the east coast. German atomic bombs destroyed Colchester, Manchester, Hull and Liverpool over the period August-September 1947 while the Allies destroyed Wilhelmshaven and Vladivostok. In August of that year, Goering gave the go order to launch an A9/A10 missile against New York and another against Washington DC, both loaded with the tabun nerve agent. The missiles were launched and reached semi orbit before descending into the atmosphere again. The A9 second stage released from the A10 and flew the last few hundred kilometres by itself. American radar operators watched in horror, unable to act. After a thirty-five minute flight time they impacted, the first one in Arlington and the other on Staten Island.
The Allies decided to expand the nuclear campaign to the minor Axis members as well. They targeted the city of Calais, the most heavily fortified point of the Atlantic Wall, destroying the port immediately. Several more missile attacks against both Britain and America took place, but on both sides, the public was growing war weary. The war had been going on for eight years without respite. In the Axis countries, the days of the amazing victories of Rommel ‘The Desert Fox’ and general Zhukov seemed a distant memory while in the Allied countries, the promised victory seemed further away than ever. Officious contacts were made via embassies of neutral countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal. In Britain, which was bankrupt and exposed to German nuclear and chemical retaliation, prices were soaring and American credit was the only thing keeping Britain from bailing out and seeking a separate negotiated peace while in America, Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey was appealing to popular sentiment with his most popular catchphrases being ‘a fair peace’, ‘bring our boys home’ and ‘this isn’t our war’. He blamed Truman for provoking German missile attacks by using atomic bombs against German civilians. The Americans were suffering civilian death tolls like they had never experienced before, unlike the Europeans. To the general populace it was quite a shock. One hundred thousand people had died due to nerve gas attacks so far and morale was dropping. In Britain, the situation grew critical with anti-war protests erupting in Leicester and Birmingham. These soon escalated into looting and food riots as Britain was suffering steep price increases as the economy went into a deep downward spiral. Attlee officially contacted Berlin, Moscow and Rome on January 7th 1948, requesting an armistice. The Americans didn’t feel much for continuing the war alone and did the same on January 9th with Truman cursing Attlee. For the first time in almost nine years the guns fell silent and peace reigned over the battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Last edited:
The A9/A10 had a payload of 1 tonne. Fat Man weighed 4.6 tonnes.
Oops!
The US didn't go in for ICBMs because the rockets would have to be too big. It wasn't until bigger bang for the payload Hbombs came along that the US really thought of ICBMs. In the meantime the Russians built a humongous rocket (for the time) which could carry an Abomb.
No way are you going to get a German A bomb to the US on an ICBM in this time frame.