Three Seconds Late

catboy637

I'm gonna try again with this. Alert me to any problems early.
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March 12th, 1858​
Julius Ochs sat on a chair, watching his wife and newborn son. The baby was being cradled by his mother, as she sung him a lullaby.
"What do you want to name him?", she asked in a hushed voice.
His father softly replied, "Adolph. Adolph Simon Ochs." He and his wife smiled.
The baby began to cry, and both parents comforted him.
The POD:Adolph Ochs is born three seconds later than OTL, leading to a slight mind change later on. Any other PODs will be bolded.
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January 12th, 1920​
Adolph Ochs sat in his office, reading yesterdays issue of the New York Times. He had seen the paper yesterday, since he was owner of the Times, but he wanted to make sure everything was fine. He put it down when one of the younger editors came in and handed him tommorrows issue to look over. He thanked him, then picked up the paper.
The thing he notice first was the headline, but then he saw something else that caught his eye.
Ochs had heard of this Goddard man saying that rockets could go to the moon. He himself thought is was a bit fanciful, but who knew of the future? But the writer of the article apparently did not. He claimed the idea was ludicrous, and that anyone with a high-school education could know it wouldn't work. Adolph saw no reason to ridicule the man, not because he thought he was correct in his theroies, but because he saw no point to it. Why ridicule some obscure, strange theroy?
Goddard called back the young editor, and requested he find the man responsible for that article.

​
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

Catboy, I wrote some stylistic advice in the old thread, but a quickie here. I wouldn't recommend bolding the PODs, because it gives too much away. That's part of the AH mystery. The TL looks better now, and I'm awaiting the next chapter.
 

Dan Reilly The Great

I'm glad to see you haven't been discouraged by all the criticism in the previous thread. I found it quite entertaining and interesting in spite of the errors, so I am glad to see you decided to write another TL rather than throw in the towel altogether.

I dunno if this has already been suggested or not, or if you will still include this particular series of events, but as far as the whole mexico thing, you could simply have the US send troops into Mexico to deal with the cross border raids and the heavy amount of instability rather than have the mexicans ask for it. It would be more believable than the original sequence of events, and has historical presidence.
 

Bill Cameron

Banned
I too am looking forward to this timeline, especially given the Goddard angle.

While rockets as useful strategic weapons will have wait for nuclear weapons and advances in electronics, the number of tactical systems that could come out official interest in Goddard's research is extremely intriguing. We could be looking at better/earlier bazookas, air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons, SAMs, ASROCs, TOWs, anti-shipping missiles like the OTL's tele or wire-guided rocket propelled flying bombs, and dozens of other applications.

While undoubted technical accomplishments, the OTL's V-1s and V-2s were essentially worthless as used. With an earlier start in rocket research, this timeline could see more practical and useful rocket based weapons.


Bill
 

catboy637

January 13th, 1920
Pershing sat in his officelooking over some monotonaous (spelt wrong) papers. He was only half looking at them, and they weren't urgent.
He called in a messanger to get him the paper. He came back a few minutes later with the New York Times. Pershing dismissed him, and began to read the front page.
The first thing that caught his eye, besides the headline, was a small box saying "A Correction of a Previous Article".
The articel read,
When I was handed the rough copy of this paper yesterday, I found an unjustified and unneeded article insulting the scientist Robert Goddard. Although I myself am not sure wether this idea would work, I must say that it seemed pointless to insult the man.
Perhaps someday far in the future, these machines could be used to deliver mail, or fly at high speeds. Or-God forbid-warfare.
-Editor In Chief, Adolph Ochs.
Pershing read the article over a couple times, then he remembered what he had heard of Robert Goddard. The idea of rockets did seem interesting to himself at the time, but he dismissed it. Now, the idea seemed good enough for a risk. What elese did he have to do?
"Get me Robert Goddard!"​
January 15th, 1920​
A nervous man sat across from General Pershing. He had no military expierence, was not an expert on tactics, and may have never held a gun. But he may be helpful to the United States.
"So," Pershing said as he lit a pipe,"I know your working with rockets. I would like to help you on that."
Goddard nodded nervously.
"I will give you funding and some men to work on your rockets. You can have that if you work for the US military. Do you agree? This is my only offer?"
Goddard looked at Pershing, then reached out and the two men shook hands.​
 

Brasidas

Bill Cameron said:
I too am looking forward to this timeline, especially given the Goddard angle.

While rockets as useful strategic weapons will have wait for nuclear weapons and advances in electronics, the number of tactical systems that could come out official interest in Goddard's research is extremely intriguing. We could be looking at better/earlier bazookas, air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons, SAMs, ASROCs, TOWs, anti-shipping missiles like the OTL's tele or wire-guided rocket propelled flying bombs, and dozens of other applications.

While undoubted technical accomplishments, the OTL's V-1s and V-2s were essentially worthless as used. With an earlier start in rocket research, this timeline could see more practical and useful rocket based weapons.


Bill
Click to expand...

I'll echo Bill here. There's a lot of potential for early tactical weapons development.

Pershing is making an intuitive jump here. What weapons is he imagining? The rocket-propelled grenade?
 

Mike Stearns

Brasidas said:
I'll echo Bill here. There's a lot of potential for early tactical weapons development.

Pershing is making an intuitive jump here. What weapons is he imagining? The rocket-propelled grenade?
Click to expand...


Goddard DID demonstrate tube-launched rocket powered mortars for the US Army during World War I in OTL. Maybe ATL Pershing remembers reading the those reports and is intriuged by Goddard's research.
 

catboy637

Excerpt from , "The American Military, 1918-1939"​
Robert Goddard began his rocketry testing in North Carolina. He began with some simple gernades taped to his own primitve rockets and shot them at bushes. One of the scientiests on the project wrote, "The weapon is fatal to bushes." Goddard was intruiged by how violently the bushes were town apart, and aimed some of his prototypes at dummies. They were severly injured, but the rockets usually jammed and missed.
Goddard was also working hard on rocket propulsion. He evenually settled on chemical reactions within the rocket. When a string was pulled, reactive cehmicals would meet and would be forced out the tube to propel the rocket. The only true way they could be used for weapons was strapping live gernades to them, which proved to be, well, hard, to say the least. Several soilders ided when they were taping the gernades to the rockets.
Goddard also worked with the idea of putting gernades in the rocket. This proved hard and required a sperate team on the idea.
Some rockets were also strapped to cars and planes, as stated by a worker on the project, "for the heck of it." Early results were cars and planes being made into lots of tiny peices. Eventually, the rockets were abe to provide a small boost to speed on cars. Of course, these were proto-proto-types, and afterwards most of the machines exploded.
Rockets themsleves were the main priority of Goddard, and they were modeled with a tube for a body, and a curved dome at the top with a stand for gernades on it. They were tested frequently, and made small initial sucsess.​
 

catboy637

Thank you for all the comments, everyone!
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From, "Trouble Down South:The Mexican Revolution(s) and the Aftermath"
Chapter 3-The Begginning​
Mexico in the interbellum was not a pretty place. Carranza, the nation's president, stepped down from reelection. He then supported an obscure diplomat in the election. The challenger was General Obregon. Carranza had Congress strip Obregon of his military titles, and then had an officer claim Obregon was planning a coup.
Obregon fled to Sonora, where he lost the election and then pledged allegince to the Sonoran governor against Carranza. However, before action could be taken, an assasin supposedly hired by Carranza shot and killed Obregon.
Obergon's friend and general, Benjamin G. Hill, took control of the revolution and overthrew Carranza after he was killed on horseback.
Hill installed his own government as a temporary dictatorship to "help" the Mexican people. But he soon grew power hungry and promoted mosty of his military friends to power. He soon turned Mexico into a military dictatorship.​
 

catboy637

From, "Trouble Down South: The Mexican Revolution(s) and the Aftermath
Chapter 4-Hill's Regime
Hill was not only a cruel dictator, he was paranoid as well. He personally tortured and killed any enemies he suspected he had, and would often have purges in his regime. The Great Meixcan Purge started when Hill thought he caught wind of a supposed coup. In irony, he reacted much harsher than Carranza by killing nearly all officers above the rank of Seargent in the army. This left most of the army without leaders, and privates were generally left to train themselves with the common rebellions against Hill.
Hills cruelty also had a price. He was generally incompetentas a leader, with his treasury depleting every day. Most, if not all, of his finacial experts were either dead or his lackeys. Mexico had racked up a huge debt, and went to America for a loan.
America immeaditly denied a loan of any type to the nation.
Hill was now left with an enourmous debt, and American cities to the North. He quickly organized "raid birgaides" to attack American towns. Several raids were launched against Las Cruces, Roswell, and Apache Junction.​
 

T3h_shammy

I suggest tying your chapters together to make them longer. 1 paragraph entries don't hold the allure of longer writings.
 
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