TL-191: Yankee Joe - Uniforms, Weapons, and Vehicles of the U.S. Armed Forces

Well, Hiram Maxim was born in 1840, so hes in his twenties at the POD. And the basic idea (recoil to cycle the rounds in the chamber) had already been given to him, so its not at all out of the question for the Maxim Gun to be invented and then exported and copied ad nauseum.

 

Not out of the question, but there is always the butterfly effect to consider, him getting a different job and not having time to create the device, him getting killed before he does, someone else who would have died OTL getting their first, someone else getting inspired and patenting it first etc. It depends on what the writer wants

 

Counterpoint is the butterfly effect doesn't always make things completely different, and also the author had the butterfly take a vacation whenever it suited him. There are so many political and military figures born post-1862 doing the exact same thing as they were otl that I think Hiram Maxim would be a reasonably minor addition.

 

I never said he would be butterflied, he could be, or he could not be, it all depends on whoever is fleshing this out as Turtledove never mentioned him to my knowledge

 

A Submachine-Gun that the Union produced specifically for Anti-Confederate Resistance Movements, the Colt M42. Throughout the 2nd Great War, the Union Armed Forces would supply thousands of these weapons to the Resistance Movements in Jamaica, within the Confederacy, Texas, and Ohio. This gun is most associated with the assassination of the Freedom Party Guards Commander Richard Paulson in 1942 in Ohio.

Plus, the Union would contract the United Defense Company to build the UD-42, a cheap alternative to the Thompson Submachine-Gun, which was built and issued to Frontline Troops as well as being paradropped to Resistance Groups through Confederate Occupied Territories.

 

Nice!

Any place for these bad boys in the Union army?

 

Maybe

 

I could see the submachine gun being another attempt at producing a cheaper and easier to produce alternative to the Thompson. While the rifle could either be an actual pre SGW rifle that was tested by the army but wasn't adopted by the army until post blackbeard thanks to budget concerns or it was a late war model that was introduced amongst elite forces and paratroopers, as an eventual replacement for the Springfield. With the machine gun being yet another post Blackbeard weapon that was developed to provide the troops a better machine gun.

 

I feel that the Tredager auto-rifle was so eponymous that the US didn't feel the need to develop an independent self-loader, hence why US paratroops were using the Tredager instead of a homegrown rifle.

 

I don't know I could easily see the US having a semi-automatic rifle of their own limited production during the war. Similar to the Soviet's and the SVT-40 of OTL, having originally been planned as a future service rifle only for Blackbeard to disrupt the whole thing.

 

They Did in the books: they had the BAR. I believe in "The Grapple" one of the US characters mentions that the BAR is a good match for the Tredegar, but the US doesn't have enough of them to strike the balance.

 

How would both the Union and the Confederate Utilize Frogmen during the 2nd Great War?

 

probably in port strikes

 

Seems to be something Featherston would have pushed for more than the Union: No amount of pre-war planning would have given the CSA full Pre-GW1 naval strength, and he'd probably see Frogmen as a means to utilize the CSN's limited resources for far more gain. Send these guys into New York harbor to sabotage the naval yards or sink a few battleships with no risk to the CSA's limited surface fleet.

 

and also be using them against the Union's Brown Water Navy

 

A Union Battleship class, which is basically a South Dakota BB with another turret added.


USS Montana class Battleship
In the years following the First Great War, the Union had curtailed the construction of Capital Ships. However, with the Pacific War, the Union Naval Armaments Board had made the decision to design a new generation of battleships. Which these ships were to implement not only the improvements made over the years, but also the lessons learned from the Pacific War. The battleships that ended up being designed were to be fast battleships, so that they could accompany the fleet carriers so that could escort them. In 1936, the Navy would award the construct of five of these new battleships to the Fore River, Bethlehem Steel, and New York shipyards to construct these ships. They were named the USS Montana, Massachusetts, Washington, Michigan, and Vermont, with the Montana being launched in 1939 and being commissioned in late 1940. At the time of the start of the 2nd Great War, only the Montana and Washington were completed as the Massachusetts and the rest of the class were being fitted out. The USS Washington would hunt and successfully sink the CSS Jefferson Davis in late 1941 off the coast of New Jersey with the older battleship USS Pennsylvania. The Washington alongside with her sisterships the Massachusetts and the Montana would sink the Confederate Battlecruiser Stuart and British Battleship King George V off the coast of Bermuda in September of 1943. The USS Montana would also sink the Confederate Cruiser CSS Alabama in June of 1942 somewhere miles of the coast of the Union controlled coast. The USS Michigan was damaged by Confederate Navy Frogmen while providing fire support for Union Marines in Haiti in the Autumn of 1943 and spent five months in repairs as a result. In the final months of the war, these battleship would provide gun fire support for Union Marines in operations across the Caribbean. During this time, the USS Washington and her battlefleet would also sink three Confederate destroyers and two frigates while operating in the Straits of Florida on June 1st, 1944, which would prove to be the last naval action of the war. The Washington along with her sisterships, the USS Massachusetts and USS Vermont and a number of smaller Union warships would sail into the anchorage of Tampa Bay to accept the surrender of the remaining Confederate fleet there. In the present day, two of the ships, the USS Washington and USS Massachusetts are both currently preserved as museum ships.

 

Some of my ideas of what the footwear for the Union during the SGW would be like.


Standard boots for Union Enlisted Men, the M-1934 Jackboot.

The Standard Issue boots for Union Officers, the M-1927 Jackboots

The Late-War M-1943 Buckle Boots

 

Prospective Union navy Battleship List:

First Great War era

Dakota-Class (1911) Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Delaware (the first of the "Co-op with the Kaiser" battleships, intended to operate alongside the German High Seas Fleet in the open Atlantic.)

New York-class (1912) New York, Illinois, Iowa, Pennsylvania

Massachusetts-class (1913) Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan

Ohio-class (1915) Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut (First US battleships to be armed with 16-inch guns)

Vermont-class (1916) Vermont, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada (built in response to the Royal Navy's "Super" Dreadnoughts and the French Lyon-class)


Post-GW1 construction would be curtailed by Socialist government cuts to defense spending, and several of the older battleships such as the Washington, Oregon and Delaware would be scrapped. USS New Jersey, the first Battlecruiser of the US navy, was initially to be converted into an Aircraft Carrier, to be named USS Vindication, but this program was cut after the USS Remembrance was commissioned and the hull was scrapped after languishing in political limbo for several years. Her sisters, USS Colorado and USS Missouri, never progressed beyond their keels and were likewise scrapped.

Second Great War era
With the Increase in militant rhetoric and the rise of right-wing governments in the CSA and Europe, the US Navy was forced to evaluate its battlefleet in the 1930's and found it desperately wanting. With their newest battleships already 20 years old and another war with Japan at their door, the Fleet began a crash program to modernize their aging vessels and construct new models.

California-class (1939) California, Montana, West Virginia, Maryland (built as part of the "New Model Navy" program in response to British and French buildup)

Idaho-class (1941) Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming, Rhode Island (built in response to reports of Japanese "Super Battleships," armed with 18-inch guns)

New Mexico-class (1942) New Mexico, Missouri, Colorado (name taken from scrapped battlecruiser, First Battleships designed with a Carrier task force in mind)

a Prototype design for a new USS Oregon armed with German-designed 20-inch guns was proposed, but the lack of large battleship engagements and the end of the war saw the design shelved.

With the end of the Second Great War and the fall of the CSA, the US would downscale its Battleship fleet massively, as its domain as the primary superpower in the western hemisphere left it with few challengers. Many of the GW1 era warships would be scrapped or sold, with the Indiana and Kansas being sold to Chile and Nevada to Brazil. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Maine would become museum ships in their respective states, while the foremast and a trio of main guns from the USS New York would be erected as a memorial to fallen sailors in New York City. Many cities would clamor for memorial guns from the ships, and a number of city squares would soon be adorned with anchors, light guns, compass towers or masts from the old vessels.
Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa would suffer a slightly more inglorious fate, being used as part of Superbomb tests in the South Pacific alongside most of the Confederate Navy. To the credit of the US builders, the ships resolutely refused to sink despite being struck by 3 bomb blasts, while many of their CSA counterparts succumbed after only one.

USS Dakota, a hero of both Great Wars, would become something of an Ambassadorial ship, touring the US and her allied states in the aftermath of the war. She would become the first US Warship to enter Charleston, South Carolina after its return to the Union, where the renunciation of secession would be signed by the state governing commission. The Ship's banner from the Battle of the Three Navies would be raised over Fort Sumpter by an honor guard of Colored personnel specially selected from each branch of the US military and overseen by Irving Morrell.
After swinging around Cape Horn and another visit to Pearl Harbor, where she would be anchored alongside the brand-new USS Colorado, She would deliver a team from San Francisco to Panama to make the first surveys for a canal, before, in 1947, settling into a permanent dry dock in Boston Harbor alongside the Frigate USS Constitution.

(this is all entirely my headcanon)

 

18-inch guns? That sounds heavy.

 

@Soundwave3591

I deleted that comment because I was being retarded.