Voices of Doomsday
- Thread starter Geon
- Start date
Lost Freeway
Banned
I'm surprised LBJ is still allowed to tell his story behind bars. It'll be a long time before ITTL Americans see him as anything other than the man who nearly destroyed American democracy.
Between JFK and LBJ, the Democratic Party will be a long time recovering.
Geon
Donor
Like it or not Johnson was the legitimate president of the United States from 1962 until he started acting like a dictator over a year later. I could easily see Johnson writing something like this or dictating it to try and justify the reasons he took the actions he did. In OTL he gave serious thoughts to the legacy he would leave in the last days of his life. I see that even more evident here.
I suspect the historic jury will be out on JFK for many years to come. Some will blame him for the war. Others will see him as a hero and martyr - staying at his post giving orders to the end. I hint at this in a non-canonical speech I wrote for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis which is on Amerigo's thread.
As for Johnson, he will be considered an American traitor on the same level as Benedict Arnold. Johnson will have his apologists to be sure but they will be few and far between. The Democratic Party is one of the casualties of World War III fragmenting after the elections into a more conservative Democratic Party (The American Party) and a very liberal cadre called the New Democratic Party. As of the end of Amerigo's TL no Democrat has yet been elected president.
It is a purely rationalist approach; I think though that once we've accepted the premise of alternate, parallel timelines existing at all that we need to expand our minds a bit. Given the practically infinite number of TLs proliferating from a given divergence, choosing to pay attention to the one where merely chaotic divergences are minimized is no more or less realistic than choosing to let every possible alternate choice that comes along after some POD be a matter of flipping coins and rolling dice. If an author chooses to tell a story from the former approach though, maximizing the parallels between his ATL and OTL as much as is logically possible given the divergence, I don't think it should be dismissed as irrational It might be laziness (I think it often is in say Turtledove) but "unreasonable" parallels that are however possible do serve a didactic function in ATL stories.
Where would I be in this world transformed before I was born OTL? When I read this TL I assumed I was butterflied away though my OTL birth was due less than two years later. I figured that even though Los Angeles, where both my parents were, is fine (thus far), my father, an upperclassman at Loyola U and an Air Force ROTC cadet, would be summoned by Presidential decree to military service, probably postponing or even permanently derailing his OTL flight school and interceptor pilot training and service in favor of something a lot less fun and romantic but a lot more necessary; he might even be diverted from the Air Force completely into the Army! Naturally even if these ATL duties did not kill him or break up his engagement with my mother, they presumably would disrupt the rhythm of that relationship, so the first child born to them might well be born within a few days of my own birth, but would not genetically be me. Then factor in that even if it is exactly my DNA, their lives are different. Different kind of service, different nation to serve in--perhaps the odds are more in my father's favor overall than they were OTL, since he is certainly not going to be sent to fly 100 missions over Vietnam. It is a question of how much more or less dangerous service in the USA might become.
So, there is just no way this alternate person born in early 1965 can possibly be me, right? I cannot exist, because the ATL is so different than OTL in the months and years of my childhood. Neither can anyone else who grew up when I did; therefore their children cannot exist either; the whole damn world is butterflied and anyone born after the war is a substantially different person. Stands to reason, does't it?
But remember this--there are a gazillion TLs stemming from the war in Amerigo's TL just as they do from any other POD. Somewhere in that radiance of (blighted) timelines, there is a world where 1) it was my genes and not some ATL brother's that came together 2) though details and even major facts of my early life have changed drastically, the general character of my young life is somehow replicated close enough that my personality is closely paralleled. No, this ATL person is not "me," nor would a parallel person in a TL very similar to ours (one, let us say, where President Obama's Vice President is not Joe Biden (nor Hillary, so the TL is still similar to ours in that respect)) be "me" either even if the current course of their lives ran almost exactly the same and he is typing words almost identical to these words right now. The Amerigo-Cuba-War version of "me" is obviously divided from me by a whole lot of factors. Nevertheless, it might be meaningful for me to write a story about this person, to imagine how their life could have gone, to suggest they have a destiny to meet up with the same significant figures, or to form similar relationships with someone else, and their lives have similar outcomes.
This is not ruled out by the conditions the POD creates. Therefore it is no more "irrational" to follow this parallel story than it is to insist on every possible variable great or small being significantly and therefore increasingly divergent, until by 2016 there are hardly any names we recognize. (Sure, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might both have lived, but their lives are so derailed that if anyone at all makes a microcomputer revolution--it isn't them, it's someone else who also is alive today OTL, but one of them is a retired realtor now living in Arizona and another one got into a bad drug bust and is currently doing time in an Oregon state prison, their third incarceration in fact...I'd have to look up Gates's and Jobs's biographies to check, but there are pretty high odds one or the other or both died right during the war, and if not, that their lives have taken them into completely different places.
But if it is possible for both to survive, it is possible for these two men to still be the protagonists of microcomputing in the 1970s and '80s--except of course, that is not something just two men do. There had to be an industry of microelectronics, and a fan base of amateur computing enthusiasts, and the first may well be retarded in this world, and the second a luxury it cannot afford at all. Not anyway in the late 70s and early '80s; perhaps the iconic breakthroughs to microcomputing must come later in this world, in the later 80s or 1990s, and therefore the key figures are completely different people. Not by butterflies, but because the Gates/Jobs rivalry was preempted, made impossible, by alternate events. Or it might still be possible anyway. In which case we don't need to call the cops if some author decides Gates and Jobs will play the role they did OTL despite the devastating 1963 War.
So it is, I might exist after all. My siblings might even exist, in the sequence and with the exact birth timing that they all were born in OTL.
And therefore, O'Lexis 89. If my youngest sister can exist, so can he!
One reason we write ATL stories at all is, to put people we think we know into strange situations that test their natures. This is not mysticism or a belief in a hidden deity with His thumb on the scales of destiny--this is thought experiment and it should not be ruled out of bounds by a half-baked logic.
This is really a great post and while the bulk of my own post was aimed more at the relative improbability of a given individual being born 30 years after a certain POD, you do raise an important point in that it is not impossible, either. My own preference, if I were writing a TL, would be for a more probabilistic approach, but that's simply a preference and not a hard and fast rule I'd insist others follow. I would expect there to be curious parallels and similarities if one could explore an alternate timeline, so I don't find them to be problematic per se.
It's also important to remember that this is all merely theoretical. While interesting, empirical study of each approach is, at the moment, quite impossible. Nonetheless, it's all quite fascinating to discuss and I very much appreciate your post.
And I'm going to admit that any TL with a nuclear war in it is going to be very very hard to preserve plausible parallels even in the noncombatant nations, let alone the combatant ones. If I assume my father and mother get through the decades of crisis with a minimum of trauma, still and all, I would be born right in the worst of times for the USA I'd be trying to grow up in. It surely must make me a very different person. And trying to replicate the geography of my childhood would be absurd in the extreme; many of the places I lived as a child would presumably be blasted fields covered with extra high concentrations of fallout after all! My life having been centered about Air Force bases you see. I'd have to go over the target list to confirm that Tyndall, Loring and Langley AFBs were all destroyed--but it would be pretty amazing if none of them were. Loring existed to pose the greatest threat to the USSR a base in the lower 48 states could possibly, after all. Langley was the headquarters of the Tactical Air Command as well as a NASA site--it might not have been targeted directly but an attack on Norfolk Naval base across the James River surely would make it untenable to keep in commission. Tyndall is on the Gulf coast of Florida and surely something the desperate Cubans would strike at. These, along with living in Whittier when my father was overseas, were the major sites of my childhood. In the unlikely event my father is allowed to stay on career track and be accepted as an Air Force fighter pilot, the locations will surely be quite different. Far more likely, he gets diverted into Army service and I grow up not seeing much of him for years while living with relatives in Whittier, California--in a Los Angeles quite different from the one I knew when I did live there.
Other people, who OTL grew up in one town, one that ITTL did not get hit and is far from places that did, might manage to closely parallel their personal development and be essentially the same person. It is absurd for me to expect any such thing; an ATL version of "myself" will think and act very differently. And the probability of my own birth, with my own genes on the same day, is low enough considering the crisis--but my sisters and eventual brothers are so unlikely it is silly to have them.
Other people, who OTL grew up in one town, one that ITTL did not get hit and is far from places that did, might manage to closely parallel their personal development and be essentially the same person. It is absurd for me to expect any such thing; an ATL version of "myself" will think and act very differently. And the probability of my own birth, with my own genes on the same day, is low enough considering the crisis--but my sisters and eventual brothers are so unlikely it is silly to have them.
I know at one point there were two ICBMs targeted for the Tidewater area -- one in Norfolk, one on the Peninsula that was probably aimed at Langley (Newport News Shipbuilding is a target in its own right but it's also close enough to Norfolk Naval Base that it would take significant damage, and possibly suffer annihilation, from an NNB strike). I think the original TL author changed that in later versions based on a smaller number of ICBMs available to the Soviets.
Norfolk has got to take priority as it would have been the largest single US base of any type, bar none. Loads of nukes stored there for the Atlantic fleet too. Compared to that all the other targets in the region take a back seat. But what a target-rich environment to have to spare! Besides Langley and the shipyards, there's Fort Eustis for the Army, and also Fortress Monroe which is little more than a symbolic target perhaps (it's a pre-Civil War era polygonal fortress that the Union held all through the Civil War; the tours point out the house Robert E. Lee had as a captain and the cell in which Jefferson Davis was eventually held. Given Communist ideology perhaps they'd spare it, but as late as the 1980s it was an operational Army base of some kind; I'm not sure what went on there, something administrative I suppose, but if they could have the resources to attack it they would.
If they could deliver a multi-megaton bomb this region would be a prime target, rivaling Washington or New York in importance. It also controls the mouth of the Chesapeake.
If the war waited until the mid-80s the region would be glowing rubble from Yorktown to Virginia Beach.
As it is, I suppose you refer to the very limited number of ICBMs the Soviets had, some of which Amerigo presumed would fail one way or another. Against the continental US the only other effective strikes would be from a handful of bombers that make it past Canadian based defenses to strike at the Great Lakes region--and submarine launched missiles.
The latter are what is keeping us in suspense here. Most Soviet subs have been hunted down and sunk by now--but what about the handful that have got away so far? No one knows just how long they can bide their time, creeping into an advantageous strike position, and out of a blue sky whammo, another city that thought it got off lucky is no more.
The Soviet submariners might have no reliable way of knowing which of their targets have already been taken care of, unless they happen to catch one of President Johnson's broadcasts; even then they might have to guess they might be some sort of black op and disregard it. They might quickly figure out that relatively few US targets were hit though, and that therefore if they aim a salvo of missiles each at their predesignated target, most of them will do new damage. That has to be encouraging for them, as it the likely confirmation they pick up that they don't have to waste any more shots on either New York or Washington. So assuming the majority are set to kill, in a combination of stoic execution of orders (and no one left alive to speak of to countermand them and order a stand-down either) and bitterness or insanity, then life becomes a game of Russian Roulette in America. When the last sub has been sunk, how will anyone know it was the last, except that no more missiles come?
So yeah, just because Norfolk had to take priority, doesn't mean the rest of the region is OK now. Odds are excellent that one of the sub launched missiles or more ill aim ant Newport News.
If they could deliver a multi-megaton bomb this region would be a prime target, rivaling Washington or New York in importance. It also controls the mouth of the Chesapeake.
If the war waited until the mid-80s the region would be glowing rubble from Yorktown to Virginia Beach.
As it is, I suppose you refer to the very limited number of ICBMs the Soviets had, some of which Amerigo presumed would fail one way or another. Against the continental US the only other effective strikes would be from a handful of bombers that make it past Canadian based defenses to strike at the Great Lakes region--and submarine launched missiles.
The latter are what is keeping us in suspense here. Most Soviet subs have been hunted down and sunk by now--but what about the handful that have got away so far? No one knows just how long they can bide their time, creeping into an advantageous strike position, and out of a blue sky whammo, another city that thought it got off lucky is no more.
The Soviet submariners might have no reliable way of knowing which of their targets have already been taken care of, unless they happen to catch one of President Johnson's broadcasts; even then they might have to guess they might be some sort of black op and disregard it. They might quickly figure out that relatively few US targets were hit though, and that therefore if they aim a salvo of missiles each at their predesignated target, most of them will do new damage. That has to be encouraging for them, as it the likely confirmation they pick up that they don't have to waste any more shots on either New York or Washington. So assuming the majority are set to kill, in a combination of stoic execution of orders (and no one left alive to speak of to countermand them and order a stand-down either) and bitterness or insanity, then life becomes a game of Russian Roulette in America. When the last sub has been sunk, how will anyone know it was the last, except that no more missiles come?
So yeah, just because Norfolk had to take priority, doesn't mean the rest of the region is OK now. Odds are excellent that one of the sub launched missiles or more ill aim ant Newport News.
With the lack of command and control, it would not surprise me if a set of Soviet sub-launched missiles hit NYC and DC again. And again. Living anywhere in the CEP of any major city would be a bad insurance risk for the next year.
There had something additional
Soviet Submarine with Nuclear torpedo on board and not used it against US or Nato Navy, had order to Attack enemy Harbor with it.
then return to secret base like Balaklava and Severomorsk get reload with more Nuclear torpedo and attack enemy sea coast sites or Fleet
Seems that during 1963, the Polaris subs will fire several Salvos SLBM on shattered remains of the USSR...
"Secret base?" Is that feasible at all?
On paper, I can imagine ways and means, and paranoid Americans might figure you never can know for sure just what capabilities the USSR actually had. Certainly you can't infer from observable poverty and backwardness that they cannot possibly do X, or Y, or Z; it could be a matter of setting high regime priorities in a compartmentalized secret projects sector that for all one can prove would match or exceed the visible economy.
I'd think though to that to make sub pens with stockpiles of nuclear reloads that could serve after a full nuclear exchange would be pretty James Bond if not Tom Swift stuff. It is one thing to make hardened bunkers that can keep operating after a missile exchange. But the minimum effort necessary would leave lots of visible traces. It is another to do it camouflaged so that Power's SAC targeting team does not know they are there to strike, and then to operate while remaining invisible.
In Amerigo's scenario, the American side of the exchange quickly predominates. The missile attacks alone merely cause great decimation, but then waves of SAC bombers go rolling in. At first they take a lot of attrition and the majority of them are lost pretty soon. But eventually Soviet interception capability is exhausted and with the destruction in detail of Soviet infrastructure there is no way to recover them. Pretty soon the relatively small fraction of Western warplanes that survive have air supremacy over the USSR. And Amerigo anticipated the "secret base" possibility by postulating that patrols sweep over the wasteland territory, scouting precisely for the possibility of some base only lightly damaged rallying ragtag survivors, and drawing reserve stockpiles out for surprise late counterstrikes.
That is over land; the territory recently claimed by the USSR is vast and no surviving enemy powers have manpower to spare to occupy the place in detail.
A submarine base however must be on a coast. The Warsaw Pact as a whole suffered badly from a lack of suitable coasts! The Black Sea is a fine place with lots of Soviet coastline plus that of Romania and Bulgaria to be sure, but it is a relatively simple matter to monitor and if necessary blockade the straits leading into the Med, which localizes the threat to become mainly Turkey's problem. Someone would have to rule on just how badly Turkey was hit--surely the damn Jupiters were taken out, and I suppose as an American ally (not sure if in NATO formally yet, but that would have just been a matter of time if not already accomplished in '63) they'd get dozens or more of short-range missile and bomber strikes. So Turkey is not really in a position to defend itself, but neither is it target-rich any more. With the remnants of US and other NATO forces to simply monitor the straits, Black sea bases are useless.
The same I think applies to the Baltic.
This leaves the northwest Pacific coast and the Arctic Ocean to site these secret sub sites at. In both cases, the number of port regions where developed infrastructure gives an outlet to the large capability of the USSR to set up bases is limited, and the admittedly tremendous stretches of shoreline where in theory some secret base might be sited are difficult to access. Movements coastwise from Pacific ports to obscure locations are all too likely to be observed by prying Yankee eyes in subs and ships offshore.
The Americans have working spy sats by now, but I'd be willing to dismiss them as effective guarantees any work on secret bases would be observed. After about a dozen failed attempts the first NRO satellites only became operational very late in Eisenhower's final term and we've only had a handful of years of Kennedy admin to follow them. These satellites did not have real time transmission capability; they took photographs and send down rolls of film to be recovered, so basically the surveillance teams had to know in advance what they were looking for. However one reason Ike was so keen to develop these spy sats was that prior to them we used aircraft flying over Soviet territory to get a look-see. It was hardly possible to maintain a constant and universal watch on Soviet territory of course. But the Russians never knew just when we (or the British) would send something over. Sometimes they managed to shoot them down, sometimes they didn't. Every plane that got away with it carried valuable information and if the Russians got caught halfway through the process of setting up a secret sub base on the Arctic or Pacific coasts, we'd then know to look for more of the same.
How feasible would it be to construct something adequate for a Soviet sub to approach undetected, now that the Red Navy is no longer standing guard in their waters to try to chase off USN and RN observers and the survivors of these forces have little better to do than try to ferret out such bases?
Very few Soviet subs in 1963 would have nuclear power; the vast majority of them are diesel and need to refuel somewhere, and when making way across oceanic distances must frequently surface to snort in some air for their engines.
One thing Amerigo unfortunately gets very wrong IMHO is his notion that LBJ would recall all surviving US military forces deployed overseas to come home and help with domestic reconstruction. I agree that many of them would indeed be repatriated for such duties. But not all of them! I don't see him abandoning the near-century long legacy of "the American Century." Both parties OTL had, before WWII, substantial isolationist wings, but the men who achieved Presidential office in both were not of this camp. Woodrow Wilson was the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland (and before him, Buchanan before the Civil War) and both he and FDR, along with Truman, wound up overseeing American power projection and global responsibility (as we deemed it anyway, others might call it something else) growing by leaps and bounds between each one assuming office and leaving it. Leaving analysis of the three Republicans who held the office between the wars aside (and while US armament growth was certainly limited in their terms, they hardly turned aside from the doctrine of "a Navy second to none" though they did try to cheapen achieving that goal with global arms restrictions) all other Presidents of the 20th century were firmly on the side of an expanding US capability and presence.
It is quite true that now, the USA has really severe problems at home that need as many hands as possible to address. And that the very large number of Americans who were in uniform when the balloon went up are now badly decimated, with their forward bases devastated when not eradicated, their forward logistics and communications in a shambles...and quite possibly, the surviving peoples in the places they more or less occupy blame the USA as much as the USSR for the misery they now eke out their survival in.
On the other hand, except for the possibility that these same miserable remnants of Europe, Japan, and elsewhere will scrape together something resembling a modern industrial base and then turn on the Yankee intruders in organized force, there is now no one left in the world who can stand against US power, despite that power being reduced to a shadowy skeleton of what it once was. A great many USN hulls have probably been sunk--but we started with a whole lot of them, and the rest have not been. Given that the Soviet Navy was fighting for its life with nuclear torpedoes, I doubt there are a lot of badly damaged and barely floating ships; most of the survivors are lightly damaged and anyway there is no foe to take advantage of the possibly weakened state of some of them. The rest are fine, although their routine maintenance and supplies are in some long-term doubt. But surely some suitable ports still exist in the USA itself--at Long Beach for instance, and probably lots of other bases on the various coasts. If the Soviets were able to make a clean sweep of all suitable ports in Europe and elsewhere in range of their IRBMs and bombers (which would imply Japan is as bad off as Europe, but I think Amerigo had them getting off less terribly suggesting some Japanese ports still survive) by that same token much lighter ships, destroyers and frigates, can dominate those waters and make do with a lot less forward support while being capable of rotating back to the USA.
Similarly US aircraft are decimated and suitable runways for the most advanced types are messed up with without resources ready to hand to refurbish them or supply them. But again the Air Force Military Air Transport Service (MATS, as it was then) can trade its surviving jet transports for operations back in the States on the majority of suitable runways still extant there, while scouring the civil market (US is under martial law and eminent domain applies) for DC-3s and so so that can operate with modern STOL type planes on very rough fields. Perhaps modern F-4s and F-101s or their European equivalents are not suited for the new Europe, but old mothballed WWII type planes can be brought out and operate with plenty of superiority over any last-ditch ragtag Soviet partisans still surviving. These are not needed in great numbers either. Civil aircraft can be retrofitted with half-assed military kit as well.
The Army was of course under fire and shot up in droves, and many of them have taken severe radiation poisoning, and possibly chem war damage too, I forget if that had much time to become a thing or not; I suspect if I go back I'll find nerve gas and mustard gas did precede the first use of nukes. But maybe not by enough that gas attacks could accomplish much before being overshadowed by nuclear strikes.
Still, American soldiers were about as well prepared as anyone could be for surviving a nuclear battlefield. This doesn't mean they survive well, but it does mean they (and NATO allies trained and equipped to a similar degree) survive better than civilians around them despite being targets. The US forces surviving and ambulatory when the nuclear exchange dies down (meaning the Warsaw Pact's entire infrastructure is gutted to the point of practical nonexistence and the last holdouts are fighting with nothing backing them up whatsoever) can and would achieve re-organization. Their prewar command and control is shot up and gone, but every unit's highest ranking officer or soldier, be that a colonel or a corporal, will accept orders from higher ranking led bodies they regroup with. Over time the US forces would thus reintegrate into a smaller but effective body subject to the orders of the President.
I don't believe then that LBJ would order all of them to board ships and planes and come home to clean up there. Leaving any behind in Europe would be a sacrifice to be sure. But it won't be a disinterested one; I think if LBJ looked ahead to the limited power and influence Amerigo grants the USA by the 21st century, he'd shudder in horror. Vice versa although the Europeans, Japanese, and others on whose soil a war was fought that the US itself largely evaded (again) might blame the Yankees, at the same time only the Yanks (and people like the Australians, maybe South Africans, Argentines and Brazilians and smaller South American nations) have the surviving infrastructure to hope to provide inputs to bring about recovery sooner in the devastated former allies. Despite officially unvoiced resentment, the quickest route to recovery and maximizing survival of the remnants of their peoples would be for the surviving fragments of NATO governments to fall in line under the banner of the continued alliance. Now the enemy is mainly the decimation of the aftermath rather than Soviet malice (though ongoing threats of rouge surviving partisans are enough to justify the military aspect of the alliance). A formal and announced "Marshall plan" might be political dynamite back home with so many millions of Americans living in worse misery than (the best off of) rescued Europeans, but simply doing it quietely--some Corps of Engineers help here, portable power generation and water purification plants shipped over to there, a whole bunch of little forms of aid simply not discussed in any detail in the US press--can make a world of difference, and bind what organization and industrial capacity can be scraped up in the shot-up terrain to US policy quite effectively. Thus, the USA retains goodwill of a sort (even with some resentment, surely individuals who are brought early on to settlements where their survival is better assured and those who need it the most have access to nearly state of the art medicines and the like must indeed be genuinely grateful, and a smart Johnson would make sure credit is shared both with their own national leadership and with Yankee benefactors.
So I don't think all the Yankees go straight home immediately, and after a few years when those left to assist in European construction while rooting out last-ditch Soviet resistance will be rotated home indeed--but only to be replaced with new American recruits trained for these duties in the recovery of the home land.
Europe would of course be mostly a bombed out ruin, with little immediate use for huge tracts of what was once prime agricultural and industrial land. But her population is also decimated. It should be possible to create a survivable and orderly life, if at far below prewar average living standards, for most of the survivors, consolidated into recovery colonies here and there. The possible mischief of separate nations seeking to readjust borders to their advantage is suppressed by the ongoing NATO alliance enforcing a simple policy of "status quo ante;" whatever West Germany or Luxembourg or Denmark had before the war is automatically still theirs, even if they agree to let some neighboring power hold some operations there a while. Their old capitals sit waiting for the fallout to die down for its own peoples to someday return, clear the rubble and start rebuilding, in the mean time it doesn't matter how awkward the locations of the refuge zones are, Uncle Sam will assist and the NATO alliance will share the burdens for mutual reconstruction.
Thus, instead of simply erasing most of the pre-War First world from the political map as they in some combination are left to die completely or turn to a slow process of isolated self-reconstruction, I believe the USA would sacrifice a small part of its own rapid self-reconstruction potential to prop up shadowy ghosts of the old allies and claim them as the surviving successors of the old order. Obviously attempting to project colonial power on any remaining overseas possessions that have any desire to leave the respective empires would be impossible. But vice versa, very few formal colonies still existed as of 1963. Congo, Angola, Mozambique and Timor as respective Belgian and Portuguese colonies would be most of what is left. If the PRC wanted to seize Hong Kong or Macau in the confusion there would be little to stop them of course.
The postwar status of the PRC is another aspect where I find Amerigo's predictions hard to square with what I'd think would be reasonable outcomes. He has a rather rosy projection in my view whereby Mao is very statesmanlike and mainly relies on soft power except for policy to the north, where he seizes control of eastern Siberia and Mongolia, and exercises hegemony over North Korea by restraining them from conquest of South Korea. In return the regional states, including ROK and Japan, move into a Chinese-led sphere where he leaves them alone internally but they harmonize foreign policy and trade with him. Neither Americans nor IIRC Soviet strikes do major harm so the PRC is free to develop as Mao sees fit.
But if the USA does not agree to withdraw from the Far East holdings we effectively had as of 1963--including Taiwan!--then I'd think Mao would take a harder line. At any rate it would not then be in his interest to do anything to protect South Korea whereas I have to agree that the USA is not in a position to fight another Korean war either. Loss of South Korea to a North that must perforce look to Chinese patronage however much they might dislike it seems very very likely and that in turn cannot fail to make Johnson look bad politically at home. A lot depends on just how badly Japan is hurt in the exchange; I suspect that American interceptors will do a very good job protecting Japan from bombers whereas the Soviets cannot afford to devote too many medium-range missiles to Japan. Still less to Taiwan or the Philippines, although Manila would be in trouble due to major US bases in the region. Again though, Soviet mid-range missiles would be hard put to strike so far and airborne bombers would not make it past the US defense gauntlet; the worst danger south of Japan would be submarine launched missiles but these too are going to be preoccupied aiming at US assets, and are subject to being decimated by USN sub-hunters before the general exchange begins.
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But Word of God for this TL is that in fact LBJ abandons all attempt to capitalize on the USA's stronger than ever relative position, in order to maximize reconstruction at home, and in effect leaves the entire world outside US borders to sink or swim by their own efforts. This is so huge a deviation from what I think he'd realistically do I can only throw my hands up and let his TL simply narrate what I regard as an improbable TL from that point of view.
So Michel, if I've forgotten that the thread has those secret bases you mention in canon, I apologize. I would ask anyone citing them as ongoing threats to explain how it is they can operate undetected. The Soviet subs seeking these ports out, and then departing them with reloads, will tend to lead watchful USAF and USN resources to infer their presence, redouble their efforts to locate them and root them out, and I'm not sure they can maintain their hidden status under such scrutiny. After all, knowing that there are some scattered and very vengeful Soviet soldiers and possibly secret installations out there, I believe Amerigo did explicitly mention extensive air patrols over former Soviet territory.
On paper, I can imagine ways and means, and paranoid Americans might figure you never can know for sure just what capabilities the USSR actually had. Certainly you can't infer from observable poverty and backwardness that they cannot possibly do X, or Y, or Z; it could be a matter of setting high regime priorities in a compartmentalized secret projects sector that for all one can prove would match or exceed the visible economy.
I'd think though to that to make sub pens with stockpiles of nuclear reloads that could serve after a full nuclear exchange would be pretty James Bond if not Tom Swift stuff. It is one thing to make hardened bunkers that can keep operating after a missile exchange. But the minimum effort necessary would leave lots of visible traces. It is another to do it camouflaged so that Power's SAC targeting team does not know they are there to strike, and then to operate while remaining invisible.
In Amerigo's scenario, the American side of the exchange quickly predominates. The missile attacks alone merely cause great decimation, but then waves of SAC bombers go rolling in. At first they take a lot of attrition and the majority of them are lost pretty soon. But eventually Soviet interception capability is exhausted and with the destruction in detail of Soviet infrastructure there is no way to recover them. Pretty soon the relatively small fraction of Western warplanes that survive have air supremacy over the USSR. And Amerigo anticipated the "secret base" possibility by postulating that patrols sweep over the wasteland territory, scouting precisely for the possibility of some base only lightly damaged rallying ragtag survivors, and drawing reserve stockpiles out for surprise late counterstrikes.
That is over land; the territory recently claimed by the USSR is vast and no surviving enemy powers have manpower to spare to occupy the place in detail.
A submarine base however must be on a coast. The Warsaw Pact as a whole suffered badly from a lack of suitable coasts! The Black Sea is a fine place with lots of Soviet coastline plus that of Romania and Bulgaria to be sure, but it is a relatively simple matter to monitor and if necessary blockade the straits leading into the Med, which localizes the threat to become mainly Turkey's problem. Someone would have to rule on just how badly Turkey was hit--surely the damn Jupiters were taken out, and I suppose as an American ally (not sure if in NATO formally yet, but that would have just been a matter of time if not already accomplished in '63) they'd get dozens or more of short-range missile and bomber strikes. So Turkey is not really in a position to defend itself, but neither is it target-rich any more. With the remnants of US and other NATO forces to simply monitor the straits, Black sea bases are useless.
The same I think applies to the Baltic.
This leaves the northwest Pacific coast and the Arctic Ocean to site these secret sub sites at. In both cases, the number of port regions where developed infrastructure gives an outlet to the large capability of the USSR to set up bases is limited, and the admittedly tremendous stretches of shoreline where in theory some secret base might be sited are difficult to access. Movements coastwise from Pacific ports to obscure locations are all too likely to be observed by prying Yankee eyes in subs and ships offshore.
The Americans have working spy sats by now, but I'd be willing to dismiss them as effective guarantees any work on secret bases would be observed. After about a dozen failed attempts the first NRO satellites only became operational very late in Eisenhower's final term and we've only had a handful of years of Kennedy admin to follow them. These satellites did not have real time transmission capability; they took photographs and send down rolls of film to be recovered, so basically the surveillance teams had to know in advance what they were looking for. However one reason Ike was so keen to develop these spy sats was that prior to them we used aircraft flying over Soviet territory to get a look-see. It was hardly possible to maintain a constant and universal watch on Soviet territory of course. But the Russians never knew just when we (or the British) would send something over. Sometimes they managed to shoot them down, sometimes they didn't. Every plane that got away with it carried valuable information and if the Russians got caught halfway through the process of setting up a secret sub base on the Arctic or Pacific coasts, we'd then know to look for more of the same.
How feasible would it be to construct something adequate for a Soviet sub to approach undetected, now that the Red Navy is no longer standing guard in their waters to try to chase off USN and RN observers and the survivors of these forces have little better to do than try to ferret out such bases?
Very few Soviet subs in 1963 would have nuclear power; the vast majority of them are diesel and need to refuel somewhere, and when making way across oceanic distances must frequently surface to snort in some air for their engines.
One thing Amerigo unfortunately gets very wrong IMHO is his notion that LBJ would recall all surviving US military forces deployed overseas to come home and help with domestic reconstruction. I agree that many of them would indeed be repatriated for such duties. But not all of them! I don't see him abandoning the near-century long legacy of "the American Century." Both parties OTL had, before WWII, substantial isolationist wings, but the men who achieved Presidential office in both were not of this camp. Woodrow Wilson was the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland (and before him, Buchanan before the Civil War) and both he and FDR, along with Truman, wound up overseeing American power projection and global responsibility (as we deemed it anyway, others might call it something else) growing by leaps and bounds between each one assuming office and leaving it. Leaving analysis of the three Republicans who held the office between the wars aside (and while US armament growth was certainly limited in their terms, they hardly turned aside from the doctrine of "a Navy second to none" though they did try to cheapen achieving that goal with global arms restrictions) all other Presidents of the 20th century were firmly on the side of an expanding US capability and presence.
It is quite true that now, the USA has really severe problems at home that need as many hands as possible to address. And that the very large number of Americans who were in uniform when the balloon went up are now badly decimated, with their forward bases devastated when not eradicated, their forward logistics and communications in a shambles...and quite possibly, the surviving peoples in the places they more or less occupy blame the USA as much as the USSR for the misery they now eke out their survival in.
On the other hand, except for the possibility that these same miserable remnants of Europe, Japan, and elsewhere will scrape together something resembling a modern industrial base and then turn on the Yankee intruders in organized force, there is now no one left in the world who can stand against US power, despite that power being reduced to a shadowy skeleton of what it once was. A great many USN hulls have probably been sunk--but we started with a whole lot of them, and the rest have not been. Given that the Soviet Navy was fighting for its life with nuclear torpedoes, I doubt there are a lot of badly damaged and barely floating ships; most of the survivors are lightly damaged and anyway there is no foe to take advantage of the possibly weakened state of some of them. The rest are fine, although their routine maintenance and supplies are in some long-term doubt. But surely some suitable ports still exist in the USA itself--at Long Beach for instance, and probably lots of other bases on the various coasts. If the Soviets were able to make a clean sweep of all suitable ports in Europe and elsewhere in range of their IRBMs and bombers (which would imply Japan is as bad off as Europe, but I think Amerigo had them getting off less terribly suggesting some Japanese ports still survive) by that same token much lighter ships, destroyers and frigates, can dominate those waters and make do with a lot less forward support while being capable of rotating back to the USA.
Similarly US aircraft are decimated and suitable runways for the most advanced types are messed up with without resources ready to hand to refurbish them or supply them. But again the Air Force Military Air Transport Service (MATS, as it was then) can trade its surviving jet transports for operations back in the States on the majority of suitable runways still extant there, while scouring the civil market (US is under martial law and eminent domain applies) for DC-3s and so so that can operate with modern STOL type planes on very rough fields. Perhaps modern F-4s and F-101s or their European equivalents are not suited for the new Europe, but old mothballed WWII type planes can be brought out and operate with plenty of superiority over any last-ditch ragtag Soviet partisans still surviving. These are not needed in great numbers either. Civil aircraft can be retrofitted with half-assed military kit as well.
The Army was of course under fire and shot up in droves, and many of them have taken severe radiation poisoning, and possibly chem war damage too, I forget if that had much time to become a thing or not; I suspect if I go back I'll find nerve gas and mustard gas did precede the first use of nukes. But maybe not by enough that gas attacks could accomplish much before being overshadowed by nuclear strikes.
Still, American soldiers were about as well prepared as anyone could be for surviving a nuclear battlefield. This doesn't mean they survive well, but it does mean they (and NATO allies trained and equipped to a similar degree) survive better than civilians around them despite being targets. The US forces surviving and ambulatory when the nuclear exchange dies down (meaning the Warsaw Pact's entire infrastructure is gutted to the point of practical nonexistence and the last holdouts are fighting with nothing backing them up whatsoever) can and would achieve re-organization. Their prewar command and control is shot up and gone, but every unit's highest ranking officer or soldier, be that a colonel or a corporal, will accept orders from higher ranking led bodies they regroup with. Over time the US forces would thus reintegrate into a smaller but effective body subject to the orders of the President.
I don't believe then that LBJ would order all of them to board ships and planes and come home to clean up there. Leaving any behind in Europe would be a sacrifice to be sure. But it won't be a disinterested one; I think if LBJ looked ahead to the limited power and influence Amerigo grants the USA by the 21st century, he'd shudder in horror. Vice versa although the Europeans, Japanese, and others on whose soil a war was fought that the US itself largely evaded (again) might blame the Yankees, at the same time only the Yanks (and people like the Australians, maybe South Africans, Argentines and Brazilians and smaller South American nations) have the surviving infrastructure to hope to provide inputs to bring about recovery sooner in the devastated former allies. Despite officially unvoiced resentment, the quickest route to recovery and maximizing survival of the remnants of their peoples would be for the surviving fragments of NATO governments to fall in line under the banner of the continued alliance. Now the enemy is mainly the decimation of the aftermath rather than Soviet malice (though ongoing threats of rouge surviving partisans are enough to justify the military aspect of the alliance). A formal and announced "Marshall plan" might be political dynamite back home with so many millions of Americans living in worse misery than (the best off of) rescued Europeans, but simply doing it quietely--some Corps of Engineers help here, portable power generation and water purification plants shipped over to there, a whole bunch of little forms of aid simply not discussed in any detail in the US press--can make a world of difference, and bind what organization and industrial capacity can be scraped up in the shot-up terrain to US policy quite effectively. Thus, the USA retains goodwill of a sort (even with some resentment, surely individuals who are brought early on to settlements where their survival is better assured and those who need it the most have access to nearly state of the art medicines and the like must indeed be genuinely grateful, and a smart Johnson would make sure credit is shared both with their own national leadership and with Yankee benefactors.
So I don't think all the Yankees go straight home immediately, and after a few years when those left to assist in European construction while rooting out last-ditch Soviet resistance will be rotated home indeed--but only to be replaced with new American recruits trained for these duties in the recovery of the home land.
Europe would of course be mostly a bombed out ruin, with little immediate use for huge tracts of what was once prime agricultural and industrial land. But her population is also decimated. It should be possible to create a survivable and orderly life, if at far below prewar average living standards, for most of the survivors, consolidated into recovery colonies here and there. The possible mischief of separate nations seeking to readjust borders to their advantage is suppressed by the ongoing NATO alliance enforcing a simple policy of "status quo ante;" whatever West Germany or Luxembourg or Denmark had before the war is automatically still theirs, even if they agree to let some neighboring power hold some operations there a while. Their old capitals sit waiting for the fallout to die down for its own peoples to someday return, clear the rubble and start rebuilding, in the mean time it doesn't matter how awkward the locations of the refuge zones are, Uncle Sam will assist and the NATO alliance will share the burdens for mutual reconstruction.
Thus, instead of simply erasing most of the pre-War First world from the political map as they in some combination are left to die completely or turn to a slow process of isolated self-reconstruction, I believe the USA would sacrifice a small part of its own rapid self-reconstruction potential to prop up shadowy ghosts of the old allies and claim them as the surviving successors of the old order. Obviously attempting to project colonial power on any remaining overseas possessions that have any desire to leave the respective empires would be impossible. But vice versa, very few formal colonies still existed as of 1963. Congo, Angola, Mozambique and Timor as respective Belgian and Portuguese colonies would be most of what is left. If the PRC wanted to seize Hong Kong or Macau in the confusion there would be little to stop them of course.
The postwar status of the PRC is another aspect where I find Amerigo's predictions hard to square with what I'd think would be reasonable outcomes. He has a rather rosy projection in my view whereby Mao is very statesmanlike and mainly relies on soft power except for policy to the north, where he seizes control of eastern Siberia and Mongolia, and exercises hegemony over North Korea by restraining them from conquest of South Korea. In return the regional states, including ROK and Japan, move into a Chinese-led sphere where he leaves them alone internally but they harmonize foreign policy and trade with him. Neither Americans nor IIRC Soviet strikes do major harm so the PRC is free to develop as Mao sees fit.
But if the USA does not agree to withdraw from the Far East holdings we effectively had as of 1963--including Taiwan!--then I'd think Mao would take a harder line. At any rate it would not then be in his interest to do anything to protect South Korea whereas I have to agree that the USA is not in a position to fight another Korean war either. Loss of South Korea to a North that must perforce look to Chinese patronage however much they might dislike it seems very very likely and that in turn cannot fail to make Johnson look bad politically at home. A lot depends on just how badly Japan is hurt in the exchange; I suspect that American interceptors will do a very good job protecting Japan from bombers whereas the Soviets cannot afford to devote too many medium-range missiles to Japan. Still less to Taiwan or the Philippines, although Manila would be in trouble due to major US bases in the region. Again though, Soviet mid-range missiles would be hard put to strike so far and airborne bombers would not make it past the US defense gauntlet; the worst danger south of Japan would be submarine launched missiles but these too are going to be preoccupied aiming at US assets, and are subject to being decimated by USN sub-hunters before the general exchange begins.
---------
But Word of God for this TL is that in fact LBJ abandons all attempt to capitalize on the USA's stronger than ever relative position, in order to maximize reconstruction at home, and in effect leaves the entire world outside US borders to sink or swim by their own efforts. This is so huge a deviation from what I think he'd realistically do I can only throw my hands up and let his TL simply narrate what I regard as an improbable TL from that point of view.
So Michel, if I've forgotten that the thread has those secret bases you mention in canon, I apologize. I would ask anyone citing them as ongoing threats to explain how it is they can operate undetected. The Soviet subs seeking these ports out, and then departing them with reloads, will tend to lead watchful USAF and USN resources to infer their presence, redouble their efforts to locate them and root them out, and I'm not sure they can maintain their hidden status under such scrutiny. After all, knowing that there are some scattered and very vengeful Soviet soldiers and possibly secret installations out there, I believe Amerigo did explicitly mention extensive air patrols over former Soviet territory.
Impressive Analysis, Shevek 23
on Balaklava Submarine Base and Nuke Depot (Object 825 GTS),
Fact is that this installation became only public after the end Of Cold War
the soviet really manage to building that Bunker from 1957 to 1961 UNNOTICED by US intelligent service !
120 thousand tons of rock were removed and dump during night in Black sea, also was material move nights into site.
the bunker is design to withstand a straight 100kt nuclear hit !
it could servis up to 14 Submarines in same time, with supply and ammunition and nuclear torpedo (no SLBM)
But the installation had two disadvantage:
It's run time of 90 days until diesel generators run empty and
The Turkish Straits a narrow connection between Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, here the NATO can intercept Soviet submarines or even nuke the Bosphorus, so it's closed !
Other Object 825 GTS
There rumors that in Severomorsk is a bigger Submarine Bunker for SLBM subs.
so it would make sense there a another Object 825 GTS site in Primorsky Krai were the installation of Russian Pacific Fleet are.
On USA Troops in oversea and there use after World War III
first who gonna survive the War ?
Fact is that US Troops in Europa will face massive looses do use of Tactical nukes use by both sides
the NATO chain of command is gone it center and most bunkers also
the European governments also gone or even Dead, like centralized France now beheaded as Paris was vaporized
While Benelux and skandinavia suffer from fallout from France, Britain. Federal west Germany disintegrated into individually states
In Amerigo senario even Spain, Italy and Portugal got hit by Soviet Nukes
(east Europe is much worst condition do US overkill strategy on dropping nukes and Fallout of Soviet Nukes on west Europe)
So you POTUS and you got US troops in Europe or better say what is left over, with rising level of radioactivity and descending into Chaos
Order them Return home or To stay and bring survivors in safety and declare Martial law there ?
would they follow order or mutiny against it with demand "we want back to see what happen to our loved ones" ?
and how would locals react ? most of them lost everything, they figure some way to blame one, sooner or later it will be those "dam Yankees who stated this War"
Now the US troops who make Martial law on Europan Refugee areas are now "The Enemy" so let to a Analog Vietnam War situation in 1960s.
Certainly Johnson had order the US Troops in Europe to stay and keep eye on Survivors
This only a question of Time were at next POTUS election, the candidate wins with promise "To bring the Boys back Home"
next Europe were other US Troops deploy ?
Japan and Okinawa, South Korea, Taiwan (i'm not sure), Philippines and Guam
Okinawa will get vaporized by Soviet nukes and other Military sites in Japan
also South Korea certainly, the North Korea leader and Military will seize the opportunity with both hands and Invade, only to get Nuclear response by USA, hell yeah
Guam will be certain target for soviet sub, but i have no idea about plans the Soviets had for the Philippines
South Vietnam had several thousand American military "advisors" also.
is that all or had other nation US troops and advisors installed during begin 1960s?
On China who is neutral in Amerigo scenario, could also seize the opportunity with both hands and march in Hong kong and Macao to "restore law and order"
Maybe even Taiwan but that depends if Johnson is too occupied with Europe and rebuilding america
If i recall this right Mao say once something like this "They can attack us nuclear and kill 2/3 of population there still 200 million chinese survivors who can fight back"
on Balaklava Submarine Base and Nuke Depot (Object 825 GTS),
Fact is that this installation became only public after the end Of Cold War
the soviet really manage to building that Bunker from 1957 to 1961 UNNOTICED by US intelligent service !
120 thousand tons of rock were removed and dump during night in Black sea, also was material move nights into site.
the bunker is design to withstand a straight 100kt nuclear hit !
it could servis up to 14 Submarines in same time, with supply and ammunition and nuclear torpedo (no SLBM)
But the installation had two disadvantage:
It's run time of 90 days until diesel generators run empty and
The Turkish Straits a narrow connection between Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, here the NATO can intercept Soviet submarines or even nuke the Bosphorus, so it's closed !
Other Object 825 GTS
There rumors that in Severomorsk is a bigger Submarine Bunker for SLBM subs.
so it would make sense there a another Object 825 GTS site in Primorsky Krai were the installation of Russian Pacific Fleet are.
On USA Troops in oversea and there use after World War III
first who gonna survive the War ?
Fact is that US Troops in Europa will face massive looses do use of Tactical nukes use by both sides
the NATO chain of command is gone it center and most bunkers also
the European governments also gone or even Dead, like centralized France now beheaded as Paris was vaporized
While Benelux and skandinavia suffer from fallout from France, Britain. Federal west Germany disintegrated into individually states
In Amerigo senario even Spain, Italy and Portugal got hit by Soviet Nukes
(east Europe is much worst condition do US overkill strategy on dropping nukes and Fallout of Soviet Nukes on west Europe)
So you POTUS and you got US troops in Europe or better say what is left over, with rising level of radioactivity and descending into Chaos
Order them Return home or To stay and bring survivors in safety and declare Martial law there ?
would they follow order or mutiny against it with demand "we want back to see what happen to our loved ones" ?
and how would locals react ? most of them lost everything, they figure some way to blame one, sooner or later it will be those "dam Yankees who stated this War"
Now the US troops who make Martial law on Europan Refugee areas are now "The Enemy" so let to a Analog Vietnam War situation in 1960s.
Certainly Johnson had order the US Troops in Europe to stay and keep eye on Survivors
This only a question of Time were at next POTUS election, the candidate wins with promise "To bring the Boys back Home"
next Europe were other US Troops deploy ?
Japan and Okinawa, South Korea, Taiwan (i'm not sure), Philippines and Guam
Okinawa will get vaporized by Soviet nukes and other Military sites in Japan
also South Korea certainly, the North Korea leader and Military will seize the opportunity with both hands and Invade, only to get Nuclear response by USA, hell yeah
Guam will be certain target for soviet sub, but i have no idea about plans the Soviets had for the Philippines
South Vietnam had several thousand American military "advisors" also.
is that all or had other nation US troops and advisors installed during begin 1960s?
On China who is neutral in Amerigo scenario, could also seize the opportunity with both hands and march in Hong kong and Macao to "restore law and order"
Maybe even Taiwan but that depends if Johnson is too occupied with Europe and rebuilding america
If i recall this right Mao say once something like this "They can attack us nuclear and kill 2/3 of population there still 200 million chinese survivors who can fight back"
In 1962, you would have had a ton of surplus WW2 aircraft still stashed away at the Davis-Monthan AFB boneyard, a robust general aviation fleet which could be requisitioned and, of course, the US commercial fleet which still had DC-3s in it in 1962. I think that there would have been minimal losses to the US commercial and GA fleets; carriers like Pan Am and TWA aren't going to be leaving 707s sitting around Idlewild in the face of a national emergency. The Douglas and Lockheed commercial production facilities in the LA area are unharmed, though Convair in San Diego and Boeing at Seattle are probably out of commission. The US will have, despite the damage, the largest fleet of aircraft in the world with fuel and pilots to fly them. And it still has the ability to make replacement parts for the planes in the air.
So, the US will have the capacity to dominate the air globally in a way no other nation can. That means air superiority militarily and a robust ability to provide humanitarian relief to allies affected by the war. That's an advantage in geopolitics I don't see the US throwing away in an isolationist retreat. There are still more than enough resources to throw at the adversely affected parts of the US to make a global retreat highly unlikely, IMO.
So far i know was Convair production plants around surroundings of San Diego
Like Convair (Lindbergh Field Plant) for Aircraft and Convair Astronautics (Kearny Mesa Plant) for Atlas ICBM with there Point Loma Test Facility and Sycamore Canyon Test Facility.
Boeing has it production plants around Seattle
Renton Factory at lake Washington for Boeing 707/KC-135 production (47.49934, -122.2089)
Boeing Plant 2 (B-47 B-52 production) in King County (47.530281, -122.3112)
Next to that is
The United States Air Force Plant 42 east L.A.
used since 1954 by different Companies like Skunks Works.
The Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana
Used by Boeing and Convair to build Saturn rockets in begin of 1960s
Like Convair (Lindbergh Field Plant) for Aircraft and Convair Astronautics (Kearny Mesa Plant) for Atlas ICBM with there Point Loma Test Facility and Sycamore Canyon Test Facility.
Boeing has it production plants around Seattle
Renton Factory at lake Washington for Boeing 707/KC-135 production (47.49934, -122.2089)
Boeing Plant 2 (B-47 B-52 production) in King County (47.530281, -122.3112)
Next to that is
The United States Air Force Plant 42 east L.A.
used since 1954 by different Companies like Skunks Works.
The Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana
Used by Boeing and Convair to build Saturn rockets in begin of 1960s
San Diego took a nuclear strike in this timeline, so I don't think you're getting much aircraft production their in the short term. Likewise Seattle. But there are plenty of aerospace plants in Los Angeles (Lockheed, Hughes, Douglas, North American, Rockwell all had factories scattered around the city). And I know there are plenty of other cities with aerospace industry.
Like Northrop near L.A., McDonnell at St Louis or Martin at Denver will be save
Grumman will be also under victims, do massive Fallout on US east coast
also Fairchild plant in Farmingdale near New York, but they got also plants in Hagerstown (Maryland) and San Antonio (Texas)
Allot What If in US Aerospace in this TL
Like What Replacement on B-52/B-47 Bombers or Navy Aircraft and Who gonna build big aircrafts in USA ?