King Thomas
Banned
I'm not sure how that would be possible without ASBs, but what if WW1 broke out in 1934 instead of 1914?
Germany needed a war in 1914, and needed it quickly before Russia get its act together and could steam-roller it.I'm not sure how that would be possible without ASBs, but what if WW1 broke out in 1934 instead of 1914?
Why? The technology exists and some bright spark may have gotten funding to do this. After all, once the internal combustion engine and caterpillar-tracks become available, and armoured and mobile artillery piece becomes very valuablehmm, well that would be interesting. Without WWI, there would be no tanks, or if they existed it would be very primitive.
Eh? how did WWI create carriers?Ditto with Aircraft Carriers.
Reasoning?Airplanes would be about the same as they would be historically, just a bit worse.
I'm not sure that the great powers would have learnt anything from the colonies or Balkan nations, they would have dismissed most findings as involving inferior armies ( as they did pre-1914)With no major wars it could be assumed that the tactics of mass waves would still be used and the same trench warfare slaughter would occur. Some nations might be a bit wiser form wars in colonies, or maybe a few minor european wars between balkan nations, that would be bound to happen.
Not sure, it depends upon what happened to military doctrine in those years...You could basically see a repeat of WWI with more destruction on Civillian populations from the air.
Erm, not really.... the split up of the Ottoman Empire is long-shot and A-H even more so... and why on earth would Russia have split up, it didn't after 1905, and took 3 years of awful war to just get rid of the Tzar?Also, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and Austria Hungry could have split up by then from internal pressure. So lots of what ifs.
Well the problem with this reasoning is that the use of tanks isn't prevented by technological reasons, it was psychological reasons. Army officers were in love with cavalry, it took having thousand upon thousands of mounted soldiers getting massacred to finally get the military leadership of western nations to see common sense. One could argue that the repeating rifle should have spelled the end of the mounted calvary charge, but military officers can be pretty hard headed sometimes. So until you actually get large masses of soldiers charging to their deaths against fixed machine gun positions you are probably not going to see the military leadership in europe or elsewhere adopt armored warfare.Why? The technology exists and some bright spark may have gotten funding to do this. After all, once the internal combustion engine and caterpillar-tracks become available, and armoured and mobile artillery piece becomes very valuable
Reasoning?
Actually I think that we might have arrived earlier at motorised and mobile warfare earlier than in OTL.
OTL WWI was a freaky break in a natural development prodcing freaky focus on how to break the freaky stalemates seen in OTL WWI.
Probably light and fast, some with tracks, others on wheels, and predominantly for deep penetrations and flanking movements.
Others will understand to have the services co-operate - they might produce "blitzkrieg" ahead of OTL. The biggest difference would be the absense of reliable radios on the vehicles,
The colonial empires will have obvious advantages from using light bombers and patrol aircraft to police the empire and suppress rebellions. So the idea of having planes support army operations would not be absent. Long before radar and reliable radios onboard fighter aircraft the strategic bomber will be very difficult to intercept, and this ATL probably will overestimate the effect of bombing as much as OTL interwar years.
On the seas I think we will see a lot more battlecruisers - fast, well armed, very big and with minimal protection. ...
... I'm not sure the idea of a big massed airstrike like USN WWII will advance beyond the heads of some excentric junior officers however.
Submarines will mainly be seen as fleet weapons - small ones to operate in confined waters and big ones on the open seas in close co-operation with the battlefleets.
Yeah, I don't think air power and the navy are going to have much luck in mixing into the domain of big guns on big ships. I think such a conflict is going to see major major sea battles (ship to ship) the likes of which we can only imagine. Germany is going to have time to close the gap with Britain. I'm not sure how many resources the French have to devote to naval matters but the Brits might be forced to coordinate a naval strategy with her allies to keep the numbers advantage over Germany.
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Do you mean as to act as a screen much like the 'rings' kept around modern battle groups? I can see submarine technology becoming very important to such a war with devastating effects if such a route is only taken. But was there anyone in naval circles who had incentive to push the submarine?
Actually there is no way for the Germans to close the gap with Britain without the British doing something about it. The size of the Reichsmarine is legislatively set by the Reichstag, while the size of the Royal Navy is not.
As historically, it will be the British that will experiment and be the initial innovators with the submarine and naval aviation. ... Fisher had developed the concept of the 'flotilla defense' system (I can't recall the correct name right now) which was centered around submarines and fast torpedo boats backed up by battlecruisers.