Drake's Drum [Nicholas Sumner]

[Vendetta]

I brought up Nick Sumner's Drake's Drum trilogy during the the discussion of my aircraft ranking system as one of the sources for some of the alternate history plane designs. Having searched and found no previous mention of the series on here, I thought I'd open up a thread to recommend it, and discuss it with anyone who happens to have read it (or decides to). Drake's Drum should certainly interest any fan of the TBOverse, given some of the broad parallels between the two. Drake's Drum is similarly a story in which World War II comes to an early end, with Germany triumphant in Europe, before erupting again several years later.

The story currently stands as a trilogy, with the first book covering the years leading up to 1945, while the renewed world war takes place over the second and third books. A fourth one is currently in the works, which seems to be an epilogue of sorts covering what were the Cold War years in our own timeline. The research that has gone into the series is impressive; Sumner is very interested in technical details. Sumner also deserves praise for the polish and production value of his series - the books are written not as conventional novels, but in anthology fashion as excerpts from a variety of historical publications, interviews, and so on. The effect is highly immersive. You can get a sample of this from the appendices on his website where he provides a lot of reference material and background information that would clutter the story too much to include in the narrative.

From a literary perspective, the story is good, though not perfect. The pre-war buildup is tense and intriguing, there are a variety of points of departure introduced, rather than the usual norm of just one for an alternate history work, but each of them are well-developed. The war unfolds with a number of gripping set piece actions. Air and naval warfare take center stage and are described in loving detail (Stuart smiles down from the great beyond). Land warfare on the other hand suffers from weaker attention to detail and is definitely not as exciting, with the exception of two very engaging chapters on the battles for Gibraltar and Malta. Drake's Drum is most certainly a work with an Anglo-centric bias (our friend Simon probably perks up at this). America, Germany, Japan, and Italy get their fair share of attention, while everyone else probably gets too little, but Britain and the Commonwealth definitely receive the star treatment. It's by the third book that the story starts to lose its momentum; the tides of war have already swung so decisively by the end of the second book that the rest is more or less a foregone conclusion. There are few surprises left to spring on the reader, and the ones that remain are let down by too much foreshadowing - you're never really in doubt about what's going to happen. The third act isn't bad, but it's not as interesting as the first and the second.

On the whole, highly recommended - certainly one of the better alternative history series I've had the pleasure of reading. I'll be happy to go into further detail about it if anyone else has read it or plans to give it a try, I just wanted to offer a spoiler free opening post. Nick Sumner's website can again be reached at https://www.drakesdrum.co.uk and his author page on Amazon can be found here.

[Vendetta]

Soft Spoilers Below
For those who are interested in hearing some more details of the timeline, here is a short summary of events

• The first point of departure occurs during the First World War, where the British recognize the defects of their armor-piercing shells and take action to remedy them earlier. As a result, the Battle of Jutland is a decisive British victory, the effect of which is to raise the Royal Navy's prestige and helps it get a larger budget in the post-war years.
• Churchill's rise to power is forestalled by his early death; the car that struck and injured him in New York in 1931 does so fatally instead.
• Oswald Mosley does not leave the Labour Party in 1930 and go on to lead the New Party and the British Union of Fascists; he instead fights his way to the leadership of Labour, pulling the party into a more right-wing populist direction. Labour defeats the Tories and Mosley is Britain's PM in the years up to WWII. This doesn't actually change all that much in terms of Britain's foreign policy towards Germany, though it does mean that Britain settles for peace in 1940 once France has fallen instead of continuing the war.
• Huey Long is successfully operated on and saved after being shot in 1935. He goes on to mount a third party campaign in the 1940 presidential election which saps enough votes from FDR to spoil the election in favor of Wendell Willkie and the Republicans. Without FDR's aggressive economic policy towards Japan, war in the Pacific is averted.
• Germany invades the Soviet Union without having a war to fight in the west. Barbarossa stalls out before Moscow as it did historically. The campaign of 1942 takes a dramatically different course. Unopposed in the Mediterranean, the Regia Marina enters the Black Sea in force and helps the Germans carry out massive amphibious operations on the Caucasus coast. These landings behind their lines unravel the Soviet defenses enough for Germany to prevail in its Caucasus campaign. Cut off from oil, the Soviet economy gradually collapses, and by the end of 1943 the Germans have successfully taken Moscow and reached their Archangel-to-Astrakhan Line objectives. A rump Soviet Union remains behind the Urals but is unable to continue effective military operations.
• Japan continues the war against China and gets as far as it did historically by the end of Operation Ichi-Go, but is unable to progress any further beyond that. The United States gradually adopts a more hostile economic policy towards Japan.
• Mosley's popularity takes a severe beating after the war and the truce with Germany, and collapses after a personal scandal involving one of his mistresses. The Labour Party tears itself apart as it splits into centrist, far-left, and pro-Mosley factions, while the Liberals are the surprise beneficiaries - their leader Archibald Sinclair will be Britain's PM when the war resumes.
• Germany begins preparing itself for war against the United States and the British Empire, initiating a large naval construction program as well as long-range bomber development. A general naval arms race is on, with sharp increases of construction in Britain, the US, Japan, and Italy as well. Germany and Italy both develop aircraft carrier arms. Franco is unable to resist German influence and is drawn into a full military alliance with the Axis powers.
• A German-American naval clash over Iceland in May of 1945 escalates into full-scale war between the two, with Germany dragging its European allies into the conflict.
• Japan enters the war against the Americans in November, also attacking the British in Southeast Asia. Germany does not declare war on Britain, to the immense frustration of the Japanese.
• By mid-1946, the US Navy has gained the upper hand in the Atlantic; Hitler decides the time has come to strike at the British. A massive German invasion of the United Kingdom is launched in coordination with attacks on Malta and Gibraltar by the Italians and Spanish.
• US economic assistance is able to bring the resource-starved Soviet munitions industry back to life behind the Urals, reopening the war in the east, while China continues to fight against Japan. Every major power is now fully in play.

[James1978]

I believe the author, Nick Sumner, is a member here.

[Craiglxviii]

I believe the author, Nick Sumner, is a member here.

He certainly is

[Nick Sumner]

Vendetta, I would have responded to your PM but I've not made enough posts on this new board to be permitted to do that yet. So let me say here, thank you for posting this and I'm glad you mostly enjoyed Drake's Drum. The fourth volume, Drake's Drum: The Horizon of Our Hopes is still in the works. I've submitted it to Beta readers (one of whom is a member here) and got some excellent feedback which has shown me that significant changes are needed. I had hoped to have the thing complete by summer, but its looking more like autumn now. There's a couple of new appendices that are nearly ready to be put up on the website and when they are I will post some images here.

[Vendetta]

Good to hear from you, I wish you swift progress and look forward to seeing your next updates.

[Craiglxviii]

Vendetta, I would have responded to your PM but I've not made enough posts on this new board to be permitted to do that yet. So let me say here, thank you for posting this and I'm glad you mostly enjoyed Drake's Drum. The fourth volume, Drake's Drum: The Horizon of Our Hopes is still in the works. I've submitted it to Beta readers (one of whom is a member here) and got some excellent feedback which has shown me that significant changes are needed. I had hoped to have the thing complete by summer, but its looking more like autumn now. There's a couple of new appendices that are nearly ready to be put up on the website and when they are I will post some images here.

Nick, you need 5 posts to “qualify”…

[Nick Sumner]

Nick, you need 5 posts to “qualify”…

Good to know.

[Nick Sumner]

Nick, you need 5 posts to “qualify”…

Really good to know.

(That was obvious wasn't it.)

[Craiglxviii]

Nick, you need 5 posts to “qualify”…

Really good to know.

(That was obvious wasn't it.)

I see what you did there!

[Lordroel]

Vendetta, I would have responded to your PM but I've not made enough posts on this new board to be permitted to do that yet. So let me say here, thank you for posting this and I'm glad you mostly enjoyed Drake's Drum. The fourth volume, Drake's Drum: The Horizon of Our Hopes is still in the works. I've submitted it to Beta readers (one of whom is a member here) and got some excellent feedback which has shown me that significant changes are needed. I had hoped to have the thing complete by summer, but its looking more like autumn now. There's a couple of new appendices that are nearly ready to be put up on the website and when they are I will post some images here.

Always love to read the appendices you created for Drake's Drum, not many novels have that.

[1Big Rich]

Nick has posted a number of images from Drake's Drum in this thread over on the BC board.

Regards,

[Vendetta]

I took a read through the annex describing the North African campaign today and was left with some questions, about where the Italian armored divisions were and what they were doing. The action unfolds in close accordance with the historical Operation Compass, but with no diversion to Greece, so that the British don't hit the brakes until they've gotten to Tripoli and taken it. Seems plausible enough - you've accounted for this by mentioning that the Italian army in Libya is still made up of low quality divisions and that the better trained forces have been earmarked for the invasion of Malta.

There's a problem though - the Italians had no tank divisions in Libya during Operation Compass, just a few ad hoc groupings of light tank battalions, and in your 1946 timeline, they almost certainly would. By this time, Italy would have at least three active tank divisions (Ariete, Centauro, Littorio), perhaps even four to six in total. None of them would be slated to play any part in the Malta operation, so it seems likely that at least one of them, perhaps two or three depending on how many they have in total, would have been transferred to Libya.

With the original campaign in North Africa cut short, the Italian armored divisions would have been freed for duty elsewhere and likely been sent to take part in the fighting against the Soviet Union instead. They'd have gained considerable operational experience fighting alongside the Germans on the Russian front (and suffered serious materiel losses given the light weight of their vehicles). With the Soviets defeated in your timeline, many thousands of Russian tanks would have fallen into German hands - far more than they had any interest in using themselves. Many would have been given away to their allies, and the Italians would likely be eager to accept them - a T-34 or a KV are both much better than any Italian armor available in 1942.

Now fast forward to 1945, the Italian expeditionary army has returned from Russia, they have several hardened tank divisions that are available now, with a few hundred P26/40s (the M26/43 in your timeline) plus up to a few hundred T-34s and KVs to give them a solid core of medium tanks to work with. Even if just one of those divisions is there, that throws a pretty big wrench into the gears - the British are still attacking with only a handful of divisions themselves. The Battle of Bir-el-Gubi offers a good demonstration of what the Ariete Division was capable of - they met a British tank force with vehicles of comparable numbers and quality to their own and repulsed its attack soundly, trading fairly evenly in losses.

The Italian infantry divisions may still go down like dominos, but with one good armored division in play, they might halt one of the British divisions in its tracks, or make an unexpected counterthrust somewhere, or punch a hole in the British blocking forces for one of their surrounded garrisons to retreat through instead of surrendering. Any of those things could disrupt the whole tempo of the operation. An Italian defeat is still likely, but the cascade of failures could be interrupted enough to avert a total collapse of the 10th Army. Perhaps the British wouldn't make it all the way to Tripoli before reinforcements arrived. If two or more Italian armored divisions are available, however, then it's hard for me to imagine any Operation Compass-scale disaster taking place - your attack on Sidi Barrani is spearheaded by a single British armored division.

So, two questions: how many tank divisions does the Regia Esercito have in Drake's Drum by the time the war starts again, and where are they stationed? There ought to be at least three of them. At least one should be on home soil for contingency reasons (and perhaps for refitting), but at least one should be in Libya - there's little else it would make sense for them to be doing.

[Nick Sumner]

Vendetta, firstly my apologies for taking so long to get back to you (insert the usual poor excuses here) and thank you for your comments on this. The North African campaign in Drake's Drum is based on the 1942/43 Allied drive from El Alamein to Tunis with some tweaking for a slightly different logistics situation (more railways).

You make a very good point about the Italians in Russia (touched on in the Italian Army Appendix) and I wish I had thought of the Italians operating T34s in the Desert. But I didn't, so that's my failing. I've a feeling KVs might be a step too far, but suitably modified T34s used by experienced Italian tankers would have given the British (mostly equipped with Cromwells and Churchills known as Marlboroughs in TTL) some serious problems. That said, I believe Italian defeat in North Africa was more the product of omnipresent Allied air and sea power, inadequate Italian leadership in the field and the failings of Mussolini's Italian state (inadequate leadership on the home front). So while a better equipped Italian armoured division might have inflicted a sharp defeat or two on the British I think the overall outcome would still be the same.

A sharp defeat or two for the British during the campaign would also have made for a better story, but I didn't think of it and the book is published now so I'll have to squirrel that idea away for a second edition.

Three tank divisions sounds about right. Two at home (one ready for the Battle of Malta as a contingency) and one in the desert.

[Vendetta]

No need for apologies. And I agree, with the Royal Navy winning the battles in the Mediterranean and the amount of air power the Allies can bring into the theater, the best the Italians can really do is just delay the inevitable.

[Nick Sumner]

Very proud to announce the impending release of my new book Drake’s Drum: Horizon of Our Hopes. The fourth and final part of the series brings the story to a conclusion. It is published by Sea Lion Press and should be available by Christmas.

The image is the cover artwork. 'A Prayer From the Ocean of Storms.'

prayer cover 5A 72 px large.jpg

[Belushi TD]

WHOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!

Glad to hear it, Nick!

Belushi TD