Fall and Rise: An ISOT

[jemhouston]

I got the King joke.

To make old Adolf see sense, 10 lbs. sledgehammer between the eyes.

[Simon Darkshade]

His generals don’t have that option, but this is before he was able to assume the mantle of the Grofaz through the Fall of France.

It won’t be a matter of his generals offing him.

[Simon Darkshade]

The general issue that DE Britain of 1943 faces here is that it is a highly specialised, highly focused end of a global supply, resource and manufacturing chain that has just lost all of the network that underpins it. Therefore, once the logistical reality sinks in, there is a realisation that they won't simply be able to sit back and grind Germany into the dust according to plan - they will need to change to win relatively quickly, then try and rebuild their lines of supply.

(One of the manifestations of this is coming up, where the small (for DE) Mediterranean Fleet is ordered to prepare an operation against the Italians...)

That supply issue is one reason why forces are being sent out to different places, rather than simply clumped over to France or even worse, held back in Britain. There is sufficient food production to support the population and the assorted armies, fleets and air forces, for the time being; and there is a decent stockpile of munitions and supplies being built up for Overlord in 1944, in addition to Britain's own far from insubstantial capacity. The general pattern of imports and general trade into Britain in late 1943 was very heavily focused on the United States and Canada, with foodstuffs from South America and oil from Mexico/Venezuela/the West Indies being the other major routes; African resources were generally squarely focused on supporting the armies in the Middle East and Mediterranean and the 'Eastern Empire' of Burma, India, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand was fairly focused on (and approaching being tapped out) the Far Eastern and Pacific theatres.

The logistical challenge is reminiscent in a certain fashion of the Apollo 13 'fit a square peg into a round hole using only what is onboard the spacecraft' process. It isn't impossible, given that much of the world is not yet at war, and that the oceans are open for trade, what with the U-Boat threat being very minimal (and already hit solidly to the cover boundary for four runs). It will take a good 6 months or more to get the requisite trade up and flowing and even then, it won't result in full efficiency or anything approaching the DE 1943 capacity.

Perhaps one of the underlying ideas behind the story is that the tanks, guns and men, aircraft and ships are all fine and dandy, but it is the 'arm behind the army' that gives it true weight in this era. Landing said tanks, guns and men in France is only one part of the issue, as they then require the necessary supplies to be moved over, put in place, and then used in a fairly brutal counteroffensive.

[Simon Darkshade]

Part 4

The return of British forces to Norway, after the raid by the Home Fleet’s aircraft carriers on Trondheim, would not be immediate. There was much shaping of the battlefield yet to be done by both the RAF and RN, with the former shifting multiple wings of Mosquitos to Scottish airfields and the latter preparing its array of escort carriers for future strike operations alongside the fleet. The shipping required for the movement of the equivalent of at least two corps across the northern seas was substantial and very little could currently be spared from the main task of returning the BEF to France. This gave time for a very careful aerial sanitisation of both Norwegian waters and the North Sea routes from Scotland’s ports and for appraisal of the enemy’s dispositions.

The 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions were at Narvik, the 69th Infantry was at Stavanger, the 163rd and 196th advancing in the centre of the country, the 181st was at Trondheim and the 214th in the south. The prospect of substantial further German reinforcement of the invasion forces was not seen as a serious threat, given the more direct need of troops in France. The British response was planned to be quite comprehensive. Both of the home based divisions of the Royal Marines had been assigned to the initial Trondheim landing, whilst Narvik was allocated to the Light Division, the 1st Gurkha Division and a crack field force of dwarven troops (operating under Imperial control for the duration of the war under the terms of the 1190 Pact of Stonebridge) and the liberation of Bergen was to be the task of the Commandos, the Royal Naval Division and the 34th Infantry Division. Given the relative lack of a role for the airborne army assembled for Overlord in the ‘new old’ Battle of France, the entire of the I Airborne Corps had been issued orders for Norway. Finally, the newly arrived Norwegian Division had just ‘transitioned’ in the Scottish Highlands, where they had been undergoing training for the liberation of France alongside other Continental forces; this crack unit was assigned a very special mission in the renewed battle for their homeland.

Prior to any action, the process of airdropping advance units of commandos, SSRF, Norisen and SAS into Norway had begun as of the previous night, with many having fought there over the last four years of their war. Their role was to observe, harass and prepare for the liberation to come, with a particular accent upon prepositioning themselves for forward air control and interdiction of transport.

Whilst Prime Minister Churchill had been very forthright in his push for aggressive action in Norway against the Nazis, Field Marshal Brooke and others held the view that it was at best a peripheral campaign to secure their flanks and strategic access to resources; the main fight lay in the fields of France, not the fjords. The level of priority of shipping and supplies dictated the timetable for Norway’s future, but nonetheless, deliverance and freedom were coming.

………………..
Vice Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, looked down once again at the report on his desk and the pictures beside it. To say it made for stark reading would be a polite understatement.

The presence of a large Royal Navy fleet at Singapore had been confirmed, with the initial British wireless and newspaper reports now backed up by the Japanese defence attaché to Siam, who had been expressly invited to Singapore by this British Admiral Mountbatten. There, he had been given a very gracious reception and a tour of the fleet.

The British had claimed a strength of 10 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 8 carriers, 9 monitors, 21 cruisers, 50 submarines and a shocking 193 escorts and whilst the precise number of smaller vessels could not be verified, the attaché’s report had mentioned counting at least eighty destroyers, all of a quite unfamiliar design. There had also been a number of other strange ships, described by their erstwhile hosts as ‘amphibious warships’; at least two of them seemed to be former battleships of some sort. Singapore had been literally crawling with British troops, all Royal Marines looking decidedly unfriendly.

Each of the British battleships that had been deliberately shown off bore a familiar name, but were clearly not the vessels detailed in Janes and the Imperial Japanese Navy’s own extensive intelligence reports, each being easily larger than the Hood. Their casual mention of 18” armament - which had seemed so fantastical that short while ago - had been apparently accurate, or close to it, and each ship bristled with a strange array of secondary guns and dozens upon dozens of light anti-aircraft guns.Rather more disconcerting had been the rather off hand reference to the top secret attributes of the Yamato class battleships, with Mountbatten remarking that ‘These old girls aren’t quite as shiny as your Yamato and Musashi, but an extra 20,000 tons can get one a lot of polish as well as that extra 18 incher, I’ll wager!’

The main message that had been politely communicated was that this fleet was but a shadow of the main force now heading back to European waters, ‘temporarily, of course, old chap.’ They had seemed to be quite open of their plans and intentions, talking openly about escorting a Royal Marine Division to French Indochina for a ‘goodwill visit’. The attaché had noted that any attempts to steer the conversation onto aircraft carriers was firmly stonewalled, with them being described as out of port on manoeuvres and exercise; strangely, one of the British admiral’s staff had quipped ‘that would seem to be a bit of a muddle for you; it could be habit forming!’ before being shushed.

Three conclusions were obvious. Firstly, the existing Japanese battlefleet was clearly outmatched somehow by this Britain. Secondly, they were clearly hiding something, and it wasn’t just their carriers. Thirdly, the prospect of expansion to the south had been turned on its head.

………………
Iosef Dzugashvili, better known to the world as Stalin, did not like surprises. Not when they happened to him, that is. The events of the last three days, then, had come as a continual litany of surprises.

First the Fall of Paris, with all that entailed for the seemingly inevitable collapse of French and British resistance against Nazi Germany. That had barely had time to register before the accounts of something very strange occurring in regards to England, culminating in what had seemed as the frankly insane bravado of a gaggle of delusional imperialists on their last legs - the first radio broadcast, calling for Italian and German surrender. The report of Foch showing up in Bordeaux had seemed equally fantastic, even if it did come from quite highly positioned sources, but now…now he was not so sure.

Then had come the bombing raids of yesterday on Berlin and Italy. In both cases, the reports of Soviet diplomats and friendly neutrals had indicated that the scale had been quite unparalleled. The English claims of thousands of bombers - thousands, where even the idea of a thousand bombers would have seemed absurd! - would make sense with the scale of destruction. If that was true, then something very strange was happening…

Beria’s report had said that the Cripps and indeed the whole English embassy was very much in the dark as to the change in mood, capability and strategy from home, prior to the arrival of an urgent diplomatic courier via Sweden, after which there had been no further news. The only sign that something was afoot was Cripps requesting a formal meeting with Molotov tomorrow morning. There was also the quite baffling request for a personal representative of Prime Minister Churchill to fly directly to Moscow. Stalin was a man who did not like to baffled.

…………………..

The first days of Operation Deliverance pushed the logistical capacity of the Breton and Norman points to breaking point, with a great bottleneck of men and vehicles clogging the roads out of the ports and the limited railways running at maximum capacity pushing troops forward to the front line. As scheduled, the ‘Old British’ and French forces were filtered through to the lines of communication for rest, refitting and eventual rearmament, but this too acted to congest the avenues of transport. The use of a large portion of the priceless skyship armada for the sole purpose of supply delivery to inland dumps was one vital means that eased this process, but to some commanders, the organised chaos was akin to Dunkirk in reverse in certain ways. The administrative movement of the major combat and support units of the reinforced British First Army would take several days to complete after the 16th, with congestion of shipping in the ports and harbours of Southern England acting as a further constraint; Second Army has much the worse of the traffic jam. By June 20th, British I Corps and I Canadian Corps had pushed forward to Caen and Avranches, relieving the erstwhile Second British Expeditionary Force’s front, whilst I Anzac Corps held the line down to Rennes and IV British Corps covered the southern portion of the bridgehead alongside the French.

The nearest mobile German unit to the first objective line had been the 5th Panzer Division, which had been reduced to a combat ineffective rump by a terrific concentration of fighter-bomber attacks and dragonstrikes over the 15th and 16th, with longer ranged attack aircraft, light bombers and strike fighters being dispatched to hit the 9th and 10th Panzer Divisions further south. The Luftwaffe’s fighters made for scant opposition against the Spitfires, Tempests and Mustangs of the RAF over Western France, with a strong air envelope being established that reached down to the beleaguered French in Bordeaux.

German Army Group B could muster 30 infantry divisions, a motorised division and the 1st Cavalry Division, yet this was far from concentrated, being spread out across the German western flank. As such, direct contact with the mustering British and Commonwealth forces was relatively rare and, where it did occur, saw the German units encounter a concentration of firepower that for them was unprecedented, with garbled reports of automatic 25pdrs and massed machine gun fire filtering up the German chain of command, along with near fantastical reactions to the seemingly invulnerable Centurion tanks.

In the main, though, contact along the new front was largely the stuff of mobile reconnaissance troops and special forces, with the Commandos, Reconnaissance Corps and Special Air Service hitting German forward forces wherever contact could be made. One such engagement saw a heavily outnumbered SAS patrol, pinned down by German fire, deploy a terrible weapon as yet unknown to the battlefields of this world.

Joke warfare.

Upon the utterance of the dolorous couplet, translated into the Teutonic for safety, the Hun were struck down by hideous and uncontrollable paroxysms of frenzied mirth until the entire platoon expired, stone dead. This was the only notable direct use of magic against the German Army, with other surprises being husbanded away for the time of the great offensive. With the exception of the use of The Joke, it was the stuff of more conventional, if equally shocking weapons, such as the terrible rain of ruin delivered by the swarms of tactical warplanes from above.

For now, sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.
…………………

From the first confused moments of The Event, the two Royal Navies had been the forces with the most interaction with each other. The initial meetings had been quite the shock, to put in mildly, but the experience had been different across the major fleets and stations. The Home Fleet of 1940 and other such ‘Old British’ naval forces in the vicinity of the British Isles, with 8 capital ships, 3 aircraft carriers, 21 cruisers and 33 destroyers, had been the strongest such concentration of the nations arrayed in a new World War, but that position had been overtaken in that single flash of light.

Admiral Sir Charles Forbes had entered Scapa Flow in Rodney on June 14th to behold the main part of the transported 1943 fleet - 9 aircraft carriers, 15 capital ships, 25 cruisers and 80 destroyers. Mere numbers alone barely began to convey the difference, with nine of the battleships clearly larger than any ship, of war or of peace, that any of the officers and men had seen before. Their guns were different, their aircraft were more advanced and their RDF had capabilities well beyond what had been considered state of the art.

Forbes’s initial meeting with Admiral Sir John Tovey, the Commander-in-Chief of the 1943 fleet, had been quite the experience, with the former layer describing it as seeming akin to ‘being the brand new boy summoned to see the Headmaster on his first day at school.’ The subsequent orders for the ‘New British’ Home Fleet to put to sea and strike the Kriegsmarine in Norway did emphasise this feeling of being pushed aside by the new arrivals, which irked the 1940 RN to no end; however kindly the shove, being thrown aside does quite naturally evoke feelings of humiliation. By the 20th of June, an ad hoc committee of high ranking officers of both fleets (which included the quite awkward circumstance of officers meeting their slightly younger selves from a different world) had formulated an initial means of working around the ‘Two Fleet Question’.

Firstly, the most advanced units of the 1940 fleet, namely Rodney, Renown, Repulse,Hood, Ark Royal and the miraculously fully repaired Nelson, along with the Counties and the newest light cruisers and destroyers, were to be sent down to Plymouth to assist the squadron deployed there to cover the (sooner than anticipated) return to France. It was further anticipated that they would then deploy to Gibraltar and French North Africa. The second group, consisting of Valiant, Queen Elizabeth, Barham, Furious, the older carriers and battleships on escort duty in the Atlantic, and all the older light cruisers prior to the Southamptons, would be laid up in the Gareloch, allowing their crews to be freed up for reassignment. The final group, made up of the balance of the 1940 destroyers, were assigned to convoy escort and anti-submarine patrol in the Western Approaches and the Bay of Biscay. Whilst they were less suited to the full range of combat missions compared with the New RN destroyer fleet, they were still more than capable of defending against the limited German U-Boat threat in concert with the scores of New escorts and specialised aircraft. Their larger moment would come with the reorganisation of the major Transatlantic convoys when supply arrangements with North America could be appropriately restored.

The capacity of the 1943 Home Fleet was to be greatly augmented as the various lighter vessels assigned to the Atlantic Fleet were summoned back to Britain to face the differently positioned German threat. Two dozen escort carriers and over 500 destroyers, escort destroyers, frigates, corvettes and sloops were scattered across the North Atlantic, whilst Force H at Gibraltar had been alerted to be reinforced by the cream of the Old Home Fleet as part of the tremendous pincer to be applied to the hapless Italians.

The disparity between the Mediterranean Fleets of 1940 and 1943 was and yet was not as marked, with the New Fleet only mustering 5 battleships, 5 carriers, 23 cruisers and 60 destroyers compared to 4 battleships, 1 carrier, 11 cruisers and 24 destroyers of the older force. Admiral Somerville and Admiral Cunningham had swiftly reached a modus vivendi to unify their commands, given their general concentration around Alexandria and the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean, with a general plan determined should the Regia Marina steam out on an ill-starred death ride.

In the East Indies, Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham had the largest shock of all on that fateful day, as the Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham appeared off Singapore, which had hitherto had a garrison of two older destroyers. After he had been revived with smelling salts and a generously stiff brandy, the evidence of his eyes and that of his officers firmly established the primacy of the 1943 RN in the Far East. Even the ‘small squadron’ left behind at Singapore under the command of Admiral Mountbatten, which would be reinforced by Admiral Crutchley’s Pacific Fleet within the fortnight, was enough to profoundly shift the balance of power in the Orient.

The first week after The Event had not seen any dramatic battles at sea on a par with the raids on Berlin and Hamburg, or with a visible reversal of fate such as Operation Deliverance, with the destruction of the Kriegsmarine ships at Trondheim being more reminiscent of the dispatching of a rat in a cage with a 1 bore shotgun, but the movement of forces, consolidation of command and organisation of the immediate priorities of strategy were to prove just as important to the conclusion of the Second Great War of 1939-40.

For, as each day of the new world at war went by, Cunningham and the Grand Fleet would make almost 500 nautical miles of progress of their journey back to Europe from Singapore, passing Addu Atoll on June 20th.

………………..

Norfolk Naval Base
0832 June 22nd 1940

The British were coming.

The arrival of the ship had been advised as occurring at some point before 0930, depending on winds for some reason. The Army Air Corps and the Navy both naturally had patrol planes up and out looking for the British ship over the last 24 hours, but to no avail. The interception of the Rex had after all occurred to an ocean liner operating in peacetime conditions, but this was still a vexing failure; the new radars would put paid to this.

Vice-Admiral Ernest King, as a member of the General Board, had been ordered to Norfolk for the arrival of British delegation, but had drawn the fairly short straw of awaiting it aboard USS New York, rather than with the shoreside party. Thus, it was, after substantive internal grumbling about the damned Limeys, he found himself on the battleship's bridge when the XAF radar starting going berserk that fine summer morn. Something big was flying in, high and relatively fast, at over 45,000 feet and 250mph.

It was not long after the radar indiciation that one of the Navy's patrol planes picked up on the British aircraft and sent the rather shocked radio message "It's a goddamned flying ship!"

This rather put a different cast on the morning and things did not get better as it got closer quite rapidly, swelling from a speck on the far horizon to a rather more concerning sight as it hove into land. King had initially thought it to be some sort of dirigible, but that impression had been a rather deceptive function of the protuberances of the flying vessel's hull. It was at least eight hundred feet long and seemed to be fitted with a variety of guns, all manner of aerials and protuberances and of course a few large British roundels and even a hastily painted Union Jack for good measure.

Where in the hell have they been hiding that and HOW in the hell is that thing flying?

With a delicacy that belied her size, the ship touched down gently on Chambers Field at 0916, after some very swift radio discussions, and the British delegation, lead by a rather green looking Ambassador Kennedy and consisting of Sir Anthony Eden, Lord Chatfield, the Earl of Cork, Lord Ironside, Lord Trenchard and a bevy of other assorted generals, admirals, Air Marshals, ministers and civil servants disembarked down the smoothly extended steel gangplank. There, after the zephyr of an awkward pause,  to meet them was the American reception committee, consisting of General George C. Marshall, General Henry H. Arnold, Admiral Harold Stark, the new Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the President's personal emissary Harold Hopkins.

"Good morning, gentlemen. I am glad we weren't late, as we only left Plymouth at 8 o'clock last night. Fluctuations in the aetheric tide, I'm told. I would propose that we retire to the nearest suitable building; there is much we have to discuss." Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Anthony Eden smiled apologetically.


...................................................

"Well, Harry, in the circumstances, I'm doubly glad you came up here."

"Yes, Mr. President. I felt it would be better to hear it directly from me...else you might find it difficult to believe. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe myself and I saw it with my own two eyes."

“A flying ship.”

”They call it a ‘skyship’, but that is exactly what it was. They were quite open with its design and how it flies, which seems to be some forms of super lifting gas and new minerals unique to their world.”

”So it is true, then. They come from a different Earth.”

”As incredible as it seems, Mr. President, it appears that is the case. Not only a different Earth than our own, but from the future - 1943 to be precise. They’ve been at war for four years and have mobilised their industrial capacity and population to a far greater level than ‘our England’. They have more of both as well - over 116 million people and an economy…if their figures are accurate, it is a third larger than our own.”

If President Franklin D. Roosevelt was taken aback by the effective demotion of the United States of America to the second rank of world economic powers, he did not show it.

First things first.

“How did Ambassador Kennedy strike you?”

”Shell shocked, Mr. President, but the same Joe Kennedy. His position has been shifted a little, after all. The British say that they intend to finish the war within six months. Before this morning, and even after the reports that have come out of Berlin, I would have thought it crazy. Now, I’m not so sure.”

”What do they need?”

”A lot of food and materials, apparently. Their economy snd industry is highly focussed on war production and all of their established trade routes and arrangements have been effectively wiped clear. They don’t seem to want weapons or ammunition at this time, but the figures they bought over for fuel, steel and explosives are astronomical.”

”It would seem that the best way to beat Hitler is to sell them what they need. After that…well, after that we shall see what happens. Now, what details did they share about their Navy?”

”Mr. President, the numbers seem to be accurate, apparently. If they are lying about the size of the Royal Navy, we’ll find out shortly. They were quite enthusiastic about having a delegation from our Navy fly back over to acquaint us with their forces and capabilities; they are quite keen on Vice-Admiral King to be part of it for some reason.”

”We can do that. They may be larger than us, for the moment, but we will catch up with them, even these fleets of ‘sky-ships’ they have. Seeing Hitler and Mussolini beaten and this business with Japan never occurring,” Roosevelt gestured at the black and white pictures of the aftermath of Pearl Harbor with his cigarette holder “will be absolutely in our interests, without our needing to actually fight. We can be like a mighty factory and workshop for the fighting Allies. An arsenal of democracy, if you will.”

”I like the ring of that phrase, Mr. President. It’s got some resonance to it. There is one thing in our favour - they like us, the British. They aren’t as hard up as our old England, but they are very grateful and positively inclined towards us. Eden said that Prime Minister Churchill is keen for a meeting, as soon as the war situation allows it…” Hopkins paused, trying to find the words he sought

”What is it, Harry?”

”For all of that bon homie and gratitude, it was a different kind of positivity; they mean kindly and good, but this kind of patronising…I haven’t seen it from the English since before the last war. It was like what you might find visiting some more backwards cousins in the country.”

Prescient Roosevelt blanched internally.

Having a smaller battlefleet and none of these marvellous sky-ships was one thing, but being compared to the Oyster Bay Roosevelts?

………………

June 24th 1940
Adlerhorst

All things considered, this last week had not been a particularly good one.

General Halder's reflection was, if anything, a bit of an underreaction. After the confusion and lack of information in those first few hectic days after The Event of June 14th, reports and intelligence had finally started to flow once more. The weight of events had been such that it seemed even more unreal than it would be, if that was even possible.

With the Fuhrer's permission, he had issued orders for the 'consolidation' of the advance of Army Group B, which in practice had meant firming up a line of defence along the Seine with Von Bock's advancing infantry divisions. The armoured and motorised divisions, which had spearheaded his victorious advance and had been spread out over Normandy and the Loire Valley, had been utterly mauled by the English fighters and bombers. Once each formation had been identified by their high flying reconnaissance planes, it was hammered by bombers and strafed, rocketed and bombed by hundreds upon hundreds of hitherto unknown aircraft; worst of all had apparently been the incendiary jellied petroleum bombs which were used with gay abandon. Those divisions not advancing were left comparatively safer from the tactical airpower deployed by the Tommies, and this respite was valuable, allowing for consolidation of the previously rapid advance and for the artillery and supply columns to catch up with the line. OKH had released Blaskowitz's Ninth Army to reinforce them, and further divisions were being pulled from Poland and the Reich itself to provide for an operational reserve in Belgium. Army Group C was steadily grinding through the Maginot Line against doughty French resistance, and Army Group A under Runstedt remained the shining light of this second phase of Fall Rot, having pushed as far as Poitiers, Vichy and Lyon. Even the forward units of the latter, though, were beginning to bear the brunt of the English air attacks, slowing their push towards the South of France and the Bay of Biscay. The remaining French armies there were starting to provide stiffer resistance in concert with the aerial support of their allies, having seemingly run as far as they could up until now. 

The British Army had continued to pour into Britanny and Normandy, arriving by day and night, by sea and air. Intelligence estimates reported at least three field armies being present and, as of this morning, 49 divisions. Their advance had been painstakingly deliberate, even for British standards, steadily moving forward along a front down from Deauville to Alencon, and from there to Angers. Were they to fall upon the flank of Army Group A, as the focus of their air power and forward reconnaissance indicated, then it would be unfortunate for the German position, but not deadly; once Army Group C had destroyed the pocketed French forces on the Maginot Line, there would be sufficient German forces for a very steady front between Orleans and Lyon, at least on a nominal basis.

Reports from Heer commanders on the front were increasingly disquieting, though. The Tommies had deployed new and unfamiliar tanks that were invulnerable to any German tank gun, at all but point blank ranges, and even the 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns which had proved so effective at Arras were unable to have their previous impact. Their artillery outranged that of the German Army, and most horrifyingly of all, they had seemed to have developed some sort of automatic field gun by the sheer fury of several bombardments. Their infantry were armed with some sort of automatic rifles and machine guns on par with the MG-34, and employed hitherto unknown grenade launchers and mortars to deadly effect in their mobile raids and clashes up and down the no-man's land between the Allies and Germans. Mobility. The corner of Halder's moustache twitched. The Tommies had mobility of a sort, of that there was no question, with hundreds of trucks and what seemed to be copies of the Kübelwagen, all equipped with machine guns so they could dash their jaegers hither and yon. Rockets, too, somehow, both ones fired from the shoulder of infantrymen against tanks and armoured cars and massed barrages of artillery rockets on any German units that crept forward from the Somme. At least they looked to be limited in some areas, as comparatively few tanks had been reported along their frontlines by patrols or the few Luftwaffe planes that managed to survive in Northern France. For all of their trucks, they were slow on the advance, even out in the open. 

At least they did not need to fear the air, as the Tommies and French had done that short while ago, before the verdammt world changed. If it were just the tactical aeroplanes over the battlefield, it would be one thing. However, the Royal Air Force now had heavy bombers, and in the thousands. Initially, just like the Fuhrer, Halder had been skeptical about the reports about the bombing of Berlin, as they were just too fantastical. Then, two nights later, the Tommies had bombed Hamburg with over two thousand planes, then Essen and Dortmund two days later - in the same night - by a thousand bombers apiece. And tonight, the skies to the south of the bunker complex were already red with fire. It was Frankfurt's turn.

Goring had managed to get off easily enough, having died of an overdose of morphine after Hamburg, Hadler thought grimly. He wondered how the Reichsmarshall would have explained away the photograph sitting on his desk, showing single engine RAF fighters flying over the still smoking wreck of Berlin. At least his demise had been relatively painless, compared to Bormann and Todt, crushed under masonry, or Himmler's ghastly prodigy, Heydrich, burned alive in Berlin. It seemed Goebbels would live, after all, if one could call it life without legs or his manhood. Over twenty five thousand others had died on that night, and the centre of the capital had been gutted by fire storms. Payback for Rotterdam, the BBC had called it,

Another series of flashes went off to the south. Such arrogance! It would be their undoing, though, ultimately, for all of their miracle weapons and ..other things...They were arrogant, allowing the Heer and the Luftwaffe to conduct reconnaissance missions up and down and over their front, in some cases not even bothering to fire at the German planes. Even their radio discipline was lax and open, as if they wanted the Germans to hear what was going on...

A shiver ran down Halder's spine, but before he could form a thought, the telephone rang.

"Halder."

"Franz? This is Von Roon."

General Arnim von Roon, one of his fellow OKH generals, had been sent forward to Paris to coordinate the defensive shift of Army Group B and Army Group A's continued offensive push

"What is it?

"The Tommies are attacking. They are across the Seine on either side of Roeun and pushing forward with thousands of tanks. Thousands! They have thrown everything at the Schwerpunkt and have smashed a hole through our line thirty kilometres wide."

"Amiens."

"This is worse than another Amiens. We are also getting reports in of landings taking place at Dieppe, Calais, Bologne and Dunkirk. Dunkirk!"

"Mein Gott." Halder looked at the map of France and the Low Countries on the wall. His eyes flickered over in a line towards Sedan. "Mein Gott."

"I think he has forsaken us, Franz. I must go. Von Rundstedt has called an emergency command meeting."

"Good luck."

"You too."

Halder stood up. Von Roon had the easy part, only having to worry about the Britishers rampaging towards him. He had to go and tell the Fuhrer that the Tommies were attacking and that there was very little between them and cutting off well over half of the German Army in France.

[Bernard Woolley]

the 69th Infantry was at Stavanger

A nice division?


Did the joke involve a dig and was written by Ernest Scribler?

[Simon Darkshade]

Well, it will soon be having an interesting few days before the survivors end up in a POW camp in Ireland, where they will get sheep tea instead of coffee.

The joke was based on the work of the late Mr. Scribler.

The breakthrough at Rouen was not meant to be a major one, but the German defences couldn’t quite cope with the type of punch through that the British delivered. When the main German AT gun is the Pak 36 and the British have Centurions, the outcome can get out of control quickly.

[Bernard Woolley]

Well, it will soon be having an interesting few days before the survivors end up in a POW camp in Ireland, where they will get sheep tea instead of coffee.

Will an Irish housekeeper insist on them having a cup of tea?

[jemhouston]

Isn't the only time Royal Marines look friendly is when they have free beer and after a winning battle?

[Simon Darkshade]

When a picture is trying to be presented to the Japanese of overwhelming strength, there isn’t space for smiling. Additionally, they have come from almost 2 years of war against them; they’d prefer to fight rather than negotiate and warn, based on what they’ve seen and heard.

[Simon Darkshade]

Well, it will soon be having an interesting few days before the survivors end up in a POW camp in Ireland, where they will get sheep tea instead of coffee.

Will an Irish housekeeper insist on them having a cup of tea?

Not quite, but one of the guards at the camp is her grandfather, so her grandmother is one of the tea ladies...

[Simon Darkshade]

Coming up in the next, penultimate Part 5 will be:

- Breakthrough: Action on the Seine Front
- Return to Dunkirk, with the Dover Guns firing: Explanation of the limited Channel landings as pulling German attention in multiple directions
- The Liberation of Norway begins
- Warsaw Ghetto aerial leaflets and the Home Army gets visitors
- June 26th: Egyptian sees Grand Fleet reaches Suez, after sinking Archimede SS, Perla SS, Guglielmotti SS, all DDs and Eritrea SL; emphasise thousands of planes. RN reception officers
- Shift on the Central French front and support to French on the Maginot Line from bombers
- Polish commandos, paratroopers, British SAS and Israeli Army commandos go 'somewhere' with Home Army support
- Tube Alloys meeting
- The special US delegation arrives in Britain
- Hitler does his nut

In Part 6, we'll see the climax and then some bits and pieces will be strewn about in the epilogue

[Simon Darkshade]

A little bit on the air:

- Bomber Command are hitting a new city every three days. In @, it was every 2-6 days for a major raid in September 1943, for example: alternate-timelines.proboards.com/thread/2181/world-war-ii-real-time?page=109
- In @, Main Force or large scale ops were on September 3rd, 5th, 6th, 15th, 16th, 22nd, 23rd and 27th
- In terms of strength, equipment and technology, this is a Bomber Command more on par with 1945, reflecting the higher 'starting point' of DE. In scale, it is more equivalent to the 1945 US Eighth Air Force
- Mention is made of single engine fighters flying over Berlin. These are the Mustangs, which are capable of doing so given their @ record
- German night fighter capacity at this time was very small, as this is pre Kammhuber Line, up against a sophisticated late war EW package and massive bomber streams with Mosquito escort
- The history here is informative: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachtjagdgeschwader_1 Prior to the @ formation of a night fighter force, over 2000 RAF bombers hit Berlin
- The German Air Ministry, along with its staff, was destroyed in that raid, complicating the process of response
- To make things even more unfair, the RAF heavy bombers fly faster than the Luftwaffe fighters and at an altitude above their flak

[Simon Darkshade]

Snippet the next:

The tenuous twilight war along the Seine Front had crept towards the flashing violence of the breakthrough quite gradually in the days leading up to June 24th. The British First and Second Armies and the Canadians had advanced steadily to positions stretching from Honfleur to Brionne, with vast quantities of supplies coming with them in armies of lorries, along the railway lines (including the 25 miles of new track laid with arcanely influenced haste from Caen to Pont L'Eveque) and in the daily skyship flights. Their push forward had been extremely heavily shrouded by misdirection and illusion magics, along with more prosaic means of disguise and distraction, such as the British Third Army and French conducting probing attacks around Tours and seemingly heavy concentration of tactical airpower in support of the dogged French defenders of Poitiers. RAF Mosquitoes and Buckinghams had been conducting regular high speed flights over Paris, dropping leaflets to the population promising that their deliverance would soon be at hand and that Allied help was on its way. The combination of these factors helped to drag German concentration away from the coast of Normandy in the lead up to the offensive.

Field Marshal Montgomery had set the first objective of Operation Broadsword as the Somme River at Amiens, some 61 miles away, where, depending on German opposition, British armour could then break for Sedan and the Ardennes. The Third and Fourth Armies would attack through Tours, Orleans and Troyes, whilst the Eighth Army would come through the Channel Ports after the initial breakthrough. The aim was very simply to cut off the two German army groups in France and then annhilate them, bringing the war to a swift conclusion, as directed by the Imperial War Cabinet and Supreme Allied War Council. The location of the first assault would allow Britain to deploy the maximal amount of her airpower and also bring some of her seapower to bear upon the decision.

Thus it was, at 2136 on the night of June 25th, 4268 25pdrs, 768 rocket launchers, 1984 6", 896 8", 420 9.2", 125 12", 54 18" and 12 24" howitzers erupted in a terrific hurricane bombardment of German positions along the Seine, with the first rounds arriving in a simultaneous shock to the defenders. From out to sea, they were joined by 10 monitors, 12 cruisers and 6 battleships, who concentrated their fire on the northern flank of Broadsword. After 20 minutes of general bombardment, the artillery shifted to different fire missions, depending on their type and range, whether it be direct support of advancing British infantry and mechanised troops, long ranged fire against German guns and supply lines previously identified by reconnaissance or the inexorable creeping barrage. Up and down the German line came the crackle and acrid tang of spellfire, as the massed force of British battle mages let loose with the unrestrained fury of their war wizardry, blasting enemy positions with hundreds of enormous fireballs, lightning bolts, cones of deadly frost, showers of meteors and storms of icy hail, whilst dozens of elementals of earth, fire, air and water were sent raging against a thoroughly terrified mundane foe and screaming waves of terror spells rippled through the air. From on high came the dragons of the Royal Flying Corps, raining fire, death and ruin upon the German soldiers and seeming like the worst of their nightmares taken flesh.

The combined effect of the assault was simply disintegration, with not even the doughtiest and most professional soldier of the Heer equipped to face such a force, let alone effectively counter it. First by handfuls, then in their dozens, then in their hundreds, large numbers of the survivors turned and ran for their very lives. Four corps from the assembled field armies - two British, one Canadian and one Anzac - pushed forward, supported by Churchill heavy tanks which proved nigh on impervious to whatever response the remaining shell-shocked Germans could muster. Within 54 minutes, the immediate objectives had been taken and assault troops had stormed across the Seine on boats, allowing sorcerous bridges of arcane force to be thrown up. Now the infantry parted ways allowing for the advancing elements of four armoured divisions to drive forth into the night, even as the guns lifted to their final objective of the night's fire. The German defences along the Seine had been conventionally strong, and in some cases included multiple lines of resistance, but they had not been prepared for what Roon had aptly described as a hole being blasted through their lines.

Forward into the night pushed the Centurion tanks of the leading armoured divisions, with more to follow through the crossings as the night turned through the witching hour into the early morning, and fully mechanised infantry and artillery after them. The dawn would bring new light and new knowledge of what had come to pass, along with the terrible swift sword of British airpower, but for now, in the darkness of the night, there was but the fearful and inexorable clank of the tanks, the monstrous anger of the guns and the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle.

[jemhouston]

I almost feel sorry for the Germans, almost.

[Simon Darkshade]

On an individual level, sure. For those in command and those so lately eager to indulge in war crimes, they fluffed around and are finding out.

The thing is that the nighttime phase of the attack detailed here - that is the nice part. With daytime comes the jabos.

[Bernard Woolley]

I wonder how differently events would play out if the DE Britain had discovered that it's magic didn't work in this universe? Probably not all that differently given the technology differential.

[Simon Darkshade]

Same end result, longer timeframe would be the short answer.

The longer version is, even if all spells no longer worked, there is still a marked disparity between the British Empire forces and ze Germans in regard to:

1.) Force size
2.) Technology
3.) Operational art and experience
4.) Supplies
5.) Overwhelming air and sea power
6.) Economy and population

The British are turning out just over 3000 combat planes per month, not counting trainers and transports, as well as hundreds of tanks and thousands of artillery pieces. That adds up. Magic has greased the wheels of the overall war machine, what with rail construction, illusions and skyships (which are very much more right towards the tech end of magitech), but hasn't built said war machine.

I would say that, if the magic elements are all nerfed, then the war creeps over into 1941 at the latest. Norway gets retaken in June/July, whilst the British Liberation Army gets taken across to Brittany and Normandy at a *slightly* slower pace constrained by capacity of the ports, pushing any real offensive action into late July or August. Once there are enough tactical airfields in Brittany/Normandy, then Jerry's goose is cooked.

[Simon Darkshade]

June 25th
Cape Gris-Nez

The night was silent, yet although all was dark, all was certainly not calm. Leutnant Unglücklichesziel sat huddled in his latest foxhole and tried to will himself to sleep. Every hour for the last ten days, there had been the guns, the awful, huge Tommy guns. Sometimes the shells fell just short, causing enormous explosions out in the surf, just beyond the rocky beaches, and sometimes too long, creating fresh craters that had turned the green, green grass of this hellish home of his into a blasted hellscape or something from the moon. Yet the awful guns were the least of it all, really. The Tommy planes came over without the metronymic regularity of the artillery, but through the day and night, screaming along far too quickly at low level or droning far too high above in their hundreds, never destroying the constantly bleeding German troops at Calais, yet always inflicting just another cut, just a few more deaths, or just a few more supply trucks blasted with their infernal rockets and liquid fire. Every effort to bring up new vehicles, new guns or any meaningful supplies, or to establish more than perfunctory defences met with the same response, almost as if they were being watched.

For tonight, though, the Dover Guns had not spoken since sunset, and after being pushed to near breaking point, any respite for the unlucky and effectively helpless targets that were him and his men was most welcome indeed. It was strange, really, to have silence after so long. It even made the summer night air smell pleasantly sweet, like home.

It was a much discommoded Leutnant Manfred Unglücklichesziel who was prodded awake, almost apologetically, by the point of a British bayonet less than half an hour later. As he blinked blearily at the Commandos surrounding him, his heart leapt at the thought that he'd finally be able to get some proper sleep.

"Awfully sorry to wake you there, old crocus. We had to put your lot out to the land of nod so we could get ashore safely, what, but now we're here, we can go about getting your lot over to Blightly and a nice quiet camp. I say, they might even put you up in that new place in Steeple Bumpleigh for a bit. Anyway, I'm forgetting my manners. Captain Bertram Wooster, 8 Commando. Would you mind awfully if we took you prisoner?"

"Anything, anything." muttered the Leutnant. Anything to stop the way this Englisch schweinhund mangled German.

As he was marched away down to the beach, where dozens of LCAs had disgorged their loads of assault troops under cover of a wave of sleep spells, he looked out to the Channel. The clouds that had enshrouded the moon now parted, revealing an armada of landing ships coming in silently and steadily towards the shore. 

High above at 40,000ft, the RAF skyship assigned to aerial control of Operation Dirk, the Eighth Army's landings at the Channel Ports, had a rather better view of the goings on, thanks to her darkvision equipped arcanocameras. The 29th Infantry Division of XIV Corps was landing at Dunkirk, the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division of XXI Corps at Gravelines, the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division of XX Corps around Calais and 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division of XVIII Corps south of Boulogne. Some of the beaches selected would be less than optimal for conventional operations, but in the apparent absence of any German arcane capabilities, certain measures had been deemed possible, and the sorcerous ramps developed under Project Masada now stretched up from the sandy beaches to the clifftops above, allowing jeeps, Landies, lorries, carriers and tanks to drive up with consumate ease. What was not visible from above were the three other brigades of Commandos already pushing inland to link up with the units of the SAS Brigade and Special Raiding Squadrons previously airdropped or inserted into the porous Pas de Calais over the last 48 hours, nor indeed the Rifle brigade poised in Dover to be flown across the Channel in waves by the new helicopters once the order was given.

Aerial reconnaissance had identified only two German infantry divisions in the Pas de Calais as of last week, as most of Army Group B's strength had been drawn south to the Seine, where twenty divisions held the river line and half a dozen were held in reserve around Paris. Their transport, command, artillery and supplies had been mercilessly targeted by the fighter-bombers, attack planes and light bombers of the RAF. In the absence of organised German opposition, ensured by the continual artillery and air attacks since The Event, it was hoped that the assault divisions of the Eighth Army would be able to push inland and create a contiguous beachhead as soon as possible. Another four infantry divisions would be landed in the morning, and then the airlanding of three British armoured divisions by skyships was scheduled to begin.

General O'Connor's main objective was the same as that of Broadsword - Amiens. They would strike at the enemy like the Highlanders of old, with dirk and claymore, splitting both their attention and their fire and moving to pocket the German frontline forces. Very soon, after the quiet beginnings of the unnaturally sleepy night, Dirk would begin to draw blood.

[jemhouston]

Cry Havoc

[Simon Darkshade]

That happened quite a while ago, in both worlds. What is now following isn’t really war.