Fall and Rise: An ISOT

[jemhouston]

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

Pest Control?

[Simon Darkshade]

Something in between shooting an over large rat that wandered into your backyard with a battery of M110s and that great childhood game of “Stop hitting yourself.”

[jemhouston]

Something in between shooting an over large rat that wandered into your backyard with a battery of M110s and that great childhood game of “Stop hitting yourself.”

I was thinking about this when I posted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX39RDxA9dM

[Simon Darkshade]

A little issue that will come up in Part 5 is the @ Duke of Windsor and wife at Biarritz. In DE, he died as PoW in 1930, without there being an abdication crisis, so some of the bad blood isn’t there; it has the makings of a strange reunion, particularly with a living Prince John being part of the DE Royal Family.

Come to think of it, Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial Family are in Scotland, whilst the @ Kaiser Wilhelm is in the Netherlands…

[Simon Darkshade]

Warsaw had seen infrequent RAF overflights since The Event, with highflying Lancasters and Windsors cruising in the wild impartial skies above the Polish capital even as it suffered under the Nazi jackboot. Each night, the BBC could be heard on the wireless sets hidden in homes across the shattered capital, giving news of change, of hope and of victories. Again and again the message would come through

Hold on. Hold on. Poland has not been forgotten. The morning will come.

On this night, as to the West, Frankfurt burnt and the British Army smashed across the Seine, and in Warsaw as the Nazi oppressors continued to erect the wall around what they intended would be a Ghetto holding hundreds of thousands of Jews, the first inklings that something was afoot could be felt. For tonight, the RAF bombers dropped leaflets, telling that British, French and Polish armies were coming and that Poland would rise again.

They weren’t the only things to drop in that night.

…………….

Lieutenant-Colonel Gustavus March-Phillipps had had more comfortable landings, but the momentary discombobulation was swiftly ameliorated by his headquarters group being able to quickly assemble around their landing sight. Glider insertion from a skyship platform had been judged as the best means of getting his force into Poland on that night, taking advantage of the havoc Bomber Command was wreaking on Jerry back in Boschland.

His deputy in this hastily assembled force was an RN Lieutenant-Commander Fleming seconded from the Commandos in some intelligence role or the other, but right now, he looked to a figure on the other side of him, whose keen almond shaped eyes could penetrate through the night in a manner that a human’s could not.

”Someone is coming up ahead, through the woods approaching the field beyond next. There. They are pausing to make the signal, as appointed.”

”Hantatyë, Master Celebhethil. We may have need of your blade and magery yet on this night, but so far, so good.”

”Indeed. I’ll to my circle, then; we shall endeavour to make contact with Lord Laurefindelë in the second battalion, for they have the more fell duty ahead, even as he bears the Sumorsweord.”

The forward pickets of the British Commandos returned the appointed torch signals from the Polish Związek Walki Zbrojnej and their accompanying SOE agents hastily parachuted in to meet them.

[jemhouston]

Material for a new Bond novel, excellent.

In case you didn't know, the TV series Timeless did an episode where they went back in time to WW2 and they met up with Ian Fleming in Germany.

When they got back, there was a new (to them) James Bond novel inspired by that mission. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6046814/?ref_=ttep_ep4

[Simon Darkshade]

I haven’t come across that, thanks.

The thing in DE is that Bond is a genuine person in and of himself, having previously made an appearance fighting Nazi dinosaurs in the Congo and tracking Count Dracula.

Funny we mention Bond, as he is with the other battalion.
This one has the elf Celebheth, which means Silver Blade, being an original character.

The other one has Laurefindelë, who has been known by other names, which carry the same meaning of ‘Golden Tresses’. I am informed that he was tall and straight; his hair was of shining gold, his face fair and young and fearless and full of joy; his eyes were bright and keen, and his voice like music; on his brow sat wisdom, and in his hand was strength.

The second location being visited by his group, which includes others such as Moshe Dayan, A.D. Wintle and a Commander Bond, is a new concentration camp near the town of Oświęcim.

[Simon Darkshade]

Narvik
June 26th 1940

As Leutnant Unglückselig stood waiting on the dockside for his turn to embark upon the ship that would carry him across to England, captivity, and safety, he finally remembered the French phrase he had been trying to remember through the day.

Coup de main.

The 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions had retaken Narvik less than three weeks ago, and in that time had quite naturally little opportunity for the erection of any permanent or major fortified defences and fieldworks. There had been some concern of repetition of the earlier naval raids and the rampage of Warspite, but the Allied evacuation of Norway had seemed to have put paid to that prospect. In any event, General Dietl’s force had maintained outer pickets out in the Ofotfjord and the surrounding heights overlooking and controlling the approaches to Narvik harbour, and these were naturally expected to provide warning of any approaching enemy.

It was thus a circumstance of no small perturbation and confustication to the German garrison when, at 0942, an enormous British fleet had appeared in the middle of the fjord and began shelling the battered remnants of the coastal batteries and other strong points. There had been no warning, nor even any telltale sound, just a normal June morning and then a veritable maelstrom of destruction. Five huge battleships, ten cruisers and dozens of destroyers, all flying battle flags and bristling with guns, had delivered the first punch, but that had not been the most disturbing feature of the day.

Nor, for that matter, had been the sudden appearance of hundreds of English fighters and dive bombers out of an empty sky, swooping down to strike everything in feldgrau that could be seen in the open with withering cannon fire, barrages of rockets and some sort of horrific jellied gasoline bomb. It was a shock, to be sure, and he still couldn’t understand how they seemed to appear out of nowhere without the usual noise of engines, but aircraft and ships were known threats and ones that could be understood.

What had came as a true shock beyond the ken of ordinary experience was the troops who had seemingly rose up from the mountainside and fell down upon the Gebirgsjager emplaced around Narvik, for one simple reason.

They were not men.

Thousands and thousands of heavily armoured dwarves had charged down forth at the Germans, firing stubby automatic rifles and machine guns and supported by mortars and mountain howitzers. Many of the mountain troops had tried to fight back gallantly as befits good German soldiers, but they were outnumbered, outgunned and beset from all sides; those positions that did offer resistance were swiftly subdued by some form of shoulder mounted rocket launchers wielded by the dwarves or equally devastating grenade guns.

The German troops on the other side of the Rombaksfjord had the distinctly strange experience of being better off facing a surprise attack by several thousand Gurkhas, even as the tender attentions of the furious fighters from the far-off Himalayas would very, very rarely be seen as the lesser of two evils; a ferocious smile and razor sharp kukri was only ever so slightly less disconcerting than a bearded midget trying to introduce a landser’s nether regions to a doubled-bitted battleaxe.

Within an hour of the appearance of the fleet, the swarms of aircraft and the troops, all semblance of organised resistance had ceased. The landing ships carrying the Light Division then appeared from behind their screens of illusion and began to land the division directly onto the dockside, whereupon they proceeded to fan out into the town as per the carefully laid plan. Once empty, they were used to ferry the German prisoners out to the transports further out in the fjord.

The morning would see other landings at Trondheim and at Bergen, similarly using the decidedly unfair combination of concealing magics and overwhelming force to come down upon the Germans as the Assyrians of old, like a wolf on the fold. Royal Air Force bombers and Mosquitoes flying from Scotland and Gloster Reapers out of the Shetlands continued to hammer every airfield in Southern Norway through the morning, following on from the constant bombing of the last week, all working towards a greater purpose.

From airfields across the North of England, hundreds of Vickers Victoria transports took to the skies carrying the first wave of I Airborne Corps. The British and Canadian paratroopers were bound for Sola and destiny.

The liberation of Norway had begun.

[jemhouston]

The Germans are having a bad day, what fun.

[Simon Darkshade]

Considering what else occurs on this day, it turns out to be a little bit of an unpleasant one.

[Simon Darkshade]

Gulf of Suez
June 26th 1940


Ahmed was always getting into trouble and today was no exception. He knew he was supposed to stay away from the British Bofors gun position up on the Attaka headland, as they had been awfully strict over the last two weeks since the new soldiers arrived. Before then, he had always noticed them about, what with the Canal in sight across the gulf, but they had mainly been passing through on their way to more important places. There were an awful lot more of them now, with more guns as well, and wire, sandbags and signs with strange skulls and crossbones on them. Any amount of forbiddance, though, was of little consequence to ten year old boys anywhere in the world. So it was, early on this warm June morning, that he was perched in his own little alcove on one of the sandhills behind and to the side of the little fort. He liked it, as he had a wonderfully clear view of the ships out to sea as they went by on their way to Suez and the Canal.

And now he could see ships alright. More ships than he had ever seen before. Dozens and dozens of huge grey shapes, as far as the eye could see, stretched out to the south.

The Grand Fleet had arrived.

Their journey back from Singapore, well within the range of the battleships, carriers and cruisers, but pushing the destroyers, frigates and support vessels to their limit, had been without event until they had passed Aden and entered the Red Sea on June 24th. The Italian base at Kismayo in Somaliland had been visited by heavy bombers of the RAF and RNAS long before the fleet came within range, reducing it to a smouldering wreck incapable of supporting defence, let alone warships. Upon reaching the narrowing seas of the Gulf of Aden, long before even sighting the Bab al-Mandab Strait, 245 aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm had sallied forth against Assab, smashing every Italian building in the settlement with rockets, bombs and rocket-bombs, and plastering the wharves with ordnance. Massawa's turn came the next day, with those unlucky Italian destroyers, motor torpedo boats and submarines in or around the harbour devastated by over 500 Spearfish, Fireflies, Corsairs, Eagles and Buccaneers, including the first use of napalm in the continent of Africa. Those submarines and surface ships that survived the preliminary air raids did not last long nor cause any inordinate trouble as the main body of the Grand Fleet forged forward at high speed, spearheaded by dozens of the Royal Navy's fast modern destroyers.

It was this vanguard that Ahmed could see on this bright summer morn, followed by the larger cruisers and, somewhat ironically, HMS Vanguard, where two officers stood on the bridge.

"The whole Canal?" asked Captain Povey, erstwhile of the 'downtime' Mediterranean Fleet and flown down to the incoming Grand Fleet as part of their reception committee. He really didn't know what to think of these confounded hell-icopters, however dashed convenient they were. His question was mainly to himself, as, however much one might hear about a fleet of hundreds of ships from the future, the actual sight of it was enough to thoroughly discombobulate the most combobulated chap out there.

"Absolutely, Captain. We've got 25 carriers, 34 battleships and battlecruisers, 72 cruisers and 67 auxiliaries, to get through as the fast element, with the others to follow on a non-emergency basis. It'll be non-stop and we'll be running the convoys damned close together; if it weren't for the fleet's wizards, there would be no way we'd be able to get them all through in this short a time. Back when we sent the fleet out east, we only ran Force W and Force Z through Suez, with X and Y going via the Cape. 32 hours for the whole fleet is remarkable. " Commander Richard Saville thought that Povey was a bit peeky, but all things considered, that was understandable.

"What about...this?" exclaimed Povey, pointing up into the air above, where a destroyer was being lifted by two enormous 'skyships' and swiftly carried to the north. "You can't airlift a ship...It's just not right!"

"Needs must, sir. We can take eight escorts an hour like that, two in the air at a time, clearing up the canal for the bigger chaps. Think of it as portage, if you will."

"Whatever you call it, if I didn't see it, I wouldn't believe it; I can see it, and I'm still not so bally sure!"

"Look at it this way, sir - if you can't believe what is going on before your own eyes, how d'you think the reports of whatever German and Italian agents are out there are going to be received?"

Ahmed certainly had a tale to tell of that morning.

[jemhouston]

Adjusting to a new reality is always easier when they're not shooting at you.

[Simon Darkshade]

Rather.

I came upon the idea of airlifting destroyers through remembering the old Civilization II error message “Ships cannot be airlifted, silly.” and then crunching how many destroyers were present in my notes and their sizes, as well as the number of spare skyships present in the Eastern Med. It helped clear up what would otherwise be the Mother of All Bottlenecks.

[Bernard Woolley]

Captain Povey!

[Simon Darkshade]

Postwar, he may well command HMS Troutbridge.

[Bernard Woolley]

Spending most of his time fishing off the stern?

[Simon Darkshade]

London
June 26th 1940

“On the downside, we’ve lost our main uranium production facilities in Canada. One year of work and all of it now left behind. However, weighed up against that, we have several important advantages.” Sir Wallace Akers, Director of the Tube Alloys project began quietly.

”First, we’ve got the scientists - Rutherford, Moseley, Chadwick, Cockcroft, Penney, Walton, Blackett, Oliphant, Bohr, Curie, and Maxwell, the Grand Old Man. The Americans, if and when they put a programme together, will likely have as great an array of talent, but not one to put us in the shade. Germany will likely not be a competitor for more than a few weeks at this rate, and the Russians are back in 1940.

Second, we’ve got all the facilities here in Britain still intact and running - the Capenhurst gaseous diffusion plant, the graphite reactor at Valley, the atomic production sites in Cumbria and Scotland, the laboratories at Cambridge, Oxford, London and Manchester, and the coordinating establishment being built at and beneath Aldermaston.

Third, we have the knowledge. We know that a bomb is possible, we think we know how much material is needed, and we have one design that we are quite sure that will work and another that will likely require testing. Compared to where the rest of the world sits, that is a distinct advantage.

Finally, we have, or will have, the material, in the form of our own stocks and production, the French heavy water, the Belgian material in New York and that captured by the Germans over the Channel, plus whatever pitchblende comes out of this mine that is now in Belgian hands.”

”All well and good, but what does this mean? How long?” Sir Edward Appleton appreciated the scientific and production concerns, perhaps more than the other man in the room, but he also knew that a simple answer was needed.”

”Three years. In three years, we’ll have a bomb.”

”And how much will this cost?” growled the familiar third man, clutching a long extinguished and well chewed cigar.

”Factoring in rebuilding the Canadian facilities, Prime Minister, two hundred million pounds.”

”I see.”

Churchill rose from his chair and strode over to the heavily shuttered and arcanely protected window and stared at the steel for a long moment, deep in thought.

”Then you shall have it.”

[jemhouston]

Churchill never had trouble making up his mind. Whether that's good or bad, you tell me.

[Simon Darkshade]

This one isn’t a particularly difficult conundrum.