TIPOTS Timeline & Background Errata

[MKSheppard]

* About the Republic of Judea, are we talking about the original borders of OTL Israel, or did they pick up Gaza and or the West Bank somewhere along the way?

Judea today is OTL Israel and Gaza plus the West Bank. Judea overran those two areas fairly early on, and there's very little unrest compared with @. The Judeans give troublemakers one chance, then they kill them.

* I presume Judea controls the Golan Heights?

You presume correctly, sir. The Syrians have made several efforts to get them back, which have always ended with a couple of ten thousand dead Syrians.

* Regarding Jordan, were they overwhelmed like Syria? Are they closer to the Soviets or the Atlantic Alliance?

The Palestinians tried to overrun the Jordanians and the Jordanians declined the honor. The Palestinian community in Jordan is therefore very small and very well behaved. They maintain a fairly evenhanded neutrality (for that part of the world), and actually tend to side with the 'Third Way' movement (led by India).

* Just how close are Libya and Egypt? Libyan oil money and Egyptian numbers could be interesting.

They cordially loathe one another. The Egyptians blame all of their problems on the Judeans, but have figured out (after several spectacular clock-cleanings) that it's a really bad idea to try and attack them. The Libyan idea of diplomacy is "Let's you and him fight", (and they may be crazy but they're not insane enough to go up against the Judeans) so they spend a lot of time trying to goad the Egyptians into a debilitating war against the Judeans so that they (the Libyans) can start to push into Egypt.

* I presume the Gulf States are aligned with the Atlantic Alliance?

This is a really weird situation. The Gulf States would prefer not to be aligned with anybody - if anything, they are even more conservative than in @. But the Iranians (and to a somewhat lesser extent the Iraqis) spend a lot of time and money trying to subvert everybody else, so the GS are very reluctantly allied with the AA. On the other hand, the Kings, Princes, Emirs, et al who run the place in TIPOTS are - if such a thing is possible - are even more venal, greedy, and grasping than in @, and on more than a few occasions the Iraqis and Iranians have come very close to some very serious gains with a big enough bribe.

On a random note, I'm guessing Albania is still off on its own outside the Soviet sphere of influence? Is/was Bulgaria part of the Steel Pact?

The Soviets swatted Albania down HARD in the early 60s, and Enver Hoxha disappeared, though the Soviets spent years trying to convince people that he was still alive and running a resistance organization. In the end, Albania remained a loyal, committed member of the Steel Pact whether it wanted to be or not. Bulgaria was a faithful member of the Pact to the very end, and when the end came it was remarkably bloody and violent - think Romania in @, only without as much compassion or restraint.

Mike

[MKSheppard]

TIPOTS (Extra) States Of The US....Columbia, Vancouver, Guam and Puerto Rico.

To explain Columbia and Vancouver:

In order to help pay war debts to the US and for the US to secure an unbroken line of communication to Alaska, Canada and the UK transferred the province of British Columbia to the US in 1946. It remained a territory for five years and became the states of Vancouver (VN) south of Prince Rupert and Columbia (CL) - everything north of there - on 4 July 1951.

Hawaii, Guam and Alaska became states the same day. (4 JUL 1951)

The Puerto Rican legislature turned down an offer of statehood in 1960, but the population thought otherwise and demanded a vote on either statehood or independence. The vote was held on 10 Nov 64 and statehood won by an overwhelming vote. Puerto Rico joined the US on 4 July 1965.

Mike

[MKSheppard]

TIPOTS Central Europe Map 1991

TIPOTS_EuropeMap.png

[MKSheppard]

RN Ships in TIPOTS

So I found these:

tipotstk3-2.png

This is Dreadnought, I believe. Nuclear powered, 9x16-inch, Secondaries are the 5-inch designed for the Cruiser/destroyers in the 1950s or some iteration of Green Mace; ABLs midships and astern, IIRC Seawolf launchers fitted midships; Phalanx all over and chaff dispensers forward.

KGVtipots.png

This is the KGV class modernised, with aft uptake into the mast, and a deck midships for helicopters.

KGVtipotsseeeslug.png

This is the other KGV modernisation, with Sea Slug fitted midships. I guess the launcher would launch both the AA and the @ never developed SSM.

I have them saved on an old computer that is currently not working, when I sort that out I can save them as PNG etc and make them conform to shipbucket standards and size etc. Photobucket has mauled them quite bad, actually.

I would also add I think AA missiles, and ABL to KGVs (in place of the seaslug, and in other positions, maybe in lieu of some of the 5.25s)

I assume that the ABLs house some sort of SSM, rather than a tomohawk.

[MKSheppard]

MKSheppard--

I did some rough calculations, and with a laser guided shell (which is becoming available by the late 70s), a 12" gun can penetrate about 13.77" (350mm) of deck armor (13.77") in a perfect 90 degree plunging angle upon reaching a terminal velocity of about 1,637 fps (499 m/s).

This might explain why the Battleships in TIPOTS verse slowly faded away; why spend $$$ on getting huge massive 18"/75 mounts weighing at least 4,000 tons on your capital ships, when you can put 12"/60 automatic rifle mounts in for about 1,200 to 1,300 tons which can penetrate any reasonable amount of deck armor with precision munitions?

Also, by that time period, shell design is getting pretty advanced. Even if Gerald Bull is never born in TIPOTSverse, someone else will have his ideas, and a whole new range of shells will be designed, allowing smaller naval rifles to have reach traditionally associated with the "big guns" of battleships.

Of course, the same technologies can be applied to the 18" rifles of the "modern" USN BBs. My calcs show that USS Texas firing a nice laser guided shell could penetrate a whopping 35.4" (900mm) of armor (!).

Of course, most likely is that that extra penetration is traded down to about 23.6" inches (600mm~) so that much longer ranges can be achieved with the 18"/75 rifles. I'm thinking something on the order of 75 (!) miles as a rough idea; I'll have to research external ballistics some more.

But such a threat (long ranged battleship calibre guns firing at you from 75 miles) is only going to be limited to the Red Banner fleet, due to the enormous cost of developing teh guns, the ammunition, and then putting them to sea in a reasonably well protected platform. Everyone else will just decide that 12" or smaller is sufficient for their purposes and build a lot of ships that would be classified as CBs.

....In the TIPOTSverse, the all time range champ is Texas on 17 Jan 92, when she kills IRS Mohammed Reza Khan at 100.3 NM (115.42 statute miles). Mind you, this is a Hail Mary shot that is, at least by the numbers, within the capability of the Dahlgren Naval Arsenal M1972 18"/75 Autocannon.

It's doable, trust me.

-Mike

[MKSheppard]

Soviet Bombers in TIPOTS

Tu-95 (AAO 'Bear', Медведь )

Crew: Seven - two pilots, one tailgunner, four others
Length: 49.50 m (162 ft 5 in)
Wingspan: 51.10 m (167 ft 8 in)
Height: 12.12 m (39 ft 9 in)
Wing area: 310 m² (3,330 ft²)
Empty weight: 90,000 kg (198,000 lb)
Loaded weight: 171,000 kg (376,200 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 188,000 kg (414,500 lb)
Powerplant: 4× Kuznetsov NK-12MV turboprops, 11,000 kW (14,800 shp) each

Performance
Maximum speed: 920 km/h (510 knots, 575 mph)
Range: 15,000 km (8,100 nm, 9,400 mi)
Service ceiling 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10 m/s (2,000 ft/min)
Wing loading: 606 kg/m² (124 lb/ft²)
Power/mass: 235 W/kg (0.143 hp/lb)

Armament
Radar-controlled Guns: 1 or 2 each × AM-23 23 mm cannon in tail, dorsal, and ventral turrets

Tu-164 (AAO 'Battleaxe', Осьсражения) (aka Tu-22 Blinder like)


Crew: three - pilot, navigator, weapons officer
Length: 41.60 m (136 ft 5 in)
Wingspan: 23.17 m (76 ft 0 in)
Height: 10.13 m (33 ft 3 in)
Wing area: 162 m² (1,742 ft²)
Empty weight: kg (lb)
Loaded weight: 85,000 kg (187,390 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 92,000 kg (202,400 lb)
Powerplant: 4× Dobrynin RD-7M-2 turbojets
Dry thrust: rated 107.9 kN (24,250 lbf) each
Thrust with afterburner: 161.9 kN (36,376 lbf) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 1,510 km/h (938 mph)
Range: 4,900 km (3,045 mi)
Service ceiling 13,300 m (40,540 ft)
Rate of climb: m/s (ft/min)
Wing loading: 525 kg/m² (107 lb/ft²)
Thrust/weight: 0.38

Armament
Guns: 2× AM-23 23 mm cannon in tail turret

Tu-174 (AAO 'Boomer', Бумер) (Tu-26 Backfireski)

General characteristics

Crew: 4 (pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, defensive systems operator)
Length: 57.4 m (183ft)
Wingspan: 112ft 5in Spread (20° sweep): 34.28 m (112 ft 6 in) Swept (65° sweep): 23.30 m (76 ft 5 in))
Height: 11.05 m (36 ft 3 in)
Wing area: * Spread: 183.6 m² (1,976 ft²) Swept: 175.8 m² (1,892 ft²)
Empty weight: 58,000 kg (172,000 lb)
Loaded weight: 112,000 kg (247,000 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 126,000 kg (277,800 lb)
Powerplant: 4× Kuznetsov NK-25 turbofans, 245 kN (50,000 lbf) each

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.3 (2,327 km/h,)
Range: 7000 km (4971 mi)
Combat radius: 2410 km (1500 mi)
Service ceiling 13,300 m (40,635 ft)
Rate of climb: 15m/s (91ft/s)
Wing loading: 688 kg/m² (147 lb/ft²)
Thrust/weight: 0.40

Armament
Guns: 2× GSh-23 cannon in remotely controlled tail turret

[MKSheppard]

Dang, Mike, were the odds really that bad?

Well, it depends on how you look at it. The TIPOTS Soviet AF really did outnumber the USAF by about 3:1, and if you take a look at some of the numbers mentioned, that is a hell of a lot of airplanes. OTOH, most - and we're talking definitely over 50% - of those aircraft were either unreliable, obsolete, or unserviceable. (This will come out as backstory in Nightwatch.) The trouble is that the TIPOTS USSR is even more hermetic than @, and when the Soviets say something, we believe them. So when they say "We have X thousand aircraft ready to go medieval on you," the US and its allies believe them. The Soviet leadership believes it because they have no idea how bad the situation is, and the Soviet military leadership hopes they'll never have to try and back up their bluster.

Mike

[MKSheppard]

Unlike in our timeline, the SAC shield is not the pale milky blue of the sky, but solid black. This means...

The black represents, quite simply, death. When TIPOTS SAC was created it was intended as not only the last resort, but as a warning: if it is unleashed, it will not be recalled, it will not be used surgically, and it will not be stopped short of utter and complete destruction of an enemy. SAC doctrine doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of armistice or surrender on the part of an enemy - they will strike and destroy until there are no targets left. SAC aircrews even wear wear black flightsuits with black scarves. Over time, this attitude evolved into doctrine, and doctrine into a rigid mindset: if a SAC aircraft launches against you, you shall die.

-Mike

[MKSheppard]

MarkSheppard:

Liddy was the force behind creation of the Special Security Teams (SSTs) whose job is to investigate anything they want.

I see you finally put into words what you were telling me about at the time of M2's Graduation at Aberdeen.

For the rest of you who weren't there; the long and skinny of it is -- the Special Security Teams (SSTs) can go anywhere and arrest anyone.

I believe that if someone in the TIPOTS universe with the clearance to ask Liddy about how many people have been put away by DHS over it's history actually asked Liddy about it, the reply would be:

"I can count the number of people who we have convicted of sedition and sentenced to life imprisonment on one of my hands. And they are in a very secure location. And they are not getting out. Ever."

Jem,

Mark hit it right on the head - the number of people who have actually been 'disappeared' by the SSTs since 1961 is in the VERY low two digits, and if DHS comes after you, you are going down for sedition and/or treason - end of the discussion...but let me point out something else that will appear towards the end of Nightwatch: The DHS has a positively horrifying reputation - imagine the rep of the Inquisition at its worst, with lots and lots and lots of people just flat out disappearing for real. But as Secretary Liddy will be the first to tell you, it's amazing how many people with guilty consciences decided to disappear without any help from the DHS....

The real impact of the SSTs is this: they exist. They play by a VERY, VERY strict set of rules. And nothing but NOTHING they ever do is ever discussed in the media or by the Government. If it is - even in the most circuitous way - people in black suits and Ray-Bans really DO come to visit you and suggest (very politely, of course) that you back the hell off. To put it another way, imagine the way some people would react if the 'trampling of the Constitution' that they so often scream about was REALLY happening...and was completely legal and utterly taboo to talk about.

In TIPOTS, Gordon Liddy is not a Himmler or Beria - the people DHS has put away are all REAL traitors who did their ever loving best to hurt this country, and he would sooner die himself than to wrongly harm someone. But when he walks into a room, conversation stops. People avoid him in the street. And children really are told to behave or the Men in Black will get you....

ASIDE TO MARK: The President has the right and RESPONSIBILITY to ask the SecDHS anything anytime. The last President to actually do so was Richard Nixon. One reason Liddy has been SecDHS since the 60s is that no one really wants to know how bad it is. (Officially, he's held on this long to prove a bipartisan commitment to National Security.)

Mike

...Fleet Mac asked in another post what life was like here in a universe where you had the Department Of Homeland Security and Special Security Teams. Here's a little background.

After @ Korean War, the CIA was a bunch of busy beavers, scoring coups in Iran and Guatemala. The usefulness of these actions is still debatable - the first probably gave educated Iranians an eternal, pathological hatred of the US, and the second one may have been a political payback to US fruit growers - but they certainly got the interest of the US people (who for the most part approved) and Congress , which was concerned to the extent that the word, "hearings" started to be heard. Dwight Eisenhower - a far harder case than history would have us believe - wanted none of that, so he decided to come up with a post-dated explanation as to why this sort of thing was necessary. Ike then tasked LTGen James 'Jimmy' Doolittle to come up with one.

Doolittle was a legend in the best possible sense of the word with a strong reputation on Capitol Hill, and whose personal integrity and honesty was (and remains) untouchable. He was also a rock-ribbed conservative with an intense dislike of the USSR. The report ran 54 pages, but it can be distilled thusly....

"...In order to head off congressional efforts to study the CIA's covert operations following these two coups, Eisenhower commissioned World War II hero Lt. Gen James Doolittle to study the subject. The 1954 Doolittle Report provided an early justification for covert action against communists by stating that no rules applied when faced with an implacable enemy set upon world domination by whatever means and whatever cost."

In TIPOTS, Harry Truman had Jim Doolittle do that report in 1949, and the result was far more drastic. In TIPOTS, the Soviet Union didn't need a decade or so to rebuild from a Nazi invasion. It had nuclear weapons in 1947. It had sunk a US CL (USS Cleveland CL-55) pretty much for the hell of it, and Stalin openly spoke of invading western Europe. So Doolittle not only said in TIPOTS what he said in @, he said it much more forcefully. Doolittle stated:

"...Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that we are facing an implacable enemy with almost unlimited resources whose stated desire - both publicly and clandestinely - is to destroy the free nations of the world and subjugate them to Communism. Every action they have taken since the official end of the Second World War has been taken in furtherance of this goal, and there is nothing in their official or secretive actions to indicate otherwise.

Our existence as we know it is at risk, and the only possible way to secure that existence is to be prepared to fight fire with fire."

To hear those words from the revered Doolittle were sobering enough, and it became Government policy. For the next ten years, however, the Soviets were looked at more as a military threat than a political one. This makes sense when you remember that the men who won WWII through military might were now leading the country. But in the mid-50s came a series of high profile espionage cases that rattled the national security establishment. Bad enough, but a number of self-serving politicians on both sides began charging that the Government had lost control of national security. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's vaunted counterespionage teams had missed every one of spies (each one being caught through their own greed and mistakes)and Hoover's angry denial that there was no real problem only made matters worse.

And then came the New Year's Eve War. The revelation that at least one member of the Cabinet was a Soviet spy was never made public, among the officials and politicians who did know, the results were startling. The Left was paralyzed after discovering that there really was a fellow traveler in their midst, and the Right was determined that it would NEVER happen again. However, with the lame duck Stevenson administration winding down, any actual decisions were delayed until after the 1960 elections....which were won in a devastating landslide by Ike's VP, Richard M. Nixon.

Nixon had NO intention of ever allowing a security failure in HIS administration, so he ordered the creation of the Cabinet-level Department Of Homeland Security in March of 1961. Nixon's people had quietly gone to Hoover just before the inauguration and told him what was happening - and that as long as Hoover cooperated, he could remain head of the FBI forever. If he did not, secret files regarding the botched pursuit of German spies during WWII would be released, and the nation would get to decide if Hoover should stay. Hoover's biographers have said that he was both furious at Nixon's actions...and admiring of the way they were pulled off. In the end, Hoover gave in and handed over the Bureau's CI functions to the new DHS.

The first director was the brilliant - and quite possibly unbalanced - CIA officer James J. Angleton, who took the job with a zeal and fire that would have done credit to a Grand Inquisitor. Angleton firmly believed that all were guilty until proven innocent and without question he destroyed innocent careers - but he also found at least two high-level moles, and possibly more. However, Democratic and NDP politicians began to complain (quietly, behind the scenes) about Angleton running amok, and even Nixon realized that he could be a liability. Angleton was given the job of DCI, while his young assistant, a former FBI agent named G. Gordon Liddy took over just after the 1964 elections.

Liddy was far less flamboyant and suspicious, but far more retiring and secretive, appearing in public only for mandatory Congressional hearings and rarely giving interviews. However, he got results - by the end of Nixon's second term he had done remarkable work in rolling up Soviet spy networks in the US. However, it came at a price - the Special Security Teams. Their original intent was to be able to physically take down and arrest spies with no unneccessary complications like warrants or court orders, and they did so on orders from the Special Security Court , a secret court made up of a Supreme Court justice and two circuit court justices. However, the SSTs began to be used more against protesters and dissidents as well as spies. The SSC did have the power to order 'indefinite detention' or ID if they found a situation warranted it - if disclosure of a spy or ring would do more harm than good to national security. But as the SSTs began to track dissidents and others who were considered a threat to national security, their reputation grew into more of a Gestapo whose job was to make people disappear.

A strange phenomenon began to develop. The SSTs - as far as can be determined - may have never actually taken more than a few hundred people into custody between 1964 and their dissolution in 1993, and most reliable sources say that the total number of people ever taken into ID was less than fifty. But many famed dissidents of the 60s and 70s, from starlets who visited rebel Cuban AA sites to defrocked priests who attacked missile silos and bomber bases, disappeared after they were known to have been visited by SSTs. However, in several specific cases like this, Liddy was asked during the Reconciliation hearings in the mid-90s and swore under oath that those persons had never been taken into custody....just visited and asked to 'tone it down'. Liddy himself has often hinted that the missing people are still quite alive and happy....but hiding out somewhere with new identities and regretting their guilty consciences. Liddy himself didn't leave DHS until 1993, having been kept on by succeeding Presidents as an example of 'bipartisanship in National Security' - and when he gave his briefings, they tended to listen very closely as he related the cases DHS had handled...and the incredible power it gave them. No one ever felt able to shut it down, or restrict its powers...and according to records declassified in the late 90s, our most liberal President, James E. Carter, wanted to use it the most, requesting SSC rulings more than a hundred times. (Records are vague, but apparently fewer than twenty were granted.) Even the mass media tread very softly where national security was concerned, usually following the government line.

So for the overwhelming amount of cases, the SSTs were the boogeymen - something you scared people with, or something that people may well have managed to scare themselves with. The overall effect, however, was deadening - loyalty became a goal in and of itself, while people who disagreed with the political orthodoxy of the time found themselves frozen out by people who feared associating with them. Even the slightest hint of interest from the DHS was sufficient to end careers and destroy lives. And sadly, the everyday actions and statements of the USSR were enough to convince most people that there really was an existential threat out there, and they needed to be protected from it. During the Cuban War, nuclear shots were exchanged within sight of the East Coast, and it frightened people.

And a frightened people are a compliant people.

Mike

[MKSheppard]

Isn't power armour in the forties a tad unrealistic? Who was the traitor BTW? A Soviet physic co... Hang on, this isn't Red Alert 2. You've constructed a dark world Mike, one ruled by cool.

A little background -

The SS armor was a ceramic/steel suit, no power was involved. It was pretty much impervious to small arms fire at medium distance or better. The US immediately started reverse engineering it on the direct orders of President Roosevelt, but the Army made it clear they wanted little to do with it. (The Germans did come up with improved versions of the Gepanzerte Angriffsklage, but were never able to produce them in enough numbers to make any kind of difference. Supposedly there was a powered suit prototype, but this appears to have been more or a small walking tank than a practical fighting suit.) The Marines, however, had fought against this stuff at close range and knew what kind of impact it could have. The first version - the M1942A Combat Suit - got into service during the first island battles, albeit in small numbers. The Corps never got as many as they wanted - usually only one company in a battalion got them - but the Japanese were terrified of them. The A1 version - with NV gear and radios - enabled the Marines to fight 24/7, something the Japanese never adjusted to. The Corps constantly improved and upgraded the suits to the point where by the late 60s, all Marines in amphibious units had them, and by the late 80s the first fully powered and armed suits - M1985A - were completely equipping all amphibious units. The Army finally caved in at the same time, equipping two full armored divisions with the M1985A and the 82nd Airborne with a special lightweight version, the M1985CL. And JN is correct, Hiss was the traitor - excuse me, the known traitor. There may have been one more....

---Mike

[Simon Darkshade]

The Tipots RN: Another Perspective is one of my posts. Good to see it survived.