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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 3, 2022 16:12:13 GMT
Steve,
1.) Eventually. It sets up a one off story about it, but the long and short is an old Atlantean gate/ley line network around certain spots in the world was greatly messed up by the fall of Atlantis and now only flickers on and off. It plays into the Bermuda Triangle, which is something separate. Like a broken device, it might flicker on and off. Enterprise was passing through at the exact wrong time
2.) Time will tell what they are; this is a very long loop meteor, as it were
3.) It is something I wish I could see. I can describe it, though
4.) Something stranger yet
5.) I’m leaning on those being the last ones, or the penultimate ones, in the world, as far as is known
6.) He is someone else, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise
7.) They were trying out their radar on gold. No hidden twists, this time
8.) Historically, it was a tie, so this is even further in advance
9.) They determine the size thanks to some rather specialised geological spells. It will be held back, as well as being used for a variety of industrial and space purposes and for silver weapons
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jul 4, 2022 15:58:13 GMT
Steve, 1.) Eventually. It sets up a one off story about it, but the long and short is an old Atlantean gate/ley line network around certain spots in the world was greatly messed up by the fall of Atlantis and now only flickers on and off. It plays into the Bermuda Triangle, which is something separate. Like a broken device, it might flicker on and off. Enterprise was passing through at the exact wrong time 2.) Time will tell what they are; this is a very long loop meteor, as it were 3.) It is something I wish I could see. I can describe it, though 4.) Something stranger yet 5.) I’m leaning on those being the last ones, or the penultimate ones, in the world, as far as is known 6.) He is someone else, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise 7.) They were trying out their radar on gold. No hidden twists, this time 8.) Historically, it was a tie, so this is even further in advance 9.) They determine the size thanks to some rather specialised geological spells. It will be held back, as well as being used for a variety of industrial and space purposes and for silver weapons
Thanks for the clarifications.
Of course thinking about it with the supernatural elements in DE silver weapons could be especially useful. Although that is a hell of a lot of silver.  |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 4, 2022 16:40:28 GMT
It is indeed. The inflationary consequences were second to “How the heck did that get there?!” as the immediate reaction. Quite a bit will get used up on the British Empire and American starship projects, which are very long term.
Other things of note in January:
- JFK coming close to acknowledging some details of what is known re: UFOs
- New British tactical nukes
- Demis Roussos becoming an opera singer, Callas sticking around longer and an opera on Alex the Great
- Iraq moving towards an internal coup
- Evel Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon successfully
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 18, 2022 17:03:06 GMT
February 21: Signing of an Armistice by South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain. formally bringing hostilities on land, sea and air in the Vietnam War to an end until a final peaceful settlement can be achieved. It provides for the establishment of a 15 mile wide Demilitarised Zone from the coast to the Thai border, the temporary partitioning of Laos into a communist North Laos and democratic South Laos, a full exchange of prisoners of war and the clearing of mines from the coast of North Vietnam and a lifting of the blockade. Previous Soviet and North Vietnamese insistence upon the withdrawal of Allied forces from South Vietnam was dropped in exchange for acquiescence on the terms of the Laotian partition.
Whilst both sides can claim victory by virtue of survival as state entities, the effective destruction of the Viet Cong provides for the best possible evidence of a strategic victory for South Vietnam, the United States and their Free World allies. Whilst Saigon still has significant progress to make until it it is militarily self sufficient, it is greatly advanced from its position of a decade ago. The cost in lives, treasure and damage to the natural environment has been great for all involved. South Vietnam has suffered an estimated 360,000 military and 500,000 civilian dead and missing and over 1 million wounded; the United States 79,248 killed or missing and 398,532 wounded; France 12,823 KIA/MIA and 65,612 WIA; Britain 10,376 KIA/MIA and 56,934 wounded; Korea 8741 KIA/MIA and 25,938 WIA; the Commonwealth 8692 KIA/MIA and 35,624 WIA; India 6983 KIA/MIA and 27,445 WIA; and other Free World Military Forces 12,579 KIA/MIA and 70,628 WIA. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong lost an estimated 2 million military dead or missing and upwards of 300,000 civilian deaths due to bombing and other military action.
The economic cost of the Vietnam War to the United States in the 1960s is difficult to measure, but from 1964 to 1970, $307 billion was spent on direct war costs alone; aid to South Vietnam and subsidies and support to numerous member states of the Free World Military Forces was in addition to this expenditure. US forces peaked in 1969 with a total of 2,139,526 men deployed in 27 Army and Marine divisions and a total of 2954 fixed wing planes and 3877 helicopters were lost due to combat or accidents, but only 426 tanks were lost. Like the Korean War, naval losses were comparatively small, with only a handful of ships sunk, but numerous battleships and carriers sustained casualties from enemy fire and accidents and sea during the six and a half years of major combat operations. Enemy air to air combat losses are claimed as 784 shot down in aerial combat in exchange for 178 US, 65 British, 40 South Vietnamese and 23 French planes.
The increasing use of chemical and radiological weapons in the final years of the war has rendered some certain parts of North Vietnam and Laos uninhabitable for the next ten millennia, whilst the use of chemical defoliant and assorted biological agents has inflicted considerable damage. Significant parts of Hanoi, Haiphong and other strategic North Vietnamese cities have been destroyed by the heavy bombing campaign of Operation Rolling Thunder and over 24 million tons of explosive ordnance was dropped by the USAF, USN and Allied forces, ranging from 3” rockets to a former battleship. It saw the last combat employment of the F-51 Mustang and the de Havilland Mosquito and the first use of nuclear weapons in a war since the British in 1956.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Jul 18, 2022 18:05:27 GMT
February 21: Signing of an Armistice by South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain. formally bringing hostilities on land, sea and air in the Vietnam War to an end until a final peaceful settlement can be achieved. It provides for the establishment of a 15 mile wide Demilitarised Zone from the coast to the Thai border, the temporary partitioning of Laos into a communist North Laos and democratic South Laos, a full exchange of prisoners of war and the clearing of mines from the coast of North Vietnam and a lifting of the blockade. Previous Soviet and North Vietnamese insistence upon the withdrawal of Allied forces from South Vietnam was dropped in exchange for acquiescence on the terms of the Laotian partition. Whilst both sides can claim victory by virtue of survival as state entities, the effective destruction of the Viet Cong provides for the best possible evidence of a strategic victory for South Vietnam, the United States and their Free World allies. Whilst Saigon still has significant progress to make until it it is militarily self sufficient, it is greatly advanced from its position of a decade ago. The cost in lives, treasure and damage to the natural environment has been great for all involved. South Vietnam has suffered an estimated 360,000 military and 500,000 civilian dead and missing and over 1 million wounded; the United States 79,248 killed or missing and 398,532 wounded; France 12,823 KIA/MIA and 65,612 WIA; Britain 10,376 KIA/MIA and 56,934 wounded; Korea 8741 KIA/MIA and 25,938 WIA; the Commonwealth 8692 KIA/MIA and 35,624 WIA; India 6983 KIA/MIA and 27,445 WIA; and other Free World Military Forces 12,579 KIA/MIA and 70,628 WIA. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong lost an estimated 2 million military dead or missing and upwards of 300,000 civilian deaths due to bombing and other military action. The economic cost of the Vietnam War to the United States in the 1960s is difficult to measure, but from 1964 to 1970, $307 billion was spent on direct war costs alone; aid to South Vietnam and subsidies and support to numerous member states of the Free World Military Forces was in addition to this expenditure. US forces peaked in 1969 with a total of 2,139,526 men deployed in 27 Army and Marine divisions and a total of 2954 fixed wing planes and 3877 helicopters were lost due to combat or accidents, but only 426 tanks were lost. Like the Korean War, naval losses were comparatively small, with only a handful of ships sunk, but numerous battleships and carriers sustained casualties from enemy fire and accidents and sea during the six and a half years of major combat operations. Enemy air to air combat losses are claimed as 524 shot down in aerial combat in exchange for 178 US, 65 British, 40 South Vietnamese and 23 French planes. The increasing use of chemical and radiological weapons in the final years of the war has rendered some certain parts of North Vietnam and Laos uninhabitable for the next ten millennia, whilst the use of chemical defoliant and assorted biological agents has inflicted considerable damage. Significant parts of Hanoi, Haiphong and other strategic North Vietnamese cities have been destroyed by the heavy bombing campaign of Operation Rolling Thunder and over 24 million tons of explosive ordnance was dropped by the USAF, USN and Allied forces, ranging from 3” rockets to a former battleship. It saw the last combat employment of the F-51 Mustang and the de Havilland Mosquito and the first use of nuclear weapons in a war since the British in 1956. Will this last or will it give North Vietnam time to go for a new round. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 18, 2022 18:28:28 GMT
They aren’t going to be in a position to start a second round any time soon. They have no easy route south, with parts of the HCM Trail off limits for 10,000 years due to radiation.
The alternates are to swing through Thailand or go straight ahead through the DMZ and the prepared US and South Vietnamese garrison divisions.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Jul 18, 2022 18:38:47 GMT
They aren’t going to be in a position to start a second round any time soon. They have no easy route south, with parts of the HCM Trail off limits for 10,000 years due to radiation. The alternates are to swing through Thailand or go straight ahead through the DMZ and the prepared US and South Vietnamese garrison divisions. So everything will be 100 % peace then. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 18, 2022 18:40:39 GMT
Not 100%. This is not the @ situation. The most analogous one is perhaps Korea, with a few more skirmishes around the edges thrown in.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Jul 19, 2022 4:01:38 GMT
Not 100%. This is not the @ situation. The most analogous one is perhaps Korea, with a few more skirmishes around the edges thrown in. The United States will help South Vietnam in keeping the edge of North Vietnam ore is South Vietnam now have to pay for everything themselves. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 19, 2022 5:52:48 GMT
The former is most likely; as said, the circumstances of South Vietnam in 1970 DE are analogous to the @ Republic of Korea in 1954.
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 19, 2022 8:54:59 GMT
The big ‘take homes’ are that this second phase of the Great Indochina War has resulted in something like Korea post 1953; and that dusting the Mu Gia Pass and other stretches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail bought victory, but at what price?
I really need to do an overall piece on the differences of the DE Vietnam War from @ whilst still displaying a greater degree of sensitivity than for previous conflicts that are more of the stuff of history and keeping a few arrows in the quiver for some future stories.
Some other thoughts:
- The press are very tightly controlled in their reporting compared to @. This follows on from the US copying the successful British approach taken in 1956 of controlling the information flow and content
- The leadership at the top is different, without the political interference and mismanagement we saw in @ from LBJ and RSM or the suboptimal results achieved by Westmoreland. I didn’t want to project too much of a “just change the personnel and it will be fine” approach, as that is too simplistic; Westy goes to SACEUR instead of the Far East and administering that more conventional force seems a better use of his talents
- There is not an attempt to fight the war without mobilisation. The NG and Reserves are called up, draft widened and deepened from already wider and deeper circumstances and the task outlined as a hard one from the start. This has flow on effects on the popular cultural presentation of the war
- The war escalates far harder far quicker, without the same gradualism displayed in 1964-65 in @. This comes from that New Frontier idealism wanting a chance to ‘bear any burden’ combined with a different set of lessons from Korea. More boots on the ground does add up
- Even so, there isn’t a quick solution. Defeating the enemy takes a good 4.5-5 years of first holding, then shifting to the offensives of 1967-68. There is no Tet 68 analogue, but rather a rolling series of offensives based on the Hundred Days; Khe Sanh is also as decisive as it was hoped to be in @
- A big catalyst comes in cutting the HCM Trail and not being constrained from pushing into Laos, which denies the VC and NVA resupply and support. Cut off from that, an insurgent force ends up being subject to attrition. This would be for nought if there wasn’t a more effective and cohesive CI strategy in South Vietnam, which in turn requires taking a broom to the corrupt elements in the government and military
- There isn’t a significant anti-war movement in the USA nor the same number of (relatively) easy ways of avoiding service. The Army in particular swells in size, but covers a lot of different areas and missions around the world.
- The end is something akin to Korea: an armistice leaving the Commies up north. However, even though there will be Soviet forces in NV and US forces in SV, it is the latter who feel, with some justice, that they have won
- There is an absence of the loss of trust that flowed from the war, which culminated in Watergate and more. This sets up a 1970s with a very different tone compared to @ and the whole genre of the Vietnam vet movie won’t occur, among other effects
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Jul 19, 2022 17:41:31 GMT
The big ‘take homes’ are that this second phase of the Great Indochina War has resulted in something like Korea post 1953; and that dusting the Mu Gia Pass and other stretches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail bought victory, but at what price? I really need to do an overall piece on the differences of the DE Vietnam War from @ whilst still displaying a greater degree of sensitivity than for previous conflicts that are more of the stuff of history and keeping a few arrows in the quiver for some future stories. Some other thoughts: - The press are very tightly controlled in their reporting compared to @. This follows on from the US copying the successful British approach taken in 1956 of controlling the information flow and content So no Pentagon Papers of OTL. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 20, 2022 5:42:03 GMT
No.
A very different Indochina War of 1945-1954 followed by a different late 50s and then a distinctly different 1960s war does not make for the same background. There is some similarity in a desire to contain China.
There is an internal US government/DoD history of this war, but it doesn't have the associated perception of any level of public deception.
I would note that the PP in @ were leaked in 1971 in a fundamentally different environment in which the war was extremely unpopular and controversial. Here, it is neither of those things and has been essentially and effectively won in early 1970.
This is from 1968 discussion:
"August 25 isn’t quite a Schwarzkopf-esque ‘Mother of All Briefings’, but bears a certain similarity. As there has been no Tet, there hasn’t been a perceived shift in the ‘winnability’ of the war and general perceptions are closer to those relayed in this short film:
The grand strategy as adopted by the Kennedy Administration and the US Army Vietnam (Dark Earth parallel to MACV) has been:
1963: Counterinsurgency Support
1964: Tonkin Gulf and the shift to mass US and allied forces
1965: Establish the force and shape the battlefield
1966: Counteroffensive begins: Put the enemy onto the back foot and constrain their ability to do anything beyond reacting on a strategic level
1967: Phase One of the Victory Plan: Strategic ‘battlefield’ shaping, with expansion operations into Laos and Cambodia, plus absolutely hammering the HCM Trail.
1968: Phase Two: Deliver a big defeat (Khe Sanh) and then use that as the kicking off point for rolling offensives over the next 6 months. I’ve intentionally wove those together to be reminiscent of the Hundred Days’ Offensive of 1918, whereby the Germans kept being hit by a series of successful bite and hold attacks that disintegrated their front and ability to effectively resist. Here, the big aim has been to cut the HCM Trail in Laos, hammer its termination in Cambodia and simultaneously launch rolling attacks across all four Tactical Zones (@ Corps Tactical Zones I-IV) reminiscent of Ridgway’s attritional rolling offensives in Korea.
Phase 2.5 (August 68-January 69): Continue the grinding process of killing the cut off VC and NVA forces in South Vietnam through large scale offensives and ongoing counterinsurgency. As they are cut off from supply, they wither on the vine.
Phase 3 (1969): Over a 12 month period, shift to a situation akin to Vietnamization within South Vietnam, continued border defence and bombing the Jim Christ out of North Vietnam.
Phase 4 (Early 1970): Declare victory, whilst retaining a strong garrison, heavy air and naval support and extensive embedded SF support. Seek a binding armistice."
They have reached the end of Phase 4. The residual US garrison, at least initially, will be 4 US Army divisions and associated support; upwards of 1000 assorted USAF tactical aircraft in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, plus B-47s in Thailand and B-52s in Guam; and two carrier battlegroups and two battleships on station offshore. As South Vietnam recovers and develops its own capacity, this force naturally shrinks.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jul 21, 2022 13:31:36 GMT
Catching up after a few days off - think my PC was struggling with the heat even more than I was so kept its use to a minimum.
Much more successful war organisation although as you say the locals and the forces involved and some of their descendants will be paying the prices for a long time to come. Although you will avoid a lot of the OTL massacres and horrors when the communists took over OTL.
Given that Nixon is no longer a candidate for President I take it there's going to be no Watergate, or similar scandal relating to illegal activities by a US President - or other leading political figures - at all.
Steve
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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 21, 2022 18:18:26 GMT
Steve,
I have thought that many of our British friends would not be having a good time of it without houses equipped for hot weather on par with an Aussie summer. My computer used to not go well over 40, so you’re on the mark there.
It is a different war, but many of the striking moments you rightly identify didn’t occur for that reason and a confluence of the others.
With Nixon as Chief Justice, there is no Watergate or any of the other events that lead to the big drop in trust of government in the USA. Combined with a lack of the JFK assassination and the social disorder of the later 1960s, it is an America that still has its innocent/trusting edge of the 1950s. Politics isn’t quite as nasty a blood sport as @ and there is still a sense of bipartisanship on big areas. My reasoning is that I wanted to explore a different tone and style for the US, rather than a slight reworking of history. In this, it is in the same boat as a different Britain, USSR and France, among others.
Simon
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