Fall and Rise: A WW2 ISOT

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?

Yes it would. A completely new fleet plus aircraft does change things a tad.

The Montanas would be regarded as third class ships, perhaps suitable for a boy’s training vessel. Where they’ll need to go is the paper design for a 106,500t fast battleship, as well as breaking out their larger gun designs.

Edit: This got me to thinking, and that got me to searching, with the result of a British battleship pic I did back in 2006/07 as a hand drawn modification of an online design from many, many moons ago:

photobucket.com/u/SimonDarkshade/p/6572149a-83bb-4ab6-b167-e64648e77927

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 25th 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.

Steve,

The Americans are certainly a bit taken aback, but their advantages haven’t evaporated. Japan’s window has closed before it was open, and any prospect for their success has evaporated.

Nice pick up on Halder’s realisation. Think of it as a distraction play similar to Schwarzkopf’s in Desert Storm, where focus was drawn to the coast, whilst the big hit came swinging through the desert.

Some dragon reaction will come in the next part, when the evidence can no longer be denied; think of the current situation as one of profound cognitive dissonance.

There will be a reckoning for Nazi survivors, including the situation whereby their future crimes are known, but have not yet occurred here. The larger part of the Holocaust, as we know it, will not occur.

I’ll provide a little epilogue, after the next 1-2 parts, but won’t go too far down the rabbit hole of a new world, as this is just a little self contained ISOT.

Simon

I can conclusively say that I don’t intend to address any of those four issues in more than brief detail. Japan would need a lot more writing to detail what happens if it doesn’t want to pull out from China (Britain’s position being less stringent than America’s), as world the Soviets, who are now the world’s second largest remaining pariah. I’m not really interested in sinking a lot of time into the future of India and their internal politics. I know that the politics of the aftermath of war are as complex as wars themselves, but this was always meant to be a limited spin off.

As for space, there will be a little something and a bit of a cliffhanger/joke to it, but nothing heavy.