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The thing is, even though a lot of alternate events were possible, that doesn't mean they were all equally possible. For instance, in 1941, Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav regent were pro-fascist and dominated politically by Germany. A group of pro-British army officers launched a coup that overthrew the regent, puthe the young king in his place, and joined the allies. The Germans, who were planning the invasion of the Soviet Union, responded by invading Yugoslavia and Greece (which Italy had invaded and was doing poorly in). The Germans took over Yugoslavia easily, but doing so delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union for about a month, and, given how close the Germans came to taking Moscow before the winter, that day may have cost them the city, which would have drastically changed the war. The chances that the coup would have failed, while unlikely, still were more likely than your example of the US invading Canada in 1939. For the Coup to fail would have meant some people we were lucky would have had to be unlucky. For the US to invade Canada would have meant that the whole history of US-Canadian relations in the 1930s would have had to have been changed.
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Jan 18, 2018 20:27
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Woodchip posted:So ive dumped all the Singapore reinforcements and aussies I toBurma. I’m sure I can totally hold Rangoon. Same here - all of the various convoys to Singapore at the start got redirected to Rangoon. Considered evacuating some guys from Singapore itself to help the defense but decided that would be too gamey. I’ve also been shoveling as much supply into Rangoon as I can before Japanese air raids make it too hairy to get any transports in. I’m 3 weeks into the war and the enemy hasn’t started pushing in Burma yet - very curious if it’ll be enough to hold. Are you planning to try and hold them at Pegu? Or make your defense in Rangoon itself?
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Jan 18, 2018 20:50
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Epicurius posted:The thing is, even though a lot of alternate events were possible, that doesn't mean they were all equally possible. For instance, in 1941, Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav regent were pro-fascist and dominated politically by Germany. A group of pro-British army officers launched a coup that overthrew the regent, puthe the young king in his place, and joined the allies. The Germans, who were planning the invasion of the Soviet Union, responded by invading Yugoslavia and Greece (which Italy had invaded and was doing poorly in). The Germans took over Yugoslavia easily, but doing so delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union for about a month, and, given how close the Germans came to taking Moscow before the winter, that day may have cost them the city, which would have drastically changed the war. That sounds right, but, we don't actually know. And any statement of "likelihood" is predicated on the unknowable question of how "different" you need decisions or events to be, in order to get a "very different" outcome. We do not actually know whether you can change a single decision in, say, 1930, and have that result in a war between the US and Canada in 1945. Our sense of how events unfold suggests that that's "unlikely" but that's a completely unfounded guess. If Hitler got into art school, does WWII happen at all? Maybe it does: maybe Germany was "primed" for a fascist movement and some other person would have wound up leading it. Or maybe not. If FDR dies of Polio before getting elected President, does the US get a New Deal? Maybe the entire world remains mired in the Great Depression for an extra 10 years. Or maybe a civil rights movement gets going in 1940 instead of 1960s and the US stays out of WWII because it's too busy with internal race riots, or pivots to fascism, or has a second Civil War. How much of a difference would it make if the prohibitionists never managed to get the 18th amendment passed? We can argue till we're blue in the face about what seems "more likely" or "less likely" but the reality is we have no basis to test such a hypothesis, and never will. Alternate history is 100% fiction and that means you have 100% control; you can create any outcome or scenario you want, trivially, by simply asserting that such-and-such events happened in a certain way, and there's no "evidence" that can be presented to prove you're wrong.
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Jan 18, 2018 21:08
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I’m in April and have been pushed out of Pegu. I’m holding in Rangoon so far but lost Prome. Supply is holding out and I’m using crappy akls to drop in supply one at a time. Buying out the flying tigers and every spitfire I can has kept me ahead in the air. Beware that some spits get withdrawn...those that are get put on sweep duty the week before they go.
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Jan 18, 2018 21:09
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"If Germany and Japan were completely different countries starting forty years prior to WWII, they totally could have won!"
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Jan 18, 2018 21:33
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Woodchip posted:I’m in April and have been pushed out of Pegu. I’m holding in Rangoon so far but lost Prome. Yeah, terrain is king for defence so holding in Moulmein is probably easier than Pegu. I've played two games against the AI as allies, and held Rangoon in both. In the second I also held Moulmein and had the decisive battle there. Three or four japanese divisions bled themselves dry on the offense and then I crushed them. I won autovictory in 1943 with the conquest of Bangkok. I did evac as much as possible from Singers and also forted up in Palembang (getting the coastal artillery unit from Medan in there is key, they get 6" CD guns!)
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Jan 18, 2018 22:05
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Woodchip posted:I’m in April and have been pushed out of Pegu. I’m holding in Rangoon so far but lost Prome. Where are you getting Spitfires for Rangoon? I’ve got the 3 Flying Tiger squadrons in Rangoon and so far they’ve done a good job protecting the ships with CAP and LRCAP. While we are on the subject, I need to get some modern fighters to Australia and then to Moresby. As far as I can tell there isn’t a decent squadron for CAP in the whole continent at the start of the game. I’ve got 3 groups of P-39s heading to Sydney from LA, which should help in the short term. I notice that Pearl has a bunch of P-40s - would it be a terrible move to strip some of the fighters from Pearl and send them south, to either Australia or Noumea/Luganville? Pearl doesn’t seem to be under much air threat at all. Or will some decent fighters show up in-theater at some point, like those groups of Banshees do at the end of December?
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Jan 18, 2018 22:22
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Epicurius posted:The Germans took over Yugoslavia easily, but doing so delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union for about a month, and, given how close the Germans came to taking Moscow before the winter, that day may have cost them the city, which would have drastically changed the war. No it didn't, and it probably didn't. The schedule slip from 15 May to 22 June was primarily weather related; even if the Balkan campaign had caused the delay, the weather suggests that an early attack might actually do worse. If the Germans attack on 15 May, many major rivers are still flooded, roads are muddy, rapid advances of the kind seen in the early weeks of the war are not possible, and Soviet forces probably avoid the massive early encirclements.
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Jan 18, 2018 22:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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My bad, it’s Hurricane 2s in Rangoon. As to getting fighters to Aus and PM, I’m slowly shipping them from the west coast via Pearl and Pago. Maybe summer 42 there will be enough to defend vs betties out of Rabaul Thanks for all the wirraways, raaf.
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Jan 18, 2018 23:18
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Woodchip posted:My bad, it’s Hurricane 2s in Rangoon. Wirraways are useful for asw out of Sydney and Brisbane. And not much else. But that's actually good, I can rarely bring myself to use actually useful planes for asw, at least before I have elite pilots who actually has a chance to hurt subs, so light bombers are a blessing in that regard.  LR Hudsons for search, wirraways for asw, and just accept that you don't have poo poo for strike untill the Banshees arrive and the first marine squadrons get shipped across the Pacific.
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Jan 18, 2018 23:43
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RZApublican posted:The extended ramblings are what make this thread good The thing is you want to push the Allied player to have to be reactive. A ton of additional Axis forces in China aren't going to do a -ton- of good. Supply and logistics in China are awful, it's not great tank country. A bunch of Panzer divisions run out of gas quickly. The German/Italian navies aren't going to be super useful other than support roles - which a hugely boosted IJN doesn't really -need- with so many more ships. All the other Axis navies do is tie up supplies and ports. Attack through India? Suddenly the Allies are forced with iether abandoning india, which effectively knocks the British out of the war, lets Japan pincer China and cut off all supplies going there, makes the other Axis navies useful as they can be support off india. It forces the Allied player to either push the limited Indian and Royal Navy forces to protect India or send the USN in a long, precarious path or has theAllies essentially split in two. IT means you can't fortress and bunker down in Australia without giving up the far mor eiportant area of India and the inevitable abandonment of China. It forces the Allies to decide to commit forces early on the terms of the Axis or give th Axis a major early advantage with VP's and plowing through to get more resources. Plus diplomatically i India is taken and the Japanese have room to in turn invade Siberia that likely knocks Russia out of the war as an effective power (I guess the game engine probably can't handle that sort of thing but it seems realistic to do if the Axis are seure enough in INdia/Persia to threaten the USSR's southern flank) My tke on this (yes I'm aware of how blatantly ahitosrical it is) is it forces the Allies to -not- just hunker down for 2-3 years. It means they have to massively commit early on or have a much more brutal steamroller t make up for. Or risk having thier far inferior forces swarmed and obliterated if they do. If not, the Axis gets such a huge VP advantage and boost from supplies and intact shipping as to make winning nearly impossible. I also think that if the game engine can handle ti giving a ton of elite and advanced German Subs to operate out of Japanese bases tasked with cnovoy/shipping raiding with as good torps as you can justify will be completley nasty as it prevents just shipping anything available to Australia to fortify there. It makes the game have hard choice syou haev to commit to or abandon.
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Jan 19, 2018 07:39
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Did the British ever have a natively-built/designed dive bomber?Lando131 posted:The most amusing suggestion I've ever heard is for Japan to forgo Pearl Harbor and instead slam everything into Russia hard enough to pull units from the West so that Germany can roll over Moscow. Then with Russia under Axis occupation Japan has plenty of fuel. If the US never intervenes maybe they even help Germany take on the UK. The Japanese actually did consider invading the Russian Far East in the '30s as a way to grab more resources. They called it the Northern Resource Area, in contrast to the Dutch East Indies as the Southern Resource Area. In the event, Georgy Zhukov curbstomped them so badly at the Battle of Khalkin Gol that they abandoned this idea.
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Jan 19, 2018 10:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:Did the British ever have a natively-built/designed dive bomber?
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Jan 19, 2018 10:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:Did the British ever have a natively-built/designed dive bomber? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Barracuda
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Jan 19, 2018 12:26
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dtkozl posted:I 100 percent disagree with this. Parts of the republican section of the government were isolationist but the democrats were raging interventionists and FDR was personally part of a faction within that had a hard on for China and would literally have used any pretext to go to war eventually just as Wilson had with WW1. There is no history where the US stays out of WW2 with FDR in the white house, just timelines where it takes longer. Yes and No. FDR trying to keep Britain alive and prevent the Nazis from ever taking over the island ? Sure thing. But: the US declaring war on Japan, so that Britain can keep it's colonies and continue to oppress the people there ? Not so much. Even with FDR being willing to go to war alongside Britain, it would still have been very hard to sell this to the US public. That would of course have required that Japan does not attack the US and declares the "liberation" (aka kick out the old western overlords and replace them with new, even worse, Japanese overlords) of SEA to be be it's wargoal. Stopping somewhere around Burma and then looking for negotiated peace with Britain and the Netherlands. Hammerstein fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jan 19, 2018 |
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Jan 19, 2018 13:17
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   Damnation.  This captain unloads – I count nine misses and one dud as well as these three hits.  I sally the carriers, but they ignore the ships and bomb an airfield.   The little fighter who could!  We see another carrier based strike.   The strikes on Rabaul have stopped. Thankfully.  I hope this is not the start of another sub pulse!
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Jan 19, 2018 13:18
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Hammerstein posted:Yes and No. This also requires Churchill to suddenly give while he still possesses Burma and India which I don't really see. He was willing to commit genocide in Bangladesh I don't think he would be willing to give up unless the Japanese had thouroughly kicked him out of the region. Plus the Philippines being an open neutral port to the allies would create a very fertile breeding ground for incidents like the Lusitania.
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Jan 19, 2018 13:30
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Grey Hunter posted:
  
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Jan 19, 2018 13:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:Did the British ever have a natively-built/designed dive bomber? I never really thought about this but if the Germans and the Japanese somehow decided to attack the Soviet Union at the same time, I doubt anyone would have intervened. (Ignore the fact that Poland is really inconveniently positioned in this scenario. Maybe they join up with the Germans just as Hitler desired).
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Jan 19, 2018 14:05
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dtkozl posted:This also requires Churchill to suddenly give while he still possesses Burma and India which I don't really see. He was willing to commit genocide in Bangladesh I don't think he would be willing to give up unless the Japanese had thouroughly kicked him out of the region. Well, what could Churchill have realistically done ? A Japanese navy which does not have to deal with the US, would have been free to lock down the Indian ocean and wreck every port from Colombo to Mumbai. But this is all hypothetical, no one in Japan had that kind of foresight anyone who would have disagreed with the warplans would have been assassinated. (fav book on the subject, John Toland's "The Rising Sun")
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Jan 19, 2018 14:22
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dtkozl posted:This also requires Churchill to suddenly give while he still possesses Burma and India which I don't really see. He was willing to commit genocide in Bangladesh I don't think he would be willing to give up unless the Japanese had thouroughly kicked him out of the region. Burma, and the assessment of the Japanese, was poorly handled by the British, which is why they lost most of it and took until mid-44 to start reversing the situation.
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Jan 19, 2018 15:31
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I know I already made the Sabaton joke but gat drat
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Jan 19, 2018 15:51
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This recent talk about Uboats to Japan reminded me. My Opa used to tell us that for him, the war lasted an additional two weeks before his ship heard the news/surrendered. He later got a college degree in Australia, which makes me think he might have been in the Pacific, as I can see no reason he'd have been down under otherwise. Is there a good way to check ship complement of enlisted seamen? I've tried vague searches in the past to bo avail. I'd ask him, but he died nearly two decades ago, so he's probably not very forthcoming at this point
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Jan 19, 2018 15:52
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Hammerstein posted:Well, what could Churchill have realistically done ? A Japanese navy which does not have to deal with the US, would have been free to lock down the Indian ocean and wreck every port from Colombo to Mumbai. The idea the Japanese navy could operate independently forever in the Indian oceans is the same type of strategic blindness that led to Midway. So long as the british had India (and here Japanese could have perhaps done a political solution if they weren't so crazy) they had basically unlimited access to land based air that could cover their rear end. Sure the Japanese had a good raid but that was surprise more than anything else. As for Burma proper, a nightmare logistically which is what really slowed both sides down. Even if you had the greatest general the world ever known he would still need to build all the roads and railroads they had to do historically and the same goes for the Japanese. So even without the US Churchill is basically going to be in the same situation as history for at least a couple years because the hard fact is Japan was at the end of its logistical tether with regards to Burma/India. So yeah, in terms of hypotheticals I see the Brits holding India/N Burma, I see the US entering the war eventually pretty much all of the time. I really only see it if the US just threw men into a meatgrinder early and enough died to get the press in a frenzy. If the US had the same disaster as the nazis had in winter 42/43 with Stalingrad + Tunisia and well over a million dead and captured I could easily see enough anger in the US calling for an end to the war. The Japanese already had the plan (which they didn't follow) and the US had enough really bad generals that makes it seem at least minimally possible.
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Jan 19, 2018 16:26
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dtkozl posted:The idea the Japanese navy could operate independently forever in the Indian oceans is the same type of strategic blindness that led to Midway. So long as the british had India (and here Japanese could have perhaps done a political solution if they weren't so crazy) they had basically unlimited access to land based air that could cover their rear end. Sure the Japanese had a good raid but that was surprise more than anything else. According to the British Generals after the war, Burma was a shithole and was lost for multiple reasons, including logistical, but the issue seemed to affect the Allies moreso than the Japanese. A mixture of poor planning, lack of training (in) jungle warfare or otherwise, units of questionable loyalty, lack of reconnaissance, a weak air force, complete lack of armoured support (to a point), fearful civilian population, lack of units, and a few other reasons led to Burmas downfall. And even then, ome of the major logistical issues regarddd the lost of most of their trucks time and time again due to defeats and roadblocks/encirclement by the Japanese.
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Jan 19, 2018 18:41
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I choose to believe this guy caused all 6 Allied ops losses
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Jan 19, 2018 20:56
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After shelli3 DONG HORSE posted:I choose to believe this guy caused all 6 Allied ops losses He’s sitting at the o-club, “no poo poo, there I was, all alone in an aluminum sky...”
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Jan 19, 2018 21:02
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Uh, so what do fires do gameplay-wise?
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Jan 19, 2018 22:05
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Cause a bit of damage and go out. Unless you get enough to go firestorm, in which case they destroy loving everything and go out.
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Jan 19, 2018 22:07
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Woodchip posted:Uh, so what do fires do gameplay-wise? The HMS Revenge certainly lived up to its name
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Jan 19, 2018 22:16
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Holy gently caress that's a good bombardment.
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Jan 20, 2018 00:44
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  It's one of those weird hyperactive sub times again!  They go after Rabaul again.  Most of their planes go to Munda though.  Not that the skies are not full of planes.  At least my pilots can make it home easily.  As we all know, they can absorb these losses better than me.  They finally turn their sights to the airfield. This could be very bad for me.  Another brutal day of air combat. And I came out much worse. Operatonal losses were particularly brutal today. 
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Jan 20, 2018 11:26
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Would you say that the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage?
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Jan 20, 2018 16:16
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Bombardments can destroy planes and squads, but can they kill the individual pilots? Can your fighter aces die to naval fire? Hmm, I wonder if hits on carriers can kill them too.
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Jan 20, 2018 18:21
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  Curse you active subs!  They are really going after these incoming ships.  It's another busy day in the skies.  My poor planes.  A bit of a quieter day, but the losses are still heavy.  Dammit, the British still have a carrier!
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Jan 20, 2018 19:02
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If Yamato or Musashi get sunk by a swordfish, the Royal Navy's revenge will become legend.
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Jan 20, 2018 19:11
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Hit 'em, Harder!
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Jan 20, 2018 22:04
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aphid_licker posted:Would you say that the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage? It's basically impossible for that not to happen.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:18
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Grey Hunter posted:
We've never even seen the Hermes...
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Jan 20, 2018 23:12
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Jobbo_Fett posted:We've never even seen the Hermes... The game seems to think otherwise.
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Jan 20, 2018 23:29
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