You're aware that one year later FDR basically took Saudi Arabia under American protection so long as they were favorable in regards to the gargantuan oil fields that its engineers discovered and provided access for, right?
Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Pretty much the US view is that the Brits are incompetent, twice requiring the US to intervene and that the US must start creating it own system to secure its interests in the world. I.e the 1890-1941 view that the US can rely on the UK to secure the Atlantic half of the Anerican Atlantic-Pacific system is questioned. The logic of NATO is based on it.
No. I didn't know. That means they expected the production to be very big in the future.
It was ominous to read for me when I first learned about it too o:
TTL Fighting France has 12 divisions, 4 of them armored. Four infantry divisions are fighting in Italy, a single infantry division in Greece, two infantry and an armored division in Syria (on their way to Greece), the rest are in North Africa and Britain preparing for the invasion of France.
The Greeks and Yugoslavs are not much concerned about the Bulgarians changing sides. Unconditional surrender suits them just fine...
Roosevelt has already proclaimed the defence of Saudi Arabia as vital for US interests till 1943, with the Saudis receiving Lend Lease and US forces stationed in Dhahran.
Originally Dragoon was supposed to go off simultaneously with Overlord. With a much more significant French navy and army is that still likely to happen? I’ve argued yes in the past but if France is still scraping together all her forces with less than a month to go that seems less likely. Still perhaps earlier than OTL though as the French will have more forces and resources available to pull it off with. The Greek Navy could also provide some assistance since it seems to not have much to do currently. Maybe it could still happen?
Where's the lift capacity though? This is a bigger bottleneck than ground troops. And on this neither the larger Greek navy nor the larger French navy can help much. Both of which yes have relatively little to do in the Eastern Mediterranean beyond hunting surviving German submarines and shore bombardment.
For about 15 minutes before the shipping constraints and the realisation that even if there was more shipping available it would be better used making Overlord bigger.
Part 146
Kayseri, May 14th, 1944
The last Okcu fighter rolled out of the TOMTAS factoty to be delivered to the Turkish air force. Further production was not allowed but it had been allowed to finish the handful of nearly complete machines at the time of the armistice. After all it mattered little as far as the Allied Control Commission was concered. The Turkish air force had been reduced to fewer than twenty aircraft in addition to a handful of transports and trainers by the fighting. What would happen to the factory and its workers now that the war was over for Turkey was something of an open question. For now arrangements had been made by Nuri Demirag and the general staff for the more experienced experienced technicians and engineers to remain in the payroll. TOMTAS had made great strides during the war and neither Ismet nor Karabekir had any intention of seeing the knowledge going to waste.
Piraeus, May 15th, 1944
Hundreds of undernourished men begun unloading from the ship from Beirut. Some had been prisoners of war. Others had been civilians, both Greek and from Constantinople, conscripted into Labour battalions. All had been used for forced labour in Eastern Anatolia and with the armistice had been released to the French army. There was even a handful of Soviet citizens, Armenians and Greeks, that had taken the opportunity to claim they had come from Greece instead. The French had been convinced or had turned a blind eye. It was not as if hostages in the Amele Taburu had identification papers at hand...
Lechfeld, Germany, May 19th, 1944
The Luftwaffe testing command handling the introduction of Messerschmidt Me 262 into service closed a month of operations. Twenty aircraft had been delivered so far with three more expected by the end of the month. no encounters had occurred so far with Allied aircraft. But Wever and Göring were putting a lot of hopes on the new aircraft. Ever increasing numbers of allied aircraft were grinding the Luftwaffe to dust and with it the German war effort. If the Luftwaffe could not match the numbers of Allied aircraft, Me 262 being 170 kph faster than P-51 and Hawker Tempest, the fastest Allied aircraft in service, could redraw the balance by far outstripping them in quantity. And this was something that Germany very much needed. Wever was becoming increasingly desperate about the situation of the Luftwaffe and not just do to the numbers of enemy aircraft but also due to the increasing problems German industry had matching the quality of Allied aircraft. The Bf-109G fighters while solid were increasingly showing their age against newer Allied fighters. All attempts to replace them including production in Germany of the Italian G.56 had failed. Me 210 the supposed replacement of Bf-110 had been a miserable failure and canceled. Ta 154 which had been supposed to take up its place in the production life had proven too difficult to produce. Replacement of medium bombers had not been just a failure, it had been a miserable failure. The only silver lining had been the just introduced FW 190D which matched in high altitude performance Allied aircraft and the growing numbers of He 219 night fighters. [1]
Eleusis, May 20th, 1944
Salamis, Averof, Lemnos and a flotilla of destroyers, sailed out of the channel heading south. They would circumvert the Peloponnese, the Corinth canal was too shallow for the draught of the big battleship, and then head west. The big ships were not needed at the moment in the Eastern Mediterranean but the war was still fought in more places than just the Middle Sea...
Italy, May 24th, 1944
Siena was iberated by general Juin's French expeditionary corps. The Germans might had avoided encirlement the previous month by general Clark shifting his forces against Rome but had been relentlesly pursued north suffering thousands of casualties. But now Kesserling had managed to establish a new line of defence around lake Trasimene in hopes of delaying the Allied asvance till he could establish a more permanent defensive line in the northern Apenines. Thousands of Italian slave laborers were forced to work there as the Germans fought for time further south.
Pyrenees, May 25th, 1944
The private grumbled to his comrades as the radio again said nothing about either demobilization or the election that were supposed to take plave within six months of the end of that war. The war was already over for three and a half months, everything appeared to be going well in Madrid, even the communists were not making any fuss about the apparent delay. The private scratched his head before opening the tin of spam on the table. He did not have much reason to complain. He and his comrades had it good. Markedly better than the previous years when Spain had come near starvation between its own civil war and the wider war. Of course the Germans were still on the other side of the border and the officers appeared to take the threat seriously with constant training drills but some paranoia was to be expected from veterans, no? Over 400,000 men had been massed on the French border and for certain the provisional government was not demobilizing, more men were being called up and Spanish war industries working at full swing but that was not something the private was aware of...
Thessaloniki, May 27th, 1944
General Ptolemaios Sarigiannis the commander of the Greek Army of Asia Minor over the previous years took over command of the Greek 1st Army from Demetrios Katheniotis. Katheniotis was growing increasingly ill to continue in command of Greek forces in Macedonia. Sarigiannis a protege of Pangalos since the previous war and victor of Asia Minor made a natural replacement for Katheniotis. Alexandros Papagos, bought back from the Allied Chiefs of Staff in Washington DC would be taking over Sarigiannis former position as head of the Army of Asia Minor and not incidentaly the Allied Control Commission overseeing the armistice with Turkey.
Sumela monastery, Trebizont, May 31st, 1944
"Here it is." The priest, the last surviving monk of the monastery pointed at the crypt in the Chapel of Saint Barbara, where nearly a quarter century earlier the monks had hidden the most important relics of the monastery, the icon of the Virgin, the gospel of Saint Christopher and a cross that had belonged to emperor Manuel Megas Komnenos, when they had left for Greece back in 1922. The abandoned monastery had been looted and burned in 1922 after the monks had left it, with only a handful of Muslim Pontic Greek speakers vising it over the years afterwards, Turkish authorities tended to be very suspicious of Greek speakers showing signs of being closet Christians. As for the relics, relations between the two countries had been too bad for any agreement to recover them, most thought them lost. Fortunately Amvrosios Soumeliotis, the last surviving monk had turned to Sofoklis Venizelos, [2] and with the monastery now in the Soviet occupation zone, he had gone to the Soviet ambassador in Athens to arrange the recovery of the relics. It hadn't cost anything to the Soviets to agree and gain a bit of goodwill from Athens...
[1] FW 190D is coming some 4 months ahead of time here thanks to the Germans switching efforts earlier from Jumo 222 to improving Jumo 213 and having to deal earlier with P-51s. He 219 is produced in significantly more numbers since Me 410 was cancelled, the 460 Me 210 finished as Me 410s are finished as Me 210C instead and He 219 are produced in their place bringing overall production TTL to about 1,000 airframes.
[2] In OTL the relics were recovered in 1930 when Eleutherios Venizelos requested it from Ismet Inonu and only two monks survived from the monastery. Amvrosios the younger of the two by then a priest in Thessaloniki went with a special license from the Turkish government to recover them. TTL there had been no Greco-Turkish rapprochment in 1930, but given their significance to the Pontic Greek population, this is not something the Greek government would not pursue is it had the opportunity...
The last Okcu fighter rolled out of the TOMTAS factoty to be delivered to the Turkish air force. Further production was not allowed but it had been allowed to finish the handful of nearly complete machines at the time of the armistice. After all it mattered little as far as the Allied Control Commission was concered. The Turkish air force had been reduced to fewer than twenty aircraft in addition to a handful of transports and trainers by the fighting. What would happen to the factory and its workers now that the war was over for Turkey was something of an open question. For now arrangements had been made by Nuri Demirag and the general staff for the more experienced experienced technicians and engineers to remain in the payroll. TOMTAS had made great strides during the war and neither Ismet nor Karabekir had any intention of seeing the knowledge going to waste.
Piraeus, May 15th, 1944
Hundreds of undernourished men begun unloading from the ship from Beirut. Some had been prisoners of war. Others had been civilians, both Greek and from Constantinople, conscripted into Labour battalions. All had been used for forced labour in Eastern Anatolia and with the armistice had been released to the French army. There was even a handful of Soviet citizens, Armenians and Greeks, that had taken the opportunity to claim they had come from Greece instead. The French had been convinced or had turned a blind eye. It was not as if hostages in the Amele Taburu had identification papers at hand...
Lechfeld, Germany, May 19th, 1944
The Luftwaffe testing command handling the introduction of Messerschmidt Me 262 into service closed a month of operations. Twenty aircraft had been delivered so far with three more expected by the end of the month. no encounters had occurred so far with Allied aircraft. But Wever and Göring were putting a lot of hopes on the new aircraft. Ever increasing numbers of allied aircraft were grinding the Luftwaffe to dust and with it the German war effort. If the Luftwaffe could not match the numbers of Allied aircraft, Me 262 being 170 kph faster than P-51 and Hawker Tempest, the fastest Allied aircraft in service, could redraw the balance by far outstripping them in quantity. And this was something that Germany very much needed. Wever was becoming increasingly desperate about the situation of the Luftwaffe and not just do to the numbers of enemy aircraft but also due to the increasing problems German industry had matching the quality of Allied aircraft. The Bf-109G fighters while solid were increasingly showing their age against newer Allied fighters. All attempts to replace them including production in Germany of the Italian G.56 had failed. Me 210 the supposed replacement of Bf-110 had been a miserable failure and canceled. Ta 154 which had been supposed to take up its place in the production life had proven too difficult to produce. Replacement of medium bombers had not been just a failure, it had been a miserable failure. The only silver lining had been the just introduced FW 190D which matched in high altitude performance Allied aircraft and the growing numbers of He 219 night fighters. [1]
Eleusis, May 20th, 1944
Salamis, Averof, Lemnos and a flotilla of destroyers, sailed out of the channel heading south. They would circumvert the Peloponnese, the Corinth canal was too shallow for the draught of the big battleship, and then head west. The big ships were not needed at the moment in the Eastern Mediterranean but the war was still fought in more places than just the Middle Sea...
Italy, May 24th, 1944
Siena was iberated by general Juin's French expeditionary corps. The Germans might had avoided encirlement the previous month by general Clark shifting his forces against Rome but had been relentlesly pursued north suffering thousands of casualties. But now Kesserling had managed to establish a new line of defence around lake Trasimene in hopes of delaying the Allied asvance till he could establish a more permanent defensive line in the northern Apenines. Thousands of Italian slave laborers were forced to work there as the Germans fought for time further south.
Pyrenees, May 25th, 1944
The private grumbled to his comrades as the radio again said nothing about either demobilization or the election that were supposed to take plave within six months of the end of that war. The war was already over for three and a half months, everything appeared to be going well in Madrid, even the communists were not making any fuss about the apparent delay. The private scratched his head before opening the tin of spam on the table. He did not have much reason to complain. He and his comrades had it good. Markedly better than the previous years when Spain had come near starvation between its own civil war and the wider war. Of course the Germans were still on the other side of the border and the officers appeared to take the threat seriously with constant training drills but some paranoia was to be expected from veterans, no? Over 400,000 men had been massed on the French border and for certain the provisional government was not demobilizing, more men were being called up and Spanish war industries working at full swing but that was not something the private was aware of...
Thessaloniki, May 27th, 1944
General Ptolemaios Sarigiannis the commander of the Greek Army of Asia Minor over the previous years took over command of the Greek 1st Army from Demetrios Katheniotis. Katheniotis was growing increasingly ill to continue in command of Greek forces in Macedonia. Sarigiannis a protege of Pangalos since the previous war and victor of Asia Minor made a natural replacement for Katheniotis. Alexandros Papagos, bought back from the Allied Chiefs of Staff in Washington DC would be taking over Sarigiannis former position as head of the Army of Asia Minor and not incidentaly the Allied Control Commission overseeing the armistice with Turkey.
Sumela monastery, Trebizont, May 31st, 1944
"Here it is." The priest, the last surviving monk of the monastery pointed at the crypt in the Chapel of Saint Barbara, where nearly a quarter century earlier the monks had hidden the most important relics of the monastery, the icon of the Virgin, the gospel of Saint Christopher and a cross that had belonged to emperor Manuel Megas Komnenos, when they had left for Greece back in 1922. The abandoned monastery had been looted and burned in 1922 after the monks had left it, with only a handful of Muslim Pontic Greek speakers vising it over the years afterwards, Turkish authorities tended to be very suspicious of Greek speakers showing signs of being closet Christians. As for the relics, relations between the two countries had been too bad for any agreement to recover them, most thought them lost. Fortunately Amvrosios Soumeliotis, the last surviving monk had turned to Sofoklis Venizelos, [2] and with the monastery now in the Soviet occupation zone, he had gone to the Soviet ambassador in Athens to arrange the recovery of the relics. It hadn't cost anything to the Soviets to agree and gain a bit of goodwill from Athens...
[1] FW 190D is coming some 4 months ahead of time here thanks to the Germans switching efforts earlier from Jumo 222 to improving Jumo 213 and having to deal earlier with P-51s. He 219 is produced in significantly more numbers since Me 410 was cancelled, the 460 Me 210 finished as Me 410s are finished as Me 210C instead and He 219 are produced in their place bringing overall production TTL to about 1,000 airframes.
[2] In OTL the relics were recovered in 1930 when Eleutherios Venizelos requested it from Ismet Inonu and only two monks survived from the monastery. Amvrosios the younger of the two by then a priest in Thessaloniki went with a special license from the Turkish government to recover them. TTL there had been no Greco-Turkish rapprochment in 1930, but given their significance to the Pontic Greek population, this is not something the Greek government would not pursue is it had the opportunity...
So, would appear that the Spanish had been 'convinced' to enter in the war/provide some sort of distraction to the German forces in the south... Though,at least that TTL Spanish armed forces would be better equipped and supplied than would seems. Even if their numbers would have a quality quality from his own Then I think that their participation possibly be wouldn't amount to much more than that for the Whermacht...
Huh. With Spain looking like they’re going to be participating do you even need to Have Dragoon? You can just march with the Spanish along the Mediterranean coast.
So, it seems that a significant part of the Hellenic Navy will participate ITTL's Operation Overlord. I am a bit surprised, wouldn't the big ships be useful at pounding the German/Bulgarian positions in coastal Thrace?
I'd rather say Dragoon. The Provence landings scheduled for August are closer to home and a shorter journey. At the very least they can free up Royal Navy or US Navy ships for Normandy, and by extension, for the Southeast Asia/Pacific theaters.
That would be logical, however Lascaris says "but the war was still fought in more places than just the Middle Sea..." . So the ships will not participate in any battle in the Med
Well, having come to beware Lascaris' artful mastery of sybilline and somehow deceptive teasers, though finding the statement of fact about other naval theaters in the same sentence would imply some deployment beyond the Mediterranean sea, I'd also note it does not make the link explicit and leaves room to ... interpretation. ^^'
Given that Germany helped instigate the second civil war Spain has an axe to grind. Is it enough for the Spanish army to cross the border? Perhaps. Then perhaps not. After all Spain is pretty much exhausted from several years of war at the moment.
Arguably yes. You need Marseilles.
You can say it was better than its immediate ancestor. But post that give me Mosquitos and Hornets thank you very much.Oh, the Me-410 was my favorite WW2 heavy fighter
Would they? A large scale amphibious assault would require landing ships that Churchill may want to release but the Americans likely would not. So if an Allied offensive against Bulgaria is going to be determined in the same places with 1918 what do you gain by bombarding Bulgarian garrisons in say... Kavala? More damage on civilian property? Besides the Allies have quite a few more battleships and cruisers around than OTL. Particularly since the Italian battleships had to be brought to action during the battle of Thessaloniki.
I'll just note that we are still in late June...
The only naval threat left in the Mediterranean is what few Italian ships the Germans managed to capture and German submarines. Which are being hunted down one by one while no more are crossing over from Gibraltar.
He seems like an obvious choice. The position plays on his strengths as an excellent administrator. All the more so TTL where he has spent the last couple of years with the Allied Chiefs of Staff which should be pretty helpful when participating in the Allied control commission for Turkey.