Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2
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So if Joe lives Joe is George and jack is Jeb..but with Addison's he has to drop any presidential ambitions..and Teddy steps up..unless he's Chappaquiddicked himself.
iOTL Jack was explicitly diagnosed with Addison's in 1947 ... but the fact succesfully kept hidden
(it was in any case in a LONDON Clinic where the chances of a leak were lower)
His hyperthyroid symptoms were noticed in the USA in the 50s but never publicised until 3 years after his death
(The explicit APS II diagnosis with likely further complications is an even later hypothesis)
Therefore his medical history would seem no reason to sideline John especially if running for Governor or Senator not POTUS
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In the 50s Addison's was treatable with early corticosteroids, although there were complications that are avoided with current treatments. As long as the spotlight is not too bright, and there are no obvious problems this would not be an issue any more than something like diabetes, in the 50s this was readily treatable although complications were more common than with modern treatments (better insulin, management, easy blood sugar measuring etc). If Joe Jr lives and goes in to politics, JFK is as likely to follow his bent and end up a history professor at Harvard rather than go in to politics.
Story 1980
Southern Russia April 4, 1943
A dozen tanks were burning. Young men with hopes and dreams were now charred flesh whose odor would stick in the memories of the few men who had escaped from the cauldrons that had been combat vehicles. Wounded men had been pulled back to aid stations and field hospitals. Mortar teams were still firing shells at a copse of trees where the Soviet anti-tank guns had started the ambush. A few shells would be lofted and then the German crews would displace before a battalion of field artillery sought them out in counter-battery.
Even as the infantrymen began to dig in and the two dozen Panzer III and IVs that were the remains of the spear point regiment found little folds in the earth to hide behind, the counter-attack started. Two rifle divisions had given up their artillery to a mechanized corps. Now every gun was firing. The ground shook. Earth was thrown about. Clumps of clay and loam mixed with steel rained down on the men who had been advancing and now had to hold in place. Eight minutes of hell shook them. And then the first hundred tanks of a Soviet tank brigade crested another small rise. Their big guns were searching for targets. Machine gunners were scanning the hasty defensive position looking for targets. Strings of tracers screeched out and kept the defenders’ heads down.
Overhead the artillery ceased. A dozen light bombers entered long, deliberate glides for accurate bombing. A platoon was obliterated. A single bomber crashed on the steppe and another was trailing smoke from a light shell exploding against the engine. The Soviet tanks advanced. Their three inch guns began to spit shells. High explosives detonated on fox holes and near trenches. Four hundred yards from the front, the first German tanks responded. A platoon of Panzer IVs led by veterans who had managed to survive Poland, France and now Russia for four years waited for open flanks to be exposed. And then they fired suddenly. Three cannons expelled armor piercing shells down range. Two missed. One was a clean penetration. A few seconds later, they fired again and the targeted tank started to cook off. Anti-tank guns that had taken impromptu positions began to fire at nearly point blank range.
By mid-afternoon, the spearpoints had blunted each other and the battlefield near a farm in Southern Russia was a wrecking yard. Only the cries of the abandoned wounded and the cawwing of feasting crows could be heard over the roar of fires and the cooking off of ammunition.
I'm at O'Hare which got me thinking...who/what is this airport getting named after in this timeline? Presumably Butch O'Hare got butterflied away?
Maybe Jaroseck?
Maybe Jaroseck?
Oddly enough, I had a conversation with my mother a while before she passed and the subject of the Kennedy's came up. I mentioned Addison's Disease to her and she told me that my grandmother had told her that JFK had it around the time of the 1960 elections. We figured she got the information from my grandfather, who moved in some very interesting circles at different points in his life.
O'Hare isn't from Chicago. AIUI the airport got renamed mostly because Col. McCormick and the Tribune lobbied for it.
Pittsburgh international works better for Jaroseck though.
Story 1981
Novorossiysk, April 5, 1943
Anti-aircraft guns stuttered. Dozens of shells per second were soon exploding. Bombs exploded near the marshalling yards. Dozens of Tupolov bombers turned around, lighter and faster as escorting fighters tangled with defenders.
An hour later, a low level raiding force of half a dozen fighter bombers slipped through the air warning network. A few Romanian ships in the harbor were able to defend themselves. Most of the bombs missed, as always, but for the cost of two fighters, a 3,100 ton coaster was on fire and sinking.
South and east of the city, the front was stable. German infantry divisions had retreated from the limits of the advance in good order and now were dug in south of the port. One army held the entrance to the Azoz Sea while the rest of the Army Group had managed to reinforce the southern flanks of the other Army Group of the southern front. The Red armies that had defended Grozny and Baku were slowly advancing northwards, maintaining constant light pressure until they hit sharp ambushes and prepared defensive positions. Now it was merely a slug fest while the main battles that would decide the war happened hundreds of miles to the north.
And facing a lot more Germans...whose morale is probably higher than OTL.
while things are going better in the west, and in the Pacific War, the Soviets are not doing as well. The tide is beginning to flow the other way, however given the geography and the limitations of the weather, I wonder how far west the Soviets will get here. Like OTL the Germans are going to put a lot more effort in to keeping the Soviets out of Germany when things start getting bad - they know the sort of payback that will be happening. OTL Soviet propaganda directed at soldiers was encouraging "payback" and the Germans knew this.
About that with the Axis secondary armies not routed during the planetary offensives and the Germans having neither Stalingrad nor Tunisgrad destroying entire armies of units and specialists.
The situation in the North is far better for the Soviets TTL than OTL. Leningrad is only mostly instead of completely beseiged. Operation Arctic Fox was defeated earlier while the Arctic Front was able to clear the Rybachy Penisula and seize Petsamo.
But does this mean that Germany is actually doing a bit better as they aren't as overextended? At least in terms of logistics, economics, and manpower. Or have they lost the same amount of men and material just with less to show for it?
The Germans had a bloody nose in Stalingrad but they are still in good shape. How Husky is going?
Story 1982
Home Counties, April 5, 1943
Every cow in the field would have sour milk this morning, or at least that is what the farmer would claim when his wife complained about the quality of the butter. It was not his fault. Overhead four hundred quad engine bombers were slowly assembling. The airfield three miles to the west of the stone fence would soon be throwing single engine fighters into the sky. The small boys would be sweeping ahead of the big boys. Their speed would soon allow them to catch up to the lumbering bombers and then pass them as they all headed to Aachen.
The morning raid by Americans however was not the cause of his cows’ distemper. Bomber Command had launched late last night. Five hundred bombers had hit a Hansa port. Most of them came back down before dawn. Those raids made his milk cows agitated. Bad butter was the cost of bringing the war to the Hun. He could only hope the war would end soon enough as his son was in an operational training unit for the big bombers that threw themselves at Germany whenever the weather and the moon allowed for an assault. The odds of his survival were only slightly better than the odds of the farmer’s survival during the first week of the Somme.
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