This is a junior assistant bureaucrat in charge of actual details --- there is always pre-conference work and post conference work after the higher ups make their decisions
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Story 1086
January 21, 1942 Rear area of the 12th Philippine Infantry Division
Sergeant Ibling walked down through the grove of trees. His company was now part of the new 12th Division as the 11th and 21st Divisions had been combined. The other two regiments were at the front anchored on a shallow, fast moving mountain river while he and the rest of the 11th Infantry Regiment were in the division’s reserve. They had been pulled back to the reserve the night before.
“Eat up men, eat while the food is warm and the cooks aren’t pretty” It was a lame attempt at an order masked as a joke and it drew a chuckle as men worked their way through the hot food that the cooks had plopped into their mess kits. The men who liked coffee had a hot cup in their hands or sitting on a log next to them. He walked around, checking on each platoon and have brief almost meaningless conversations with his men. Once he was done circulating, he stood in line and ate the slop that the cooks put into his bowl.
Thirty minutes after chow had been served, the company was marching further to the rear. They took cover once as a Japanese fighter patrol went over head. They were not strafed. By now, almost every man in the amalgamated company had been strafed or shelled or sniped. they were veterans. They were smart enough to either grab a cigarette as they stayed under cover during the fighter sweep or to even catch a few minutes of light sleep.
As the company came to their destination, hot showers were set up next to a quarter master’s tent. Every man stacked their rifle and stripped down to enjoy a five minute luxury that would have only been better if they had been joined by an enthusiastic succubus. As soon as they emerged, clean, relaxed and dripping wet, quartermasters handed each man a towel, a set of skivvies and a carton of cigarettes. The men went through the quartermaster tent like it was the first day of boot camp again; new pants, new shirts, three pairs of dry socks, new boots and a new hat. Once the men had changed and handed back their old clothes, ripped and tattered from being their campaign clothes for over a month, they marched again to an ammunition depot.
After making sure that every man had at least twice the authorized number of bullets and grenades, Sergeant Ibling allowed himself a short smile as he released the company to the platoon leaders, all inexperienced sergeants like himself and he walked to the battalion headquarters. There, an American captain who had been trying to bring the scratch force together smiled as he saw his temporary B Company commander walk up. The battalion commander stuck up a finger to hold the Sergeant for a minute as he finished responding to a message from the regimental commander.
He walked over and then waved at another man, a Filipino who had been bent over a desk and scratching out some figures. The brown skinned man walked with a slight limp on his left leg but he seemed fit and he seemed confident.
“I would like you to meet your new Company commander, Lt. Azana. Sergeant Ibling held together the company during the retreat from the Agano and he has been doing a great job putting it back together since we’ve been able to rest a bit behind defensive lines. Lt. Azana was with the 21st Division until he was wounded in an air raid but now he is good enough to fight in the trenches.”
The battalion commander left as he had to sort out another problem with the mortar section supporting him.
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Story 1087
January 21, 1942 Darwin
USS Concord led the convoy into the harbor. The harbor was congested with American, Australian, Dutch, British and New Zealand warships. There was even a Portuguese aviso taking on fuel and water before it headed back north to Timor.
Sergeant Donohue looked over the railing and he was amazed at how green and verdant the nearly tropical city was. He had expected Australia to either look like the Hudson River Valley or to be a desert. He had not expected to see a crocodile sunning itself along the bay. His back pocket was full of letters to mail to Elaine. Writing to her was his anchor to normality after a day maintaining watch with his gun crew or sitting in lectures or watching a movie that he had already seen three times. The movie selection had improved when the convoy entered Brisbane Harbor. The soldiers stayed on the ships for two days, but the ships traded their film libraries between themselves and with the Australians.
The captain had told the company that they would be going ashore for a couple of days to stretch their legs out and work with their weapons. They were soldiers, not cargo and they needed to remember that. After that, the captain had no good information and he was a good enough man to not traffic in rumors. The rumors were still active. He thought that they all agreed on one thing; they were going into combat soon, but the question was where: Manila, Singapore, Java or somewhere beyond. There was even a rumor that the Japanese carriers were moving to smash Darwin just like they smashed Pearl Harbor.
As soon as the troop transports were secured in their berth, Concord left the harbor and headed north before turning east. The old cruiser had almost no business being involved in a major surface battle.
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And a belief that they know what they supposed to do and they can do it.
Unlike you know IOTL where every unit panicked.
Story 1088
January 22, 1942 0243 near Brest
The bombers of 4 Group pressed forward. The mission was one that they had run half a dozen times already and one that they would continue to run. Thankfully it was not a deep penetration raid to the Ruhr or to the Baltic with multiple overlapping night fighter boxes and thick bands of heavy anti-aircraft guns. However this was never a milk run.
Colonel Doolittle was sitting behind the pilot in one of the lead Halifaxes. The American observer had to wedge himself in half a dozen different contortions to see the pilot, the bombardier/navigator and the flight engineer work together. He looked around him in the near dark and could see a handful of other bombers. The city’s defenses were active as guns were throwing tracers skyward and searchlights probed. They converged on a single Whitley and within seconds, shells started to burst closer to that unlucky bomber. Any given shell was unlikely to damage a bomber, but the concentrated fire transformed unlikely into likely. The bomber being targeted twisted and turned until the pilot found a cloud that offered some cover and time to deal with an engine fire.
The bomber steadied itself as the bomb-aimer took his position on his belly. Two minutes later, the bomber jumped skyward as several thousands of pounds left the plane’s belly. The bombs fell. And then they exploded as they hit the water several hundred yards from the target.
Colonel Doolittle did not know this. The plane had already started to turn for home. All eyes were scanning for night fighters.
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Story 1089
January 23, 1942 Vyazma, Russia
The railhead was busy. Ever since the last Soviet offensive petered out, the quartermasters and the transportation battalions were busy shifting depleted German units to the rear where they could have a few days of quiet to rest and recover whatever strength that they could find from local resources. Most of the time, that meant accepting the men who had been frost bite cases or lightly wounded come back to their units even as mechanics and veteranians did their best to restore mobility and supply to the divisions.
However that was not always the case. Today’s train had started in Warsaw and then went to Minsk and now was at the edge of the standard gauge network. It carried thirty four factory fresh Panzer IIIs with the new 50 millimeter guns. Half of the tanks were still modified for desert service as they had been diverted from rebuilding and sustaining the 21st Panzer Division in Tripoli once Operation Typhoon had failed to be a knock-out blow.
The heavier guns would give the German Panzer crews a chance against the increasingly common T-34s as well as the British infantry tanks that were invulvernable at long range. The Panzer crews were still better trained and the commanders were still more creative but the tools had been insufficient for the task that they had been called to perform. As more and more Soviet tank crews survived their first brush with German defenses, they would learn to not be as dumb and not be as predictable. Once that happened, those long guns would be critical. Now the work gangs just needed to unload the tanks without hurting themselves or damaging the vehicles.
The railhead was busy. Ever since the last Soviet offensive petered out, the quartermasters and the transportation battalions were busy shifting depleted German units to the rear where they could have a few days of quiet to rest and recover whatever strength that they could find from local resources. Most of the time, that meant accepting the men who had been frost bite cases or lightly wounded come back to their units even as mechanics and veteranians did their best to restore mobility and supply to the divisions.
However that was not always the case. Today’s train had started in Warsaw and then went to Minsk and now was at the edge of the standard gauge network. It carried thirty four factory fresh Panzer IIIs with the new 50 millimeter guns. Half of the tanks were still modified for desert service as they had been diverted from rebuilding and sustaining the 21st Panzer Division in Tripoli once Operation Typhoon had failed to be a knock-out blow.
The heavier guns would give the German Panzer crews a chance against the increasingly common T-34s as well as the British infantry tanks that were invulvernable at long range. The Panzer crews were still better trained and the commanders were still more creative but the tools had been insufficient for the task that they had been called to perform. As more and more Soviet tank crews survived their first brush with German defenses, they would learn to not be as dumb and not be as predictable. Once that happened, those long guns would be critical. Now the work gangs just needed to unload the tanks without hurting themselves or damaging the vehicles.
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Story 1090
January 23, 1942 2145 near Balikpapan
Four torpedoes entered the water. The old American pig boat descended beneath the dark sea. Seventy four seconds later, three torpedoes detonated on time. A freighter was targeted and she was soon sinking. This was the third ship lost in the invasion convoy as a Dutch submarine had claimed a kill the morning before and the Dutch bomber force set fire to two ships, sinking one. The anti-submarine escort force started to hunt for the intruder even as the the Japanese landing forces entered the boats to attack the beach southeast of the city.
By early morning, the invasion force had seized the airfield and then the harbor. The most significant resistance was fear. The Dutch defenders had elected to withdraw towards Banjarmasin with the hope that reinforcements could support a successful toehold on the north shore of the Java Sea.
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Driftless
Donor
A couple of questions:
* Will the Japanese take the oil facilities mostly intact as they did historically?
* Is the damage to the transports at Balipapan more - or less impactful than historically?
The theater-wide accumulation of damage to their transport fleet seems to be higher than historic levels - for this early point of the war. It's both the immediate loss of the ships, crews, cargoes (including soldiers); but the longer term shortage of capacity for the coming operations - an earlier constriction of an already thin pipeline.
They are already going over Borneo/Kalimantan well though. Sabah and Sarawak are being captured, and already they are invading the DEI, Banjarmasin is way down south, near the coast.
Soon Java may be threatened.
Also, how many km did the soviet offensive regain during the December offensives?
In this TTL, the Japanese force at Balikpapan will get most/all of the Balikpapan oil production capacity as they did OTL.
Yes, the stock and flow of the Japanese transport fleet will be severely crimped going forward. At this point, the Japanese will have lost one additional transport to the American S-boat. In OTL, they lost a ship to B-10s and a Dutch submarine.
I have not quite mapped out the end of the Moscow counter-offensive. Total distance taken is slightly less than OTL and it started a few miles further east. The biggest difference is that the Germans pulled back in better order so divisions that OTL were at 40% strength and trying to defend a salient are now at 50% strength and covering either a straight piece of front or defending along natural terrain features.
This is a real-time look at Wannsee, made in Germany.
There was a British TV dramatisation of the conference, with Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich, but no decent version online.
If there was ever a meeting that deserved the attention of a low level Mosquito raid that one should have been top of the list.
Evil men planning a genocide......
Man the mental gymnastics in that room must be off the charts.
Story 1091
January 23, 1942 2300 Pearl Harbor
1st Lieutenant Joshua Jaroschek looked over the side of USS Enterprise. It was a pretty night as the carrier passed along the narrow channel which linked Pearl Harbor to the sea. Her escorts were already out and waiting for their queen to join them. The Marine fighters had been craned aboard earlier that afternoon and the pilots and mechanics of VMF 111 came aboard after dinner. The rest of the Samoa Force had left three days earlier. The Marines aviators were all carrier qualified although none of them were intimately familiar with landing their Wildcats on a heaving deck. But they all hoped it was like riding a bicycle with only a slightly increased chance of death. The extra fighters would be held in reserve and for task force defense if needed while the Navy fighters could do whatever they did out of sight of the carriers.
He did not know where they were going. The plan to go to Samoa had been shelved immediately after Pearl Harbor and since then, they had been flying regular patrols and waiting for clarification. They were heading to the South Pacific and their destination would be announced once the force had left sight of land. Until then, he looked at the stars and wished on one so that his daughter could discover the joy of toes of her own.
1st Lieutenant Joshua Jaroschek looked over the side of USS Enterprise. It was a pretty night as the carrier passed along the narrow channel which linked Pearl Harbor to the sea. Her escorts were already out and waiting for their queen to join them. The Marine fighters had been craned aboard earlier that afternoon and the pilots and mechanics of VMF 111 came aboard after dinner. The rest of the Samoa Force had left three days earlier. The Marines aviators were all carrier qualified although none of them were intimately familiar with landing their Wildcats on a heaving deck. But they all hoped it was like riding a bicycle with only a slightly increased chance of death. The extra fighters would be held in reserve and for task force defense if needed while the Navy fighters could do whatever they did out of sight of the carriers.
He did not know where they were going. The plan to go to Samoa had been shelved immediately after Pearl Harbor and since then, they had been flying regular patrols and waiting for clarification. They were heading to the South Pacific and their destination would be announced once the force had left sight of land. Until then, he looked at the stars and wished on one so that his daughter could discover the joy of toes of her own.
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