I respect anyone who fought in The Battle of Britain (coming from this area of the UK you tend to) but what I can't believe was the rumours about a new BoB film that was going to be made by Hollywood.
Even the die hard american fuck yeah types were going WTF?
WTF!? Unless its a movie telling the tale of a fictitious American volunteer, the only advantage I can see to doing a do over of BoB is CGI and the political angle. BoB the movie was way too timid to allow for more than a nonspeaking walk-on for the Churchills.
At least with CGI you might see a BoB movie where the Luftwaffe has more than Me-109s, Stukas, and He-111s.
Why can't Pinewood do this story?
Very nice timeline, but I think things might be going too well for the Brits. It doesn't seem like a British war without some almighty clusterf*ck of some kind. The stroke of luck that really stands out in my memory is a duff engine delaying the sailing of Canadians to Hong Kong. (I know they're still in a pickle despite how much better they're doing than OTL, but still.)
That was needed to help Anglo-Canadian relations, as Hong Kong and Dieppe OTL poisoned UK-Canadian military relations for a long time to come. Also I suspect why Dieppe may not happen here. The Allies are already doing more than enough (causing Blue to short-circuit!?) ITTL to allow for the cancellation of something so unwise as that sorry raid. OTOH, without all the many lessons learned from that disaster...
Jinx999 said:
Do you have any plans for the Yamato? Because going down like a punk on a pointless suicide mission after achieving sweet FA is a rather sad end for a beautiful ship. Assuming this timeline is a democracy
, I'd vote for being sunk by a US Navy surface force - that includes the refloated battleships from Pearl Harbour. Throw the poor Yanks a bone.
Meh. The Queen Mary was beautiful. I'll even say HMS Vanguard was beautiful. The Yamatos were big fat ugly fuel guzzling targets, with too tight tolerances and an abortion of a bulkhead scheme that was tailor made for capsizing (1). They wasted enormous levels of resources and slip time for a country that could spare neither. When I think of the number of aircraft carriers and first class tanks that Japan could have built for the cost of those ships...!
1) The only reason Yamato didn't capsize was due to "lucky" American torpedo hits scored on the opposing side of the ship, just as she threatened to turn turtle. The Musashi had no such "luck".
Jinx999 said:
I imagine that Hollywood won't have such a bad case of "America Wins the War" this timeline.
Um, this is the same industry that produced that recent submarine movie that I will not name
about Americans seizing a U-Boat.
Jinx999 said:
I don't see this timeline as preventing the US Navy from becoming the post war dominant force, the economics are too strongly in favor (2) for them (although the RN ought to present the USN with a large lead weight with "Defender of the Freedom of the Seas" on it as a reminder of their responsibilities) - but taking out two and a half of the five most powerful navies in the world is a high note to end your dominance on. (3)
2) Fixed it, I don't think you meant "against".
3)
Hear! Hear!
I do have plans for Yamato, I am thinking of something a bit more dramaitic than just being swarmed under
Well, if the Japanese had been willing to "risk her" more often, she might have had a glorious end OTL in the Solomons. Or at Samar, if Kurita's exhaustion hadn't gotten the better of him. Though the sight of dozens of destroyers taking her out would still constitute a "swarming", it would at least be a proper naval action. Think of a wolf pack dispatching a grizzly bear.
On the subject of changes to the Eastern Front, if I remember rightly, Vichy was occupied after the fall of Algeria, so the Germans have less troops to commit to the East because of that.
EDIT: And for the extra 8,000 words, I'd love to see either some attention devoted to how France and her Empire are effected by the different war (even the dreaded politics).
fasquardon
Except the level of occupation forces in occupying Vichy France wouldn't be all that demanding. IIRC, the Germans had the troops set aside as a contingency pretty much before the ink was dry on 3rd Republic France's original 1940 surrender.
With the Free French so much stronger in TTL, I wonder how the resistance is doing in mainland France?-Up-date?
Not much, I hope. They need to organize non-fighting cadres for later operations, not form up active partisan units and start blowing up things. The Gestapo was very effective at keeping the Resistance crushed in this period. I read somewhere that the life expectancy of a Resistance member was somewhere between 17 to 42 days!
The Resistance was always at its best when acting in the roles of espionage and assisting escaping PoWs and refugees. It was when they performed acts of sabotage and assassination that they got the hammer dropped on them, their families, neighbors, etc, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, the deportations of the Holocaust made for natural collaborators of every devout Anti-Semite wherever they took place. It was only the combination of Barbarossa (here come the Communists!) and deportations of the populace to serve as slave workers (which is only just starting in France, IIRC) that
really got the ball rolling in regards to public support for the Resistance. That, and later, the sense that the Liberation was coming.
Then again, collaborators were known to assist the Gestapo with the hunting down and killing of members of the Resistance with the Allied armies only one day's march away!
Some people just can't see beyond the little square piece of cheese, I guess.
