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Tomdidiot

Second Lieutenant
93 Badges
Feb 15, 2007
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I decided to start my first AAR. This will be an AAR of a British game that I am about to start. I shall attempt to retain the empire, and also "add" a few bits.... Kyushu, for one, would be a very nice addition to the empire....

First off, House Rules
1. MEC and ARM must be at least 75% of the army. INF is SOOOOO..... yesterday. And I am not allowed to have more than 78 MEC/MAR/MTN divisions.
2. I will abandon the British land doctrine tree in favour of the German land doctrine tree.
3. I will NOT abandon France.
4. No Military control of anyone, except for Commonwealth countries
5. I shall take the dissent hit from not releasing India. The empire must stay together!
6. No Subs. Subs are totally un Royal Navy
7 .... This one will spoil the ending ;)


This will be SMEP 5.0 with the following changes:
1. Historical date for the First MEC infantry model moved forward to 1939 and the historical date for the first MOT model will be moved forward to 1938. This is so that I could actually have an army at the start of the war.
2. Several leaders have been changed, and a couple added. British Corps/Army commanders during the second world war have recieved buffs. Horrocks, Scoones, Stopford, Christison, Crocker, Cunningham, Ritchie etc. will all start at skill 4, and have max skill 8/9. Kirkman and Hawksworth (no pic leaders) added. Ramsay and Tovey have skill increases, to compensate for Bruce-Fraser being removed (He's a double for Fraser). Keith Park loses Old Guard. US Corp commanders recieve similar buffs.
3. Nationalist China will recieve large buffs to IC, MP and tech teams. This is to prevent Japan from stomping all over them by 1941. To allow Communist china to stopm Nat. China into the ground afterwards, they will get good tech teams by event after Japan has been beaten.
4. Tech teams have been changed. The Andrew Cunningham tech team become avaliable in 1940 (Taranto raid year) instead of 1943 . John Brown and Co buffed to 7. Liddel-Hart no longer has time limits, and is available from 36'. George Paget Thompson increased to skill 7.
5. Bhutan and Nepal have their base IC reduced to 2. They should not have 20 infantry divisions for me to use as cannon fodder on the Indian front.
6.British sliders start at full standing army and 1 step from full free market. Hawk and Interventionism have been moved 1 to the right to compensate.

DO NOT expect this to be very active.
 
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IC Whoring for fun and profit


Stanley Baldwin sat smugly in his seat. The budget talks were going well. Even though the Labour Party and the Liberal Party had almost won the election, and his majority was very slim, (especially after it emerged that the British army and the Royal Navy were in dire need of funds - funds denied by Baldwin whilst he was acting Prime Minister for the ailing McDonald) he was sure that Labour and the Liberals would still support his pro-disarmament budget. Something many members of his party didn't.
Historical Note: This is the main point of divergence for this AAR. Baldwin only narrowly scrapes through the 1935 elections because, unlike in real life, Baldwin decided not to re-start Britain's rearmament program in 1934, but rather, delayed it, and even cut spending further.
225px-Stanley_Baldwin_ggbain.35233.jpg

Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minster of the United Kingdom


It took over a week of debate, including an all-nighter, but finally, the budget passed the House of Commons, and then quickly passed the House of Lords. In it, were provisions for the reduction of government spending on the armed forces, especially the army, plans to reduce the government's grip on the economy, and also plans to encourage businesses to invest in manufacturing, and increase the United Kingdom's industrial base.

The Army's Response
The army, extremely unhappy about the severe limitations in size and funding, decided to grin and bare it. It made selection procedures more rigorous - only the fittest and best young men would now make it into the army. The regiments were slimmed down - the Territorial army was disbanded in all but name, most regiments lost their regular 2nd battalion. Its officers, without men to command, were organized into "think-tanks", which were to theorize about new strategies and tactics.

By the end of 1936, the British Army had decided that the best way to cope with this new challenge was to adopt a new style of warfare, previously suggested by Basil Lidell-Hart and Heinz Guderian, and now being rapidly adopted by the Germans: One relying on Tanks, trucks, and air support.

The Royal Navy's response
As the Senior service, and the one biggest obstacle to any invasion of the United Kingdom the Royal Navy was hit the least by these funding and budget cuts. However, its effects were still severe - the Royal Navy was forced to mothball 3 battleships - Royal Sovereign, Royal Oak, and Ramilles, and a large number of old WWI era cruisers and destroyers would also be mothballed, and the submarine fleet all but scrapped. There were, however, some bright spots: The Royal Navy, under the budget, would still be allowed a new aircraft Carrier (to be called the Ark Royal, new light "treaty" cruisers, the Town-class, and several new, heavily-armed, destroyers - the Tribal-class, though these would be limited to 12.
777px-HMS_Ark_Royal.JPG

HMS Ark Royal upon completion

The Royal Air Force's Response
Though not hit nearly as badly as the British army, the royal air force was still terribly affected by the budget cuts. The Strategic Bomber proponents, led by Sir Owen Boyd, quickly dominated the discussion, claiming that, in the case of a major war, "The Bomber would always get through". As a result, the Royal Air Force's Fighter wings were reduced to a meagre 2, though, in a concession to Sir Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, Boyd agreed that these 2 would be equipped with the Hurricane when it entered mass production. The Royal Air Force would also withdraw it's planes based in India and in the Middle East, in order to reduce the amount of support staff needed.

300px-Hurricane.r4118.arp.jpg

The Hawker Hurricane - Sir Owen Boyd's concession to fighter command.


Out of character notes

- Another modification: Extra industry for the UK. However, the negative peacetime IC modifier is increased by another 10 percent to reflect pacifism.
- Yes, even with the new increased IC base, I shall still IC whore. This is because, I can't build infantry, I can't build planes, and I can only build a few ships. What else can I spend my IC on?
 
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Baldwin!!!! you fool!!!!! :D

hey it adds to the fun as a reader if you have some nice little rules. Nice!.
 
Hopefully this will continue. With those rules should be fun.
 
Right, school work and stuff have kept me really busy, so, yeah this update is a bit late.


Research, Disbanding, and other boring stuff

One of the first victims of the government's purse-tightening were the colonial African troops in East Africa. The army felt that it was a waste of money to pay these troops proper wages, and since it was not very nice to not pay your soldiers (and potentially hamrful) the simplest solution was to disband them. All of them. Immediately.
ScreenSave11.jpg

OK, well, by the 4th of January. Same thing.


A few days later, King George V died. Some people reckoned it was brought on by the budget Baldwin proposed for 1936. He felt it was an insult to the British army, and refused to sign it, but, at Baldwin's egging, he had agreed. It was believed that the new of the British Army's mass demobilisation program was the thing that drove him into the sickness that finally ended his life.

George's son, Edward VIII became king.


Baldwin's budget, apart from cutting government spending on the military drastically, did have other provisions that would benefit Britain in the long run. Firstly, the government decided to improve on the road and rail network in Scotland - in order to win votes in crucial Scottish constituencies, according to Labour - in order to encourage private investment and speed economic recover according to Baldwin.

Baldwin's budget also increased government subsidies for agricultural techniques and for improved tools to increase the productivity of factories.

ScreenSave9.jpg


The army used its reduced budget wisely. It channeled money to the Royal Small Arms Factory to develop a newer, cheaper gun that could be deployed to the army in times of war. Though this design was never used, it would be the forerunner of the mighty 25-pdr.

Things seemed to be chugging along just fine, but then, Hitler marched into the Rhineland. Without consulting Baldwin, Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary fired off a telegram condemning this to the Germans
230px-AREden.jpg

Eden, didn't do Baldwin any favours

A furious debate raged in the house of commons over Britain's response. Baldwin, beleagured by a furious attack from Labour (who claimed that Baldwin had no more control over his government and demanded the immediate dismisal of Eden) and by hawkish elements of the Conservatives (who claimed that sending off a letter of protest wasn't enough) , made a concession to the right - he would increase the military budget- slightly in response to this, but only just. Eden was safe. For now. After the debate, however, Baldwin, made it perfectly clear to Eden that if he pulled off a stunt like this again, he would be fired.
 
Baldwin likes keeping his head int he sand, doesn't he?
 
OOC: You guys all know about the Edward VIII crisis, and I can't be arsed enough to write it up again (I lost it when Firefox crashed), so I'll move on to something interesting and ahistorical. Woo!

OOC: Sorry for not updating for so long.

Chamberlain and the Effingham incident

Stanley Baldwin resigned from the office of Prime Minister in 1937 at a high point in his career. Having succesfully managed to bring Britain out of the depression, and having handled King Edward VIII's abdication crisis, along with appealing to Labour supporters by advocating a greatly reduced military, Baldwin left office with some of the highest approval ratings in the history of the United Kingdom.

Chamberlain decided not to significantly change his predecessor's policies too much, seeing how popular they were. Even the cabinet stayed almost the same, except with Sir John Simon taking the post of Chancellor the Exchquer, vacated by Chamberlain.

ScreenSave15.jpg

Chamberlain's Cabinet and policies

However, Chamberlain had decided to slightly reduce the funding for the Royal Navy in order to allow the Royal Air Force to develop a tactical bomber, the Vickers Wellington

27136-004.jpg

The Vickers Wellington, known affectionately as the "Wimpy" by its crews

ScreenSave16.jpg

Chamberlain had diverted funds away from the Royal Navy's King George V-class Battleship program in order to develop the Wellington
However, this peace was not to last. Back in 1936, the Spanish civil war had broken out. Though Baldwin had initially been vehlmently opposed to actively supporting the Republicans, Eden managed to convince him of the importance of keeping Spain out of fascist hands, and argued that, if the Republicans won with only Soviet help, the Soviets would wield considerable influence in the post war government. Baldwin therefore reluctantly announced that whilst the British government would not explicitly support the Republicans, they would make no attempt to stop volunteers from traveling to Spain.

However, Anthony Eden and the head of MI6 had secretly agreed to provide funds to the republicans, through the volunteers. Baldwin, when he found out, was enraged, and was about to sack Eden, but Eden managed to convince him that this was essential to maintaining the status quo in europe.

In December 1937, John Smith (OOC: For lack of a better name), an MI6 agent responsible for smuggling funds to the Republicans, was captured by Nationalist troops near the city of Seville. The local Nationalist commander, enraged, ordered his troops to open fire on a British ship seen leaving Gibraltar, theHMS Effingham. The Effingham was not hit. By a sheer stroke of bad luck, three Nationalist Torpedo boats sailed into view at that very moment. The Effingham’s captain, fearing a torpedo attack, opened fire on the torpedo boats, sinking two and driving away the third. The Nationalist artillery on the shore then turned and opened fire, and Nationalist troops began shelling Gibraltar

HMS_Effingham.jpg


When this incident reached London, it forced Chamberlain into a dilemma: if he refused to respond aggressively to this unprovoked attack on British military forces, Britain would look weak in the eyes of the world. If, however, he decided to take strong steps against the Nationalists, he would face massive discontent at home for dragging Britain into a war.

Eventually, egged on by Eden, he announced that Britain was now officially supporting the forces of Republican Spain in their struggle against the Nationalists. This caused widespread anti-war protests at home.

ScreenSave17.jpg

Britain declares its support for the Republicans

Then, the understrength 7th, 8th and 10 Indian Divisions, training in North Africa, were immediately shipped to Gibraltar. Meanwhile, France also agreed to support Spain, though on a more limited extent.

the III Indian Corps was formed from the three divisions, and they were sent into the attack in January.

The Nationalists, used to fighting against poorly-armed and poorly-trained militia and volunteers, were decisively defeated by the British. By the end of February, the Spanish Civil war was over, won by the Republicans.

ScreenSave18.jpg

The Situation at the end of the Spanish Civil war

This war, however, came at a huge cost - Chamberlain was now extremely unpopular, and many believe that this unpopularity and his percieved hawkishness meant that he would be much less aggressive with Hitler when he annexed Austria in March 1938.
 
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Looks like a nice enough start. I'll try this myself. Never really played Britain.. Do you think i should srap some of the outdated navy to make room for a more modern and powerful fleet of ships?

I'll propably be releasing most of my african colonies as puppets, ofcourse depending on how good of an IC count they have ofcourse. ;)
 
Enewald said:
you support... commies?!?! :confused:

But yay, britain aars are rare. I think... :) and suppose.
Well, Eden is going all anti-Communist, and is trying to gain some leverage over the post-civil war Spanish government, so it wouldn't go commie. In Eden's mind, if Britain does not interfere, spain would turn red or fascist. If Britain supports the republicans, there is a chance that it wouldn't.

As I said, in Eden's mind.

@Sir Keisari. The "Outdated fleet" is way better than what the Italians have got :D And releasing colonies is heresy!
 
Cool AAR I'll be watching and enjoying :)
 
Count me in!
 
It's back! Probably only to vanish again for a whil but still, an interesting set of limits you've given yourself (and some good house rules, I've copied a few myself ;) ).
 
"The Nationalists, used to fighting against poorly-armed and poorly-trained militia and volunteers, were decisively defeated by the British. By the end of February, the Spanish Civil war was over, won by the Republicans."

And those couple dozens of French divisions all over Iberia counted for nothing, naturally, in comparison to the three Indians in Seville! ;)
 
Kasakka said:
"The Nationalists, used to fighting against poorly-armed and poorly-trained militia and volunteers, were decisively defeated by the British. By the end of February, the Spanish Civil war was over, won by the Republicans."

And those couple dozens of French divisions all over Iberia counted for nothing, naturally, in comparison to the three Indians in Seville! ;)
Most of the "French" divisions were actually Republican divisions which they sent to the French as Expeditionary Forces.
 
Nice AAR, I'll be following this!