Against all Odds: The British Empire in World War Two

[ViperhawkZ]

Question: is Canada doing in this timeline what they did IRL and rounding up all the Japanese immigrants from BC? OTL there was no small amount of controversy about that. If they are doing that, the stopover in Vancouver might be the place to mention it in the narrative.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next update.

[Kurt_Steiner]

Time for a bit of daggers and cloaks...

[stevep]

Trek

Good update and as always you're mixing the grand strategy with the espionage. Intriguing as to who is trying to contact them and, if their genuine, how their going to maintain the communications. Two questions, points:

a) Think a slight typo as when their 1st told about it you said Ian replied 1st then have Felix speaking.

b) Is it wise sending Felix to the states? Technically wouldn't the authorities there consider him guilty of treason by leaving and then working for a foreign government. As such I would say he's at high risk even apart from the mission their on.

I agree with Griffen. Would prefer more frequent updates but RL must come 1st, especially when it involves something like you're education.

Steve

[trekaddict]

Griffin.Gen Thank you, thank you.

ViperhawkZ Going into too much detail would be against the rules, but suffice it to say, yes, that happened.

Kurt_Steiner Considering who the two are and what at least one of them will earn his money with after the war this is a given, methinks.

stevep Well as said, at least some writing is almost always going on.

The contact is one that neither you or they will expect, though some of you might find a few clues as to who it is.

as for your questions:

a) That's mostly not correctly spelled. The two expect Edwards to say something and he doesn't.

b) Not really. For one Felix was stuck in the UK for most of the war, he was assigned to the US Embassy in Britain almost straight out of Annapolis. He also formally renounced his US citizenship before becoming a naturalized Brit. He's an Officer in the Royal Navy just like any other, so technically the Americans can't do squat. Legally Felix is just a naturalized British who happened to have been born in Colorado Springs and joined the Royal Navy.

[Ehran]

The worrying bit is there still seems to be problems. I thought modern plants were designed so that if there was a problem they automatically shut down. Unless the quake prevented the moderating rods operating or something
Steve

those plants were 40 years old and GE trash at that. seems they were scheduled to be shut down and dismantled in a couple weeks prior to the tsunami doing a hatchet job on them.
the big problem though it seems is the spent fuel ponds which if they dry out will let the spent fuel light up and set off on it's drift downwind. that would be a far more deadly problem than
the actual reactors melting. still all you really need to do is pour enough water into the ponds to keep up with evaporation to "fix" that problem. got to wonder about seawater though and
whether that's going to react with the spent fuel. what they really need onsite is a canadian DART team as we have considerable expertise/hardware in producing large amounts of potable water from whatever is handy.

the new pebble bed designs are supposedly impossible to melt down the way these ge things can. bet they are really wishing they had procured candu reactors now.

[Ehran]

Question: is Canada doing in this timeline what they did IRL and rounding up all the Japanese immigrants from BC? OTL there was no small amount of controversy about that. If they are doing that, the stopover in Vancouver might be the place to mention it in the narrative.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next update.

think the major driver of that was american paranoia though i really doubt we lacked in homegrown racists back then. without the urge to follow the american example one can hope for that to be a situation we didn't fall into. surely one of our less than shining moments.

[Ehran]

b) Not really. For one Felix was stuck in the UK for most of the war, he was assigned to the US Embassy in Britain almost straight out of Annapolis. He also formally renounced his US citizenship before becoming a naturalized Brit. He's an Officer in the Royal Navy just like any other, so technically the Americans can't do squat. Legally Felix is just a naturalized British who happened to have been born in Colorado Springs and joined the Royal Navy.

and the odds of their caring about the legality of their actions being approximately zilch it would be his status as a british observer that would be protecting him. still he would make an entirely admirable decoy if bond needed to do anything somewhat sneaky as i expect felix would be getting much more carefully watched than anyone else in the delegation.

[trekaddict]

Well, the Americans can't do anything officially, and that at the very least increases their chances. Right now the Americans can't afford any scuffles with the British, they need all their resources focused on Japan.

Besides, as far as the Americans know, Felix is just one more expat who joined with teh evul Imperialists, and they won't risk a diplomatic incident over him.

[ViperhawkZ]

With a Commonwealth/UAPR Cold War situation on the horizon, will the Canadian locks at Sault Ste. Marie (my home!) be expanded to be as large or larger than the American side? Huge, huge amounts of shipping goes through those locks - including, importantly, iron - and having to rely on the Rednecks to let us use their half when war could break out at any moment (or indeed, when the war starts in that theoretical scenario) would be foolish at best.

The Canadian locks are too small for shipping IRL. They're mostly used for tour boats and private boats etc.

[trekaddict]

To be perfectly honest, I haven't thought about that much. I could see that being done, together with a development of airfreight and a few heavy duty rail lines, all after the war.

[ViperhawkZ]

The MV Paul R. Tregurtha - largest ship on the lakes - is 309m long. She can carry, in one trip: 68,000 long tons of iron ore or 63,616 long tons of coal. Now imagine dozens of ships that size. That's a damn lot of potentially vital materials.

(Sorry, my ego is inflating a bit now that I've dragged my hometown into it. Burst my bubble whenever you see fit.)

[trekaddict]

Well, it's probably easy to be correct when you assume that the Canadians will look at an alternative to the St. Lawrence once it becomes clear that there is a Cold War on after the fighting is over. Just how all that looks like in detail I can't say until after I've read up some more on the matter.

[stevep]

Well, it's probably easy to be correct when you assume that the Canadians will look at an alternative to the St. Lawrence once it becomes clear that there is a Cold War on after the fighting is over. Just how all that looks like in detail I can't say until after I've read up some more on the matter.

trekaddict

Less a question of an alternative to the St Lawrence, since that would be needed for contact with the wider world for bulk loads. Especially since much is totally under Canadian control, which could be awkward for American production in the Great Lakes area.

More a matter that above the St Lawrence, on the lakes themselves, movement between the lakes in a couple of cases is dependent on canals and in virtually all cases there are bottlenecks with Canada on one side and America on the other.

I think ViperhawkZ is mainly thinking that if Canada is dependent on American controlled locks for portage it puts them at an economic disadvantage and possibly, at times of crisis, a serious crippling of activity.

Steve

[trekaddict]

A connection to the wider world out of Artillery range from the American border would be especially useful in wartime. If a conventional WW3 were to be started (it won't, but bear with me here) then the St. Lawrence would be cut almost immediately, and IIRC Ottawa isn't too far from the American border either, so somehow Canada must maintain contact with the convoys from Europe for supplies and ammo.

EDIT: What I could see is a railway of sorts, kind of like the post-war Highway system in the UK. They'd still need a point of entry into Canada though, and all the major ports are either useless due to proximity to the UAPR (Vancouver), too exposed to being cut off (in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) or not too far from the American border. (Quebec City) Any suggestions?

[El Pip]

Our favourite duo on a covert and risky mission to the evil Commie West Coast? Excellent!

[trekaddict]

Well, it was well time. I had several attempts at getting them into America, they all developed differently from what I had originally planned.

[ViperhawkZ]

Sept-Îles, Quebec is a town with a deepwater harbour, a land connection to the rest of Canada, and is far from the American border. If necessary, it could be built up as a reasonably large port.

[trekaddict]

Sept-Îles, Quebec is a town with a deepwater harbour, a land connection to the rest of Canada, and is far from the American border. If necessary, it could be built up as a reasonably large port.

I was considering that one, but refrained from arbitrarily selecting one until I'd head back from someone actually living in Canada.

[Ehran]

the major problem canada would have with any war with the usa is our near total lack of strategic depth. our population centres are almost all within 100 miles of the us border. seems bizarre that a country as huge as canada would have this sort of problem but this is the case.

[ViperhawkZ]

It's not really that odd because for six months every year, most of the country is a freezing, barely-habitable ice world. The main problem with living much higher north than most people do is that there is no way to grow food and very few methods of transportation, making it basically impossible to sustain a community.

On the other hand, Canada has few enough residents that with the proper preparations, our entire population could literally vanish into the Arctic - General Winter does not only fight for the Russians, you know.