Chapter 5.7 - Stabilization and Destabilization
With relative quiet on the high seas, many ships and aircraft had been repurposed towards the grueling war of attrition in Southeast Asia, where the Japanese had slowly halted and turned back the Australasian advance. Still, it was not without cost, and bombing raids led by Bostock's Bombers - a repurposed naval taskforce - soon revealed a deep disorganization in the western flank of the Japanese force. The Allies would be quick to take advantage of this weakness.
The attack on Ft. Carnot begins - the Japanese stubbornly resist, but they will not be able to hold for long.
While the old French Fort at Ban Houayxay may have offered the Japanese some shelter from the bombings, it would do little to help against the advancing Australians. Heavy artillery bombardments shattered the venerable fortifications and the Laotian strongpoint was soon reduced to rubble. Ban Houayxya became the site of a fierce battle as the Japanese fought bitterly for every inch of soil, holding the Mekong river in a desperate attempt to keep their flank intact. The disorganization, however, soon became apparent as battalions were cut off from one another and brigades seemed to operate without any sort of inter-communication. They could not hold in the west against this attack.
Australian boots return to the war-ravaged city of Hanoi. Fighting continues in the north of the city, but the bulk now returns to Allied hands.
To the east, the Australians were once again on the counterattack, and with good results - Hanoi fell back into Allied hands on the 13th of December, resulting in a tenuous stalemate at any attempts to push further out of the city. The IJA was not prepared to give up on the Indochinese capital just yet, but against the Australian Army there was no easy victory.
Emboldened by the victory at Hanoi, propaganda of the latest Australian efforts to liberate Asia from tyranny soon circulated the Empire. From volunteers in the Indies to a fresh recruitment drive at home, more and more men were signing up to the Australian Army to fight - so many, in fact, that it was getting difficult to arm them all and see them to the front lines.
Operation Torch was a success from a localized perspective, but had yet to have the impact on North Africa that Allied Commanders desired.
In the west, Allied gains remained subpar at best. American troops deployed as part of Operation Torch had successfully driven the Axis out of West Africa and pushed up the Sahara into Morocco, but Central Africa remained in enemy hands and there was no immediate signs that the US would be able to threaten the Mediterranean any time soon. Even once North Africa fell, it would require a substantial naval invasion into Spain to free up the sea - an endeavour the Americans lacked preparation or willingness to conduct. The goal was still to meet the Australians at Suez.
The Australians were rebuilding the defensive lines around Hanoi, pressing the IJA back across the line and strengthening their hold on Northern Indochina.
General Dougherty's stoic defence of the Indochinese capital had not gone unnoticed or unappreciated by Allied High Command, and now with fresh reinforcements, the divisional commander was tasked with aiding the rest of the 4th Infantry Corps in pushing their way northwest - straight through the enemy lines. Breaking the Japanese back at Hung Yen, they pressed onwards towards Vinh Yen; it seemed once again that initiative lay with the Australians. Japan would not go down easily, however, and they had their own plan...
Japanese activity in the South China Sea had increased, and intercepted radio messages indicated that the Japanese were planning to deploy their ships off the coast of Indochina, and that a sizable fleet was headed west, past the Philippines. Rather than weather the storm, Admiral Cunningham of the Royal Navy opted for a more direct approach. Proposing a direct attack on the Japanese fleet, Allied Command reluctantly agreed and the battle was joined on the 16th of December. Under cover of poor weather, Cunningham's fleet had closed in on the Japanese taskforce, catching its southernmost fleet by surprise. What ensued was a brutal slugfest, each side turning their guns on another.
While the Japanese ships were fast and nimble, and boasted excellent firepower, they were somewhat lacking in armour plating or damage control systems. What started as an ambush soon turned into a brawl, the
HMAS Royal Sovereign and HMAS Queen Elizabeth pounding the Japanese line with their guns. Struck several times by
HMAS Royal Sovereign's main guns, the
IJN Mutsu exploded violently and began to list and sink.
IJN Nagato, the Japanese flagship, turned from the battle and attempted to flee under cover from
IJN Ryujo's complement of aircraft, but a single light carrier was not enough to deter the Allied fleet. Even as counter-fire claimed
HMAS Broome and
HMAS Brisbane, the fast-moving cruisers carved through Japanese escort destroyers and closed in on their target. Smoking several times from hits by both
HMAS Queen Elizabeth and
HMAS Royal Sovereign, it was the heavy cruiser
HMAS Newcastle who claimed the final blow, delivering two torpedoes to her aft bow and bringing the proud Japanese flagship beneath the depths. As the Australians celebrated, however, their joy soon turned to horror - already struck twice during the battle, the damaged
HMAS Royal Sovereign had become a vulnerable and slow-moving target which the IJN's air power could not ignore. Struck twice by dropped bombs, the final blow came as a Japanese Zero, clipped by anti-aircraft fire and coming down, rammed itself into the forward ammo storage compartment of the battleship. The impact alone would have badly damaged the ship, but the resulting explosion of the ship's 381mm shells tore the ship in half, sending it to the bottom in two grim pieces.
Despite the loss of
Royal Sovereign, the Royal Navy had earned a victory over the Japanese, sinking two of their vaunted Battleships and forcing the surviving elements of the Japanese fleet into retreat. With the threat of American industrial power looming over the Pacific, every lost ship was an asset the Japanese could ill afford to handle, and the boldness of the British, they believed, would surely encourage the Americans deeper into the war.
Baku was on the verge of falling to a renewed Axis offensive.
The Axis continued to find success in the near east. Spearheaded by the Asien-Korps, General Erwin Rommel had pushed the Red Army back to the gates of Baku and was now knocking on the doors of the vitally important city. Without Baku and the Caucasian Oil Fields, Russia's supply of fuel would rapidly dwindle and - it was hoped - leave her tanks and aircraft starved and unable to continue their counterattack. Hitler was now placing all of his hopes on this strategy, declaring Baku the place where the war would be won or lost, and demanding that the city fall before the new year. Rommel intended to take it before Christmas.
Australians continued to push hard into Iran - the Eastern Army had fallen in mere days, and now only Turks and Germans stood between them and Tehran.
(Author's Note: For some reason, I failed to take a picture of the encirclement, but it consisted of 8 divisions, of which 5 were militia - all Iranian.)
Allied Command knew the last thing they needed was victory for the Axis in Russia. If Stalin marched into Europe, he could be negotiated with and many former territories reclaimed - there would be no such peace if Hitler took Moscow, and so the purpose of the Iranian offensive was redirected. The Suez would have to wait, now the Australians would redirect their attentions north, to Tehran and to the oil refineries of Baku.
The Red Army would not stand by so passively in Manchuria...
The Japanese Army was stretched thin following Operation White Typhoon, and the Australians had drawn many of their troops to the south in order to counter the Allied attack. Now they faced an indomitable attack from the north as the Red Army descended upon Manchuria with a vicious offensive. Without regard for the cold, bitter weather that faced them, Stalin's elite Siberian troops brushed aside their Japanese counterparts and exacted a bloody toll in revenge of Khalkin Gol and the Russo-Japanese War 36 years prior.
Emperor Puyi had been captured - the puppet figurehead of the Japanese-controlled state was gone, and with him all sense of order and dignity in Manchukuo collapsed. The Soviets now marched onwards, towards the mountains of Korea and the Great Wall of China, intent on routing the Imperial Army and liberating the Chinese from Japanese control. Across all the nation, a flicker of hope now dawned in the people's hearts.
The Australians now held a firm and well-armed line of defense across the entire Sino-Indochinese border.
As the Japanese attempted to push back the Allies in several places, it became clear that no amount of glory, pride or perserverance would counter the Australians' skill or guns. Forming a vast line of defense across northern Indochina, the Australians perservered through bad weather and trying odds, cursing the enemy, cursing the rain and cursing every day that brought them there. Morale was low as Christmas rolled around, but for all the long struggles this war had brought, some began to whisper that an end was still in sight: the war in China was nearly won, and with it, perhaps the end of their war would come as well...
In South America, a different kind of national mood was stirring...
Only one continent was yet untouched by the war that swept the world: South America. Here, peace had largely reigned, for only the colony of Guyana saw any involvement in the conflict, and then only indirectly at best. While the USA had once relied on Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas as a model of a modernizing South America, ties between the Northern and Southern Americans had grown icy cold over the past years of war. Increasingly worried by American interventionism, and emboldened by the great successes made by the Fascists in Europe, Brazil had become a beacon of right-wing power in the American world.
The Dictator Vargas (in military garb, centre) declared himself President for life of the Estado Novo.
Roosevelt's attempts to bring Vargas into the war on the American side had proved unsuccessful, and now that President Willkie was withdrawing America from international politics, the virulent rhetoric out of Brazil had increased in intensity. Numerous meetings between Brazilian, Argentine and German diplomats had been conducted, and the general mood was that something big was brewing in the southern continent. Propaganda from the Estado Novo and the Integralista espoused the values of Brazil's past, and spoke of Cisplatina as a former, rightful land which she deserved to hold - much to the chagrin of the Argentines, who viewed Montevideo and its surrounding area as rightfully theirs. No one was sure what Hitler had planned for South America, but everyone could agree that it couldn't be good...
In the Burmese jungles, a new contribution appeared - the US Pacific Theater Army under General Douglas MacArthur arrived to stabilize the front in Burma.
After some hesitation and a considerable amount of battling, Willkie found Congressional approval to deploy American troops in Asia. While the Commonwealth was growing exhausted with the war and was desperately in need of help, Allied Command could not have been more astonished when 10 American divisions landed in Rangoon, advancing up the Burmese state to meet the Japanese near Mandalay. With the Soviets in desperate need of aid at Baku, the African front stalling and in need of quickened pace, and the Chinese front on the breaking point, the Americans had decided to march into the British colony and meet an undernourished, unprepared Chinese army which would offer them little threat and protected little of value for the war. It was now clear that the United States government did not care about winning this war, only about positive headlines and bringing back as many American GIs as possible.
As the year came to a close, the battered British Commonwealth now wondered if the world really was doomed, or if there was anything they could do to save it.
The Nations of the world on Jan 1st, 1942. (Click for a full-sized version!)
Three Alliances square off for world domination. (Click for a full-sized version!)
