On further inspection you did not, and the mistake was entirely mine.The Yogi said:I did? In the first post about Indy in Last Chance, I wrote only "two old Maxim machine guns" without specifying calibre. If I did write .50 cal anywhere, it was a mistake.
Darn. Although I'd expect to see fairly enthusiastic production of them. The Pan-Asians are relying heavily on tanks, and the M2HB was America's preferred low echelon antitank weapon in this era. Indy's rifle company may not have them, but if he's part of a regular infantry unit there will be some at the battalion or regimental level.In any case, they are not M2 .50 cal Brownings - unforturnately for Indy.
Well, that or the 37mm gun M3, but those were just coming into the line at this point.
Of course, an American-equipped 'militia' division would most likely not have a full infantry division's allotment of things like antitank weapons. And what antitank weapons it did have would be whatever odds and ends the US could scrape up from abroad, much like the British Home Guard units.
Like, say, the newly named "M35 .32 Caliber Antitank Rifle, Long Cartridge?"
Crud... that means Indy's a captain in an HoI2 militia unit! Those things are like red shirts, only with higher mortality rates! It's worse than I thought...
I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that they had been misinformed. I know I wouldn't want to send agents into the Pan-Asians' backyard knowing the exact date on which I was going to commit an act of war against them.Derek Pullem said:As far as James and Fah Lo Suee are concerned, the Empress will speak to the BBC on the 12 August i.e. the next day. They do not want to be in the custody of Fu's henchmen at that time so escape is an imperative.
In their defense, when the situation is as fluid as it has been in East Asia for the past four years, their intelligence network almost has to be in tatters. They may need to pick up new leads, especially when dealing with something like the Si-Fan. The Si-Fan are undoubtedly scrambling to rearrange anything Fah might possibly know about (which mean virtually everything) by now. And they'll be chasing down as many of those moles you mentioned as possible.The Yogi said:Probably the Secret Service Standard Operating Procedure as seen in countless Bond-movies - travel to the general region in which there is trouble and hope to stumble over a lead.
Any other British agents with access to the Si-Fan have probably been neutralized by the resulting chaos, even if their identities are not known. The Si-Fan may not be reliable to Fu, but that doesn't mean that the British have consistent access to intel on their actions.
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Even without open rebellions, that's a problem for Fu, to state the obvious. Without efficient cooperation from the Imperial Navy, Fu's plans cannot succeed. Too many of his enemies cannot be neutralized by ground forces alone.The Yogi said:But the navy… the navy was manned and officered almost exclusively by Japanese.
Hmm. Fu may be overreaching. It is difficult to invade India from the territories Fu controls; the terrain is terrible. On the other hand, India isn't very heavily militarized in this era, and a large fraction of the population will view the Pan-Asians as liberators.India, because of it's size would take a while, but the outcome would be decided quickly. Then would come the battle for Singapore, which would decide the outcome of the war.
It shouldn't be quite that bad, since the Germans have probably captured a fair amount of rolling stock for the Soviet rail lines, and they can cross-load at the points where German and Soviet railroads connect. But even in the face of such a disastrous collapse, railroad rolling stock is very mobile and the Soviets would have destroyed a lot of it in place to keep it out of German hands. So they won't have nearly enough, especially of locomotives.SS-Hauptstumführer Meyer, Skorzeny’s PAK commander sighed and pinched a cigarette from the package held out by his CO. ’Logistics are falling apart, boss. An old friend of mine is a junior officer at OKH. He painted a bleak picture last I saw him. You know how Ivan’s rail tracks are not as wide as ours – they’ve hardly even begun to fix that, and in the mean time, we have to move around everything we need with trucks or transport planes.’
What the Germans need, ironically, is Lend-Lease... which they aren't going to get until the Pan-Asians have been soundly thumped in the American West. Though if they can hang on to at least some of the territory they've gained in Russia for another year or two, they'll probably be in a position to start getting trucks from Detroit.‘We have plenty of trucks!’ Skorzeny protested. ‘Do you have any idea of how many we took from the Franzozen?
At least I know I expect the war on the American front to be over in the US's favor in another year or two. Given the force ratios and what I know about the two combatants, I honestly don't think it could last much longer than that.
In this setting, there are no Desert Rats because the North Africa campaign never really got going.Derek Pullem said:"And so it begins......"
OK - the real war starts here. I wonder how much of the Far East the Empire will trade to ensure Canada and the US are safe. I hope Churchill managed to convince the Chiefs that the war will be won and lost in America not the Far East. I'm hoping for the BEF and the "Desert Rats" to be attacking down highway 15 and on to Salt Lake City soon.
Churchill is going to be torn. On the one hand he was always a fairly strong America-sympathizer. On the other, he really didn't like the idea of losing the British Empire in the Far East. If we were talking about anyone else I'd say he had no idea what to do next. Since this is Churchill, he will undoubtedly come to a quick decision, but I'm not placing any bets on what it will be or whether it will be the right choice.
Although by now, the Pan-Asians are in a position to wreck every port on the west coast of the United States, so it will be a long time before the Allies can threaten his naval superiority. They'll more or less have to build the seaports to capture the rear area bases to capture the forward bases that can even begin to threaten his territory. If we have to wait for "Victory at Sea," the war will run well into the late '40s and go nuclear before there's any chance of Pan-Asia falling.So long as the Americas are denied to Fu then he will (eventually) lose naval supremacy (if he hasn't already - Yamamoto and the death ray not withstanding). Which means an awful long walk from Beijing to Moscow and beyond.