The San Diego Military Olympics
The beginning of 1936 was a trying time for the US, particularly for the top decision makers. Parts of Roosevelt's staff were already ringing warning bells about the aggression of some nations on the planet, particularly the Japanese. Whether or not Roosevelt agreed with them did not matter; the American public was interested only in solving their own problems. Roosevelt knew that any major spending on anything besides domestic issues would likely have him thrown out of office. Possibly even before the elections set for November of that year.
As such, the US was forced to continue its isolationist policies. For the most part.
There was a faction within the upper echelon of the staff that predicted that war would come to America, whether she wanted to believe it or not. These men banded together and decided to try to figure out a way to trick the American public into preparing for war - a war they predicted would come from the far East.
They knew that they must be subtle. They must push forward important projects and somehow spin them so that they were not met with dissent from the American people. At the beginning of 1936 Roosevelt shuffled his cabinet slightly to begin to redirect America's efforts towards defense.
He pressed Douglas MacArthur into service as a bureaucrat as the Chief of Staff to implement some new training methods in order to churn better troops out. In a move that many people scoffed at MacArthur lobbied for and had himself appointed as Chief of the Army as well. It was hard to argue with his skills though, particularly when he adjusted the Army's logistical system to reduce wasted supplies.
Early in the year MacArthur ordered all air wings and all ships to congregate in San Diego. The premise of this was to promote inter-service co-operation through 2 weeks of sporting competition. A military Olympics, if you will (although the Army was not invited. MacArthur was heard to say that he "wanted the flyboys and sailors to have a sporting chance of winning
something") However, as the troops competed, the senior brass were gathered at the Naval Air Station North Island to discuss a complete reorganization of forces. This was the true reason for bringing all the forces together.
They began with the air forces which were split to no more than 3 wings of like plane types. Oscar Westover insisted that keeping the wings separate would allow them each to complete their jobs more efficiently. Further, he was part of the camp that believed that war would come in the pacific. He requested that all of the Air Corps Martin B-10 Light Bombers and Keystone B-6 Tactical Bombers be upgraded to TBD-1 Devastator Torpedo Bombers. His arguments that the only threat to the Continental United States would come from the seas could not be countered by the armaments minister, Robert Wagner. To further illustrate his point, Westover jotted down some relative statistics for the three planes on a scrap piece of paper, showing that the torpedo bomber was much stronger against ships. "No one can wage war in the Pacific if their ships are at the bottom of the sea."
Arguments about which arm of the military should be operating planes over the ocean would be had another day.
That first image is a real hack job, but I learned a lot doing it. The second one I learned even more. I'm going to post this, then go through a little more of the re-org (don't worry, I won't be making images of each and every fleet I created but I'll probably give a quick run down of fleets and their make-ups.) I plan on probably posting a few quick posts to start showing some goals, build queues etc, then maybe annual updates until 1941 or so. I brought everything to San Diego, all 22 air wings and 142 ships then split them all out. Maybe not the most efficient, but it works for me.
Feedback is certainly welcome.
A few questions
- does anyone know where the images in the game from the production screen are stored? I wouldn't mind grabbing a few of those to toss up in an image or two I'm sure. I had a quick look but couldn't track them down.
- are the images readable? Too big? Too small? My screenshots are all 1600 x 900 so I'm going to have to figure out a decent way to scale them without losing too much text detail.
- Does anyone know if the standard 4 CV 4 CL CTF makeup from TFH doesn't work in BI? Notwithstanding the AI doomstacks.
