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what you use for those arrows?
interesting and intriguing
i shall observe it from the shadows
interesting and intriguing
i shall observe it from the shadows
Did you mod the outcome of the Manchurian war or played it out this way?
Sorry, if you already answered this question, I have followed from the start, but usually skip the replies and your answers and only read your updates.
I hope you have fun writing this as well as playing the game behind it.
Sorry, if you already answered this question, I have followed from the start, but usually skip the replies and your answers and only read your updates.
I hope you have fun writing this as well as playing the game behind it.
Sorry guys, I've been playing Mount & Blade - Last Days of the Third Age (a Middle Earth mod which is AWESOME) the last few days, which means I haven't been playing HOI2. Will soon though.Užičkibombarder said:
I use PSP 7 (ooold version, works for me though).Deus Eversor said:what you use for those arrows?
interesting and intriguing
i shall observe it from the shadows
No problemo. I modded the outbreak of the war, in order to reduce it in scope (so that only the US and the USSR were in the war, and not, for example Mongolia or Britain) and I also modded the peace treaty to kick in once the outcome was no longer in doubt. The actual operations are all AI.Amona said:
INTERLUDE II
Nationalist troops enter Peking after American pullout. July 1946
Nationalist troops enter Peking after American pullout. July 1946
Peking, Republic of China
Saturday, July 15th, 1946
It was a bleak little room, he thought as he wearily sat down at the small square table set out in the middle of it. The plaster on the walls was flaking and the wood in the table and the creaking chairs was white-grey with dryness and age. Across the table sat the defector, or supposed defector. It was his job to determine which.
‘How do you do, Lieutenant-Colonel? I am Lieutenant Gabriel E. Thistle of the US Army Intelligence.’
‘Ludovik Sergeievich Maximenko, at your service Lieutenant.’
A man in his late twenties wearing the uniform of the VVS, (The Soviet Air Force), Maximenko seemed very nervous, sweating profusely and looking at the American officer with apprehension. To calm him down, Gabriel fished out a packet of Lucky Strikes and offered it to the Russian, who greedily accepted. After the American had lit it for him he puffed happily and seemed to relax visibly.
‘Ah, wonderful! I’ve smoked nothing better than Papierosi for the last six years!’ he confided, seeming entirely focused on the tobacco.
‘I’ve tried those’, Gabriel said, shaking his head. ‘No wonder you’ve defected!’
The Russian almost chocked on the smoke as he was overcome by a fit of laughter. ‘Good one! You know, for a checkist, you’re very civilised!’ (He actually said “cultured”, but that was the gist of it, Gabriel knew) ‘And your Russian is excellent.’
‘Thank you, Sir, but I’m no Checkist – I’m an army translator, that’s all. You’re not a prisoner, after all, but a guest. Now, I’ve been told that you have some sort of information for us. Why don’t we begin with that?’
‘No.’ Maximenko shook his head energetically. ‘First, you tell me what will happen to me. Listen, I will help you in any way I can. I mean, I was happy to fight the Germans in defence of my country, but I hate Stalin, he has betrayed the revolution and the Russian people. Instead of fighting on against the German beast, he has dragged us into war with our American friends! I could not stand for that. When the war here in China ended, I saw my chance and flew over to you.’
Gabriel ignored the speech, which he was pretty certain had been prepared expressly to please, rather than to honestly express the Soviet Officer’s views. That didn’t necessarily mean Maximenko wasn’t a bona fide defector though.
‘Don’t worry. You will be allowed to live in the United States, wherever you please.’
‘Live? How will I live? I don’t even speak your language! What place will there be for me in your capitalist system? Will I be a job-less beggar?’
‘There are courses you can follow. An intelligent fellow like you should have no trouble learning the language. We, the Army, will get you started with a house and a job – maybe even a flying job, would you like that? Flying cargo or passengers?’
‘I would like that very much. Very well, then I will tell you what I know. You think the war is over, but it is not. The Red Army is withdrawing from Manchuria as we speak, but they’re leaving behind much of their equipment, which is immediately picked up by forces loyal to Mao. There will also be left behind advisors to train the Chinese Communist forces in the use of these weapons. Within a few months, Mao will have fifty or sixty divisions organised and equipped as Red Army mobile forces, with tanks, halftracks, artillery, everything!’
Should Chiang Kai-Shek get wind of this, the Chinese Civil War would resume in no time, Gabriel thought unhappily. But what would be the Soviet reaction to that? If they intervened, could the Truman administration even consider going to war against the USSR AGAIN to prop up Nationalist China? No, the Congress would ask for the President’s head on a platter if he tried that after the latest debacle.
‘This is troubling new, Sir. We will of course try to corroborate your story with photo reconnaissance. Unless this turns out to be some elaborate hoax, you can look forward to a new life as a resident of the United States of America.’
Maximenko smiled happily while internally laughing like a madman at the foolish Americans. There was no hoax. The truth worked for the Soviet cause here, and if the Americans chose to keep this information a secret to Nationalist China, then the GRU would find other ways to let Chiang Kai-Shek know what the USSR was up to, and sow distrust in the process. The Chinese Civil war would resume, with the Nationalists as the aggressors and the Soviet Union would have the perfect justification for intervention. And this time, there would be no Americans to stop the Red Army!
****
The Heinkel He-162 Salamander Jet interceptor
Königsberg, Greater German Reich
Saturday, July 15th, 1946
The Me-162 "Salamander" of Fänrich Maximilan “Max” Reinhardt, fresh pilot of Jagdgeschwader 77 "Herz As" touched down on Königsberg military airport. He felt like whooping with glee – his first flight as full officer pilot was successfully completed. He was now one among that select brotherhood, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. He steered his taxing machine up to the hanger at the edge of the field where his ground crew awaited. So did Günther Plowitz, an elder member of the squadron who had more or less adopted the green newcomer.
‘Max, my boy!’ he shouted as Reinhardt climbed down the ladder on the side of the hull. ‘So what do you think? Do you like flying our Salamander?’
‘Love it!’ Max shouted back joyfully. He pulled off his pilots cap, letting loose a shock of unruly blond hair, cropped close to temples and the neck but left long on top, as the fashion dictated. He would have made a fine poster-boy for the Luftwaffe; tall, blue-eyed, square-jawed – a perfect Aryan, except that his mother was Czech, and therefore he would probably never make Oberst – but that had always been beyond Max’s aims anyway.
‘That’s because you’re a young idiot and know no better!’ Plowitz laughed, slapping Max’s shoulder. ‘Everyone knows that this fighter is an emergency measure – a bodge job, remarkable only for going fast and breaking up even faster!’
‘What do you mean? The Salamander won us the air war!’ Max protested vehemently.
Plowitz shook his head. ‘They don’t tell the new recruits how it was at the end of the war. We had to put a stop to the American bombers before they reduced the Reich to rubble, but we didn’t have enough trained pilots and not enough aviation fuel to train them. The Americans and British had plenty of both. The only solution to the problem was mass-producing a jet-fighter, because in a jet, any jet, a half-trained recruit would have a fighting chance against the best piston-engine fighters of the Ami’s. And there wasn’t such a bad shortage of jet fuel, it seems you get some when making ordinary petrol – don’t ask, I’m no chemist. We already had the Me-262, and it ruled the skies, but it was complicated to build and expensive, and we needed thousands of planes! So under orders from Speer, Heinkel put the Salamander together and rushed it into mass production in a matter of a few months. As a result, while the scheme worked and we finally did defeat the Ami bomber forces, far more of our pilots died from crashes or even mid-air breakup than from being killed by enemy action! So yeah, it’s fast and it hits reasonably hard, but it’s still a cantankerous, accident-prone, short-legged little flying coffin. I've lost many a good friend to it and I shall be glad to see the last of it.’
‘The last of it? It’s being phased out then?’
Powitz nodded. ‘We’re scheduled to convert to a new Focke-Wulf design, the Ta-183 before next year. Imagine that, flying a jet built by Kurt Tank, that’ll be something else! I hear its all metal, does almost a thousand kph and carries four 30mm cannon, just like the Me-262. I can’t wait to try it out!’
And despite having dreamt of nothing but flying the Salamander for the last year and a half, neither could Max.
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Nice update.
You should correct the comment below the Salamander though... - EDIT: ah, corrected now...
You should correct the comment below the Salamander though...
- EDIT: ah, corrected now...
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Excellent update!
Glad to hear that the Luftwaffe is finally getting some safer planes. And I'll bet your stocking up on jet fuel in proper amounts for the next war, eh?
Jesper
Glad to hear that the Luftwaffe is finally getting some safer planes. And I'll bet your stocking up on jet fuel in proper amounts for the next war, eh?
Jesper
Damnable Ruskies!
I'm interested as to how Germany will fit into the 3rd World War, as three-way wars aren't terribly common.
Or are you going for an Orwellian permanent war thing?
I'm interested as to how Germany will fit into the 3rd World War, as three-way wars aren't terribly common.
Or are you going for an Orwellian permanent war thing?
Good update yogi. Will the USA be sending lots of hardware to the Nationalist Chinese?
Those sneaky Russians, always sneaking around! And since the Americans will trust Maximenko as he is telling the truth, he may be in a position to betray them again in the future!
Of course, Russians up to trickeration. That Stalin.....someone should do something about him.
An old comment that I have been thinking about. Given the limited destructive power of A-bombs at the time and the minute number and huge destructiveness of them in HOI2, I think I will let a single game A-bomb correspond to 3-5 bombs in the narrative. Something along that order would be neccessary to completely destroy a large metropolis like Moscow, Berlin or London anyway.Leviathan07 said:
Thanks both of you, and thanks Murm for voting for this piece as best narrative HOI2 AAR for the Q2 2007 AARwards! Considering there is so little narrative interspersed with so much history book-style, I've would've been even happier for a vote in the history-book category but I guess there was simply too stiff competition in that respect, eh?Murmurandus said:
It might not be restricted to intelligence, but yes, it's looking that way.trekaddict said:I sense a three way Intelligence war.....
The He-162 makes me shiver. Structure partially made from glue-bonded wood, where the glue would eat away at the wood and cause catastrophic structural failure in mid-flight... <brrrr> Not a bad plane otherwise, especially not considering the extremely short development time and how every conceivable corner was cut in order to achieve a stunning planned production rate of 4.000 A MONTH! Had the Germans been able to successfully achieve such an output (assuming of course they didn't have allied troops rampaging through Germany as IOTL) their scheme of giving superior planes to half-trained pilots might well have worked. Here, I assume it did.Commander-DK said:Excellent update!
Glad to hear that the Luftwaffe is finally getting some safer planes. And I'll bet your stocking up on jet fuel in proper amounts for the next war, eh?
Indeed - Stalin REALLY wants a communist China as manpower-providing ally before the next major conflict. Believe or not, but the Russo-German war was so hugely costly to the USSR in terms of manpower that it was actually short on men in late 1941 and again towards the end of the war - not a situation common to Russian armies in any era!Guangxi said:More trouble in China to come
I actually don't know how this will play out. I know what aims Germany has long term, but how the AI's will act (and react) is a bit of a mystery even to me. In this AAR I'm going to follow the game closer than in any other of mine. Still, I won't let the game reality stand in the way of a good story.Jape said:Damnable Ruskies!
I'm interested as to how Germany will fit into the 3rd World War, as three-way wars aren't terribly common.
Or are you going for an Orwellian permanent war thing?
Most certainly. Even if it's politically unfeasble to intervene directly, not giving substanstial military aid will be just as impossible.discovery1 said:
Glad to hear it! For the benefit of the story, I'm considering a few changes to the final version of the Ta-183 (the version we know of was only an early draft anyway): namely exchanging the four MK 108s for two MK 103s (since that way it will be massively more effective against fighters) and including the dual rocket/jet propulsion envisioned in the first drafts (using a small liquid fuel rocket engine as a sort of afterburner for take-off and interception). Won't make any difference in game, but would be cool in any narratives of air combat (which there will be, oh yes, can't stay away from that).Darks63 said:
Yes, I'm sure neither we or young Gabriel have heard the last of Ludovik Maximenko.anonymous4401 said:
Breathe man, breathe!Kurt_Steiner said:
Heh. I don't think anybody will, at least not for a few more years...EmprorCoopinius said:
BTW, I've decided to use Wades-Gilles and Postal Map transcriptions of Chinese names, ie Peking, not Beijing, and Mao Tse-Tung, not Zedong. It feels more in swing with the times, so to speak.
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CHAPTER III
1946-1947
The Chinese crisis of 1946
1946-1947
The Chinese crisis of 1946
Soviet weapons for Mao
In early July of 1946, as their pullout was still ongoing, US Army intelligence provided incontrovertible photographic evidence that the USSR was arming the Communist rebel forces in Manchuria by means of leaving stockpiles of everything from small arms to tanks behind as they withdrew. In mid July, the United States and China lodged a formal complaint in the Security Council of the United Nations, accusing the USSR of breaking the terms of the peace of Peking in which arming the Communist Rebels had been expressly forbidden. The Russians countered with accusing America of arming the Nationalists, and offered to cease in exchange for a stop of American arms deliveries to the Republic of China.
Chiang Kai-Shek was outraged over the implied equiparation of the Government of the Republic of China with a rebel group. The massive amounts of left-behind equipment had already altered the balance of power between Government and Rebels in China, and a stop to further deliveries to both sides would only permanent that shift. He insisted that America turn down the deal, and fearing the growing strength of the Communist guerrillas decided to launch a pre-emptive attack on Manchuria and the old Communist heartland in Shensi (Shaanxi), before the Soviet weapons could be integrated into new functional units.
As soon as Nationalist Forces had completed the occupation of the former US zone in China, they arrayed a powerful invasion force on the border of Manchuria. Soviet aerial reconnaissance spotted these preparations in early August and in turn protested stridently before the United Nations. Realising that a collapse of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army could trigger an immediate Soviet intervention that the United States would be politically hard pressed to match, the US ambassador in Peking tried to restrain Chiang Kai-Shek, but the Chinese Generalissimo dismissed American concerns – if Mao wasn’t crushed while he was weak, the Civil War would resume just the same, but by then the Communists would be the stronger party. Only in exchange of outrageous amounts of American materiel, to “restore the previous balance of force” was China prepared to postpone the suppression of the CPLA.
The Chinese Civil War rekindled
On August 10th, advance elements of the Nationalist Chinese Army crossed the demarcation line in Manchuria, only to find that several Communist formations were already fully organised and equipped with Soviet weaponry. The Russians had started building them well in advance of the armistice and they were now fully combat ready! Feeling the pressing need for quick action, the Nationalist invasion forces were still relatively small, and were soundly beaten and pushed back across the border. The tank-heavy mechanised CPLA forces then launched a lightning counteroffensive that was only stopped at the very gates of Peking as more and more Nationalist reinforcements were gradually brought in.
In contrast to their early ground-war misfortunes, the Nationalists held the advantage in the air from the start. Not only had they been given advanced P-51D and P-47M aircraft, they had also received training by American Air Force instructors since 1942 and had a number of US pilots still in service, leftovers from the famous “Flying Tigers”. The CPLA, although armed with some of the best Soviet fighters, which had given their American counterparts a run for their money in the last phases of the Manchurian war, had virtually no capable pilots and were quickly chased from the skies. The complete Nationalist air superiority had a dramatic effect on the new heavily mechanised CPLA. As supply columns and fuel trucks were shot up by Nationalist fighter-bombers, the powerful Soviet-built war machines ground to a halt. This contributed decisively to the failure of Mao’s bid to capture Peking.
Nationalist advance into Manchuria
Once the initial Communist advance had been checked, Nationalist numbers began to tell. The CPLA advantage in heavy weapons and tanks was largely offset by Nationalist air superiority and within a few weeks, the CPLA had been driven away from the vicinity of Peking. During August, Kuomintang forces pushed deeper into Manchuria and also quickly reduced the old Communist stronghold in Shensi. By September, Nationalist forces had taken Jinxi and advanced as far as Mukden. Although during that time a number of units forming with Soviet equipment were readied for action, they were committed piecemeal to the front and failed to make an impact. Mao Tse-Tung had desired as little help as possible from the USSR in order to be able run a future Communist China according to his own peculiar ideas, but in early September the complete defeat of Communist China seemed imminent, and Mao had to swallow his pride and ask for a full scale Soviet intervention.
Soviet intervention
Stalin was only too happy to oblige. On September 8th, 1946 Communist China signed in as the fourth member of the Comintern Pact (a mutual defence pact already including the USSR, Mongolia and the Peoples Republic of North Korea). Soviet forces immediately went into battle in China, and this time not only in Manchuria but attacking all along the border. As the United States protested in outrage, the intervention was kept moderate in scope in order not to provoke the American public into supporting a second intervention in China. Because of this, it did not immediately produce a reversal of the course of the war, but merely put a stop to the Chinese advance.
Chiang Kai-Shek was undeterred though; in his mind the internal enemy was always the most dangerous one, and now the standing of the Chinese communists had taken a deadly blow, as most Chinese came to regard them as collaborators with the Russian invaders. Rather than backing down, Chiang called for national mobilisation in defence of the Chinese home land and launched a counter-invasion of Mongolia, which would come very close to snuffing out one of the Comintern states before being turned back in 1947.
American and German reaction
Both other great powers, the United States and The Reich deplored the Soviet intervention (although only the USA in the UN, since Germany was not a UN member) and proceeded to give military support to China. The Panzerwaffe was at this time busy converting from the Panther to the Panther II, and a great number of the older AFV were sent to China. The bulk of military support came from the USA though. An American counter-intervention was considered but rejected, the political cost to the President being deemed prohibitive after the failure in the Manchurian war. As far as Chiang Kai-Shek was concerned, this was for the better, since it kept the conflict nicely limited to a China vs invader battle, which helped unite the people behind the Kuomintang and his leadership.
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