I apologize for this very long absence from this AAR, but finals followed by holidays has been eating up a lot of my time. I've only just now managed to drag myself over to the keyboard to type something up. Hopefully my pace will increase in the near-future. Enjoy this relatively short update in the meanwhile.
The United States in the World War - Part IV
The devastating defeat inflicted upon the French Atlantic Fleet by the combined American navy on January 21 convinced the British Admiralty to reevaluate their overall strategy in the north Atlantic. The ease with which King and Nimitz had decimated the French battleships boded ill for the Union's own. With less than half the number of American aircraft carriers, the vast array of British battleships would clearly be in grave danger should they sally forth to do battle.
As a consequence of these new realizations, the tense maneuvering of both fleets through the north Atlantic over the past several months gave way to yet another lull in the hostilities. No longer having to fear the constant harassment of the Syndicalist navies, King ordered the combined fleet back west of Iceland to patrol the waters through which the ever-growing convoys of men and material passed through to Reykjavík. Supervised closely by General Marshall and overseen directly by Admiral Stark, the Icelandic capital could be expected to support as many as two dozen divisions by March. For analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, such a build-up's purpose was clear: the invasion of Britain.
As preparations for such an ambitious military operation were underway, and with the Syndicalist navies making efforts to avoid a direct confrontation, Roosevelt hoped to maintain the war effort's momentum by other means. With the United States entering an election year and the President intent on running for an unprecedented third term, his decision was motivated as much by politics as military necessity. Remembering the surprise British air attacks on Reykjavík the year before, the President turned to the Air Corps. Mj. General Carl Spaatz, in charge of the Iceland Air Command, proposed an ambitious bombing campaign of Scotland and northern England. The President, perhaps motivated by the Vice President and General Rickenbacker's objections, had grave misgivings about the viability of the overall plan. With the distances involved and the poor conditions in the North Sea, Spaatz's operation was limited to a single, albeit massive, attack.
Therefore, in the early morning hours of January 29, 1944, six wings of B-24s took off from air bases scattered around Reykjavík. With no early warning systems present in the north and the fleet in Scapa Flow, the British civil defense was left completely shocked when hundreds of American bombers appeared in the skies above Glasgow. Ports, factories, and railways were the primary targets. Due to the centralization efforts of the Syndicalists, these industrial targets were pounded mercilessly, blanketing the city in smoke and hampering the accuracy of subsequent attack waves. By the time the last of the American raiders retreated back to Iceland, Glasgow's industrial centers were gutted. Although civilian casualties were light, the war was nevertheless brought home in a way the British public, safely isolated on their island, had never before experienced.
The Spaatz raid, though inflicting only minor damage to Britain's war-making capacity, immediately became a perfect propaganda weapon for the American war effort. The President hoped the raid could be followed up with subsequent attacks in the upcoming weeks. But bad weather and a lack of viable targets within the American bombers' attack range prevented it. Eager to validate the amount of resources being poured into the Air Corps, several officers began to debate whether or not a revision of the Corps' strategy was in order. The decision to target only industrial and military targets severely limited the number of targets available and raised fundamental questions about such efforts' effectiveness.
But where American propagandists used Spaatz's raid to demonstrate the United States' progress in the war up to that point, their British counterparts employed it to harden the people's resolve, using it as a clear demonstration of the inhuman cruelty of America's capitalist and royalist masters. A country-wide relief effort was conducted to help the people of Glasgow recover from the attack. With British forces continuing to advance through western Africa with practical impunity, the attack failed to dampen British spirits.
For their part, the French expressed their outrage over the Ameican attack, but behind closed doors welcomed to news, hoping that such actions would drive the British, allies more by virtue of international solidarity than enthusiasm for the war, to throw themselves fully into the conflict as the Spanish and Italians had. Neither their defeat at sea nor the bombing of Glasgow, however, deterred the French. With Austria-Hungary growing increasingly unstable in the new, entirely hostile European order, French-lead Syndicalist domination of the continent was nearly complete. Few expected the French armies to sit idle come spring.
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The United States in the World War - Part IV
The devastating defeat inflicted upon the French Atlantic Fleet by the combined American navy on January 21 convinced the British Admiralty to reevaluate their overall strategy in the north Atlantic. The ease with which King and Nimitz had decimated the French battleships boded ill for the Union's own. With less than half the number of American aircraft carriers, the vast array of British battleships would clearly be in grave danger should they sally forth to do battle.
As a consequence of these new realizations, the tense maneuvering of both fleets through the north Atlantic over the past several months gave way to yet another lull in the hostilities. No longer having to fear the constant harassment of the Syndicalist navies, King ordered the combined fleet back west of Iceland to patrol the waters through which the ever-growing convoys of men and material passed through to Reykjavík. Supervised closely by General Marshall and overseen directly by Admiral Stark, the Icelandic capital could be expected to support as many as two dozen divisions by March. For analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, such a build-up's purpose was clear: the invasion of Britain.
As preparations for such an ambitious military operation were underway, and with the Syndicalist navies making efforts to avoid a direct confrontation, Roosevelt hoped to maintain the war effort's momentum by other means. With the United States entering an election year and the President intent on running for an unprecedented third term, his decision was motivated as much by politics as military necessity. Remembering the surprise British air attacks on Reykjavík the year before, the President turned to the Air Corps. Mj. General Carl Spaatz, in charge of the Iceland Air Command, proposed an ambitious bombing campaign of Scotland and northern England. The President, perhaps motivated by the Vice President and General Rickenbacker's objections, had grave misgivings about the viability of the overall plan. With the distances involved and the poor conditions in the North Sea, Spaatz's operation was limited to a single, albeit massive, attack.
Therefore, in the early morning hours of January 29, 1944, six wings of B-24s took off from air bases scattered around Reykjavík. With no early warning systems present in the north and the fleet in Scapa Flow, the British civil defense was left completely shocked when hundreds of American bombers appeared in the skies above Glasgow. Ports, factories, and railways were the primary targets. Due to the centralization efforts of the Syndicalists, these industrial targets were pounded mercilessly, blanketing the city in smoke and hampering the accuracy of subsequent attack waves. By the time the last of the American raiders retreated back to Iceland, Glasgow's industrial centers were gutted. Although civilian casualties were light, the war was nevertheless brought home in a way the British public, safely isolated on their island, had never before experienced.
The Spaatz raid, though inflicting only minor damage to Britain's war-making capacity, immediately became a perfect propaganda weapon for the American war effort. The President hoped the raid could be followed up with subsequent attacks in the upcoming weeks. But bad weather and a lack of viable targets within the American bombers' attack range prevented it. Eager to validate the amount of resources being poured into the Air Corps, several officers began to debate whether or not a revision of the Corps' strategy was in order. The decision to target only industrial and military targets severely limited the number of targets available and raised fundamental questions about such efforts' effectiveness.
But where American propagandists used Spaatz's raid to demonstrate the United States' progress in the war up to that point, their British counterparts employed it to harden the people's resolve, using it as a clear demonstration of the inhuman cruelty of America's capitalist and royalist masters. A country-wide relief effort was conducted to help the people of Glasgow recover from the attack. With British forces continuing to advance through western Africa with practical impunity, the attack failed to dampen British spirits.
For their part, the French expressed their outrage over the Ameican attack, but behind closed doors welcomed to news, hoping that such actions would drive the British, allies more by virtue of international solidarity than enthusiasm for the war, to throw themselves fully into the conflict as the Spanish and Italians had. Neither their defeat at sea nor the bombing of Glasgow, however, deterred the French. With Austria-Hungary growing increasingly unstable in the new, entirely hostile European order, French-lead Syndicalist domination of the continent was nearly complete. Few expected the French armies to sit idle come spring.
