THE FORESIGHT WAR (57 page)
Authors: Anthony G Williams
3
,7
cm Flak 18
medium automatic AA weapon (37x263 mm)
5 cm Pak 38
L/60 anti-tank gun (Tank version known as KwK 38)
[introduced earlier in place of 3.7 cm guns]
7
,5
cm Pak 40
L/45 anti-tank gun
(Tank version known as KwK 40) [both guns modified to use the same ammunition: historically they were different]
8
,8
cm Flak 18
L/56
anti-aircraft gun also used as an anti-tank and field gun. Tank version is KwK 36.
8
,8
cm Pak 43
L/71 high-velocity anti-tank gun
10
,5
cm Flak 39
high-velocity AA gun
11cm Flak 43
smoothbore heavy AA gun firing fin-stabilised HE shells
German Aircraft
Arado 234
twin-jet reconnaissance bomber
[in service from 1942].
Bf 109
single-engined, single-seat fighter, designed by Messerschmitt
Dornier 217
twin-engined bomber
Dornier 317
German four-engined heavy bomber [the historical Do 317 was an experimental twin-engined bomber]
Fieseler Storch
Army co-operation and spotter
Focke-Wulf 187
twin-engined single seat fighter
[historically only experimental; put into production with more powerful DB engines]
Focke-Wulf 190
single-engined single-seat fighter
Heinkel He 177
German four-engined heavy bomber [the historical He 177 had two double engines driving two propellors]
Heinkel He 219
twin-engined night-fighter
[developed much earlier]
Junkers Ju 52
three-engined military transport
Junkers Ju 87
single-engined two-seat dive bomber (Stuka)
Junkers Ju 88
twin-engined multi-role warplane
[in service earlier]
Junkers Ju 188
refined version of the above
[in service earlier]
Me 262
Messerschmitt jet fighter
[in service earlier]
German Warships
Admiral Graf Spee
German Panzerschiff: “pocket battleship”
Admiral Scheer
German Panzerschiff: “pocket battleship”
Gneisenau
German battlecruiser
[not built]
Leipzig
German light cruiser
Lützow
German Panzerschiff: “pocket battleship”
Nurnberg
German light cruiser
Scharnhorst
German battlecruiser
[not built]
Schleswig-Holstein
German battleship of pre-Great War vintage
Type VII
German U-boat, conventional type
Type X
German Elektroboot [the same as the historical Type XXI, but available in 1940 instead of 1945]
Type XI
coastal version of Elektroboot [the same as the historical Type XXIII, also available years earlier]
Type XII
German supply submarine [the same as the historical Type XIV]
U240
Type VIIC U-boat
U470
Type X Elektroboot
Other Nations’ Terms
Allison
US aero-engine firm
Betasom
Italian submarine unit based at Bordeaux
Capitano di Corvetta
Italian naval rank equivalent to Lieutenant Commander
Co-Prosperity Sphere
The area of SE Asia which Japan planned to bring under its control
H2X
American version of H2S
Hotchkiss
French MG used by German occupation troops in France (and also by the UK)
IJA
Imperial Japanese Army
IJN
Imperial Japanese Navy
Il
Duce
Italian term for Mussolini, their leader
Katyusha
Soviet artillery rocket
KV-1
Soviet heavy tank
Lochagos
Greek Army rank, equivalent to captain
Marine Nationale
French Navy
Maroszek
Polish anti-tank rifle
MAS craft
Italian light torpedo boats
Norden bombsight
American daylight bombsight
Pershing
US heavy tank with 90 mm gun
[in service earlier]
Regia Aeronautica
Italian Air Force
Regia Navale
Italian Navy
Rodina
Russian: “Motherland”
sonar
American term for Asdic (SOund NAvigation and Ranging)
Stavka
Soviet High Command
T26
Soviet light tank
T34
Soviet medium tank
TNHP 38
Czech light tank, used by Germans
USAAC
United States Army Air Corps (to which USAAF crew belonged)
USAAF
United States Army Air Force
USN
United States Navy
0.5 inch Browning
American heavy machine gun (12.7 x 99 mm cartridge)
1.1 inch
USN automatic AA gun (28 x 199 mm cartridge)
5 inch
USN dual-purpose gun (anti-ship + anti-aircraft)
Other Nations’ Aircraft
Aichi D3A
Japanese dive bomber
Aichi E13A
Japanese seaplane
B-17
“Flying Fortress” USAAF heavy bomber
B-25
“Mitchell” USAAF medium bomber
Mitsubishi A6M
IJN single-engined, single-seat fighter (“Zero”)
Mitsubishi G3M
IJN twin-engined bomber
Mitsubishi G4M
IJN twin-engined bomber
Mustang
see
P-51
Nakajima B5N
IJN single-engined bomber
P-36
USAAF single-engined, single-seat fighter
P-40
USAAF single-engined, single-seat fighter,
P-47
USAAF single-engined, single-seat fighter
P-51
USAAF single-engined, single-seat fighter
PZL P11
Polish single-engined single-seat fighter aircraft
Thunderbolt
see
P-47
Other Nations’ Ships
Abukuma
IJN light cruiser
Akagi
IJN aircraft carrier
Anderson
USN destroyer, Sims class
USN battleship
USN battleship
Chikuma
IJN heavy cruiser
Chokai
IJN heavy cruiser
De Ruyter
Dutch cruiser
Dunkerque
French battlecruiser, sistership to
Strasbourg
Haruna
IJN battleship
Hiei
IJN Kongo-class battlecruiser
I-57
IJN submarine
Ise
IJN battleship
Java
Dutch cruiser
Kaga
IJN carrier
Kirishima
IJN Kongo-class battlecruiser
Kongo
IJN battlecruiser
Littorio
Italian battleship
Marconi
class of Italian submarines
Mogami
IJN light cruiser
Musashi
IJN super-battleship, Yamato class
Mutsu
IJN battleship (sister to
Nagato
)
Nagato
IJN battleship (sister to
Mutsu
)
USN battleship
Ryoja Maru
Japanese troopship
Shokaku
IJN carrier
Soryu
IJN carrier
Strasbourg
French battlecruiser, sistership to
Dunkerque
Tone
IJN heavy cruiser
Vittorio
USN battleship
Yamato
IJN 70,000 ton super-battleship
Zuikako
IJN carrier
AFTERWORD
This book is a story written around a whole series of ‘what ifs?
’.
The initial
premise, that anyone from the present could wake up seventy years earlier,
is obviously fantasy of the purest sort, but the remainder of the speculation is intended to be as realistic as the author’s knowledge of World War 2 can make it.
What if the UK avoided giving that guarantee to Poland, which led to the declaration of war on Germany in 1939, which led to most of the British Army being based in France in 1940 – from which they later had to be evacuated via Dunkirk at great cost – which in turn meant that the forces the UK could send to Norway were inadequate?
What if the UK had used the few years before the war to prepare for it in a much more accurately focused manner, with improvements to inter-service cooperation in general and amphibious warfare capabilities in particular? Might this (along with the suggestion above) have resulted in the Germans being thrown out of Norway in 1940, rather than the British? If so, this would not only have enormously reduced the risk of the Arctic convoys to Russia, but would also have allowed the British to intervene directly in the fighting in northern Russia. It might also have allowed the British to defeat the Italians in North Africa before the Germans (in the form of Rommel and his Afrika Korps) came to their rescue, thereby avoiding years of expensive warfare before North Africa was finally secured.
What if the British had avoided the 1940 clash with the French fleet in Oran but had worked to recruit the French colonies to the Free French, to join the Allied cause instead? That also could have helped in securing North Africa quickly.
What if the UK had prepared more effectively for the Japanese invasion of Malaya and Singapore and provided the defences with adequate modern equipment? This would have been much more feasible if the fighting in North African ended quickly. Could the loss of these colonies have been avoided and the three and a half years of fighting in the Pacific been much shortened?
What if the Allies had focused on the invasion of Northern France rather than diverting so much military effort into the invasions of
What if the Allies did take seriously the German conspirators against Hitler, and avoided the ‘unconditional surrender’ demand which reportedly discouraged the opposition to Hitler and considerably toughened the resolve of the Wehrmacht to carry on fighting until the last?
There are also, of course, many matters of a more technical nature; changes which could have led to a great improvement in the capability of the Allied armed forces within the same overall level of resources and without requiring huge breakthroughs in technology (all of the proposals in the book were either developed shortly after the suggested dates, or would have been technically feasible at the time).
What if the British, who started and finished the war with some tanks of good quality but signally failed to produce anything to compete with the Panzers in between, had developed a coherent programme for a family of armoured fighting vehicle? This would include the armament for them, making earlier use of APDS technology (being developed by the French before World War 2).
What if the RAF was partly deflected from its obsession with strategic bombing and made instead to focus more on the tactical support role as well as maritime patrol? This would have resulted in earlier development of fighter-bombers and armoured twin-engined attack planes (the Brigand and Hereford in the book) as well as more long-range MP aircraft (the Warwick – rather different in the book from the historical plane).
What if the RAF had developed electronic navigation aids and other techniques for accurate night bombing at the start of the war, instead of close to the end, enabling them to attack precision targets rather than whole cities?
What if the RAF bomber fleet had focused on high-speed, unarmed strategic bombers (the Mosquito and a fictional scaled-up version in the ‘Avro Manchester’) instead of the relatively slow, armed heavy bombers?
What if the RAF had a long-range fighter available from the start, enabling bomber escorts to be provided as well as, for instance, interceptions over Norway? The designs were there on paper, but not implemented.
What if radar had generally been developed at an accelerated rate and used more widely, for example in airborne early warning systems?
And especially the centimetric radar able to detect submarines – and even schnorkels – with precision.
What if guided bombs and missiles had been developed and used earlier, instead of having only a minor effect on the war (and that almost entirely in German service)?
What if the Fleet Air Arm and RAF Coastal Command were provided with adequate numbers of modern aircraft (the Beaufighter, Beaufort and Warwick in the book), instead of being last in the queue for competitive planes for much of the war? This could easily have been afforded by switching production more quickly away from obsolete or obsolescent types such as the Fairy Battle, Boulton Paul Defiant, Bristol Blenheim, Hawker Hurricane (once the Battle of Britain was over) and most of the historical bombers and naval aircraft which were of little combat value and had no development potential.
What if the RN’s aircraft carriers, given the benefit of more and better aircraft, had been designed for rapid handling of larger quantities of aircraft like the USN and IJN designs? The Invincibles would have lost their armoured decks, but gained in hangar capacity and the effectiveness of their aircraft complement. Angled flight decks (not actually introduced until the 1950s) would have assisted with this since they made it possible to fly off and recover planes at the same time. The book also assumes the conversion of the big old Hawkins class cruisers to light carriers suitable for accompanying cruiser forces, and the construction of some of the wartime six-inch gun cruisers as light carriers.
What if Merchant Aircraft Carriers (MAC ships) had enabled continuous air cover for convoys from the start of the war, instead of only being introduced relatively late?
What if the Royal Navy prepared more thoroughly for the submarine threat, with earlier development of the ‘Squid’ forward-firing mortars and their associated specialist Asdic, together with the development of a class of fast AS ‘corvettes’ (similar to the historical ‘Hunt’ class) which were built in large number, partly by limiting the number of (more expensive) fleet destroyers? Airborne AS weapons were also poor at the start of the war, and the faster development of high-resolution radar, Leigh lights, airborne depth charges and homing torpedoes would have been of great assistance.
What if the RN took the aircraft threat more seriously from the start and acquired more effective AA capability instead of being woefully ill-equipped for much of the war? This could have involved the general use of the 4 inch AA twin mounting in destroyers rather than 4.7 inch guns in low-angle mountings intended for surface engagements. The book also proposes the replacement of the rather disappointing, slow-firing 5.25 inch DP armament, used in new battleships and the historical Dido class light cruisers, with lighter and faster-firing 4.7 inch guns in twin DP mountings. In consequence, the Dido class would have become smaller and less expensive ‘frigates’. More rapid acquisition of the 40 mm Bofors guns, plus encouraging Bofors to accelerate the development of their 57 mm automatic AA gun,
are
also proposed.
What if the RN economised considerably with the design and production of the new King George V class battleships by reusing existing 15 inch guns and turrets (by far the most costly and time-consuming element of a battleship to manufacture) instead of developing new 14 inch armament which proved extremely troublesome in service? This could have freed up resources to carry out the planned, but never implemented, upgrades to the battlecruisers
Hood
and
Repulse
, as could a decision not to modernise the old QE class battleships.
These are the simple ‘what ifs’. The complex ones are concerned with Germany having equivalent foresight, and the British knowing that the Germans knew…
Germany did of course make many mistakes in World War 2, the most serious (as with Japan) being to start it! However, as the story emphasises, the key strategic errors may have been very difficult to avoid as they were tied up with the ideology and psychology of the Nazis in general and Adolf Hitler in particular.
One major German error was to allow the British Army to escape from Dunkirk by relying on the Luftwaffe to prevent this, instead of instructing the German Army to go in and capture them. However, this does not arise in this book as the British Army was kept out of France.
Leaving the UK undefeated while attacking the Soviet Union created a two front war for Germany, which ultimately led to its defeat. However, expansion to the east was always Hitler’s aim; he had no particular quarrel with the UK and would (at least initially) have preferred a negotiated peace. If he believed that he had the strength to conquer the USSR and that its defeat would force the UK to negotiate (as it probably would have done), it is difficult to imagine him refraining from attack.
Hitler’s second major strategic error was to reject the welcome from many of the people of Russia’s subject states, who initially saw the Germans as rescuers from Stalin’s oppression. Had he recruited them to his aid, he would not only have secured willing allies but also dramatically shortened the length of his Eastern Front supply lines which ran through hostile territory. However, the ingrained Nazi contempt for the Slavic people prevented this.
His third major mistake was to declare war on the USA in December 1941 when he did not have to; however, the USA was already fighting an undeclared war against the German U-boats as well as keeping the UK and the USSR supplied with vital materials and equipment, so it is hard to see how open warfare could have been avoided for very long. If it had been, the outcome of the war would have been difficult to predict.
On the more technical side, the U-boat was historically Germany’s most effective weapon against the UK and it is suggested that the very expensive and strategically rather pointless heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships could have been deleted in the interests of boosting U-boat development and production (although the earlier Panzerschiffe – ‘pocket battleships’ – and light cruisers would have been already built). However, the historical Type VII and IX submarines were primitive by comparison with the Elektroboote (actually, the Type XXI and the coastal Type XXIII, designated Types X and XI respectively in the book) which were just entering service at the end of the war. There was no technical reason why these could not have been developed much earlier. Had that happened in reality, together with earlier development of the advanced pattern-running and homing torpedoes, they could well have brought the UK starving to the negotiating table. However, in this book their effects are more or less balanced by the earlier development of RN anti-submarine technology, the MAC ships and the much more extensive deployment of long-range maritime patrol aircraft; aided of course by the retention of the British bases in the
The Luftwaffe has also been criticised for focusing almost entirely on supporting army operations rather than developing a strategic bombing role (the opposite criticism to that of the RAF!) This meant that their bombers were mostly small, with limited range and bombloads, and they relied for long-range maritime patrol (important for providing convoy information to U-boats) almost entirely on small numbers of a converted airliner. A bomber/MP fleet more balanced around heavy four-engined types as well as medium twins (based on the excellent Ju 88 and its derivatives) could have served them better.
It is assumed that both the UK and Germany could have developed jet aircraft earlier if sufficient official encouragement – and resources – had been provided, but it seems doubtful that these could have had a significant effect on the outcome of the conflict as they would, to some extent, have balanced each other out.
It is also assumed that with appropriate direction the more powerful aircraft guns, like the 13 mm MG 131 and 30 mm MK 103 and MK 108, could have been introduced earlier, as could Flak developments like the 30 mm guns, smooth-bored large-calibre weapons, and guided surface-to-air missiles.
In terms of Army equipment the suggested German tank development is simplified, with one tank replacing the historical PzKpfw. III and IV (designated PzKpfw III in the book), and one larger tank, capable of mounting either version of the 88mm gun (and designated PzKpfw IV ‘Panther’), replacing the actual PzKpfw. V (Panther), IV (Tiger) and ‘King Tiger’.
In small arms, the late-war StG.44 was the first of the modern line of assault rifles firing cartridges intermediate in power between the pistol rounds used in SMGs and the full-power rifle/MG rounds. This concept was being explored before World War 2 and the first prototypes were actually produced in 1942, so development could have been brought forward to produce the ‘StG.40’ in the book.
Finally, there is one area of author’s licence which I employed for obvious narrative reasons: it was Hitler’s normal practice to meet his senior Nazi commanders individually rather than collectively as portrayed in the book.
Anthony G Williams
October 2004