Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[Imperator Pax]

Japan's well frankly this goes to some of the same problems as in the US just on am uch larger and more deleterious scale especially since for Japan the war started much earlier and there wasn't time to procure better equipment. The Japanese leadership the supply side officers were dealing with a doctrine (and in the Japanese unique case the ramifications of ideology) of a very infantry, bayonet centric notion of aggressive frontal attacks, and this goes less to ww1 though the conclusion drawn from ww1's final years was validating to the IJA staff (the US fresh troops took atrocious losses relatively speaking but won, the German offensive nearly broke the french, the british break throughs were successful... and none of these official accounts placed the credit primarily on artillery, it was in the official histories and understandings the infantry who achieved victory) and that RJW history also placed success as going from the infantry man and the moral rectitude of the IJA and this strangled technocratic development leanings in the IJA beccause they just didn't have the budget or support to procure new artillery

they tried, but the showa financial crisis and then wall street crash followed by the opening of hostilities in north china and then the full outbreak of the second sino japanese war prevented the acquisition/procurement of full scale modern artillery by the IJA the best they received were handfuls of schneiders and some other models which will show up but its ultimately politics

 

[SuperHeavy]

The accuracy of the mobile launchers is not going to be anything to write home about but it would scare the hell out of anyone they can hit. It would be like sky started falling for any mass of infantry caught out in the open.

 

[ATP]

Japan's well frankly this goes to some of the same problems as in the US just on am uch larger and more deleterious scale especially since for Japan the war started much earlier and there wasn't time to procure better equipment. The Japanese leadership the supply side officers were dealing with a doctrine (and in the Japanese unique case the ramifications of ideology) of a very infantry, bayonet centric notion of aggressive frontal attacks, and this goes less to ww1 though the conclusion drawn from ww1's final years was validating to the IJA staff (the US fresh troops took atrocious losses relatively speaking but won, the German offensive nearly broke the french, the british break throughs were successful... and none of these official accounts placed the credit primarily on artillery, it was in the official histories and understandings the infantry who achieved victory) and that RJW history also placed success as going from the infantry man and the moral rectitude of the IJA and this strangled technocratic development leanings in the IJA beccause they just didn't have the budget or support to procure new artillery

they tried, but the showa financial crisis and then wall street crash followed by the opening of hostilities in north china and then the full outbreak of the second sino japanese war prevented the acquisition/procurement of full scale modern artillery by the IJA the best they received were handfuls of schneiders and some other models which will show up but its ultimately politics

Click to shrink...

That,and they had relatively big standing army with obsolate artillery arleady.For the same reasons french in OTL do not replaced their WW1 guns,/well,mostly,build some new,but not many/
When both germans and americans practicallt created army from almost notching before WW2.Brits had small standing army,and only country with replaced artillery with big standing army were soviets - but people there were starved almost to death to do so.

And,they were right about not trusting in artillery - WW1 proved that 10 day bombardment do not helped,when 15 minute waking barrage,where artillery fire go before attacking infrantry,let english win in Amiens 1918 battle.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1924
He looked at the phone one more time, then at his wristwatch as Griswold helped himself to coffee. The two of them were he suspected a bit surprised Waite hadn't rang... or shown up for this meeting it'd been on the books... but the man did have his own slate of jobs he was responsible for and a committee meeting that was higher up on responsibility.

The telephone was a wondrous thing, but the telegram remained the most effective method of long distance communication with the world beyond China's shores. Letters came, and were sent out... and course they sent men abroad and that would never change he imagined... it wouldn't disappear entirely... but the telephone and the radio allowed communication at a speed that did at times that could boggle the mind.

The nascent telephone industry, the radio too were likely to mature to the point that every decent family might have one. Already they used the radio in public venues to share news that didn't have time or was important enough not to wait for a paper to be printed or for it to go up on the village signboard.

A radio call to men assembled could transmit orders to entire formations, and a telephone could give a colonel the narrow details of what was to be done. Allen stood and regarded the machine and the papers on his desk. Originally he hadn't had a telephone in his office, but now it was a ubiquitous presence just as the same as his sidearms, and his pens, and the papers.

It was modernity. Things grew, the cadre had grown, nearly four hundred pages of material had been compiled deemed significant priority to read over regarding what was happening in middle America.

"Powell has been busy." He remarked one hand resting on the bound report with only mild annoyance at the chore before the two of them. The MAK had pushed its own telegraph and railway business into telephones, sunk money into industry. Guatemala had encouraged it, and the diversification including the tourism trade as prohibition had taken root in the states. Powell had encouraged immigration and built more, faster, justifying the Cadre's expansion, and across middle America and the result was the shift they were looking at.

"He's still sore the constitution failed." Griswold replied. "The new communist problem more or less insures that he's in a position that the government of both countries will give the cadre more sanction than we ever got officially from the old dynasty." There was a pause, "You put it off as long as you could but if you take Percy along with you to ride out to join Shan..."

Allen jerked his head to one side hand shifting to wave off the comment, "I'm prepared for the questions, I assume Cullen is reading the mail?"

"And listening in on the phone. He's actually pretty sore about how lax the legation's security is about it all." It wasn't just the British, it was the American side as well. "When they shuttered the Black Chamber," Officially, "We took on plenty of them."

"Or Powell did."

"Counts as US." Griswold responded to the correction, with distinction on the last word, "And the State Department knows it. The desk hands down there know we may not see eye to eye on everything but its like some fella taking a swing at your brother, and finding out." There was a shake of his head, "Powell is heavily involved in electrification and that makes him popular, but also he's made it possible for people to have credit to start businesses as the towns expand. Thats bigger still. Honduras and Guatemala will probably weld themselves together given the situation which will make the British have questions."

"You'd think," Allen stopped himself, and blew out a breath, the world had changed. Powell liked borrowing Teddy's phrases, and messages about things, but he wasn't Roosevelt. He had his own goals, and pushing the countries in south America to adopt new modern inexpensive arms... in the form of 8mm standard rifles and modern artillery was part of that. For the things he couldn't produce he was talking about ships, and that seemed perilously expensive. "What is it?"

"He wants a hundred thousand men. Specifically he wants five rifle divisions, triangular, and with mechanized artillery." It would be lighter artillery of course, Powell had experimented with a variety of options, but he'd built self propelled semi automatic three inchers. Those he seemed to like, "Percy will have questions about why he's sending people to Denmark and the Netherlands, and which ever other options," Offices of the Cadre on the continent, "he has looking at things, but we know his emphasis is on infrastructure projects."

"I imagine that sounds familiar. This is bothering Waite I take it?"

"The constitution fell through, that would have given, or at least shored up what the MAK does across four countries. As it is, Guatemala and Honduras have both given him a blank check to back and forth over their borders." extraterritoriality in a way that Fruit, or for that matter the French or British didn't have, and there was surely the labor question. Fruit had been building company towns for decades now, and that was one thing, but building the railway, and operating it had become an entirely different endeavor ... and now with ports... repairing the earthquake damage that had gotten Powell out there in the first place. "Powell has power concentrated in both countries. State won't move against him, not in this administration, and frankly I think the British don't want to, but the French may expect to get cut out of the market entirely if he succeeds."

"The French should have thought about that before they tried to go back to a closed system." Closing their colonies off wasn't really the issue... oh it was political talking point but it was an excuse to deny the French access to the market and Paris almost certainly knew that but... "The frogs are arrogant sons of bitches." Allen remarked, "I imagine thats Powell's official position, if maybe a little more polite. Facing the facts though," And the fact that people had been complaining about capital access in markets since they'd been boys at least that long, "Powell has to read the papers we send over and know things are coming to a head over here."

"Possibly down there as well. Its why he wants to expand arms sales." And for Powell it would give him the excuse of selling off stocks of cheap post war heavy artillery that he didn't feel he needed to Allen assumed probably Brazil or maybe nearer Columbia, and then turnaround and sell comparable equipment or even the same models of rapid firing heavy artillery to their now concerned neighbors while still talking about a united states of south america at some point. "I've seen his proposals, and I would not be surprised if something happens in Chile or the like. There is trouble everywhere, but he has a point pushing everyone on the continent to adopt the same cartridges makes for a simple market."

It was a cold calculus, the sort of thinking that made men bitter about the world... cynical. "Notably its none of the neighbors likely to ever shoot at his own men."

"I surely hadn't noticed," Was the sardonic response, wry smile, "Oddly enough neither has State made such a statement. They did take note that France sold field guns to Mexico and elsewhere before the war though." Of course ironically with post war surplus being what it was Powell had sold French ordinance to his more southernly neighbors the past few years. "Powell has the bug though, he's got the itch about boats... and I think he means to try and play the mediator to his neighbors with the British as a way of getting himself a navy at some point down the road once the rest of the Cadre there has been convinced of it."

"It must gall him that he didn't think he needed to include a constitutional requirement for a navy into the document." Allen replied equally amused, as he prepared to circle around he paused, "He's also been talking about electric boats, of the undersea kind?"

"Some firm out of the Hague, its a dutch name but theyre Germans. Way to get around the treaty, they've been working about two years now." Griswold paused, "Powell isn't likely to buy anything yet, he's keeping his options open and talking with King, even though that one hates the British something fierce."

Allen flipped the documents, and the red ink in the pages, "His banking expansions, I see Waite has noted that he's attempting to push fiscal reforms is there anything I need to really know about there?"

"He can afford to maintain lower interest rates than other banks. That will probably give him leverage when he invariably moves... but he's also surviving de facto," If not de jure, "as the bank of last resort to Guatemala's government before they call Uncle Sam for help. That's risky..." He let the comment hang.

"Waite thinks he's going to push with Cabrera gone, and no chance of the constitution to unify the neighbors." There was a pause, "The government is unstable since Orlean's coup," the man's name was actually Orellana but Griswold didn't care, "I don't think he'll move against the general they get on," Orellana and Powell were apparently close friends since the MAK had gone over, "and state obviously wants them to work together but again finances in the country are shaky and there are demographic considerations with all the immigration and expansion."
--
Notes: Just to reiterate last year I lost a decent chunk of material , that has seriously set this back, and I haven't been able to sit down make myself basically rewrite everything from really this point to the outbreak of the Northern Expedition, much less put that war to paper. This is not dead, but you will see a lot more of its Culitvation Chronicle AU going up.

Largely thisdetails the across the pond looking in as things in Latin America take shape. I'm not exactly sure what killed Orellana foul play hasbeen suggested , that he was poisoned after having declared martial law and thus here... after that happens its the MAK which assumes power, and its expansion is largley overshadowed from AoE's perspective because by that point the Northern Expedition is becoming a political problem, and then becomes a military problem. Thus this ia good opportunity in the timeline to show whats going on in latin and south america as the interwar period really gets underway.

 

[ATP]

electric submarines - of course they must use it underwater.They were slowly and had little range, but worked.According to what i read, electric subs who could be fast under water was created after WW2.Well, germans buitl some before war end.Typ XXI,i think.

french 75mm guns in Mexico - i think,that they used it alt least till 2000.
Speaking about guns - could you made medium guns or howitzers on truck with 1924 technology? if so, they could change position faster then normal artillery.Of course,could not fire when truck moved.


P.S i read about China air forces in 1937 - they were trained by american,germans and italians, and owned american,german,italian and french planes.
in small numbers,for example they buyed italian monoplane fighter Ba-27, but only 10 or 12 of them.The same goes for german Hs 123 dive bomber.

it must be nightmare for logistic.Your China could produce everytching for itself,and few types to made it cheaper.
What about using one engine for all? dutch did it, their fighter D.21,fighter-bomber G.1 and dive bomber C.X all used the same Bristol engine.

Not buy Bristol engines,they were weak,but one type of engine is good idea.