Infantryman said:
Cassidy said:
Couldn't find any pic of the Macharius.
Also, shitty slowdown 1945-ownards is shitty. It reached the point where "Very Fast" is faster than "Extremely Fast", which is why updates will take longer to be posted from now on until things get really heated up.
Makes me really wish Paradox had made a turn-based engine instead.
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Preparing for D-Day and a Chilling Revelation
With Air Superiority secured over Britain, slowly, millions of soldiers were being redeployed near major harbors, while several submarines were sent to the recently built naval bases at the acquired islands at the west coast of Africa, in part of preparations for an amphibious operation that would be greater than everything every done before: The D-Day, the Liberation of Europe. The time was coming, the long research projects were soon to give the first fruits. Nearly four million soldiers would land upon the shores of Europe and Africa once everything was ready, secured by the bravery of the mighty Air Marines.
The Drop Planes would soon be constructed. Enough to drop almost a million of Air Marines and provide aerial supplying for them. It would be in the next year, 1946, that hopefully, by North Hemisphere summer, everything would be ready for the great operation.
A long overdue modernization of the the special infantry begins. They are the human spearhead of the UDMS-KKK army, their advanced equipment and skills able to punch through landscapes where tanks would barely manage to travel.
Slowly, the entire attention of the UDMS-KKK is direct to Atlantic isles and to the English Channel. Both Second and Main Battlefleets, with a few reinforcements of new escorts, including the infamous USS Cleveland Mark Blakemore, that has survived through some of the deadliest and greatest naval battles ever fought.
The Battle of Britain was won, but not over. Meanwhile, the Second Battlefleet begins an important mission: the reconaissance of all territories under reach of the future Drop Planes to check if there is any vulnerability that could be exploited by Air Marines.
In Africa, Tambacounda and the large stretches of land over the Sahara, combined with the strangely not invaded Spanish territories, will serve to encircle part of their forces over the coast, and then the submarines that were sent to the islands shall do their part. Tambacounda shall serve as the primary staging area for the advance into Africa, intended to involve 1 million combatants and a sizable amount of aircrafts to provide support. This would occur in parallel to one or at most two additional staging areas. The challenge would be significant, for according to Intel the enemy forces were between 11 and 14 million combatants.
Another potential staging area, if somehow it could be possible to push the remnants of Spain to cede all their islands in the Atlantic.
The rapid construction of an air base in either Ceuta or Mogador would allow for Air Marines to attempt seizing both or either Marrakesh and Gibraltar, reopening the Mediterranean to humanity. There would be many risks and alternatives to consider, and it would not be easy. The enemy far outnumbers their forces, no matter how massive they look.
Meanwhile, more deals are made with Britain.
No inch of the west coast France seems to have been left undefended, even despite lacking a beachhead for an amphibious operation. Although some have been left for poorly fit divisions to hold, strangely. Fortress Europe will be difficult to storm.
Very, very difficult.
Yet Wilhelmshafen, the landing zone of the first aliens to set foot on Earth, and presumedly the center of operations of these aliens, was very lightly defended. Perhaps, with their center of operations destroyed or surrounded, their combat capabilities would severely be diminished.
With the reconaissance of all shores of interest concluded. It was realized that, there were three viable staging points: For Air Marines to land in the Sahara and Tambacounda in Africa, isolating part of the enemy forces and making the enemy resort to convoys that could thus be targeted by nearby submarines, while landing all other forces in Tambacounda to advance in Africa, and hopefully divert the enemy's attention from Europe, by trying to take quickly with air marines all coastal area in Normandy and Netherlands that are poorly defended, immediately deploying forces over them to begin the liberation of Europe, and maybe, by making a daring operation in North Africa that would put their Air Marines in range to seize Gibraltar, allowing for more soldiers to break through Spain and open the Mediterranean, and by landing a few at Hammerfest, still strangely not occupied by the aliens, to launch a diversionary offensive..
The only certainty was that many men would die, far more than those who gave their lives in Managua and San Jose.
Despite severe criticisms from several skeptics, many proposed a super-heavy tank as a counter to the dreaded tripods. The Baneblade would, if successful, become the largest tank to ever be deployed and used in battle, and the largest tank ever built. It would be a symbol of power, like the Japanese Battleship Yamato, like the German Bismarck, like the Airships of the Second World War. Except it would not share the same fate of these.
Eventually, all necessary research is concluded. More than half a million Air Marines will be trained for the upcoming operation.
Aware perhaps of what was intended, the enemy was conducting runway cratering missions against Cape Verde Islands. But no more as Air superiority is achieved. Meanwhile, the men prepare to embark on their journey overseas, a massive logistical setup created to support so many.
Millions that would be readied for an operation planned for the year of 1946, an operation intended to turn the tide of an once hopeless conflict for once and all. They all knew that once the first human soldiers stepped over Europe and Africa, it would only be over once either all of them were exterminated or once the last alien scum has been purged from Earth. This second phase of the War of the Worlds, if successful, could last for many years.
However, despite constant naval interdiction operations from both Battlefleets, they didn't expect one surprise. One Chilling revelation that would change everything:
The aliens have adapted their tactics for naval warfare. They were now sending massive fleets of nuclear powered aircraft carriers with supersonic carrier air groups to hunt allied shipping, always escorted by destroyers. If they could adapt their tactics like that, maybe eventually they would start conducting amphibious invasions on their own. And if that happened, the odds would suddenly take a turn against humanity.
To call what happened while the two battlefleets readied themselves to save the transports and soldiers inside those ships a slaughter would be an understatement. Had this gigantic fleet arrived earlier, the entire D-Day preparations could be ruined and millions of soldiers could die, drowning in the ocean.
Dozens of thousands had this as their last trip. The enemy had no mercy. They killed military and civilian alike. It was clear that once possible, every alien, every alien, regardless of gender or age, has to be exterminated
To be Unclean; That is the Mark of the Xeno
To be Impure; That is the Mark of the Xeno
To be Abhorred; That is the Mark of the Xeno
To be Reviled; That is the Mark of the Xeno
To be Hunted; That is the Mark of the Xeno
To be Purged; That is the fate of the Xeno
To be Destroyed; For that is the fate of all Xenos
And this universal paradigm would not apply only to Earth. Once Poland and the UDMS-KKK go to space, this would be the official foreign policy. However, right now, the announciation of the greatest naval disaster in the history of the UDMS-KKK since the slaughter of the Italian Navy stranded in the Mediterranean was beginning.
Battle of the English Channel: Last Stand of the former US Navy
The greatest Naval battle the UDMS-KKK has ever fought. Legions of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with air wings far more advanced than anything they could field, escorted by destroyers so advanced their guns seemed to not be manned at all. Although they knew they had no chance of winning, if they retreated, nearly half a million of soldiers in transports just east of their position would be completely defenseless against the upcoming slaughter. Thus they have chosen to make their stand. The Last Stand of the remnants of the former United States Navy.
The Cleveland would (attempt) to engage dozens of supersonic aircrafts heading for the capital ships. They simply ignored it, its man-handled cannons to innacurate to target aircrafts able of flying so quickly. The still prop based carrier air groups of the three carriers were both outnumbered and technologically obsolete when facing the legions of alien aircrafts.
In only three hours of battle, two capital ships have already been sunk, the situation was indeed hopeless, but they would not retreat, they would do whatever it takes to ensure as many soldiers as possible could reach safely Britain.
But in face of such a powerful fleet and its legions of aircrafts, they were simply slaughtered. All large carriers of the UDMS-KKK Navy have reached the bottom of the sea in this dread 4th of September and the USS Belleau Wood only didn't sink out of sheer luck, and would require several months to be repaired back into combat-readiness. One of its two surviving battleships and two heavy cruisers also was sunk.
The UDMSN has been completely defeated on this dark 4th of September of 1945. All it had left was one battleship, a few heavy cruisers and the severely damaged Belleau wood coupled with a fortunately still large amount of escorts, including the USS Cleveland that have somehow managed to survive such slaughter. To make matters worse, the UDMS-KKK would have to develop its own naval technology instead of relying on the surviving naval vessels of old countries from scratch if she was to rebuild its Navy and challenge the now clear naval supremacy of the aliens, as the knowledges of Kwanzania were lost during ITZ.
D-Day would be a far more complicated operation than first thought, dozens of thousands have already died. The enemy had nearly a hundred of carriers. Many no longer expected for the operation to happen in 1946 at all.
And the part that came too late to cross the English Channel would lead to the death of more dozens of thousands, to further salt the pain of this disastrous naval defeat. Churchill would say this was the greatest military disaster of history since the complete obliteration of most armies of the world but the Italian and South American armies, that now served mostly under the UDMS-KKK flag.
Part of the Transports heading for England in the preparation for the D-Day also was struck down by enemy interceptors. Fortunately none of the units was completely annihilated.
Like mentioned, to rebuild the Navy, they would have to literally start from scratch. It would be a long time. Too long. People could decide to forsake Eurasia if too much time passed without successful operations on ground. But Sosnkowski couldn't. He still remembered his homeland, he still dreamed of the day the Polish flag would once again rise over Warsaw.
Would he risk the lives of millions for Europe, to launch an Airborne and Amphibious operation without naval superiority over the English Channel, over the far north of Norway and over Africa?
But most worrissome of all: could the enemy ever "learn" how to conduct amphibious assaults and once again become a far more substantial threat than they already are?
The stakes were raising, and soon, battles of a scale never seen before would begin, for soon, Four million humans would fight against legions of more than ten million alien forces.