"Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - The French Triumphant!

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition >> Scenario Design and Modding >> "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - The French Triumphant!

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"Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - The Fr... - 2/12/2010 10:34:48 PM

Coulsdon Eagle

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Joined: 1/3/2010
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Has anyone read "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - it is an alternative history by Roger Branfill-Cook. It is not a large book, and is not a novel a la Harry Turtledove.

To set the scene, RN Admiral Somerville & Force H do not attack the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940. As a result, virtually the entire French Navy joins the Allies, including the ships at Toulon; an Anglo-French task force sinks the Bismarck & Scharnhorst in the Denmark Strait; Hitler follows through on his order to scrap all Kriegsmarine capital ships; with the French numbers of ships the Battle of the Atlantic is won early on, with Hitler concentrating on Russia.

Now, here's the interesting part for us...

The French & Royal Navies, freed of having to maintain a major fleet in the Atlantic, send major forces to the East in late 1941, the French keeping Indo-China free of Japanese influence. The Japanese postpone their plans to tackle the US, Britain & France, and instead concentrate on the DEI by means of pro-Japanese "nationalists" (the blueprint was Hitler's moves in the Sudetenland).

By late 1942 Japan can no longer ignore the flow of supplies to the Chinese Nationalists from India, and determine on a showdown with Britain & France. In March 1943 "Second Jutland" occurs in the Indian Ocean; unfortunately for the Japanese, they start by mistakenly attacking the US Pacific Fleet which just happens to be nearby!

The following forces are engaged: -

Japanese
Kido Butai: -
Kaga - sunk by Allied aircraft
Akagi - sunk by Allied aircraft
Hiryu - sunk by Allied aircraft
Soryu - sunk by Allied aircraft
Shokaku - sunk by British submarine
Zuikaku - sunk by French & US cruisers
Ryujo - sunk by Allied submarine

Fast Scouting Division: -
Kongo - capsized after being torpedoed by Dutch submarine
Hiei - sunk by gunfire
Haruna - escapes
Kirishima - sunk by gunfire

Support Division (lacking Mutsu which has blown up in harbour): -
Nagato - sunk by gunfire
Ise - escapes
Hyuga - escapes
Fuso - sunk by gunfire
Yamashiro - sunk by gunfire

Main Body
Yamato - sunk by a Tallboy bomb dropped by a French-crewed Lancaster
Musashi - battered by gunfire & scuttled
Shinano (completed as planned super-battleship) - battered & sunk by massed destroyer torpedo attack at night

Allied
Battlecruiser Squadron: -
Hood - obliterated by magazine explosion [that always seem to happen to the Mighty 'Ood!]
Renown - severely damaged & founders under tow
Strasbourg
Dunkerque

Battle Fleet: -
King George V (uparmoured)
Prince of Wales (uparmoured) - blows up & capsizes under fire from Shinano
Duke of York (uparmoured)
Anson (uparmoured & upgunned to 9 x 16 inch)
Howe (uparmoured & upgunned to 9 x 16 inch)
Rodney - severely damaged by Musashi
Nelson
Temeraire (lead vessel of planned Lion class)
Vanguard (as completed in 1946)
Warspite
Valiant
Richelieu
Jean Bart

Carrier Strike Force: -
Ark Royal - sunk by bombs & torpedoes
Illustrious
Victorious
Formidable - seriously damaged
Indomitable
Unicorn
Foch
Clemenceau

US Carrier Task Force: -
Saratoga
Lexington - sunk by bombs
Hornet - sunk by bombs
Yorktown - damaged & sunk by Japanese submarine [exactly as at Midway]

US Battleship Task Force: -
Iowa
New Jersey
Washington - blows up & capsizes under fire from Yamato
North Carolina
South Dakota
Alabama
Indiana
Massachusets

Certainly the addition of virtually the entire French Navy to the Free French forces, especially the major capital ships and the strong cruiser & large destroyer units, add a new ingredient to an intoxicating mix. The delay in the Japanese attack allows the British & French to replace their pretty ropey carrier aircraft with American models.

Now, how about a scenario where the Japanese take on the British and French without attacking the USA, but allow the Western Allies to build up their forces with the Free French playing a major role? That could be a well-balanced game, at least at the start, without the Pacific Fleet. It would be fun to see how the Japanese destroyers cope with the contre-torpilleurs!

Post #: 1

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/13/2010 9:43:15 AM

Adnan Meshuggi

Posts: 2220
Joined: 8/2/2001
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hmpf, sounds strange.
How do they finish vanguard (could have been done in late 44) in late 42, train the crew and ship it to the pacific?

Also - bismark was with prinz eugen - they should have done at last this correct

More mistakes: the "rebuild" of the pow-class with 16inch-guns is stupid. The brits need 2-3 years to build this guns - and - more important they could not put a 3x16" in a 2*13,5"-barbette.

Anson and Howe could have been finished with this layout in late 1946... earliest.

The japanese also have some problems - how do they finish shinano in late 42?

at last - the cv foch is unknown to me. Does anybody knows something about two french carriers in ww2?
At last - they have been defeated by the german army in 1940...
does this "story" mention the situation about "escaping french fleet"?

The whole story is bs.

Nothing else to say about

only this: the input of the french navy in the pacific war would be small - even if the fleet escapes...

_____________________________

Don't tickle yourself with some moralist crap thinking we have some sort of obligation to help these people. We're there for our self-interest, and anything we do to be 'nice' should be considered a courtesy dweebespit

(in reply to Coulsdon Eagle)

Post #: 2

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/13/2010 10:10:39 AM

Coulsdon Eagle

Posts: 20
Joined: 1/3/2010
Status: offline

Remember, this is an alternative history, and is light in detail - the war is over in 200 pages - Second Jutland (including foreplay) only takes up 23 pages including "eye-witness" statements and is a virtual re-run of First Jutland, even down to the naming of the two opposing Fast Battleship / Battlecruiser forces, and with a Run to the South / North followed by a horizon ringed by large-calibre gunfire.

Darlan orders the French Fleet from Toulon to confront the British at Oran - or so he makes the Vichy Government believe. A plot device without which much of what happens would not be possible.

The Bismarck task force includes Scharnhorst, Gneisenau & (yes) Prinz Eugen; only the last two survive, which is the reason given for Hitler scrapping the capital ships, and Germany loses the Battle of the Atlantic, allowing more Allied resources to be diverted into building up their battle fleets to oppose Japan.

The US supplies Britain with 18 x 16-inch guns to replace the planned armament of Anson & Howe. It is not the completion of Vanguard which surprises me, as the gun turrets already existed, but that the Lion-class also makes a debut in time.

IIRC France had either the fourth or fifth largest navy in the world, with possibly the best designed heavy cruisers & large destroyers. If you add this to a Royal Navy whose focus is almost entirely on the Far East, you have a potent force facing Japan. (In the book, with the US Pacific Fleet thrown in, the Japanese really have no chance.)

Most alternative histories are silly to one degree or another. This one is very pro-French; the Russians get hammered by a more logical Hitler. There are holes in it where I thought the author was losing the plot - but, hell, I get that every other page with Turtledove's series, and at least this one is diverting enough and short with it.

But the point of the original post is that a scenario with an imposing Anglo-French fleet based on Singapore & Indo-China would be as valid as the super-dreadnought variants. With its focus on the gun-line it may well appeal to those who love battleships as well.

(in reply to Adnan Meshuggi)

Post #: 3

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/14/2010 7:45:32 AM

mikemike

Posts: 501
Joined: 6/3/2004
From: a maze of twisty little passages, all different
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This seems to me even more far-fetched than the Turtledove stuff (with the exception of "Guns of the South" which uses time travel) and is apparently designed to have the French win the war.

- Darlan's headache was not fooling the Vichy government (of which he was an important part) but that having the Fleet go over to the Britons would be a breach of the Armistice treaty that would certainly make Hitler occupy the rest of France; this (and the fact that he trusted the Britons just as much as he trusted Hitler, seeing that French ships in Portsmouth had just been seized by British troops who killed a number of French sailors in the process) prevented the Oran force from accepting any of the alternatives proposed by Somerville except offering armed resistance. A much more plausible alternate version of Oran would have the French getting under way half a minute earlier, letting both "Dunkerque" and "Strasbourg" escape cleanly, and maybe dispatch "Ark Royal" by gunfire on their way to Toulon (there was a very real risk of that happening even in RL).

- The French ships would have to be based in Britain, putting even more load on the base facilities there, and would have presented a hideous logistical problem (metric spare parts and non-standard ammunition)

- Richelieu might be possible, but without access to US yard facilities? Jean Bart - where would the guns have come from?
CVs Foch and Clemenceau were not even launched in 1940, so ships of that name would have to be British-built.

- Without the USA in the war, would Britain have been able to provide the escort forces necessary for the Battle of the Atlantic? French ships wouldn't have been much of a help there, because there weren't a lot of them, especially if the French Navy also had a significant presence in the Far East.

- British BBs with US 16-in guns? Selling those guns to Britain would have delayed USN battleships, can't imagine that happening, but even so, either you also buy the turrets from the US (and shoehorning them into the KGV design would have posed quite thrilling problems) or you have to design and build your own turrets for them, which means still getting saddled with the major bottleneck (British turrets always were late and bug-ridden to boot).

..."with possibly the best designed heavy cruisers & large destroyers" Well - the only decent French CA was "Algerie" (but that was a splendid design, all right), all the others were tin-cans, and as to the superdestroyers, they were certainly fast, good-looking ships, but the ones that had decent guns had problems with their ammo hoists, and just enough ammunition for a 15-minute fight, they all had even worse AA armament than British DDs, and like almost all French ships were desperately short-ranged, being designed for service in the Mediterranean where there were bases every few hundred nautical miles.

- I don't believe Hitler would have gone through with the scrapping order under any circumstances. He was majorly pissed off, but essentially D�nitz stopped him with one remark - "This would be the cheapest naval victory Britain has ever achieved".

- Hitting a maneuvering target with a Tallboy? Now really - when Lancasters on a Tallboy mission were as good a target as a blimp?

- An imposing Anglo-French fleet with Metropolitan France completely occupied? Well - look at the RL performance of "Richelieu" under those circumstances, and its operations were even supported by US resources.

Really, highly far-fetched. Reminds me of a story on an alternate-history site that has the Serbian Army essentially winning WWI single-handedly.

_____________________________

DON�T PANIC - IT�S ALL JUST ONES AND ZEROES!

(in reply to Coulsdon Eagle)

Post #: 4

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/14/2010 10:00:19 AM

Coulsdon Eagle

Posts: 20
Joined: 1/3/2010
Status: offline

I hope you have read Turtledove's World War (?) where aliens land in late 1941 and really cannot understand what the **** is going on. That is really off the wall and I actually had some sympathy for the lizards in trying to understand Nazism, Stalin's Russia and this very strange concept called democracy.

Back to the French....

Well, their Navy remains in Oran & Alexandria, as all the French overseas territories jump in bed with Darlan's Free French. And you are right - it is a breach of the Armistice & the Germans occupy the rest of Metropolitan France. They would also have a tremendous effect on Free French morale that they still have somewhere they call home that is unoccupied, which could affect performance. The Americans fit out the French fleet (& the Brits) on the basis that they would rather have someone fighting Germany, even if it is not them. And prudent navies always order more gun barrels than they need so that they can change worn-out guns or rush through a crash building programme.

The French & Royal Navies are able to devote their forces to the Far East in mid-1941 as they have won the Battle of the Atlantic by then. This is among the tenuous changes that crop up. All the points you make are valid - the French ships were designed with the placid Mediterranean in mind and were apparently awful blue water craft (although both navies learn from their experiences in Norway & stack up AA armament). The French experienced terrible trouble with their triple- and quadruple-gunned turrets in real life, and sought information from the Royal Navy that resulted in staggered salvoes & changes to ballistic caps - if you look at the N3, G3 & Nelson / Rodney designs compared with both the French battlecruisers & modern battleships you will note some ressemblance. I would be quite interested in seeing how two triple 16-inch turrets fit into the holes for a twin & quadruple in the KGV class.

The metric issue is real as are other differences - the Hawk 81A (export version of P40) had throttles that were pulled down as opposed to British-built fighters where the throttle were pushed forwards. Actually, the imperial / metric battle is still being fought out in the UK

But how wildly unrealistic is this possible Far East scenario compared with the super-duper dreadnoughts (how the hell do the Brits & Yanks win the Battle of the Atlantic when all their steel goes towards those behemoths?), the Dutch having bloody great battleships, or the Soviets basing a major naval force on the Siberian coast? You get some nice shiny new ships to play with (they might not be quite as good as the catalogue) and there is the possibility of a pretty even combat between the beefed-up Anglo-French and the Japanese. Ignore the book, go for the game!

(in reply to mikemike)

Post #: 5

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/19/2010 12:08:03 PM

Adnan Meshuggi

Posts: 2220
Joined: 8/2/2001
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Coulsdon Eagle

Remember, this is an alternative history, and is light in detail - the war is over in 200 pages - Second Jutland (including foreplay) only takes up 23 pages including "eye-witness" statements and is a virtual re-run of First Jutland, even down to the naming of the two opposing Fast Battleship / Battlecruiser forces, and with a Run to the South / North followed by a horizon ringed by large-calibre gunfire.

Darlan orders the French Fleet from Toulon to confront the British at Oran - or so he makes the Vichy Government believe. A plot device without which much of what happens would not be possible.

The Bismarck task force includes Scharnhorst, Gneisenau & (yes) Prinz Eugen; only the last two survive, which is the reason given for Hitler scrapping the capital ships, and Germany loses the Battle of the Atlantic, allowing more Allied resources to be diverted into building up their battle fleets to oppose Japan.

The US supplies Britain with 18 x 16-inch guns to replace the planned armament of Anson & Howe. It is not the completion of Vanguard which surprises me, as the gun turrets already existed, but that the Lion-class also makes a debut in time.

IIRC France had either the fourth or fifth largest navy in the world, with possibly the best designed heavy cruisers & large destroyers. If you add this to a Royal Navy whose focus is almost entirely on the Far East, you have a potent force facing Japan. (In the book, with the US Pacific Fleet thrown in, the Japanese really have no chance.)

Most alternative histories are silly to one degree or another. This one is very pro-French; the Russians get hammered by a more logical Hitler. There are holes in it where I thought the author was losing the plot - but, hell, I get that every other page with Turtledove's series, and at least this one is diverting enough and short with it.

But the point of the original post is that a scenario with an imposing Anglo-French fleet based on Singapore & Indo-China would be as valid as the super-dreadnought variants. With its focus on the gun-line it may well appeal to those who love battleships as well.

Sorry, the story isn�t good.
First, denmark street was a break-through. Bismark and Prinz Eugen tried to reach open ocean and after the "sucsessfull" mission was to return to the french atlantic coast.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau laid in these ports (brest?). So no battle at the denmark street WITH Scharnhorst or Gneisenau
If someone change history the last thing he should do is to correct some things.

the consequences for the french - if it�s fleet escapes and change sides would be very serious. Without its homewaters (and logistics) the french fleet isn�t very useful. Sure, the americans can modify the weapons, produce the ammo etc. But this needs time. A lot time. And the americans can�t built new powerplants without a huge time gap.

So - i stay to my post: the input of the french fleet is nil. At last compared to the big input of negative consequences for the french and allied position in europe.

It is fantasy, like "how Yamato singlehanded sunk the US-Battle-Group at leyte" or "japanese invasion at san diego defeats the US...

Maybe for french-fanboys something to lick their wounds (about the big defeat in 1940), but nothing serious to think about in a scenario for War in the Pacific.

Sorry - i hope it does not sound offending. But the whole story stinks. Lilke mikemike said, there is no chance for the brits to build the battleships the way described. It is as possible as "Hitlers Reichsflugscheiben from Mars" invade the USA in 1950"

_____________________________

(in reply to Coulsdon Eagle)

Post #: 6

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/19/2010 1:14:25 PM

vettim89

Posts: 3615
Joined: 7/14/2007
From: Toledo, Ohio
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Would have to agree this one is about as implausible as they come. Yet, I also have to agree that the BB heavy alternative histories are just as implausible considering the steel issue for all sides.

Everybody has there favorite "what if" scenarios and, while this one is a reach, it is probably no more unlikely than the ones where Japan wakes up in the early 1930's and completely revamps its industrial base.

WHat about these two alternative histories?

1. Hirohito accepts Roosevelts invention and a face to face meeting occurs in November 1941. Nothing comes out of these meetings except the start of the war is delayed six months. The war starts in May 1942 with both sides better prepared for war.

2. The IJN sails into Soerobaja Harbor on 1 Dec 1941 and annexes the DEI ala Germany and Austria/Czekoslavokia. The Dutch are allowed to keep their government as a puppet but are forces to "sell" resources and oil to the Japanese. After several months of diplomatic protests, war finally breaks out in say March 1942 but with Japan already in possesion of the SRA

_____________________________

"We have met the enemy and they are ours" - Commodore O.H. Perry

(in reply to Adnan Meshuggi)

Post #: 7

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/19/2010 2:38:48 PM

Adnan Meshuggi

Posts: 2220
Joined: 8/2/2001
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Well - this what-if-scenario is nonsense cause of its short time to correct "things"

No problem with "the brits ordered so and so many 16"-guns and turrets in 1932"-what-if.
But to say "magically the brits recive enough turrets, guns and manpower (for vanguard) is stupid.

Also - if the bismark and the scharnhorst sink (to free british ships from europe) at last the sinking ships should be able to be at the position to be sunk.

The japanese could wake up in 1930, but nobody can magically warp the ships and the material to the places this scenario need.

This is the weak point

You can make any scenario you want (i like the idea of the dutch anexion), but at last it should be possible (building things in time - so no supercomputer-satellite-radarproof-stelthbomber by japanese techniques in 1942) and you need to explain why things happen this way.

This scenario has serious failures and fails any reality-check (cause some things can�t be done). The author just tried to put some "new toys" in, without care about possibility

that is my critique.

the idea of a strong french fleet in the pacific sounds interesting. but it needs some explainations...

_____________________________

(in reply to vettim89)

Post #: 8

RE: "Moment of Destiny: One Day in Oran" - Th... - 2/19/2010 6:47:17 PM

Miller

Posts: 2226
Joined: 9/14/2004
From: Ashington, England.
Status: offline

Lol, its good to see the French Navy wins the war almost by itself, they dont even lose any ships in the process!

What a pile of ****e.

(in reply to Adnan Meshuggi)

Post #: 9

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