Amphibious Alliance (The battle of Taiwan April 1923)
The Alliance of Pacific Powers was a defensive alliance formed to deter Imperial China from conquering more lands than it already had. This was not a secret; all nations which could read a map understood it, and the articles available to diplomats and spies left little chance to doubt. To be sure, it could theoretically apply to France, but given the firepower imbalance between the colonial empire of Paris – without counting the rest of the Entente – and the APP, even the Granadans and Californians tended to agree it would likely be the last monumental mistake their nation would ever make.
No, the target of the UPNG and the other nations had always been China.
Something that had seemed easier than France, until the navy of Empress Ren revealed it had functional aircraft carriers, and that unlike the Granadan Admirals, the Chinese pilots had trained a lot to sink capital ships when the signal to begin the war would be given.
To be sure, every leader part of the Alliance of Pacific Powers had understood the first Chinese onslaught would likely be of considerable strength, but the first aerial raids were a magnitude worse than the most pessimistic estimates.
This was why, on April 2, when California declared a state of hostilities existed between it and Guangzhou, only the UPNG, the Aristocratic Republic of Merica, and the Republic of Peru immediately followed.
The hesitations of the other nations were perfectly understandable. The Sultanate of Brunei, for example, was not that far from the closest Chinese fleet, and with the terrible destruction power being wielded by the aircraft carriers, the defensive power of the Brunei armed forces would be very much in doubt if a significant number of the soldiers were sent away from Borneo.
For Vietnam, the danger was more extreme, not less, for out of all the members of the APP, the massively indebted ‘economic colony’ was the only one which had the dubious privilege of a land frontier with the Heavenly Empire. Assuredly there weren’t yet massive armies marching southwards, but there were at least one hundred thousand men playing garrison duties. Vietnam could resist this wave, but not without full mobilisation...something which would make the levels of debt skyrocket and the budget spending extremely problematical.
The Republic of Australasia’s greatest cities were crowded by protestors the moment the war’s beginning was made public. Signing the treaty and joining the alliance had resulted in significant economic difficulties, and the brief period where the public had been willing to cheer their government for ‘a just and independent military industry’ had ended months ago.
As for the Carolinas, now that Florida was not a threat anymore, both politicians and the citizens in the street tended to consider more and more the Alliance of Pacific Powers as a relic of the Great War, for all the fact the new treaty had been signed in 1919. But while the historical falsehoods proclaimed in the legion were countless, no specialist of Carolinian affairs could doubt that the reluctance of Columbia to go to war was very real. Maybe if the powder keg had been in Central or South America...but it wasn’t. Moreover, the Republic of the Carolinas had territories in the Pacific – the reason they had been included in this alliance in the first place – and those required costly investments. Increasing the military spending on top of that was not going to be popular at home.
By the time the sun rose on Taiwan on the third day of April, the Granadan envoys successfully changed the mind of the Sultan of Brunei after many hours of effort and plenty of assurances to reassure not only his defensive capabilities, but also his remarkable greed. It would take a few more hours, but the same ‘diplomatic victory’ was achieved with the Republic of the Carolinas, though this time the financial penalties and the lost markets the nations breaking their word was a far greater incentive than the general corruption of the Sultan and his court.
No level of threat, compliments, veiled accusations, calls to honour, or silky overtures, unfortunately, was sufficient to convince the Vietnamese officials from uttering a declaration of war. The UPNG and California increased their pressure, but nobody in Vietnam was ready to make a step in that direction, for all the grumbling of the Americans and their unflattering comparisons with ugly monkeys and stubborn donkeys. And as pacific strikes were replaced by angry mobs, the Australasian ministers’ greatest concern wasn’t joining the war anymore, it was ensuring they would still be in power come the next election.
Meanwhile, the defenders of Keelung were fighting for their lives. For all the efforts of Air General Mayo to stop them, the Chinese strike fighters and bombers returned to Keelung just after dawn, and proceeded to methodically destroy everything they could ascertain to be part of the Californian military forces.
The Californian aviation tried once again its best, but more and more of its very finite number of pilots died, and when the Chinese departed, the fires had engulfed hundreds of soldiers and vital positions. Worse, those impressive columns of smoke were now used as markers by the battleships to fire tens of kilometres away, far beyond anything they would have been able to in a contest of fleets.
This was the moment the amphibious assault was launched against Keelung. The first Chinese assault was stopped cold in the outer harbour, as half a dozen artillery pieces and a lot of machine guns, mortars, and riflemen had been told to hide and wait for that exact moment. It was a bloody defeat, but unfortunately to achieve this success, the Californians had revealed their positions...and the battleships and the other ‘big guns’ of the Imperial Chinese Navy took their revenge in the minutes after.
Keelung would not be captured intact, but the Chinese marine infantry and elite troops had only been looking for a good beachhead, after all. And while the first echelon had failed, the second echelon managed to land.
The bombers and the aviation cover of the Chinese forces returned, and the invasion’s advance, so far measured in hundreds of metres, began to secure considerable gains. The Californians at this critical moment were deprived of much of their coordination, for Marshal Valdes’ advanced headquarters disappeared in a bright explosion, proving once more the wisdom of not storing ammunition stocks near an outpost where your military leadership gathered.
The military hierarchy was not decapitated, but the time for Marshal Valdes’ fate to be ascertained, for his replacement to be brought up to speed to the situation, to realise how bad the situation was on the frontlines, and to acknowledge the multitude of disasters striking all at once...there was no hope anymore to save Keelung.
In fact, by the evening, it was too late to save a large part of the 6th Line Division of the Californian Army. The soldiers would find refuge in one of the industrial zones next to the harbour and pursue a fierce resistance against all odds, but sixty hours later, they would be forced to surrender.
By then, the rest of Keelung would have been captured, and hundreds of armoured vehicles, artillery guns, and of course tens of thousands of men would have landed and been deployed.
The land campaign of the Chinese Empire to conquer Taiwan had begun.