TL-191 Challenge: CS Victory in the Second Great War

Nerdlinger

With a POD as late as possible, come up with a plausible way in which Jake Featherston could have led the CSA to victory in the Second Great War.

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I can think of some basic changes in strategy which would have improved the Confederates' chances, though I don't know if any one of these changes could by itself have won the war:

  • Actually use blacks for war work rather than "reducing their population"
  • Give funding to FitzBelmont earlier than in the canon (i.e., when the uranium bomb was first proposed to Jake)
  • Continue to pursue the assassination of key US leaders, such as Irving Morrell
  • Call up Mexican divisions earlier in the war (and provide them with better equipment)
  • After reaching Lake Erie, rather than invade Pittsburgh, hold fast in eastern Ohio and attack Pontiac/Detroit instead (since most of the US's military strength was apparently east of Ohio)
  • Prioritize production of upgraded barrel designs (done too late in the canon)
  • Conserve men and materiel by playing defense where possible rather than wasting them in pointless little attacks
A lot of these require good judgment (and to some extent precognition) not displayed by the CS and Featherston in the canon, so I'm not sure how realistic they are.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Nerdlinger said:
With a POD as late as possible, come up with a plausible way in which Jake Featherston could have led the CSA to victory in the Second Great War.

~~~~~~

I can think of some basic changes in strategy which would have improved the Confederates' chances, though I don't know if any one of these changes could by itself have won the war:

  • Actually use blacks for war work rather than "reducing their population"
  • Give funding to FitzBelmont earlier than in the canon (i.e., when the uranium bomb was first proposed to Jake)
  • Continue to pursue the assassination of key US leaders, such as Irving Morrell
  • Call up Mexican divisions earlier in the war (and provide them with better equipment)
  • After reaching Lake Erie, rather than invade Pittsburgh, hold fast in eastern Ohio and attack Pontiac/Detroit instead (since most of the US's military strength was apparently east of Ohio)
  • Prioritize production of upgraded barrel designs (done too late in the canon)
  • Conserve men and materiel by playing defense where possible rather than wasting them in pointless little attacks
A lot of these require good judgment (and to some extent precognition) not displayed by the CS and Featherston in the canon, so I'm not sure how realistic they are.
Click to expand...
In order

  1. Will help some, but not enough with Union weight of numbers, maybe 10% increase (blacks would be unskilled and more inclined to sabotage, rebellion and not making maximum output), in any case with Featherston around not gonna happen
  2. Still no way to deliver it beyond smuggling it into the US and they will only get lucky once, and accelerating this would be bad, I'm assuming FitzBelmont did this on a shoestring and did the minimum possible concentrated in the area to get a single bomb quick, throwing more money at it would not get you more quicker unless you throw a lot (10,000 tanks worth) more
  3. Toss up whether this works or not and will just make the US do the same thing in response, this will of course attrit CS agents that could best be used in esionage
  4. The CSA lacks the industry to equip their own army fully, they can't equip the Mexicans better, and bullying the Mexicans more may make them quit earlier
  5. Do this and you leave the majority of US forces free to prepare, reorganize, refit and launch a major counter attack instead of driving them to retreat
  6. Not gonna help much, the North just has numbers and more practical designs
  7. This cedes the initiative to the North. This is a bad thing for the CSA and lets the North attack when its good and ready
In short even if the CSA does everything on your list, the North still wins


Now Settling accounts ignore the industrial side of things but the Union should have an edge between 5 and 20 to one over the south in Industry, the South will not survive this
 

Nerdlinger

RamscoopRaider said:
In order

  1. Will help some, but not enough with Union weight of numbers, maybe 10% increase (blacks would be unskilled and more inclined to sabotage, rebellion and not making maximum output), in any case with Featherston around not gonna happen
  2. Still no way to deliver it beyond smuggling it into the US and they will only get lucky once, and accelerating this would be bad, I'm assuming FitzBelmont did this on a shoestring and did the minimum possible concentrated in the area to get a single bomb quick, throwing more money at it would not get you more quicker unless you throw a lot (10,000 tanks worth) more
  3. Toss up whether this works or not and will just make the US do the same thing in response, this will of course attrit CS agents that could best be used in esionage
  4. The CSA lacks the industry to equip their own army fully, they can't equip the Mexicans better, and bullying the Mexicans more may make them quit earlier
  5. Do this and you leave the majority of US forces free to prepare, reorganize, refit and launch a major counter attack instead of driving them to retreat
  6. Not gonna help much, the North just has numbers and more practical designs
  7. This cedes the initiative to the North. This is a bad thing for the CSA and lets the North attack when its good and ready
Click to expand...


  1. Fair points. I was thinking work-to-death camps would be most likely. And it would take a rather drastic change in mindset for Featherston to hold back on genociding the blacks.
  2. Delivery might be a problem, although I suppose if the US could build a big enough bomber, the CS could too. Even giving the CS a year-long edge over the canon wouldn't help them churn out a couple more bombs?
  3. Conceded.
  4. Conceded.
  5. The CS could still take out the main tank production facilities as well as cut yet another line of transportation between the east and west US. And if they play big-time defense in eastern Ohio, they can hold off the US forces a lot better than they did when they stretched themselves thin to take Pittsburgh. (They'll do even better if the US commits to Virginia as in the canon too.)
  6. Conceded.
  7. I mean on a more local scale, say, after the CS reaches Lake Erie. Patton's defensive strategy was to counterattack at every available opportunity. The Confederates could have bled the US a lot whiter if they let the Yankees come to them. Perhaps even if this strategy wouldn't have been militarily sustainable in the long term, in the short term a political victory could have arisen due to the US public's increasingly perceiving the CS as unstoppable and the US military as ineffective and wasteful of lives.
RamscoopRaider said:
In short even if the CSA does everything on your list, the North still winsNow Settling accounts ignore the industrial side of things but the Union should have an edge between 5 and 20 to one over the south in Industry, the South will not survive this
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Bummer for the Rebs.
 

Trotsky

Nerdlinger said:
I know, but this was only at first. It wasn't too far into the war that they started just flat out exterminating the blacks.
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Well, close to halfway through the war they decided on wholesale reductions. They might have stopped using black workers when suicide bombs started happening.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Nerdlinger said:
  1. Fair points. I was thinking work-to-death camps would be most likely. And it would take a rather drastic change in mindset for Featherston to hold back on genociding the blacks.
  2. Delivery might be a problem, although I suppose if the US could build a big enough bomber, the CS could too. Even giving the CS a year-long edge over the canon wouldn't help them churn out a couple more bombs?
  3. Conceded.
  4. Conceded.
  5. The CS could still take out the main tank production facilities as well as cut yet another line of transportation between the east and west US. And if they play big-time defense in eastern Ohio, they can hold off the US forces a lot better than they did when they stretched themselves thin to take Pittsburgh. (They'll do even better if the US commits to Virginia as in the canon too.)
  6. Conceded.
  7. I mean on a more local scale, say, after the CS reaches Lake Erie. Patton's defensive strategy was to counterattack at every available opportunity. The Confederates could have bled the US a lot whiter if they let the Yankees come to them. Perhaps even if this strategy wouldn't have been militarily sustainable in the long term, in the short term a political victory could have arisen due to the US public's increasingly perceiving the CS as unstoppable and the US military as ineffective and wasteful of lives.
Bummer for the Rebs.
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Building a true strategic bomber is HARD, the B-29 cost more than the atom bomb program and took longer, the CSA does not need a strategic bomber like the Union does (maritime patrol in the pacific islands), also I figure Fitzbelmont used the centrifuge method to enrich uranium, figure he took a year to enrich enough uranium to make another bomb, and you may get another CS bomb (depends on if his Uranium quality drops or not), if you want mass produced nukes you use plutonium like the US did in 191

Ohio is different than Virginia, the CS logistics are worse, they have a hostile populace, no permanent fortifications, give the majority of US troops a months rest (minimum to get to Pontiac, will probably take longer), and they would be able to launch a pretty big counter attack on the CS's exposed flank before the CS could take Pontiac, at which point it is withdraw or get cut off, Logistics are also worse to Detroit for the CSA and it leaves a longer open flank, the best they could do is launch a drive on Pittsburg to disorganize and damage US forces, then withdraw once they start slowing down

The counterattack was actually a viable method, and inflicts more casualties than straight defense when done right and allows the regaining of lost terrain, counter attacks also slow the other side down more than just straight defense even if they cost more, without counter attacks you get a US steamroller and in this War the US ain't giving up, note there was not talk of that in any of the books
 
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Trotsky

RamscoopRaider said:
Ohio is different than Virginia, the CS logistics are worse, they have a hostile populace, no permanent fortifications, give the majority of US troops a months rest (minimum to get to Pontiac, will probably take longer), and they would be able to launch a pretty big counter attack on the CS's exposed flank before the CS could take Pontiac, at which point it is withdraw or get cut off, Logistics are also worse to Detroit for the CSA and it leaves a longer open flank, the best they could do is launch a drive on Pittsburg to disorganize and damage US forces, then withdraw once they start slowing down
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I think if the Confederacy's 1942 summer offensive goes after Detroit and not Pittsburgh, they might lose the war a year faster than they did. Going after Detroit would be adding stupid to the idiocy that starting the war in the first place was.

The counterattack was actually a viable method, and inflicts more casualties than straight defense when done right and allows the regaining of lost terrain, counter attacks also slow the other side down more than just straight defense even if they cost more, without counter attacks you get a US steamroller and in this War the US ain't giving up, note there was not talk of that in any of the books
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They made a point of mentioning in the books how utterly worn and torn the Army of Kentucky was after reaching Lake Erie. John Bell Hood-style counterattacks would not have gained a single solitary advantage.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Trotsky said:
They made a point of mentioning in the books how utterly worn and torn the Army of Kentucky was after reaching Lake Erie. John Bell Hood-style counterattacks would not have gained a single solitary advantage.
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John Bell Hood style no, Manstein and Model style is something else, and given this is Patton I think it is the latter rather than the former

John Bell Hood just rammed his head into the other side, the Germans would let the enemy penetrate, cut of the penetration, advance a little to disorganize the foe then pull back, the latter sounds like what Patton would do
 

Nerdlinger

RamscoopRaider said:
Building a true strategic bomber is HARD, the B-29 cost more than the atom bomb program and took longer, the CSA does not need a strategic bomber like the Union does (maritime patrol in the pacific islands), also I figure Fitzbelmont used the centrifuge method to enrich uranium, figure he took a year to enrich enough uranium to make another bomb, and you may get another CS bomb (depends on if his Uranium quality drops or not), if you want mass produced nukes you use plutonium like the US did in 191
Click to expand...

I meant just building a few large bombers, not necessarily a whole line of them. And they wouldn't need the bombers to go all that far given the proximity of their targets. FitzBelmont did know about jovium's potential usefulness -- it's possible he would have switched methods at some point.

RamscoopRaider said:
Ohio is different than Virginia, the CS logistics are worse, they have a hostile populace, no permanent fortifications, give the majority of US troops a months rest (minimum to get to Pontiac, will probably take longer), and they would be able to launch a pretty big counter attack on the CS's exposed flank before the CS could take Pontiac, at which point it is withdraw or get cut off, Logistics are also worse to Detroit for the CSA and it leaves a longer open flank, the best they could do is launch a drive on Pittsburg to disorganize and damage US forces, then withdraw once they start slowing down
Click to expand...

I was saying that if the US offense in Virginia commenced after Blackbeard had finished, as in the canon, the CS would buy more time in their defense of Ohio than if the US had started a counteroffensive in Ohio as I thought would have been more logical. But I see what you mean about the impracticality of Detroit.

RamscoopRaider said:
The counterattack was actually a viable method, and inflicts more casualties than straight defense when done right and allows the regaining of lost terrain, counter attacks also slow the other side down more than just straight defense even if they cost more, without counter attacks you get a US steamroller and in this War the US ain't giving up, note there was not talk of that in any of the books
Click to expand...

OK, but it seemed in the books that the counterattacks were wasteful and that defense would have been a more effective strategy.
 

Trotsky

RamscoopRaider said:
John Bell Hood style no, Manstein and Model style is something else, and given this is Patton I think it is the latter rather than the former

John Bell Hood just rammed his head into the other side, the Germans would let the enemy penetrate, cut of the penetration, advance a little to disorganize the foe then pull back, the latter sounds like what Patton would do
Click to expand...

Doesn't sound like what Patton did at the Battle of Atlanta.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Nerdlinger said:
I meant just building a few large bombers, not necessarily a whole line of them. And they wouldn't need the bombers to go all that far given the proximity of their targets. FitzBelmont did know about jovium's potential usefulness -- it's possible he would have switched methods at some point.
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That figure was for just the R&D costs, not production costs, and again you need something that can go high and carry 10 tons, only two countries produced bombers like that in OTL WWII, at great cost

That would be ungodly expensive to do so and take a really long time to switch over
I was saying that if the US offense in Virginia commenced after Blackbeard had finished, as in the canon, the CS would buy more time in their defense of Ohio than if the US had started a counteroffensive in Ohio as I thought would have been more logical. But I see what you mean about the impracticality of Detroit.
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If the CSA does not go after Pittsburgh the USA can do both at the same time

OK, but it seemed in the books that the counterattacks were wasteful and that defense would have been a more effective strategy.
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Not certain have not read the books in 8 months, depends on who was talking, if it was just a frontline soldier he was probably wrong, if it was Tom Colleton he was probably right so you may be correct here
 
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