Oh! I also just found this archived ATL here http://www.oocities.org/drammos/ww2.html it's a pity the author never continued it, it was a pretty interesting read.
Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Hey how can you open it? Because it only shows a blank page
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You gotta wait awhile for it to finish loading it takes like 20 seconds for me. It works just fine for me not sure why its not working for ya. Here's a site with another link try this one. https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=timelines:the_guns_of_lausanne
To be honest, any French 75s (the good 75, not the ones they exported prior to the Balkan Wars) they have would still be perfectly acceptable pieces during WWII.
Part 40 And it starts to rain
Spain, November 1934
Spanish troops under general Francisco Franco, brought down the last rebels in Asturias putting a formal end to the Spanish Left's uprising. Franco had taken a gamble in demanding , the release of officers imprisoned after the 1932 coup to support the government but it had played out when the government had backed down. Then the government had taken his advice and battle hardened units of the Spanish Army of Africa had been brought in the mainland placed under his command and unleashed upon the Asturias rebels, forces under general Lopez Ochoa were already in action against the Catalonia. A mix of military action and negotiation by Ochoa would bring down the rather unorganized Catalonian revolt with relatively moderate casualties. Asturias treated by Franco and his Regulares no different than the Rif, would prove much bloodier with over 3,000 dead including several summary executions on both sides, gaining Franco the nickname of "butcher of Asturias" and the enmity of the Left.
Athens, December 1934
Five years ago Andreas Zaimis had been a convenient compromise solution to elect in the largely ceremonial position of president of the republic. It was a position that fitted Zaimis, a mediocre politician with the great advantage on not arousing passions for or against him during his long career quite well and neither side could secure the two thirds majority in the joint senate and parliament to elect a candidate of their own. After the 1932 election this was hardly the case as the Liberals with 203 MPs and 63 senators comfortably exceeded the 247 votes needed to elect a president. And thus 74 year old Themistoklis Sofoulis became the third president of the republic. With most looking at the presidential election the new budget for 1935 tripling projected arms and fortifications expenditure from about 330 million drachmas in 1934 to nearly a billion went mostly unnoticed. But Venizelos had quickly noticed the implications of Hitler's rise to power two years ago and intended for Greece to be ready for the new international environment.
Ethiopia, December 1934
How the border incident between Ethiopian troops and the Italian colonial army had been triggered could not been proven. What was certain was that very conveniently Italy used it to make economic and territorial demands against the Ethiopians. Ethiopia would appeal on the League of Nations but the Italians didn't seem to be impressed. For the British and French governments it was one more inconvenience in their hopes of securing Italian support against Germany.
Rome, January 1935
The French foreign minister Pierre Laval signed off part of French Somaliland and Chad to Italy while giving it a blank cheque in Ethiopia. Mussolini was quick to take advantage of it, starting to ship troops to Italian Somaliland by the end of the month. Further Ethiopian protestations to the League of Nations would follow but despite general sympathy for Ethiopia would amount to little.
Piraeus, March 25th 1935
Venizelos had not been particularly happy with Stratos decision to build a battleship back in 1931. But the way things were going the past couple of years Stratos decision could well prove to be the right one for all the wrong reasons he mused as Salamis, completed the previous month, joined the rest of the fleet for the independence day celebrations. First came Ares, back in 1921 there had been some idiots who had proposed scuttling the ship on cost grounds as if there had been many ships dating to the revolution still afloat. Next was Averof, always taking precedence to every other ship of the fleet. Then Salamis. Then the two light cruisers, Koundouriotis and Katsonis. Then the half dozen destroyers built in Greece in the last decade, Hydra, Spetsai, Psara, Kimon, Formion and Nearchos. More were needed. Earlier in the month Germany had openly introduced conscription and announced it would stop abiding by the arms limitations of the treaty of Versailles. It was only a matter of time for Turkey and Bulgaria to follow suit.
Arsenal de Brest, France, April 22nd, 1935
Battleship Richelieu, was laid down. Early in January France had renounced the quantitative limitations on her navy from the treaty of Washington, though she continued to abide by the rest of the treaty. Thus Richelieu would not exceed 35,000t standard displacement at least officially. Like the battleships building in Italy since April 1934 she would carry 16 inch guns, 9 of them in three triple turrets grouped forward.
Turkey, May 1935
After three years of preparation new penal and civil codes modelled upon European models were officially introduced. As part of the civil code everyone was required to take surnames. Things were less positive in the economic front where Turkey was under severe strain in her foreign balance of payments, for every practical purpose the country was in default as she was under ever increasing difficulty to secure foreign currency particularly British pounds and US dollars, following the strong protectionist laws enacted all around the world. The new clearing agreements signed with Germany were promising to be very helpful, establishing in effect a barter system were Turkish goods like chrome and tobacco would be sold to Germany and Germany would export a similar amount of goods to Turkey. Germany was not signing clearing agreements just with Turkey. Similar agreements were being signed with most European countries. But some were more susceptible to German economic influence than others. The German share of Turkish foreign trade start rising exponentially with Italy a distant second.
Topola, Serbia, May 7th, 1935
The body of king Alexander of Yugoslavia was interred in Saint George's church in Oplenac. The king had survived his assassination attempt in Greece but terminal cancer [1] had proven a more intractable opponent than any assassin. Nearly half a million people and several foreign heads of state had gathered for the funeral. Inevitably discussions for the ongoing crisis in Abyssinia, where Mussolini seemed set on war had taken place. But both France and Britain were still loath to take action against Italy.
London, June 1935
Much to the French shock Britain signed a treaty with Germany limiting the German surface navy to 35% of the Royal Navy and allowing it equality in the number of submarines. Within days of the treaty Germany would lay a pair of battleships ostensibly of of 26,000t each, actual displacement would be in excess of 32,000t. Each if the two ships, to be named Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would be armed with 6 380mm guns in three twin turrets. Proposals by the navy to instead arm the ships with the readily available 283mm would be met by Hitler's intransigence who insisted upon matching the new French ships. It wasn't the only British concession to the fascist powers that month. In the end of the month Britain proclaimed an arms embargo against the participants of the Abyssinian crisis. Given how Italy was a fully developed industrial nation and Ethiopia had no industry at all it was obvious who benefited and who didn't from the embargo.
Adrianople, July 1935
A dozen PZL P.24s in the blue and white roundels of the Hellenic Air Force landed in the airstrip. Another two dozen where on order while a licence production agreement had been signed to produce the aircraft in the KEA factory in Phaleron, PZL's chief designer Zygmunt Pulawski, was currently visiting Athens to oversee ironing out the last details for local production to begin. Poland had been probably an unexpected choice for the Greeks who were traditionally buying British and French designs. But Greek rearmament had run into unexpected difficulties in the previous few months. On one hand Britain had declined to guarantee loans that would be used for arms. On the other much to the Greeks shock even though they could pay, the ability of French and to a lesser degree British industry to deliver, while they were themselves busy rearming had proven questionable. To further exacerbate things, with free convertibility between currencies a thing of the past after 1932, the large scale Greek exports of Greek tobacco to Germany, comparable only to these to the US, were useless for importing goods from anywhere but Germany. Thus the Greeks had turned for artillery to Czechoslovakia, the Stratos government had already bought vz30 howitzers from Skoda in 1931 after all and to Poland for aircraft, as the Poles were accepting Greek tobacco for payment. The situation was relatively better for the navy as orders had been placed in Britain for two more Sunfish class submarines. Even there the Greek attempt to also order from Britain the two heavy cruisers the navy desired since the 1920s had fallen flat though as it conflicted with British desires to reduce all future cruisers to 8,000t and 6in guns. Venizelos, not particularly happy with the British refusal of a loan, nor particularly impressed by their recent actions towards Germany and Italy had just turned to the US ordering the ships from there.
Constantinople, August 1935
Chrysanthus, the exiled metropolitan of Trebizont became the new patriarch of Constantinople as Chrysanthus II following the death of Meletius IV earlier in July. With the importance of the Greek patriarch enhanced after the removal of Stergiadis is was a selection that passed multiple messages. On one hand the new patriarch unlike his predecessor was not a Venizelist. On the other he had been sentenced to death by the Turkish nationalists back during the war...
Ethiopia, September 7th 1935
Three days earlier a special session of the League of Nations had exonerated both sides of the border incident last December. Since December Italy had refused all attempts at mediation or arbitration, both through the League or by France and Britain, or even French and British proposals for large Ethiopian territorial concessions. The only "compromise" Mussolini had offered was demanding a quarter million square kilometres of Ethiopian territory east of Adis Adeba which the Ethiopians readily refused. And thus 685,000 Italian troops marched into Ethiopia without a declaration of war to bring to it European civilization as Italian propaganda claimed. Or at least its products like tanks, bombers and mustard gas...
[1] Source is his son's prince Tomislav's memoirs according to which at the time of his death doctors were giving Alexander about 6 months of life...
Spanish troops under general Francisco Franco, brought down the last rebels in Asturias putting a formal end to the Spanish Left's uprising. Franco had taken a gamble in demanding , the release of officers imprisoned after the 1932 coup to support the government but it had played out when the government had backed down. Then the government had taken his advice and battle hardened units of the Spanish Army of Africa had been brought in the mainland placed under his command and unleashed upon the Asturias rebels, forces under general Lopez Ochoa were already in action against the Catalonia. A mix of military action and negotiation by Ochoa would bring down the rather unorganized Catalonian revolt with relatively moderate casualties. Asturias treated by Franco and his Regulares no different than the Rif, would prove much bloodier with over 3,000 dead including several summary executions on both sides, gaining Franco the nickname of "butcher of Asturias" and the enmity of the Left.
Athens, December 1934
Five years ago Andreas Zaimis had been a convenient compromise solution to elect in the largely ceremonial position of president of the republic. It was a position that fitted Zaimis, a mediocre politician with the great advantage on not arousing passions for or against him during his long career quite well and neither side could secure the two thirds majority in the joint senate and parliament to elect a candidate of their own. After the 1932 election this was hardly the case as the Liberals with 203 MPs and 63 senators comfortably exceeded the 247 votes needed to elect a president. And thus 74 year old Themistoklis Sofoulis became the third president of the republic. With most looking at the presidential election the new budget for 1935 tripling projected arms and fortifications expenditure from about 330 million drachmas in 1934 to nearly a billion went mostly unnoticed. But Venizelos had quickly noticed the implications of Hitler's rise to power two years ago and intended for Greece to be ready for the new international environment.
Ethiopia, December 1934
How the border incident between Ethiopian troops and the Italian colonial army had been triggered could not been proven. What was certain was that very conveniently Italy used it to make economic and territorial demands against the Ethiopians. Ethiopia would appeal on the League of Nations but the Italians didn't seem to be impressed. For the British and French governments it was one more inconvenience in their hopes of securing Italian support against Germany.
Rome, January 1935
The French foreign minister Pierre Laval signed off part of French Somaliland and Chad to Italy while giving it a blank cheque in Ethiopia. Mussolini was quick to take advantage of it, starting to ship troops to Italian Somaliland by the end of the month. Further Ethiopian protestations to the League of Nations would follow but despite general sympathy for Ethiopia would amount to little.
Piraeus, March 25th 1935
Venizelos had not been particularly happy with Stratos decision to build a battleship back in 1931. But the way things were going the past couple of years Stratos decision could well prove to be the right one for all the wrong reasons he mused as Salamis, completed the previous month, joined the rest of the fleet for the independence day celebrations. First came Ares, back in 1921 there had been some idiots who had proposed scuttling the ship on cost grounds as if there had been many ships dating to the revolution still afloat. Next was Averof, always taking precedence to every other ship of the fleet. Then Salamis. Then the two light cruisers, Koundouriotis and Katsonis. Then the half dozen destroyers built in Greece in the last decade, Hydra, Spetsai, Psara, Kimon, Formion and Nearchos. More were needed. Earlier in the month Germany had openly introduced conscription and announced it would stop abiding by the arms limitations of the treaty of Versailles. It was only a matter of time for Turkey and Bulgaria to follow suit.
Arsenal de Brest, France, April 22nd, 1935
Battleship Richelieu, was laid down. Early in January France had renounced the quantitative limitations on her navy from the treaty of Washington, though she continued to abide by the rest of the treaty. Thus Richelieu would not exceed 35,000t standard displacement at least officially. Like the battleships building in Italy since April 1934 she would carry 16 inch guns, 9 of them in three triple turrets grouped forward.
Turkey, May 1935
After three years of preparation new penal and civil codes modelled upon European models were officially introduced. As part of the civil code everyone was required to take surnames. Things were less positive in the economic front where Turkey was under severe strain in her foreign balance of payments, for every practical purpose the country was in default as she was under ever increasing difficulty to secure foreign currency particularly British pounds and US dollars, following the strong protectionist laws enacted all around the world. The new clearing agreements signed with Germany were promising to be very helpful, establishing in effect a barter system were Turkish goods like chrome and tobacco would be sold to Germany and Germany would export a similar amount of goods to Turkey. Germany was not signing clearing agreements just with Turkey. Similar agreements were being signed with most European countries. But some were more susceptible to German economic influence than others. The German share of Turkish foreign trade start rising exponentially with Italy a distant second.
Topola, Serbia, May 7th, 1935
The body of king Alexander of Yugoslavia was interred in Saint George's church in Oplenac. The king had survived his assassination attempt in Greece but terminal cancer [1] had proven a more intractable opponent than any assassin. Nearly half a million people and several foreign heads of state had gathered for the funeral. Inevitably discussions for the ongoing crisis in Abyssinia, where Mussolini seemed set on war had taken place. But both France and Britain were still loath to take action against Italy.
London, June 1935
Much to the French shock Britain signed a treaty with Germany limiting the German surface navy to 35% of the Royal Navy and allowing it equality in the number of submarines. Within days of the treaty Germany would lay a pair of battleships ostensibly of of 26,000t each, actual displacement would be in excess of 32,000t. Each if the two ships, to be named Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would be armed with 6 380mm guns in three twin turrets. Proposals by the navy to instead arm the ships with the readily available 283mm would be met by Hitler's intransigence who insisted upon matching the new French ships. It wasn't the only British concession to the fascist powers that month. In the end of the month Britain proclaimed an arms embargo against the participants of the Abyssinian crisis. Given how Italy was a fully developed industrial nation and Ethiopia had no industry at all it was obvious who benefited and who didn't from the embargo.
Adrianople, July 1935
A dozen PZL P.24s in the blue and white roundels of the Hellenic Air Force landed in the airstrip. Another two dozen where on order while a licence production agreement had been signed to produce the aircraft in the KEA factory in Phaleron, PZL's chief designer Zygmunt Pulawski, was currently visiting Athens to oversee ironing out the last details for local production to begin. Poland had been probably an unexpected choice for the Greeks who were traditionally buying British and French designs. But Greek rearmament had run into unexpected difficulties in the previous few months. On one hand Britain had declined to guarantee loans that would be used for arms. On the other much to the Greeks shock even though they could pay, the ability of French and to a lesser degree British industry to deliver, while they were themselves busy rearming had proven questionable. To further exacerbate things, with free convertibility between currencies a thing of the past after 1932, the large scale Greek exports of Greek tobacco to Germany, comparable only to these to the US, were useless for importing goods from anywhere but Germany. Thus the Greeks had turned for artillery to Czechoslovakia, the Stratos government had already bought vz30 howitzers from Skoda in 1931 after all and to Poland for aircraft, as the Poles were accepting Greek tobacco for payment. The situation was relatively better for the navy as orders had been placed in Britain for two more Sunfish class submarines. Even there the Greek attempt to also order from Britain the two heavy cruisers the navy desired since the 1920s had fallen flat though as it conflicted with British desires to reduce all future cruisers to 8,000t and 6in guns. Venizelos, not particularly happy with the British refusal of a loan, nor particularly impressed by their recent actions towards Germany and Italy had just turned to the US ordering the ships from there.
Constantinople, August 1935
Chrysanthus, the exiled metropolitan of Trebizont became the new patriarch of Constantinople as Chrysanthus II following the death of Meletius IV earlier in July. With the importance of the Greek patriarch enhanced after the removal of Stergiadis is was a selection that passed multiple messages. On one hand the new patriarch unlike his predecessor was not a Venizelist. On the other he had been sentenced to death by the Turkish nationalists back during the war...
Ethiopia, September 7th 1935
Three days earlier a special session of the League of Nations had exonerated both sides of the border incident last December. Since December Italy had refused all attempts at mediation or arbitration, both through the League or by France and Britain, or even French and British proposals for large Ethiopian territorial concessions. The only "compromise" Mussolini had offered was demanding a quarter million square kilometres of Ethiopian territory east of Adis Adeba which the Ethiopians readily refused. And thus 685,000 Italian troops marched into Ethiopia without a declaration of war to bring to it European civilization as Italian propaganda claimed. Or at least its products like tanks, bombers and mustard gas...
[1] Source is his son's prince Tomislav's memoirs according to which at the time of his death doctors were giving Alexander about 6 months of life...
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Yeah this thread here is a good read for better details. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/alltheworldsbattlecruisers/greek-small-battleship-1932-t9005.htmlSalamis is the 6x16" gun design, correct? I'm glad Averof still gets her recognition, can't let some fancy BB get in front of the greatest AC of all time!
So greece will manufacture its own PZL P.24s..while it was not an airplane that was superior to the Italian planes except when it comes to armament at least Greece will not run out of parts for the planes thus the italian airforce will pay dearly if it wants to bomb Greece...
Will greece also get planes with the capacity to carry Arial torpedos and/or strike at ships?
And the butterflies keep flying... The Second Italo-Ethiopian War starts 13 months earlier and Italy commits more men than IOTL. Greece will have its own production of adequate (by the standards of 1939) fighters and is significantly ahead in its rearmament. @Lascaris which is the class of cruisers ordered by the Greeks to the U.S.A.? Is it the New-Orleans class? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans-class_cruiser
Or is it this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland-class_cruiser
The only thing that remains unchanged from OTL is the British (and to a lesser extent French) stupidity by following appeasement policies...
Or is it this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland-class_cruiser
The only thing that remains unchanged from OTL is the British (and to a lesser extent French) stupidity by following appeasement policies...
Thank you for saving Ares !
I would like to share the greatest moment of the brig Ares with the non-greek readers:
During the Battle of Sphacteria, the brig Ares was cornerned in this sheltered bay: https://www.google.com/maps/place/S...bc2ee84be216bd6!8m2!3d36.9232993!4d21.6690536
Her captain had been already killed in land and a turko-egyptian fleet of 45 ships was closing in. The men started panicking and a few were about to set fire to the gunpowder so as not to end up prisoners of the Egyptians. Then captain Nicholaos Votsis whose ship had departed without him in the panic of the evacuation and Georgios Sachtouris took control of the ship and rallied the men.
At first, as the brig exited the bay she came against two frigates and a corvette while she was receiving musket fire from the Egyptian soldiers on Sphacteria. With superb handling and a fair wind, she managed to avoid the frigates and the corvette and sail out of the bay. After a while, the wind died out for two hours. Then five enemy brigs closed up on her. She outfought the five enemies, destroying one brig and damaging the rest.
Behind the brigs came two frigates that bombarded the ship and prepared to board her. At that time, captain Votsis gave the order to prepare to blow her up in order to take with him as many enemies as possible. The orders were overheard by Greek slaves from Kasos on board of the turko-egyptian frigates. In 1824 the whole population of the island of Kasos was either butchered or sold as slaves by the turko-egyptian fleet. Some of these slaves let the Egyptian commander know that the Greeks are about to blow their ship and the two frigates aborted the boarding action.
By that point the wind was blowing up again and Ares fought back against the frigates while gaining space. The damages inflicted upon the frigates made them stop the pursuit. By that point, most of the turko-egyptian fleet was able to join in the pursuit of Ares. She maneuvered and maneuvered while fighting back as best as she could.
In total, the pursuit of Ares lasted more than 5 hours and during that time she faced a total of 34 hunters.
This action was one of the best examples of greek seamanship during the War of Independence. If somebody wrote this action in this site, it would labelled as ASB.
That's why I am glad @Lascaris saved Ares!
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I'm just reading the TL all over again, and my curiosity was again picked by the football championships of 1924.
So, I wondered if Greece would have participated in the first FIFA World Cup in 1930.
Since Yugoslavia did send a team to Uruguay and Greece is in a comparatively better financial shape to afford the roundtrip to Montevideo, I think that would be a good possibility, right?
So, I wondered if Greece would have participated in the first FIFA World Cup in 1930.
Since Yugoslavia did send a team to Uruguay and Greece is in a comparatively better financial shape to afford the roundtrip to Montevideo, I think that would be a good possibility, right?
They are not relying on them, but they are still keeping in service every single quick firing piece in existence in addition to the heavy artillery provided by France and Britain during WW1 which is not even quick firing. As of 1935 that is 844 guns. To a degree what the Greeks have gained is at Turkish cost and vice versa, as the 844 include 276 former Ottoman/Turkish pieces (168 in OTL 1935) and quite a few guns lost in 1922.
Uncle George is Uncle George. Enough said.Salamis is the 6x16" gun design, correct? I'm glad Averof still gets her recognition, can't let some fancy BB get in front of the greatest AC of all time!
Even in OTL KEA did produce aircraft locally in notable numbers and licences had been bought for P.631 and Hs.126 and offered for P.24. TTL KEA started somewhat earlier and Greece has quite a bit more in GDP and industry. One additional reason for choosing Polish is buying PZL P.7 a few years earlier. Of course the big butterfly here is who's overseeing the setup of licence production on the Polish side...
They already have torpedo bombers at this point, both Fairey IIIF and Hawker Horsley bought in 1929 and Blackburn Velos procured earlier...
One month and roughly the same numbers of men. 17 infantry divisions IMS in addition to smaller units.
For diplomatic reasons the ships need to be laid down in 1935... ahead of the 2nd London naval treaty where the British are pressing for killing off heavy cruisers altogether. USS Wichita with certain minor modifications. Greek ships don't need to carry 4 aircraft nor 10,000 NM range when operating in the Mediterranean. OTOH the space taken up by the aircraft facilities can be used for more AA guns which are certainly needed in the Mediterranean and some slight improvement in deck armour wouldn't hurt, the other design on offer at the time with the British out of the game would be the French C5, an evolution of Algerie roughly comparable to Wichita but with more deck armour and a thinner belt compared to the American ship.
Never got the logic of scuttling the ship in 1921, but then never got the logic of many things Gounaris did at the time. Or I should say got the logic on what he was likely to do but not how an apparently clever highly educated person could be so consistently be making always the wrong decision.
Anyway here's Volonakis painting of Ares at Sfakteria.
That's an interesting question. After all not just Yugoslavia but also Romania send a team to Uruguay. If her two Balkan Entente allies did why not Greece also?
IIRC Wichita was the most unstable of the US Treaty Cruisers, that's something that could be fixed as well without the 10,000 ton limit. I agree on cutting down the range, the only things the Greeks need to be planning on outside of local ops would be working with the British in the Eastern Med in a hypothetical war vs the Italians or moving to the Black Sea to deal with the Soviets, and even just one aircraft is probably enough. The two Sunfish class will give good service, they're probably the best choice for a coastal sub in the 30's. As for the destroyer leader, the Greeks could look at an improved Dubrovnik that I'm sure the Yugoslavs would recommend, a Tribal if the Brits are willing to let their brand-new design be built for a friendly country, or a Grom with torpedoes that won't explode when bombed (my personal choice).
Originally I was thinking about a pair of C5 cruisers possibly with US made guns, these was the evolution of Algerie with three triples on the same displacement that would then develop into Saint Louis class. But excellent though Algerie was there were reasons not to go for it in the 1930s, if it was taking French industries 4+ years to complete each La Galissoniere or for the Mogadors how much it would take for a heavy cruiser? Besides I'm not certain the French would accept using American weapons even if their industry wouldn't be able to produce weapons for export ships on time.
Leaving aside the cruiser controversary, where the British would have not the slightest problem to sell Crown Colonies besides starting to have bottlenecks with building mountings otherwise the HN is very closely tied to the RN. These two are actually the replacement for the two WW1 era light cruisers in Greek service on the other hand, using the proposed L90 design the RN was looking into at this time (3,205t, 40kts and 6x5.25in in the original design)