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Adventure in Academia - Art Quest

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Pt 4 - Ito Asahi's War Diaries
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    • Of course the best place to go was right to the source: A diary, written during the first modern war between Akitsukini and Caspia. Planes, machine-guns, trenches, logistics and fleets - all of these clashed in a war that took tens of thousands of lives and almost caused the ruination of two nations. It also exposed the racism of the Western world in stark relief for the first time, as the shock of an Akitsukini victory - if you could call it that - swept around the world. Of course, you'd read enough revisionist retellings of the war to know that not every historian considered it an Akitsukini victory, not in the long run, but for your purposes that was neither here nor there.

    What was important was the reprinted document in front of you. A translated copy of Ito Asahi's war diaries. He had been an infantry commander who witnessed the first deployments of the Caspian warmachines and the Akitsukini responses to it. You settle down to read with a pen nearby to take notes.

    When the Capian landships first appeared, with massive wheels and heavy guns, we were stunned. They came on so slowly that we thought they weren't moving at first, but they crept closer and closer on those wheels. When they opened fire it was as if a demon was speaking, small guns but accurate and able to pick out our gun posts from their elevated position. We responded with machine guns, but couldn't get through their thick armour. It was as if we faced battleships on land.

    ​

    We turned them away, but it cost us more than a little. It took artillery, guns, everything we could throw and still it was only with a noble sacrifice that we carried the day. One died. The others retreated. Already I knew that battle had changed with their appearance, and as far as I knew we had nothing to respond to them with. Certainly nothing of the same calibre or capability. They crossed the crater filled landscape between our trenches as if it was nothing. I dreaded the next time I would face them.

    Had I known what would happen the next time we faced them, I wouldn't have been so afraid. My company redeployed to the line several months after that first encounter, and almost immediately we faced those damned machines again. But this time, as they rolled towards us and our machine guns did nothing but make a most horrifying sound as their rounds screamed off their armour. But the commotion at the rear almost had me more distracted than the encroaching enemy.

    Six auto's pulled up behind our lines on the wood-lined road that was used for supply haulers and mules. They turned oh so slowly on narrow wheels to present their rears and what I saw their stunned me. Each carried a light gun in an armoured compartment that after a few moments began to rotate towards the nearest Caspian machine. When they fired it barely compared to the heaviest bombardments I'd endured, but this was different. This was accurate, precise firepower.

    ​

    The six were joined by three others with ungainly looking machine-gun apparatus. A Caspian war machine was brought low by gunfire, then another. The machine-gun carriers repelled the infantry wave that was accompanying them in moments, sweeping back and forth across the Caspian lines. Then the whistles blew and we were up and out of the trench and advancing. I couldn't help but slow alongside one of the Caspian hulks, now burning and slumped over. I risked a bullet to consider it but I knew I had to get a closer look. I wondered when we would get the same. I wondered, immediately, if we could arm our tractors and have a similar weapon to win this war.

    ​

    It was a fascinating insight into the very first days of armoured warfare. While neither the Caspian wheeled landship nor the Akitsukini armoured car could be called a tank, there was a limpse of what was to come in that battle. Ito saw the future too in his suggestions of arming the tractors. He truly seemed a genius. If only he had survived the war.

    What is your first argument?
    [ ] Racism lead to Western forces ignoring the early lessons of the Caspian-Akitsukini War
    [ ] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.
    [ ] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.
    [ ] Write-in
     
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    • [X] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.​
     
    [X] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.

    How do we steer the timeline so that the Bob Semple Tank becomes the forefather of mainstream armor development?
     
    [X] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.
     
    [X] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.
     
    [X] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.
     
    [X] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.

    Naturaly, this is one possible future of Gaya and not binding on ACDQ, Castles of Steel, and other, lesser quests like mine own Barnstormer Quest (update in progress, computer troubles make typing filled with much rage)
     
    samdamandias said:
    Naturaly, this is one possible future of Gaya and not binding on ACDQ, Castles of Steel, and other, lesser quests like mine own Barnstormer Quest (update in progress, computer troubles make typing filled with much rage)
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    Yeah both of my 'future' quests are alternate timeline, both rockets and this. Feel free to use any of it, but the history I invent is not necessarily the 'canon'
     
    [X] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.

    I think in particular the height of the gun platform of the caspian vehicles was an initial advantage quickly turned liability, but only after shaping the understanding of what these vehicles should be.
     
    [ ] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.
     
    [ ] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs X as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.
     
    [X] The normalisation of the tank as an infantry support vehicle, rather than a breakthrough vehicle, was pushed by the Caspian Akitsukini war.
     
    [X] The efficacy of the wheeled tank was largely overstated in future designs as the Caspian mammoth, the Kobayashi AC and the pedirail overwhelmed.
     
    Pt 5 - R.J.Miller 1
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    • His experiences, and those of many others who wrote on those first days of armoured warfare, skewed the next ten years massively. It was honestly incredible how dramatic the shift was over that decade, wherein everybody assumed that the wheel was the way to go. Tractors had been a thing before that, both agricultural and artillery, but for some reason nobody thought to put tracks on a tank. Those Caspian rollers and the Akitsukini armoured cars had kind of screwed everyone's thinking.

    Nowhere was that more obvious than in the writings of R.J. Miller, a New Alleghanian war theorist who wrote both in the lead-up to and after the Great War. You could base your primary argument around his work as he was firmly, firmly committed to the pedirail and the later inventions in that line.

    War is no longer the domain of men, such is the power of the Pedirail. Now a demi-platoon of men, tucked inside the armoured shell of their so-called 'Char Lourd', can advance across the blasted field between themselves and their enemy and deliver upon them the wrath of light Artillery and Machine Gun without ever exposing themselves. And then, these genii of motors, Walker and Michaels, they brought upon the world their All-Terrain Wheel.

    The Europans committed to the concept and, in clear divergence from the systemic idiocy of the Alleghanian forces and their 'tracks' they showed their superiority in the Great War. Much like that far eastern Caspian conflict, the war quickly descended into the worst excesses of the trenches, and the breaking of those fortifications came with the use of the Pedirail. The Great War, while just as immobile and hard fought as the Caspian scuffle, showed the future.

    That future comes with the wheel, as so much of humanities past has. The Alleghanian commitment to the slow, ponderous 'track' is foolish. The wheel allows for speed, for mobility and that is the key. The ability to break through the enemies lines, to drive beyond them and harass the rear, that has been the job of cavalry since the Sycthians. What are these Heavy Cars but a modern Cavalry? It is a fool who believes them to be an extension of artillery and not the new metal horse.
    -- R.J. Miller, Armoured Warfare in the 20th Century, 1916    ​

    He was one hell of an effusive writer. He was also entirely wrong, of course, but he couldn't have known that in 1916, could he. Still, he demonstrated your argument well enough. But was that enough?

    What is the next stage?
    [ ] Countering Miller - New Alleghanian reports on tracked vehicles from the era.
    [ ] In Support of Miller - Demonstrate armour as cavalry in the Great War.
    [ ] Extend the argument - The infantry tank in the Great War.
    [ ] Chop the argument - Skip to another aspect of early armoured warfare (Choose one: Multiple turrets, Male/Female designs, the super-heavy tank, write-in)
     
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    • [ ] In Support of Miller - Demonstrate armour as cavalry in the Great War.
    [ ] Extend the argument - The infantry tank in the Great War.

    I'm trying to choose between these two. I think we're onto something about the different deployment. Supporting Miller would be proving that his ideas were used in the real world, in other words that he wasn't just saying random words that nobody cared about.

    But Extending it would give us a look at, like, the worldview of *What* Armor was other than what it eventually became like/seen as.     ​
     
    [X] In Support of Miller - Demonstrate armour as cavalry in the Great War.

    Does this mean the use of armour as cavalry in the Great War? Like, we're supporting that Miller was giving a mainstream opinion that was enacted on the battlefield, rather than going, "Yep, Miller's right about the future."​
     
    The Laurent said:
    [X] In Support of Miller - Demonstrate armour as cavalry in the Great War.

    Does this mean the use of armour as cavalry in the Great War? Like, we're supporting that Miller was giving a mainstream opinion that was enacted on the battlefield, rather than going, "Yep, Miller's right about the future."​
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    Yes exactly. Showing the guy had some right ideas.
     
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