Changing Destiny (Kancolle)
- Thread starter Skywalker_T-65
- Start date
Burning Baron
This position needs more entrenching.
- Location
- In here, not out there.
What good would that do beyond the pre-existing armored ramp?
Normandy, and Omaha in particular, is significant because unlike nearly every other landing the LCP was present for, the defenses were right there. For Torch, Iwo, Okinawa, Germany, Italy, Sicily, and many other amphibious invasions that I can't remember because it's 0135 for me, the defenses were somewhat removed from the shoreline, meaning the troops contained within had time to disembark and find cover, whereas Utah, Omaha, and especially the Pointe had ramps dropping at the base of a most angry cliff.
Thirty feet of concrete, steel, with rifles and MG42s for flavor.
And the Germans held their fire until the ramps dropped.
Even LVTs would be in much the same situation. Because the troops have to go from the rear to the front, meaning the end result is the same. And at Normandy, remember, they landed at the base of cliffs. So now the Wehrmacht have elevated firing positions where they can almost lazily pour fire into the troops. The Higgins worked well because the ramp was taller than the sides of the boat, which gave a measure of protection.
Also smoke was deployed on the Normandy coast. That's part of the reason the drivers dropped their charges off in the wrong places.
I have yet to see a significant 'what if?' alternative to the D-Day landings that doesn't fall apart under scrutiny.
And thus the "Great Big Book of Broad Strokes" was made.
If the US felt it was useful to put smoke launchers on them it would have done so. It armed some of them with rockets for a final 'fuck you' at the defenses, for all the limited good that did.
The best thing Thompson can do for D-Day is keep silent so the men who spent the time and effort figuring out how to do it don't get nudged off track, or lend a shipgirl for the first wave. Even if Omaha fails initially the US will simply divert reinforcements to Utah, which was a cakewalk, and simply take out Omaha's defences from the rear.
Pretty much, outside of some really specific things he would know about, aka shipgirls, abyssals, and stuff he needed to know to run a destroyer, the best he could probably do is give a general list of events and personal experiences/daily life and let the analyst's do their jobs. Odds are there will be plenty of stuff there that they would find important that wouldnt register for him at all. How much of an effect that will have on the war is anyones guess though i imagine with the butterflies already happening it would be minimal.
- Location
- USA
In all honesty, this is the best thing that could be done to make D Day easier. Drop an outdated battleship girl like Utah on each beach and let her blast apart pillboxes at point blank.
- Location
- Canada
Literally any other arrangement would be even more terrible.
Side ramps? Congratulations a beach, where possible, has the heaviest anti-infantry firepower shooting down the beach roughly parallel to the shore, not firing out to sea, because the high tide mark usually has a rise in the ground that presents cover for enemy infantry. In fact often low-calibre bunkers have their backs to the sea because if you're using light weapons, the enemy is already ashore.
Rear ramps? 1) The boat has to back off the beach which means enough water under the stern and 2) getting that wet is bad for your infantry.
Well more LVTs would make it ashore, but they would be more fragile to light anti-tank guns... it's probably a wash.
The problem with this sort of claim is that there are a mountain of things that we use every day today that an earlier era would be interested to know are possible or viable in the long term. It's the same reason I can't take ASOIAF SI fics without notable tech advancement seriously.
Sure, 2020s to 1940s is a shorter gap, but there are still many, MANY things we take for granted today that weren't taken for granted in the 1940s. For example, wifi is something Thompson would be able to describe the function of. With the modern political agenda promoting knowledge of female inventors in modern history, he MAY know the basic concept was invented by actress Hedy Lamarr initially as an idea for a torpedo guidance data transmission system in WWII. Knowing who made it and what the tech concept was initially filed under is pretty expedient if the military is interested in faster communications tech.
Even if he doesn't, he's likely able to at least describe roughly how he used wifi, which narrows down the search parameters considerably when the guys are looking through the patents roster and incoming patent applications for a tech that could lead to such communications tech.
...Hold on a second...
@Skywalker_T-65 is Thompson vaccinated for smallpox? Because that's still extant in the wild in the 1940s...
I should point out that the Salk vaccine for polio was invented in 1955, and many of the other major vaccines haven't been invented in the 1940s yet.
Thankfully, due to narrative rules, I have yet to see an SI or ISOT character outside a major published work drop dead or be severely afflicted by diseases, unless it's for emphasis (Instant Sunrise/Crunch Buttsteak (on AH) and their California ISOT where the anti-vaxxers experience IIRC smallpox).
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PAGDTenno
Verified Warmind. Probably on fire.
- Location
- South Carolina
There are so many things we know are possible and don't know how to actually build. For instance, we know commercial fusion reactors are possible, and have since, oh, somewhere around 1970 at the absolute latest.
We still haven't worked out how to actually build them.
Several people have tried to hammer through your head that knowing something is possible is so far removed from actually knowing how to build it, and that every technology that can be realistically developed during wartime and the immediate postwar decades has actually been conceptualized, Guardian.
And yet, you keep hammering away at this idea that Thompson is somehow going to bring in a technological revolution, bringing the 1950-1960 tech level all the way up to the early 2000s, despite direct WoG that it won't happen, and long, detailed, comprehensive explanations of why it won't happen.
We still haven't worked out how to actually build them.
Several people have tried to hammer through your head that knowing something is possible is so far removed from actually knowing how to build it, and that every technology that can be realistically developed during wartime and the immediate postwar decades has actually been conceptualized, Guardian.
And yet, you keep hammering away at this idea that Thompson is somehow going to bring in a technological revolution, bringing the 1950-1960 tech level all the way up to the early 2000s, despite direct WoG that it won't happen, and long, detailed, comprehensive explanations of why it won't happen.
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Archduke
Don't Take Geology Puns For Granite
- Location
- Texas
The biggest changes I can see happening at Normandy is the application of shipgirls removed from their hulls. This is something reasonable in the story, and quite possible. It doesn't have to just be USN girls as well, you can grab any British shipgirls. This, of course, depends on D-Day happening still, and what the author wants to do.
Wobulator
Within 1 AU of you!
- Location
- Mars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
IT DOES NOT MATTER.
It isn't going in the story. We have direct word of god that it will not.
So please, for the love of god, drop it.
- Location
- Canada
Whatever brought him here even slotted him into his own family tree with provided backstory and credentials, getting him an official Admiralship too. I would presume that either it also did any required vaccinations as per the times and backstory/history would suggest when history was warped to include him, or that there was actually a Thompson inserted earlier into the timeline naturally going about his life before future!Thompson took over mentally and that the body got vaccinated as was appropriate.
Or whatever explanation Skywalker wants to go with. At any rate, you are correct in that it would certainly be an anti-climactic end to the story if he dropped dead of smallpox. Even if he survived it I don't think that would be a very fun or relevant arc where he's just sick the whole time. Even if just for narrative reasons it is unlikely he would get smallpox, so whatever reason behind vaccinations or not doesn't matter, or we can just ignore the whole thing.
There are a few things he could provide assistance with regarding D-Day. Things like, "Hey, we need to be extra-careful of our navigation to the beaches, because in my timeline one landing force landed over a mile off to the side of where it should, letting the defenses chop them to ribbons." And "No offense to the Army Air Force, but no matter how much pre-bombardment they do, they won't be able to take out the pillboxes--they're just too tough for any bomb; in my timeline, even the ones that did score direct hits just bounced off. You need to bring some battleships and have them get in close to blow hell out of those things, or else they'll rain hell on the troops as they land." Those sorts of things that would have been covered in Annapolis's history courses, which can give a bit more guidance to the planners. And if you think the planners wouldn't ask him how things turned out in his timeline, so they could refine their plans accordingly, well...
Smallpox vaccinations stopped for children born somewhere between 1970 (when an ex of mine who had the vaccination scar was born) and 1976 (when I was born).
Ironically, this is a place where Thompson might be able to get some technological progress sped up, by pointing out that vaccination is possible and effective, somehow involves the use of either live or dead versions of the virus (which is pretty common knowledge, and would get the doctors' gears turning on how that would work), and that in his timeline, it's eliminated smallpox and polio, and made measles, mumps, and rubella (the "MMR" vaccine), tetanus, and (in domestic animals) rabies and distemper very uncommon. He might even be able to speed the discovery of penicillin, if he remembers, "Hey, we came up with a drug that treats bacteria infections when someone noticed something about a kind of mold--I can't remember what kind, but it made it so that a lot of VD became something easily treated, including syphilis." Wouldn't be a major improvement, but it would say, "Hey, there's something out there that works, if you look in this general area."
CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
Thompson's military. They're all vaccinated for Smallpox because it remains a biological warfare risk. Now, will you please stop being ridiculous?
floppy_seal99
D-O-G-A-R-S DOGARS!
- Location
- snooping as usual
All I'm seeing is people trying to derail the thread with "HURR IMMA MAKE SPESHUL TECH" fantasies and trying to railroad OP into doing so.
This is an absolutely BASED evisceration of thread derailers.
Then Utah gets fucked over royally when they land in the right place rather than at the one spot factors convened to mostly destroy German defenses. This stuff cuts both ways, and a lot of the navigation issues at Omaha can't realistically be avoided. Stuff like currents, chaos, obstacles, and sunken vessels will turn 100 out of 100 Omaha beaches into a chaotic mess like it was historically.
That's because most bombs were dropped inland and wildly missed to avoid hitting the landing forces. Additionally, your incorrect. Bombing the bunkers has the same problem all WW2 bombing does, unless your targeting something unarmored you need a direct hit (or virtually direct) to do damage. There was damage done to the defences by air attack, just not too much because of how hard it is to hit them.
This shows your ignorance of history, because there were two battleships present at Omaha, Arkansas and Texas. Texas famously partially flooded itself to keep providing fire support after the troops pushed off the beaches and beyond its intended gun elevation. The battleships cant get close without risking mines/running aground, and in any case several destroyers all but beached themselves providing fire support.
Operation Overlord was one of the most well planned endeavours in human history. Is there some parts that could have been done better? Sure. Anything someone from the future can be reasonably expected to know without having in depth knowledge of it? Not really.
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PAGDTenno
Verified Warmind. Probably on fire.
- Location
- South Carolina
An addendum: A battleship is a fool to fight a fortification. The fortification has all of the advatages: Durability, aim (shooting from land rather than a pitching ship does wonders for your accuracy), and target size (a fortification is a much smaller target than a battleship). Sometimes the guns are even bigger.
The exceptions are rare and highly situational, usually involving an overwhelming force advantage, air support (in which case, 999 times in a thousand it's better to hang back and let the carriers pound the forts to rubble), or fortifications in such bad condition they're just about ready to fall apart on their own.
The exceptions are rare and highly situational, usually involving an overwhelming force advantage, air support (in which case, 999 times in a thousand it's better to hang back and let the carriers pound the forts to rubble), or fortifications in such bad condition they're just about ready to fall apart on their own.
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
Emphasis on a battleship. The nice thing about battleships against fortifications is that they can bring buddies.
Also, I should point out that the problem with just letting the carriers bomb a fort into rubble is that battleship guns are much, much better at punching through concrete than any bombs carrier planes of the era could carry. For instance, the Iowa-class's 16" guns were and still are better concrete-piercers than the BLU-109 - a 2000-lb guided weapon dating from 1985 far and away superior in accuracy, penetration, and overall destructive power than a WWII-era 2000-lb bomb, the heaviest a TBF Avenger can carry.
Wobulator
Within 1 AU of you!
- Location
- Mars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Except, you know, the ground-based AA.
And the subs.
And the land-based aircraft.
PAGDTenno
Verified Warmind. Probably on fire.
- Location
- South Carolina
The Fast Carrier Task Force managed it quite well. And the second two are also a problem for battleships.
- Location
- USA
I would point out that, depending on how the author interprets the rules that govern shipgirls, there is nothing stopping Utah the shipgirl from marching up the beach all guns blazing. All the problems related to bombarding the atlantic wall from the sea dont apply to 6 feet of angry Standard Battleship standing firmly on the sands of Normandy.
As a bonus, the defenders heavy guns have to make a direct hit on a human sized target that is shooting at them in order to even HOPE to do damage.
As a bonus, the defenders heavy guns have to make a direct hit on a human sized target that is shooting at them in order to even HOPE to do damage.
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- Location
- Canada
I'm going to assume the Germans can shorten Zufallszahlengenerator to ZZG.
So instead of "RNGesus be with us!" the typical Wehrmacht battle cry when dealing with Shipgirls is "ZZGesus Mit Uns!"...
As a side note, does anyone think someone in the British Merchant Marine on the Arctic Convoys might have painted on the side of a lend-lease Valentine "Got mittens" as a snipe back at the common German inscription "Gott mitt uns"? Because I can see Gangut expressing her cosmopolitan background (i.e. familiarity with the Czarist era when it was likely she knew many languages) and trolling the Germans by having "Got mittens" stenciled somewhere when fighting the Germans in winter.
Archduke
Don't Take Geology Puns For Granite
- Location
- Texas
A shipgirl supporting a Naval landing is something to be feared. Hell, you could even use older Armoured Cruisers in that rule, or Predreadnaughts.