Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
Hi Cryhavoc101, yes all as was historically, just here to provide context of whats happening in Britain's part of the war
Malaya What If
- Thread starter Fatboy Coxy
- Start date
The second provided graphic was not created by me. Check its origin-link...it's from a mainstream Australian meteorological group. And note the circulation-arrows from the Coral Sea area back to the west, toward Darwin and the south coast of PNG...except right now, because of the blocked low pressure zone, some of that normal air mass-flow and westward movement of water and thermal energy is diverting southward along Australia's east coast. During "normal" times, that low would be moving across Australia, its effect on the westward-from-Coral-Sea air/water/energy flow would be transitory at most, and the discussed effects on weather in the Owen Stanleys would be as normal.
Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
The last post is a fine example of just how complex WWII was, especially for the Anglo Americans, they more than any others fought a war that was 24/7. And took place on multiple fronts in various countries with different terrains and climates, in the air on land and at sea, with their two capital cities separated by time and distance. Plus unlike today were we have highly sophisticated communications systems, which means that the leadership and the functionaries around them can communicate face to face in a secure environment. In the nineteen forties FDR and WSC, had only a very limited short wave radio link, that despite the best efforts of the technical services, wasn’t totally secure. Other than that the overwhelming majority of communications between London and Washington had to be by cable, which was limited to the number of lines available. Again unlike today, if you wanted to send plans, maps or diagrams between the two countries, you couldn’t do so electronically, they had to be physically transferred, either by air or sea, with all the risks involved. And without the information processing capabilities of modern computers, the best means available was the very primitive Hollerith machines, or card indexes, all of which involved very limited memory and large human input. And once either leader was away from his office, and especially while on the move, his ability to communicate was either nil or very restricted. Trying to keep up with the constantly changing stream of information coming in from around the world, was a hurculean task and involved hundreds of people all doing very boring tasks at all hours of the day and night. Even the simplest tasks such as keeping track of what was where and how much was available, involved hundreds of personal. Whereas today once the information has been entered into the system, it can easily be retrieved at the other end of the world, with a few simple instructions to a computer, and most international leaders can be in constant secure contact with their respective central offices.
RR.
RR.
I'd actually be a *bit* surprised if either the Americans or the Brits had troops in all 24 time zones (yes, I know you have the half hours, and overlap at the date line), mostly because the Americans rarely had troops in the Indian Ocean and and the Brits tended to leave the Central Pacific to the Americans. Combined, Otoh, definitely.
The British had troops around the world literally, example was troops in Canada and India, they were from one time zone in Newfoundland to British Columbia. Combined with the US that had troops stationed in different parts of India, airfields in Africa, Islands in the Pacific, Iceland, Ascension Island. Both countries individually had troops in each time zone if you include the ships in transit between ports and the different airfields built to facilitate the transfer of aircraft around the world.
Great work!
The changes WRT overall numbers are certainly a welcome improvement, even if below what would be deemed neccessery by the people who are on the scene and in command. However, for all the numbers, the greatest change is in regard to the Morale of the Commonwealth troops where decisive leadership of Lord Gort is to be thanked for is a factor that should constantly be taken into account. For all the faults and deficiencies that ITTL plague and are likely to continue to crop up, the CW forces of ITTL are a very different beast then IOTL, and that goes beyond just extra numbers of materiel and men.
The changes WRT overall numbers are certainly a welcome improvement, even if below what would be deemed neccessery by the people who are on the scene and in command. However, for all the numbers, the greatest change is in regard to the Morale of the Commonwealth troops where decisive leadership of Lord Gort is to be thanked for is a factor that should constantly be taken into account. For all the faults and deficiencies that ITTL plague and are likely to continue to crop up, the CW forces of ITTL are a very different beast then IOTL, and that goes beyond just extra numbers of materiel and men.
Agree with the second paragraph assuming good weather, and obviously the third paragraph is true, especially when bad weather overwhelms the pilot and/or equipment.
A US C-47 crash site with three crew remains was recovered in Malaysia just recently, and that was from 1945 when the war was nearly over and enemy action wasn't a factor. And, USA is willing to spend money to go get its government-service peoples' bodies back. According to the news coverage of that recovery, USA still has about fifty aircrew missing in Malaysia that it's never found, 75 years after WWII...all from operational crashes due to some combination of weather, equipment problems and possibly pilot error, in a locale with mostly logistics and operational-communications air traffic, not combat aircraft. And USA in the latter years of WWII was known to bring its own nav-aids such as radio beacons to regions where it began flying logistics traffic, so while those aircraft had nothing like modern location capabilities, certainly they were better able to monitor their position than an early-WWII fighter pilot with basically nothing but his eyes, some paper maps, a compass and his watch.
Aircraft are at risk anytime they fly over territory where there's no place to safely land, or survivably crash-land, in the event of equipment trouble. Certainly that was true of much of the Malayan back country during early to mid WWII.
While the weather in Malaya on average is less bad than in PNG, it's still the tropics, so atmospheric energy often is relatively high.
Malaysia's monsoon seasons in average years are November to March in the northeast, and May to September in the southwest. Average monthly rainfall across the country is eight inches in June and July, and fourteen inches in November and December, so it rains very often and thunderstorms are frequent. During the inter-monsoon months, steady rain is uncommon but afternoon thunderstorms occur most days.
Completely clear days are rare; completely clouded-over conditions other than in the monsoon or inter-seasonal rainstorms also are rare, with the norm being partial cloudiness.
There's a substantial average airflow over the country beginning several hundred feet above ground, from the east across the country, of 10 to as much as 30 knots, during the November to March period, slower at night and faster during the hotter afternoons, and a lesser average airflow of 5 to 15 knots from the west during the May to September period. Large-area-mass airflows across mountain ranges are of great significance to air operations because the sharp topography, which pilots may not be able to see due to clouds/rain-fog or discern due to the endless green foliage, greatly affects the airflow up to about twice the local elevation change and results in frequent unexpected turbulence and up/downdrafts.
Because this is the tropics with considerable solar heating whenever it's not fully cloudy, onshore breezes of 5 to 15 knots at the surface are common most afternoons, and offshore breezes of 2 to 10 knots at night.
On an annual average basis, the northeast part of peninsular Malaya is several degrees cooler and somewhat less humid than the west or south. The northeast, especially during the monsoon, also is cloudier.
An annual average of five Pacific typhoons impact Malaya, generally from the direction of the Philippines. A typical typhoon affects Malaya's weather conditions for 2 or 3 days. Generally during the 1930s-40s, flying during the eye-arrival day of typhoons was considered to be impossible or at least extremely dangerous.
Most of the above is summarized from https://www.met.gov.my/en/pendidikan/iklim-malaysia/, the site of the Malaysian Meteorological Department.
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Remember USS Robin/ HMS Victorious, serving in the Central and SW Pacific, All the American chain of logistics personnel supporting CBI , all the Canadians shipping supplies out og the Canadian West Coast ports to Hawaii and West
What would make anyone think Lord Gort would be so inspiring to the command in Malaya? His leadership of the BEF gave no reason to think so. Against the opinions of his subordinates such as Alan Brooke he supported the Dyle Plan which set the BEF up for disaster. His best decision was to order the early retreat to Dunkirk. The performance of the BEF wasn't very inspiring, with the Germans rating it fighting qualities below the Dutch and Belgians but above the French. Gort was never given another field command because he'd lost the confidence of Churchill and the rest of the government. He mostly served in political positions for the rest of the war.
USA operated airbases in Brazil, west Africa, east Africa, southern and northern Persia, west India and east India solely for logistics and transfer of aircraft to USSR and south Asia. USA operated many radio navigational-beacon stations in Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, because individual stations could not have much range without being located near the tops of mountains, and there was no way to provide electricity and conduct maintenance of mountain-top equipment in those pre-solar-energy, pre-practical-wind-generator days. USA also operated a complex of air bases in southwestern China for the first part of the B-29 campaign against Japan. USA operated (sometimes in conjunction with the Brits) air bases along the eastern South American coast, the western and eastern African coasts, southern Arabia and Persia, western India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), plus Bermuda, the Canaries, Diego Garcia, Christmas and probably other islands for long range aircraft anti-submarine and anti-surface-raider patrols.