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Historical context. Nassar sank a bunch of ships at both ends of the Canal in 1956. It took a multi-national force from November of '56 till late April '57 to create the minimal clear channel. Nassar then blockade the canal in 67; that combined with sea mines and anti-tamper devices on junk materials dumped in the canal; all of which blocked the canal from 1967 until 1975. That was 8 years the canal was closed and it took three nations doing mine sweeping, harbor clearance, and UXO removal. . I can't see the canal being cleared after a nuclear strike in anything less than a year by only one nation in the midst of a global war. Sorry, but it probably wouldn't have been cleared until late into the 2000s if at all by any concentrated effort.
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Hey, Law and Order's a team, man. He finds the bombs, I drive the car. We tried the other way, but it didn't work. |
#2
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And the Panama Canal we know was open at least as late as the Virginia Task Force in Satellite Down being reassigned to the East Coast - that is where they were headed when they ran into the Soviet force of destroyers. Per Satellite Down On 3 March 1999, the USS Virginia received orders to takethe remains of the task force and return to the Atlantic with alldue speed. Task Force 115 cut south along the coast, hopingto make it safely through the Panama Canal system as a short-cut to the Atlantic. It was a voyage that the task force was notdestined to make it. Thus the Panama Canal was still open and still functional in March 1999 - long after the nuclear phase of the war was over. |
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You think the Soviets launched a Spetsnaz raid ore nuked it.
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| Alternate Timelines.com | |
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Oh I bet the Soviets did attacks on the canal but it wasnt nuked - at least not at the time of Satellite Down - i.e. they wouldnt have sent the Virginia to go thru the Canal if it was nuked and out of commission
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If thy did attack they failed ore did not do much damage, how much does it need to blow one of the gates up and also would there still be some US military presences at the Canal at the time of Virginia passing true.
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| Alternate Timelines.com | |
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I don't want to put a wet blanket on this but I don't buy that the Soviets would nuke the Suez Canal. They relied on the Indian Ocean too much to send supplies to Vladivostok and other points in the Far East. To put some perspective on this, in 1958 they were the 12th largest user of the Suez. When the canal closed in 1967 they were the 7th largest user. When the canal reopened in 1977/8 they were the 5th largest user. By 1979 they were the 4th largest. 90% of the Soviet cargo going thru the Suez was for national trade, thats right national trade not international. Between 1972 and 1975 only 10% of Soviet container traffic from western terminals to eastern terminals went via the Trans Siberian land bridge. Also in the 1980s the three ports getting the most expansion in the Ussr were Vladivostok, Petropavlosk, and Nakhoda. Sorry I dont buy the Soviets cutting off a vital transportation link for themselves. They had just as much to lose by the Suez being out of commission as we do.
"We think that the freedom of navigation in that region (Indian Ocean) is of vital importance not only to the United States, and we even think that it is not of that importance to the United States, whose coast is on the opposite side of the globe - as it is for the Asian and African countries as well as for the Soviet Union. -Leonid Zamyatin, Chairman of the International Information Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union May 1981 interview with Bratislava Pravda We have taken the line of . . . tackling the problems of raw material, fuel and energy, food and transport. The U.S.S.R. has strongly advocated a reduction of arms in the Indian Ocean over the last ten years and has championed the 'zone of peace' proposal of ASEAN - Leonid Brezhnev General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1977 60th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution speech. Anyways got my 10 cents in. |
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I seem to recall from that module someone did on the internet about Central America (Damn, I thought I downloaded that one -- if anyone has it, let me know), that the Panama Canal is non functional in the T2K2/2.2 timeline due to extensive sabotage and ships stuck in the locks after the sabotage.
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War is the absence of reason. But then, life often demands unreasonable responses. - Lucian Soulban, Warhammer 40000 series, Necromunda Book 6, Fleshworks Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com |
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With respect to the French clearing the blockage of the canal by 2000, because it doesn't have locks or anything the French could have just used a nuclear demolition charge and literally cleared the southern blockage. Such a thing doesn't need to be perfect to work well enough to let tankers transit the canal. Transiting ships just get a NAVTEX warning to button up in the area and some basic decontamination procedures.
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How big is the file? Can you email it to me? Note though -- My ISP will only accept a 10MB attachment.
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War is the absence of reason. But then, life often demands unreasonable responses. - Lucian Soulban, Warhammer 40000 series, Necromunda Book 6, Fleshworks Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com |
#12
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It’s been posted here before - let me find it
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Huh. Seems like a major strategic oversight to me. |
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there were lots of strategic mistakes in the timeline - i.e. things like not nuking York PA or Hagerstown MD - i.e. the Bradley, M109, M88, M8 Buford production line+Caterpillar+Harley in York and the A-10 production line and Mack Trucks engine plant in Hagerstown MD - in V1 they might have restarted the A-10 line and that engine plant would definitely be of huge use to the military
and the Soviets hit both refineries at the southern exit/entrance of the Canal with 250kt air bursts and did a real job on the shipping in the area - thus they didnt need to hit the Canal itself - they plugged the exit/entrance Last edited by Olefin; 05-04-2021 at 07:13 PM. |
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module Last edited by Raellus; 05-04-2021 at 09:32 PM. |
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Yes the strikes on the Suez refineries are canon per Marc Miller for V2.2 since they are part of the Africa timeline that has them in it.
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It would suit the Soviets far more than the west to block it during the war, but wold they go all out and nuke it? Not immediately I don't think.
I always imagined a 2-tier blockage from the Warpact side. If the Middle East states are still more friendly to the Soviets than the Americans then they would still be trying to keep same onside. The chance to get tens of thousands of allied troops behind the RDF alone would be worth avoiding too much infrastructure damage. If they assume they will win the war, or at least not lose, the Soviets will want the canal back in service asap. Either way, setting off nukes would be a bad move. However, if the war starts to go badly for the Soviets, or the west wins the ME states over, then the gloves come off and it goes to the second tier and in a fit of pique the canal gets obliterated. Blocking it via sabotage, strategic strikes etc would be easier than clearing it when there is a global war ongoing. As an aside, in my TL I relocated most of the RDF and allied forces. It was as they said when the RDF was formed, 'too much to lose, too little to win'. I felt that to deploy those forces, probably well out on a limb, was too risky and they would be better used in Europe or Korea. Keeping them supplied would have been far too much effort given the state of the rest of the world, especially if any of the states around there were actively pro-Soviet. With a war still ongoing in China, and in Europe, I'm not sure the Soviets would have been able to commit enough troops to bull through Iran anyway, again not without a lot of active support from Iraq and others. |
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Slightly more low tech option…GRU recruit Islamic groups (probably using some sort of false flag approach) to fire RPG’s at vessels in transit from shore. I don’t think either of those are particularly good alternatives though. A nuke seems a lot simpler and more likely to achieve success though. I just wonder if scuttling vessels in transit might be an option if the Soviets didn’t want to do permanent / long term damage for whatever reason, ‘only’ close it for six months. And yeah, the fact that the Panama Canal is still functional seems like an oversight on the part of the author of that module. Of course that also sets a precedent for another option for Suez in V1, namely that it is also still open and navigable.
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Author of the unofficial and strictly non canon Alternative Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom |
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Layered Approach
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@Spartan: Cold Water sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. I remember playing an old DOS version of Silent Service on a friends IBM in high school. Good times. Quote:
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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048 https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module |
#20
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Indeed it is/was. Hopefully they learnt their lesson.
_________________________________________ Alexandra https://www.cargolution.com/en/logistics/ |
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