raharris1973
Well-known member
Warning- this story/timeline contains a cliffhanger that will not be answered until a follow-on post.
August 9th, 1945: 1202 (11:02 AM Nagasaki time): The atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, explodes at an altitude of 1,650 feet over the city. Three shock waves are felt by both planes of the US mission package over Nagasaki airspace, the bomber, Bockscar, and escort, Great Artiste.
On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 75,000 people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60,000 people suffered severe injuries.
1206: Bockscar and The Great Artiste, now low on fuel, head toward Okinawa. Real possibility exists for a forced landing in the water. Attempt to raise air/sea rescue units fails.
1230 (1130 Tokyo time): The Supreme War Council receives news of the Nagasaki bombing and continues to debate.
During this interim, the third US aircraft in the mission, The Big Stink arrives over Nagasaki for photographic reconnaissance of the mushroom cloud and destruction, and also turns toward Okinawa.
By 1230, all three US aircraft are clear of the Japanese Home Islands of Kyushu and the 50 nautical mile limit of the Home Islands.
At this moment, by ASB action, all of the Japanese Home Islands (Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Honshu, and minor nearby islands) are surrounded by a stasis field extending to above the 30,000 foot ceiling and down below the islands and its surrounding ocean floor out to 50 nautical miles. For the inhabitants of Japan, for anyone in this field, this is completely imperceptible.
For any sensing/observing creature outside looking or moving in, Japan is vanished. What bird, fish, fisherman, or pilot would sea on approachg 50nm of Japan is a perfect reflective surface. If they make kinetic contact with surface, it is perfectly rigid, and they bounce off it or crash on it.
Despite this supernatural anomaly, the landings of the Nagasaki mission aircraft a unaffected.
1300: Okinawa is in sight for the Bockscar. Attempts to notify airfield of emergency landing fail. There are other planes landing at the time on the only active runway. Finally, Sweeney orders flares to be fired. and Bockscar heads in. They land at 150 MPH instead of the normal 120 MPH. The number 2 engine runs out of fuel as they are on the runway.
1320: Both The Great Artiste and Big Stink land at Okinawa. The Bockscar crew reports completion of its mission which is radio'ed to Washington, DC. With the over 12 hour time difference, President Truman reports the success of the Nagasaki atomic bomb mission and the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan, at a press conference on afternoon, early evening of August 9th 1945, just as OTL.
In the preceding hours, reports at cryptanalysis stations throughout the Far East began to note the total silence of all radio traffic on the Japanese home islands. Isolated reports were coming in of impossible visual anomalies, and were held at lower levels. Japanese radio men on the Asian continent and Pacific islands also began to note the strange radio silence from the home islands.
None of this was cohering into a logical, plausible analysis approved at any high ranking level by the time of the Presidential press conference at which he told the world that the United States had performed the second atomic bomb attack in world history, But there was uneasiness by the time the President spoke among military intelligence brass and some of the highest cleared scientists had even been consulted, since top officials responsible for the atomic mission knew the bomb used today was a much more sophisticated and powerful design than the one used on Hiroshima a few days earlier.
Within the next 24-48 hours, as in OTL, President Truman orders that no further atomic bombs be launched without his express order. This Nagasaki bomb, originally meant for the city of Kokura, went too much like military clockwork gone out of gear on its own.
Also within these few days, as follow-up air and naval raids were scheduled and launched and photoreconnaissance was taken, the disappearance of Japan and replacement with the reflective visual and physical anomaly was confirmed.
Within a week, the disappearance/replacement of Japan is a fact that cannot be cannot be contained from the civilian world.
Meanwhile, the Pacific War continues apace, with the Soviet campaign proceeding in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The war in China is ongoing with US-backed Chinese Nationalist forces pushing against the Japanese towards Guangzhou and Wuhan, and Chinese Nationalist forces and Communist forces struggling with Japanese forces for position.
British Imperial forces are advancing through Thailand and into Malaya toward Singapore while the Australians are expanding their hold over Brunei, Borneo, and New Guinea.
The Japanese forces scattered throughout Asia in the weeks and months ahead, as we count out the rest of 1945, have no one to order them to surrender. They are enraged, but also shocked and saddened by the news of what happened to Japan, and assume it is an effect of an American super-weapon.
The "sorrow-rage" of the Japanese makes them stubborn, violent and unpredictable opponents wherever they are. But it does not make them terribly militarily effective in meaningful sense over time. There are many wasteful "suicides by banzai charge". Not all reactions are the same. Some do earnest attacks per IJA doctrine, some do banzai charges, others do drunken banzai charges, some of the other Japanese troops in some places essentially go bandit, engaging in looting and rape and drunkeness and evasion. In Southeast Asia, specifically Indochina and Indonesia, a segment of the Japanese forces aligns with local nationalist independence fighters as a supportive foreign legion to find a new purpose.
How do the Allied powers conduct the Pacific War going forward?
From one perspective, with Japan apparently destroyed, the United States could decide it has nothing else to do except recover its POWs from Japanese occupied territories, mainly on the Asian mainland. If they haven't been massacred yet.
On the other hand, the US and Soviet Union already agreed at Potsdam to divide occupation duties in Korea at the 38th parallel, and without Japan, MacArthur is not saving up his troops for an invasion of Japan. In fact the Soviet commander in the Far East is asking for a US invasion of southern Korea to tie down Japanese forces opposing them.
The US, reorienting itself to a new, apparently, Japan-less geopolitics, may not want to yield its claimed occupation rights in southern Korea and leave the area to Soviet influence alone. On the other hand, the US government may consider southern Korea strategically worthless without mainland Japan and just tell the Soviets to have fun with it.
The Soviets will also occupy southern Sakhalin island and the Kuril Islands, which were ceded to them at Yalta.
In China, at Yalta, and in the Sino-Soviet Treaty, the Soviets had already been granted concessions over the Manchurian railways and the ports of Dalian and Lushun (Port Arthur), and some additional economic concessions in Manchuria. The Soviets are likely to march and drive at least to the Great Wall of China to claim control of these concessions and crush the Japanese forces in their path.
According to OTL's 17 August 1945 General Order #1, after Japan's historic surrender, Japan's forces in Taiwan, northern Indochina, and China south of the Great Wall were directed to surrender only to the Chinese Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Since there is no surrender by Tokyo, this order does not go into effect, but we might consider it an indication of the US's, and Nationalist China's geopolitical agenda and ambition. It may be indicative they felt that the Soviet advance should halt no further south than the Great Wall of China, and Chinese forces, possibly aided by the US, should claim northern and eastern and southeastern China from the Japanese.
In this ATL, it would have to be done by combat, with US forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines planning hasty landings on the China coast. The question would be how far north within China US forces would dare to land? The Tanggu-Tiajin area, on the road to Beijing? Shandong province? The mouth of the Yellow river in its new course south of Shandong in Jiangsu province? Shanghai, and the Yangzi river delta just south of that river? Or only in the far south, in the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong near Hong Kong?
And these landings would have to be combat landings, in the teeth of fierce Japanese resistance by large armies. Granted the Japanese forces would still have poor long term prospects, with areas between their occupied cities and rail lines and garrisons riddled with Communist and Nationalist guerrilla zones, and many "Japanese" held positions manned by less than reliable Chinese "puppet" troops.
American willingness and ability to land further north, compared with the Soviet rate of advance southward, with determine over the months ahead where the Soviet and US/ChiNat forces meet in mainland China - the Great Wall, the 38th parallel, the Yellow River, the Yangzi river, or south of Shanghai.
Which do you think Soviet forces in China would meet their halt line?
In the late summer and autumn months of 1945, British Empire and Australian forces would busy themselves with the full reclamation of British imperial territories like Malaya, Borneo, Brunei, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and if they can reach it, Hong Kong. Secondarily, they may make a start toward recovery of the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, but would keep their commitments to those territories limited while focusing on their own, and await the raising of forces from recently liberated France and the Netherlands to take care of the bulk of reclamation operations in their respective colonies. This interim will allow local Indonesian and Viet Minh nationalists to become quite well armed with Japanese weapons and volunteers.
From a broader, world perspective, there's a million conspiracy theories and speculations about what happened to Japan. Since Truman publicly announced the Nagasaki bombing, it cannot be disavowed, and a majority of speculations attribute the disappearance/destruction of Japan directly to the atomic bomb because of the near coincident timing.
Neutral opinion is highly suspicious and critical of atomic weapons and concerned that science has messed with uncontrollable forces likely to irreparably harm the planet.
The whole world, including the Soviet Union, is scared to death of US atomic weapons, but with the weapons unforeseen possibly continental scale effects, the United States is scared of them too, unwilling for now to test or use new weapons.
How else would you expect the world to be shaping up geopolitically, culturally, morally, military, economically, politically, as we get toward November and December 1945?
August 9th, 1945: 1202 (11:02 AM Nagasaki time): The atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, explodes at an altitude of 1,650 feet over the city. Three shock waves are felt by both planes of the US mission package over Nagasaki airspace, the bomber, Bockscar, and escort, Great Artiste.
On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 75,000 people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60,000 people suffered severe injuries.
1206: Bockscar and The Great Artiste, now low on fuel, head toward Okinawa. Real possibility exists for a forced landing in the water. Attempt to raise air/sea rescue units fails.
1230 (1130 Tokyo time): The Supreme War Council receives news of the Nagasaki bombing and continues to debate.
During this interim, the third US aircraft in the mission, The Big Stink arrives over Nagasaki for photographic reconnaissance of the mushroom cloud and destruction, and also turns toward Okinawa.
By 1230, all three US aircraft are clear of the Japanese Home Islands of Kyushu and the 50 nautical mile limit of the Home Islands.
At this moment, by ASB action, all of the Japanese Home Islands (Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Honshu, and minor nearby islands) are surrounded by a stasis field extending to above the 30,000 foot ceiling and down below the islands and its surrounding ocean floor out to 50 nautical miles. For the inhabitants of Japan, for anyone in this field, this is completely imperceptible.
For any sensing/observing creature outside looking or moving in, Japan is vanished. What bird, fish, fisherman, or pilot would sea on approachg 50nm of Japan is a perfect reflective surface. If they make kinetic contact with surface, it is perfectly rigid, and they bounce off it or crash on it.
Despite this supernatural anomaly, the landings of the Nagasaki mission aircraft a unaffected.
1300: Okinawa is in sight for the Bockscar. Attempts to notify airfield of emergency landing fail. There are other planes landing at the time on the only active runway. Finally, Sweeney orders flares to be fired. and Bockscar heads in. They land at 150 MPH instead of the normal 120 MPH. The number 2 engine runs out of fuel as they are on the runway.
1320: Both The Great Artiste and Big Stink land at Okinawa. The Bockscar crew reports completion of its mission which is radio'ed to Washington, DC. With the over 12 hour time difference, President Truman reports the success of the Nagasaki atomic bomb mission and the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan, at a press conference on afternoon, early evening of August 9th 1945, just as OTL.
In the preceding hours, reports at cryptanalysis stations throughout the Far East began to note the total silence of all radio traffic on the Japanese home islands. Isolated reports were coming in of impossible visual anomalies, and were held at lower levels. Japanese radio men on the Asian continent and Pacific islands also began to note the strange radio silence from the home islands.
None of this was cohering into a logical, plausible analysis approved at any high ranking level by the time of the Presidential press conference at which he told the world that the United States had performed the second atomic bomb attack in world history, But there was uneasiness by the time the President spoke among military intelligence brass and some of the highest cleared scientists had even been consulted, since top officials responsible for the atomic mission knew the bomb used today was a much more sophisticated and powerful design than the one used on Hiroshima a few days earlier.
Within the next 24-48 hours, as in OTL, President Truman orders that no further atomic bombs be launched without his express order. This Nagasaki bomb, originally meant for the city of Kokura, went too much like military clockwork gone out of gear on its own.
Also within these few days, as follow-up air and naval raids were scheduled and launched and photoreconnaissance was taken, the disappearance of Japan and replacement with the reflective visual and physical anomaly was confirmed.
Within a week, the disappearance/replacement of Japan is a fact that cannot be cannot be contained from the civilian world.
Meanwhile, the Pacific War continues apace, with the Soviet campaign proceeding in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The war in China is ongoing with US-backed Chinese Nationalist forces pushing against the Japanese towards Guangzhou and Wuhan, and Chinese Nationalist forces and Communist forces struggling with Japanese forces for position.
British Imperial forces are advancing through Thailand and into Malaya toward Singapore while the Australians are expanding their hold over Brunei, Borneo, and New Guinea.
The Japanese forces scattered throughout Asia in the weeks and months ahead, as we count out the rest of 1945, have no one to order them to surrender. They are enraged, but also shocked and saddened by the news of what happened to Japan, and assume it is an effect of an American super-weapon.
The "sorrow-rage" of the Japanese makes them stubborn, violent and unpredictable opponents wherever they are. But it does not make them terribly militarily effective in meaningful sense over time. There are many wasteful "suicides by banzai charge". Not all reactions are the same. Some do earnest attacks per IJA doctrine, some do banzai charges, others do drunken banzai charges, some of the other Japanese troops in some places essentially go bandit, engaging in looting and rape and drunkeness and evasion. In Southeast Asia, specifically Indochina and Indonesia, a segment of the Japanese forces aligns with local nationalist independence fighters as a supportive foreign legion to find a new purpose.
How do the Allied powers conduct the Pacific War going forward?
From one perspective, with Japan apparently destroyed, the United States could decide it has nothing else to do except recover its POWs from Japanese occupied territories, mainly on the Asian mainland. If they haven't been massacred yet.
On the other hand, the US and Soviet Union already agreed at Potsdam to divide occupation duties in Korea at the 38th parallel, and without Japan, MacArthur is not saving up his troops for an invasion of Japan. In fact the Soviet commander in the Far East is asking for a US invasion of southern Korea to tie down Japanese forces opposing them.
The US, reorienting itself to a new, apparently, Japan-less geopolitics, may not want to yield its claimed occupation rights in southern Korea and leave the area to Soviet influence alone. On the other hand, the US government may consider southern Korea strategically worthless without mainland Japan and just tell the Soviets to have fun with it.
The Soviets will also occupy southern Sakhalin island and the Kuril Islands, which were ceded to them at Yalta.
In China, at Yalta, and in the Sino-Soviet Treaty, the Soviets had already been granted concessions over the Manchurian railways and the ports of Dalian and Lushun (Port Arthur), and some additional economic concessions in Manchuria. The Soviets are likely to march and drive at least to the Great Wall of China to claim control of these concessions and crush the Japanese forces in their path.
According to OTL's 17 August 1945 General Order #1, after Japan's historic surrender, Japan's forces in Taiwan, northern Indochina, and China south of the Great Wall were directed to surrender only to the Chinese Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Since there is no surrender by Tokyo, this order does not go into effect, but we might consider it an indication of the US's, and Nationalist China's geopolitical agenda and ambition. It may be indicative they felt that the Soviet advance should halt no further south than the Great Wall of China, and Chinese forces, possibly aided by the US, should claim northern and eastern and southeastern China from the Japanese.
In this ATL, it would have to be done by combat, with US forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines planning hasty landings on the China coast. The question would be how far north within China US forces would dare to land? The Tanggu-Tiajin area, on the road to Beijing? Shandong province? The mouth of the Yellow river in its new course south of Shandong in Jiangsu province? Shanghai, and the Yangzi river delta just south of that river? Or only in the far south, in the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong near Hong Kong?
And these landings would have to be combat landings, in the teeth of fierce Japanese resistance by large armies. Granted the Japanese forces would still have poor long term prospects, with areas between their occupied cities and rail lines and garrisons riddled with Communist and Nationalist guerrilla zones, and many "Japanese" held positions manned by less than reliable Chinese "puppet" troops.
American willingness and ability to land further north, compared with the Soviet rate of advance southward, with determine over the months ahead where the Soviet and US/ChiNat forces meet in mainland China - the Great Wall, the 38th parallel, the Yellow River, the Yangzi river, or south of Shanghai.
Which do you think Soviet forces in China would meet their halt line?
In the late summer and autumn months of 1945, British Empire and Australian forces would busy themselves with the full reclamation of British imperial territories like Malaya, Borneo, Brunei, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and if they can reach it, Hong Kong. Secondarily, they may make a start toward recovery of the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, but would keep their commitments to those territories limited while focusing on their own, and await the raising of forces from recently liberated France and the Netherlands to take care of the bulk of reclamation operations in their respective colonies. This interim will allow local Indonesian and Viet Minh nationalists to become quite well armed with Japanese weapons and volunteers.
From a broader, world perspective, there's a million conspiracy theories and speculations about what happened to Japan. Since Truman publicly announced the Nagasaki bombing, it cannot be disavowed, and a majority of speculations attribute the disappearance/destruction of Japan directly to the atomic bomb because of the near coincident timing.
Neutral opinion is highly suspicious and critical of atomic weapons and concerned that science has messed with uncontrollable forces likely to irreparably harm the planet.
The whole world, including the Soviet Union, is scared to death of US atomic weapons, but with the weapons unforeseen possibly continental scale effects, the United States is scared of them too, unwilling for now to test or use new weapons.
How else would you expect the world to be shaping up geopolitically, culturally, morally, military, economically, politically, as we get toward November and December 1945?
I could perhaps see China divided roughly north-to-south in this TL, perhaps roughly similar to the Medieval Jin-Song arrangement in China, with the US controlling the former Song territories while the Soviet Union and the Communists control the former Jin territories:
