Re: Blood and Iron

The German Navy had slapped the pride of the British Empire in the face so hard it felt like there was no choice but to double, and triple down on their efforts to cross the English Channel and send troops to aid their allies.

Currently, the War was not going in the allies' favor. The French had repeatedly tried to attack German border fortifications across the Rhine, and were now theorizing about marching through Belgium to try to bypass them altogether.

Not remotely aware that the Germans had already planned for this potential scheme. Meanwhile, Italy and Austro-Hungary were going back and forth in the Alps, exchanging blows in small skirmishes here and there meant to test each other's strength before either fully committed to a full-scale assault.

As for the Balkan Campaign, it had turned into a complete and total shit show in the first month of the war. Belgrade was a Ghost Town, forever haunted by the one hundred thousand citizens who were buried in a mass grave outside its boundaries.

While the Serbian Provisional government rallied as many men as they could to send at the nearly two million invaders who had massacred their capital and everyone in it.

Bruno had dug in at Belgrade, choosing to wait for his allies to catch up with them so they could make a joint push into what remained of Serbian territory and wipe out their newly reformed army in a series of swift and brutal assaults.

As for the Ottoman Empire, they were busy combatting the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Armies in the Caucasus, while at the same time trying to send as many troops to aid Serbia by funneling them through Montenegro.

The Ottomans in particular were struck hard, with 500,000 Russians and Austro-Hungarians already marching through the Caucasus. Against their 150,000 active soldiers that remained after the Balkan Wars.

To put it simply, they were mobilizing as many men as they could as quickly as they could to fight against this sudden threat.

Due to Bruno's influence, the Imperial Powers were the most ready for the war when it began. With each of the three European Empires having a million men to mobilize at its start, all of which were equipped with their most advanced weapons available for deployment.

Within a fortnight of the conflict breaking out, another five million men between the three nations had been fully mobilized for the war effort.

Considering the massive industrial investments Bruno had made across their three Empires, it was no understatement to assert that they could effectively transport these five million men and their equipment from the Caucasus to the Rhineland in record speeds.

All the while, supplies were constantly being transported between the three Empires and to their frontlines. Whether it was oil from Russia or German Kamerun. The preparations made a decade in advance saw them make it to the forces who needed it.

Of course, none of this really mattered to the British Empire, who were so thoroughly outraged by their loss in the North Sea that they felt the need to avenge it as soon as possible. Reports made it clear that German Aircraft carrying torpedoes had played a large role in their shocking victory.

Few realized how many torpedoes had been launched by subs beneath the sea, and those in charge dismissed reports about the overwhelming advantage German warships had in terms of accuracy. Because of this, it was assumed that Germany's effective use of aerial assets won the battle in their favor.

I mean, until now, the presumed use of aircraft in warfare had been for reconnaissance, and maybe using them to drop grenades on an enemy position. But dedicated bombers, ground attack craft, fighter planes, and torpedo aircraft?

The Germans had certainly managed to innovate well beyond anyone's wildest dreams. And creating such a variety of advanced aircraft was simply beyond their means to rapidly develop a counter to as the use of aircraft in warfare was a relatively new phenomena, one which only the Germans truly understood the significance of.

And that was only because they had a man from the future to educate them on the matter. Because of this, the British Royal Arsenals were scrambling for some kind of anti-aircraft weaponry of which none existed outside of the borders of the German Reich, or at least currently.

Currently, the British War Department, or at least its leadership, was throwing a tizzy fit over how they would immediately counter this monumental threat to their naval supremacy on the world stage, completely lacking in the critical thinking to comprehend that they had already lost such a thing at the Battle of the North Sea which just occurred three days prior.

Instead, these old men whose understanding of warfare was woefully obsolete argued over the most efficient use of their resources.

"By the time we manage to develop and produce such weaponry to deter German seaplanes, they would have already won the war! It will take a year at the very least to even implement such designs. We have no real basis for how to actively combat aircraft! What are we supposed to do? Strap a pom pom onto some kind of crude anti-aircraft mount and hope for the best?"

Though this statement was made ad absurdum, this was more or less exactly what the British had done in Bruno's past life as a means of rudimentary anti-aircraft weaponry. The QF 1-pounder "Pom Pom" was the world's first autocannon, created in the 1880s initially for the purpose of combating infantry.

It was essentially a Maxim water-cooled machine gun that had been scaled up to accept a 37mm high-explosive cartridge. During the early days of the Great War in Bruno's past life, it was used as an emergency measure to combat aircraft. And it did the job well enough considering what it was designed to shoot at the time.

But by the end of the war, it had begun to show its age, and as a result, nations began to scale it up to even larger cartridges. These improved designs had taken them three years to produce and employ into service.

Not to mention they had proven woefully obsolete by the outbreak of the Second World War. As it stood, there was no way of knowing if these decades-old autocannons were remotely capable of combating the advanced German seaplanes.

However, German torpedo bombers were already an active threat to British naval supremacy. Waiting three years for such a solution to manifest itself into existence was simply not an option.

And even though the British bureaucrat suggested this, his peers looked at him as if he had actually come up with a practical solution. One of them voiced this very sentiment, much to the lament of the man who had initially voiced it as a jest.

"Actually, that's not a bad idea. Unless we can come up with a better option, that might just work!"

After a long and thorough debate on the subject, the British Empire immediately planned the approval of development for an anti-aircraft variant of the QF 1-pounder pom-pom, as well as research and development into other forms of AA weaponry to combat this new and very real threat. Continue the journey on m|vl-em,py-r