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 sche. anwhile, Italy and Austro-Hungary were going back and forth in the Alps, exchanging blows in small skirmishes here and there ant 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 governnt rallied as many n 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 reford 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 sa ti 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 n 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 n to mobilize at its start, all of which were equipped with their most advanced weapons available for deploynt.
Within a fortnight of the conflict breaking out, another five million n between the three nations had been fully mobilized for the war effort.
Considering the massive industrial investnts Bruno had made across their three Empires, it was no understatent to assert that they could effectively transport these five million n and their equipnt 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 Karun. 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 assud that Germany's effective use of aerial assets won the battle in their favor.
I an, until now, the presud 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 ans to rapidly develop a counter to as the use of aircraft in warfare was a relatively new phenona, 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 so 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 Departnt, or at least its leadership, was throwing a tizzy fit over how they would imdiately counter this monuntal 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 n whose understanding of warfare was woefully obsolete argued over the most efficient use of their resources.
"By the ti 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 implent such designs. We have no real basis for how to actively combat aircraft! What are we supposed to do? Strap a pom pom onto so kind of crude anti-aircraft mount and hope for the best?" Though this statent was made ad absurdum, this was more or less exactly what the British had done in Bruno's past life as a ans of rudintary 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 ergency asure to combat aircraft. And it did the job well enough considering what it was designed to shoot at the ti.
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 ntion 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 co up with a practical solution. One of them voiced this very sentint, much to the lant of the man who had initially voiced it as a jest.
"Actually, that's not a bad idea. Unless we can co up with a better option, that might just work!"
After a long and thorough debate on the subject, the British Empire imdiately planned the approval of developnt for an anti-aircraft variant of the QF 1-pounder pom-pom, as well as research and developnt into other forms of AA weaponry to combat this new and very
real threat.
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