Re: Blood and Iron

The Imperial Japanese Navy had set its sight on the Bismarck Sea, baited by a small flotilla consisting of a single German Cruiser, as well as a flank of three destroyers escorting it.

These ships were smaller, leaner and faster than their Japanese counterparts, which were primarily Hyūga-class battleships and Kongō-class battlecruisers.

Shots rang throughout the chase, but most missed their targets horrifically. Meanwhile, the Japanese Admiral in charge of the fleet continued to bark his orders at the sailors beneath his command.

"Do you not have eyes? They're getting away! Aim, you sons of foreign whores!"

The Japanese sailors, used to the abuse within their command structure yet fanatically loyal, tried their best to obey.

But launching an attack on the vertical profile of agile German cruisers was easier said than done. Especially when these ships darted between islands with seemingly preternatural awareness.

What the Admiral failed to realize was that this was not a rout.

It was a trap.

As the Japanese fleet rounded a narrow strait between two small islands, they crossed a line into German kill-zone doctrine—a doctrine born from the lessons of the Great War, refined through a decade of technological supremacy.

On both sides of the strait, the jungle-covered hills revealed their true purpose: fortified artillery nests. Coastal guns, lined up with chilling precision, adjusted in unison. The targeting solutions had already been calculated.

Germany no longer relied on dumb range tables or human estimators.

Thanks to Bruno's decades-long investment in fire-control innovation, each artillery position was networked into a regional command node via encrypted radio signals.

These nodes ran on the Z-Rechner series—vacuum tube fire-control computers based on Konrad Zuse's early architecture, accelerated by Bruno's wartime funding.

These machines—Z3-F for field batteries, Z3-N for naval coordination—handled real-time calculations that considered radar input, atmospheric drag, velocity, wind, ship trajectory, and synchronized firing solutions across batteries.

As the lead Japanese battlecruiser crossed into the firing arc, a submerged mine magnetically triggered beneath its bow. A blinding eruption of water and steel followed.

The Admiral barely had time to issue a reversal order when the radar pinged dozens of new signals—German U-boats rising from deeper waters in wolfpack formation. The strait, it turned out, had no escape.

From the skies above, Do 217 maritime bombers swept in low, dodging flak and laying another minefield in the Japanese rear to cut off retreat.

Meanwhile, inland-mounted siege cannons fired with such accuracy it was as if the very hills themselves sought vengeance.

This was no accident.

This was the doctrine of Bruno von Zehntner.

He had abolished the battleship as obsolete. Invested instead in networked kill-zones, agile cruisers, and digitally assisted artillery. While Japan built monuments of steel, Bruno built weapons of intelligence.

The Japanese Admiral watched helplessly as another ship burst apart in flame, and finally—he understood.

They were never chasing the Germans.

They had been invited to die.

---

It had been a fortnight since Japan had initiated a war against the German Reich by sinking one of its destroyers on patrol in the Bismarck Sea.

What started as a war to expand and consolidate their control over the South Pacific turned into a bloodbath so horrific it was starting to seem like the end of the Empire of Japan altogether.

In the South Pacific, Japan had already lost the entirety of the Fleet they sent to invade the region, trapped in a decisive maneuver, that single-handedly obliterated them.

Even now, the Empire of Japan's strategic high command was scrambling for answers about how this was remotely possible.

Then there was the infantry division they had sent to gain a staging point in Buka, and the Air Wings supporting them, all of them gone, down to the last man.

This was not an overwhelming defeat, it was a slaughter of mythic proportions.

The Empire of Japan had more than enough blood and steel to keep sending wave after wave of men until they repaid the debt in full.

Or they would have had Russia not declared war on them in favor of their German allies immediately after the conflict began.

Stretched in on two fronts, the immediate concern was to reinforce Pyongyang, currently occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army. Trying its best to hold out against overwhelming force coming from the north.

The Russians intended to avenge their losses at Port Arthur, and Mukden a quarter of a century prior, ironically enough exasperated by Bruno's own influence at the time, against those they held responsible.

Battle lines held in Northern Korea for now… But ammunition was running low, and armor was already scrapped. Aircraft? Downed before the siege even begun.

An Imperial Japanese lieutenant fired his submachine gun at a rushing tide of Russian Soldiers, clad in their own domestic camouflage pattern similar to the Soviet TTsMKK from the second world war of Bruno's past life, poked their heads over some rubble, and fired their Stg-25 rifles.

This was the finalized production variant of the assault rifle Germany and Russia's engineers had built in this life, blending the best parts of the Hk-33 with the Stg-44. While integrating an AKM style side rail and optics mount.

It had proven highly efficient, and the 4x fixed optic with an etched BDC gave these Russian Imperial Guard Infantry all the advantage as they aimed down and fired short controlled bursts at the Japanese soldiers, ducking beneath cover as the Japanese retaliated with their obsolete Semi-Automatic Rifles chambered in 6.5 Arisaka.

The Japanese lieutenant, having run dry of ammo, and having no fresh magazines on hand, unsheathed his Kyū guntō and ordered a full scale charge.

"Tennoheika Banzai!"

In a desperate attempt, having run out of ammo to continue the fight without ammunition, the Japanese defenders rushed the Russian soldiers, hiding behind armored vehicles and rubble alike. Not realizing their mistake as they did so.

Whether it was automatic gunfire from assault rifles, magazine fed squad automatic weapons, belt fed general purpose and heavy machine guns. Or airburst high explosive munitions fired from the auto cannons of wheeled APCs and tracked IFVs alike.

The assault was an utter massacre of epic proportions, and would go down in history as a worse decision than Pickett's Charge, or perhaps even the Charge of the Light Brigade.

And in doing so, sustained such heavy casualties Pyongyang would fall into Russian hands by the dawn of the next day.