Saturday 23 August 2014

War Plan Red

In doing some research into the US War Plan Orange this week, I stumbled across some other interesting plans developed in the aftermath of WW1, mostly to exercise War Planning and Strategic staffs learning, but also useful as the basis for contingencies.

Of striking interest to me was the US War Plan Red, which was to fight a war against England, and potentially Japan also as per the provisions of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.  War Plan Red had a number of subset plans, notably War Plan Scarlet against Australian, New Zealand and Commonwealth interests in the Pacific, and War Plan Crimson against Canada.  Interestingly, War Plan Red had the US assume a strategically defensive posture against what they saw would be a mostly Atlantic affair and prepare for a landing of British Troops on the east coast of the Continental USA.  At the same time, the planner saw that a invasion of British interests in Canada and the Caribbean would be the best way to reduce British interests on the continent.

All very interesting, particularly when one then lays on top of that the Canadian Defence Scheme Number 1 which was for a counter invasion of the US to stall for time and allow British support to cross the Atlantic.  The Canadian plan saw flying columns seizing territory along the Pacific and Atlantic US coasts.  An audacious plan indeed but one that was seen as sufficiently desperate it might just succeed if the dice rolled correctly.

And so were laid the plans of what might have been, but more interesting is to consider them being executed in the 1890s...with a few VSF elements thrown in...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
http://tarpley.net/online-books/against-oligarchy/britains-pacific-war-against-the-united-states-in-the-age-of-the-anglo-american-special-relationship/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1
http://www.glasnost.de/hist/usa/1935invasion.html

5 comments:

Jim Jackaman said...

Interesting stuff indeed!

DLI said...

The BBC ran a show on the subject a few years ago. Funny now you think of it after WWII.

Peter said...

Interesting indeed! However my favourite war plans have got to be the various late nineteenth century German schemes for an invasion of the American eastern seaboard. Knew how to plot a good line on a map, did the Prussians.

commissarmoody said...

I believe I also saw the BBC doc on it. Very interesting. And i think a VSF 1890s treatment would be a great era to game it. Rough riders and Buffalo soldiers vs the Mounties and polar bear cavalry ;)

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An exploration of debauchery, vice and other reasons to be a man!