Instead of preventing the defeat of the Axis powers by the United States, the Japanese firebomb attacks on America’s west coast virtually ensured it. Since Japan was an ally of the Third Reich, and since the attacks had been mounted partly as an attempt to force the U.S. military to divert resources away from its struggle to crush the Nazis, the unanimous consensus among Roosevelt’s cabinet was that the Japanese Empire needed to be crushed at the earliest possible moment and efforts to eject the Nazis from continental Europe had to continue without letup. Accordingly, within 36 hours of the firebomb raids the White House authorized U.S. Army Air Corps bomber groups stationed in the Philippines to begin attacking Japanese military facilities on the island of Formosa(present-day Taiwan) and in French Indochina(present-
day Vietnam).

The bomber groups were escorted on their missions by the P-38 Lightning, a twin-engine fighter with formidable firepower-- and a reputation for being able to match any Axis fighter in a dogfight. The first American air combat kill in Europe in the Second World War had been recorded by a P-38 stationed in Iceland when a German spy plane tried to photograph American military outposts on the island. Now the Japanese were going to get a first-hand glimpse of just how lethal the Lightning could be when going head-to-head with another plane.

Zero pilots used to making short work of opposing fighters (with the notable exception of the P-40s flown by the legendary Flying Tigers volunteer squadron) got a rude shock the first time they fought against P-38s. In a dogfight spanning almost ninety minutes, two dozen Japanese aircraft were shot down and eleven others seriously damaged; at least two of those eleven were so badly crippled they later had to be scrapped. When a full report on the engagement was submitted to the Imperial Navy carrier aviation division officers in Tokyo, the men who read it were utterly flabbergasted at its description of the new U.S. fighter’s lethal effectiveness in combat. But the news of the P-38s’ success was hardly a surprise to the Luftwaffe attaché at the German embassy in Tokyo: since the American declaration of war on Germany in November of 1940, one out of every four German fighters shot down in combat had fallen to Lightnings.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy’s Grumman F4F Wildcat was also establishing a reputation as a fearsome dogfighter. In Fleet Air Arm service the Wildcat had already demonstrated its ability to knock down large German aircraft, and by the time the United States declared war on Japan it would also prove to be quite capable of holding its own against the Messerschmitt Bf109. The Wildcat, known to the British as the Martlet, would prove to be a rather sharp thorn in the side of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carrier forces as the war went on. And new generations of fighter aircraft were on the drawing boards of companies like Grumman, Lockheed, and North American to give the Allied powers a further edge over the Axis in the air; these fighters would be powered by new, more powerful engines capable of pushing them at speeds beyond even the wildest dreams of combat aviation design engineers up to that time. One North American design in particular would set a new standard for tactical fighters in the latter stages of the Second World War....

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Just as the computer revolution has made possible today’s generation of remote-controlled drone aircraft, the introduction of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine would act as the catalyst for the birth of what may have been the most effective American tactical fighter of the Second World War: the P-51 Mustang. While it would take nearly eight months after the West Coast firebomb raids for the Mustang to even have a test flight, let alone make it into actual combat service, when it did get into the fight it would prove to be a game-changer.

Interestingly enough, the Mustang was originally conceived in response to a request by the British government to North American for a high-speed, low-cost tactical fighter that could be quickly and easily mass-produced to serve roles air support roles that at the time couldn’t necessarily be fulfilled by existing RAF aircraft. When the United States officially entered the war in November of 1940, the Army Air Corps also began taking a serious interest in the design. One particularly intriguing idea that sprang to mind among U.S. Army Air Corps strategists in relation to the Mustang was the notion of having outfitted with external fuel tanks for greater flight range so that it could perform the task of escorting strategic bombers on flights into Germany and German-occupied Europe.

As formidable as the Mustang had been to begin with, it was the invention of the Merlin in late 1942 that would make the Mustang into a truly world-beating tactical fighter. The Merlin, a creation of the venerable Rolls-Royce company, boosted the P-51’s top speed by over 50 to 75 miles an hour and made the American plane the most formidable adversary Luftwaffe pilots had faced since the Spitfire. No less of an authority on combat aviation than Hermann Goering is alleged to have told American interrogators after the war ended that he knew the jig
was up the first time a Mustang flew over Berlin.

Some of Goering’s fellow Luftwaffe officers were of the opinion the jig had been up much sooner than that. The American entry into the
war in Europe in November of 1940 had vastly complicated the Wehrmacht general staff’s strategic planning and put further strain on military
resources already greatly burdened by the ongoing struggle with Great Britain and the looming threat of war with Germany’s great ideological
nemesis the Soviet Union. With the U.S. Army Air Corps now an active partner of the RAF in the bombing campaign against German military and industrial targets in occupied Europe, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the Luftwaffe to muster enough tactical fighters for the
defense of the Reich’s home soil-- to say nothing of the deleterious effort Allied bombing was having on the Kriegsmarine’s operations in
the North Atlantic.

For Japanese military aviators, their new bête noire was the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair, a gull-winged carrier plane that had been introduced into active service just before the P-51 was re-engined with the Merlin. The Corsair not only had better speed than most of the fighters in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s arsenal, it could also boast a greater weapons capability, having six .50 caliber machine guns and being able to carry either 2000 lbs. of bombs or two racks of 5” rockets depending on what the situation demanded. The first
time a Japanese air combat patrol encountered the Corsair in action, it was a massacre-- according to official postwar Japan Maritime Self-
Defense Force estimates, at least three-quarters of the planes in that patrol were lost within minutes of the initial contact between the Japanese fighters and the Corsairs.

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In January of 1943 the U.S. Navy’s submarine service struck a devastating blow against Germany in the fight for control of the North Atlantic. Acting on information supplied by the Norwegian resistance and OSS undercover agents working at German naval bases in Norway, a task force of six Balao-class submarines set an ambush for the massive battleship Tirpitz. Their objective: to sink Tirpitz or at the very least cripple her to the point where she would have to be scuttled by her own crew. Two aircraft carriers were on standby as a reserve force
in case the submarines weren’t able to finish the job.

It was just after 1:32 AM Central European Time on January 18th, 1943 when the lead submarine in the task force sighted Tirpitz on her periscope and flashed the news to the rest of the group. Just minutes later Tirpitz’s crew felt the first of multiple explosions rocking the mighty battlewagon’s quarterdeck. Her captain radioed for assistance from other German warships in the area, but it was already too late for him and his crew; by 2:14 AM, less than 45 minutes after the first volley of torpedoes had been launched, Tirpitz was listing sharply to port and smoke could be seen pouring from her starboard bow. At 2:41 AM, having been advised by his engineers that there was no possibility of salvaging her, Tirpitz’s captain gave his crew the order to abandon ship. Sixteen minutes later, fire reached the stricken battleship’s boiler room and triggered an explosion that broke her in two; by 3:20 AM Tirpitz’s stern section had disappeared beneath the icy waves.

The sinking of the Tirpitz, coupled with the surrender of Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus’ Sixth Army at Stalingrad ten days later, dealt a horrific blow not only to the morale of Germany’s armed forces but also to Hitler’s sanity. If he hadn’t had cause to regret allowingFall Schlange to proceed before, he certainly had cause now-- even if he refused to admit it to himself....