Doomsday

A little quickie I made after seen a cool post on Shipbucket of an alternate history Japanese bomber aircraft and the framing was something I thought of early in the brainstorming process; seen here are a pair of IJN G12M Raizan bombers of 10rd Hikotai, 701st Kokutai flying over the Imphal valley in the early morning hours of January 6, 1967 to strike Bengali ground targets both within the valley and in the mountains to the west.

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In the years following the end of the Second World War, there was great tension between the western powers of the Entente Cordiale and Quadruple Alliance (reforged as the Warschauischesbund in 1947) and the Co-Prosperity Sphere led by Japan; the Honolulu Truce left a sour taste in the former while in the latter, the militarists clamored for another go in spite of the ongoing war with China. The Western powers kept up their support of Chiang Kai-Shek's government, with the strongest come from the newly-unified Russian Federation, which bordered China just to the north. The Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, Champa, Malay, Sarawak, Lanfang, Palau, the Marianas, Hong Kong, Macau, Tsingtao, Korea, and Manchukuo all chafed under Japanese dominion and thousands immigrated to the Indian countries, Iran, Muscat, Ethiopia, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Oregon, Alyeska, California, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Adelie, Neuschwabenland, Faibemia, Orcadas, and Tanganyika, with the peak occurring between 1948 and 1953; many moved into the cities to occupy housing left behind by locals who moved into the suburbs though some did form their own farming communities, especially in Hawaii and South America. This only further cemented the West's sentiment against Japan and froze relations between the two spheres as the Japanese government sought to undermine the former's control over Africa and Antarctica.

There had been scattered shooting incidents between the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the West, mostly naval and aerial, throughout the 1950s and 1960s; there even was a brief undeclared war between Japan and Russia, fought in Mongolia and the far northern reaches of Manchuria, in 1959. But things remained mostly quiet as the Entente and WB squabble with each other and the Sphere maintained its grueling war on China until the fall of 1967, that was. On October 19, a Californian Imperial Navy ship, the ICSS Mojave, was captured by an IJN submarine chaser (aided by several helicopters and three missile boats) off the southeast Formosa coast and the crew was taken prisoner (with one crewsar killed); the Californian government responded by sending an entire naval squadron to the South China Sea, spearheaded by the carriers Dominga I, Fulston, and Escamilla. They were suddenly attacked by a combination of bomber aircraft, submarines, and missile boats on the 25th, all of which were repelled with heavy losses (three destroyers and one cruiser sunk and two of the carriers, three cruisers, and seven destroyers damaged), forcing the Squadron to retreat to Honolulu to redock. The following day, Imperial Japanese ships were spotted circling the Baranov and Gilbert Archipelagos and Royal Burmese Air Force aircraft started bombing Bengali garrisons along the border, with the Co-Prosperity Sphere officially declaring war on select members of both the Entente and the WB. Taken by surprise, both alliances scrambled to assemble their militaries, mobilizing and calling up reserves as they sought to get their feet on the ground fighting the Sphere. A winded six year long war would ensue, one that would truly test weapons and tactics devised over the past decade and shape more to come in the following years.

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The G12M was Japan's first supersonic bomber and was still in the process of equipping various Hikotai when the GPW began, with only two being equipped with Raizans by the year's end. It was meant to replace the older G11N that was feared to be much more vulnerable to SAMs and fighters while also being able to be launched from carriers; indeed, in February and March 1967, select Raizans flew sorties against targets in Bengal and Maratha from the carriers Ryujo and Taiho in the Indian Sea. The Raizan was also intended for low-level bombing, which it performed admirably at first, until it faced off against stiff walls of Triple-A and SAMs against which it suffered heavily. Specific Raizans were converted to hunting radar stations and SAM sites and destroying them, often in tangent with A14M Bofu fighters, on "Lightning" missions against enemy targets, both in India and in China. Even after the war's end and the Empire being relegated to a mere Entente member-state, development on the G12M continued and there were even several nations interested in procuring the aircraft, most notably the Imperial Mughal Air Force who were impressed by the Raizan's performance during the war. Ethiopia flew Raizans against the Somalis in 1977-78 and 1997 while several early-model G14Ms were purchased by the Central African Empire and utilized during the Mbomou War, flown by Japanese and Chinese crews who were familiar with the aircraft. The G14M was supplanted by the G15M in 1995 and the last examples in Japanese service were retired in 2008, though both Ethiopia and the Mughal Empire continuously-update their Raizan fleets.