Final Impact

Infobox Book |
name = Final Impact
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = John Birmingham
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = Australia
language = English
series = Axis of Time
subject =
genre = Alternate history, Science fiction
publisher = Macmillan
release_date = January 2007
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 368 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-345-45716-1
preceded_by = Designated Targets
followed_by =

"Final Impact" is the third volume of John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy.

Plot summary

Picking up two years onwards from the end of "Designated Targets", Final Impact is the last novel in the Axis of Time trilogy. The supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton has been refurbished with more conventional steam catapults which replaced her less reliable fuel air explosive catapults. Her carrier air group is replenished with A-4 Skyhawk jet powered attack aircraft, many of which are flown by 'temps, contemporary pilots. Admiral Kolhammer returns to sea at the head of a new Task Force with the Clinton at its core after two years of administering the Special Administrative Zone-California.

Many characters have died in the intervening time period, from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, by his own hand to Commander Dan Black, one of the main characters of the story who asks for a return to combat and dies during the retakeover of Hawaii, when his plane crashed during take-off from Muroc Airfield, California. D-Day has begun a month early and the Third Reich is crumbling as the Allies invade France. Paul Brasch's (who is now a Major General) cover is blown and is extracted by the British. Hitler has a seizure and suffers permanent brain and muscle damage; with the T4 program in mind and believing it is for the good of the Reich, Himmler suffocates him. The USSR re-enters the war on the Allied side and surges through the Western Front and the Eastern, having used the intervening two years to train huge armies as well as outfit their troops with advanced technology, including AK-47s and MiG-15s. However, before a full scale invasion of the Home Islands of Japan can begin, the Soviets drop an atomic bomb on Litzmannstadt (that is, Łódź, Poland which in reality was colonised by the Nazis in 1939, ethnically-cleansed and re-named.)

The Axis Powers react as much as they can: Himmler authorizes the use of anthrax in an unsynthesized form which will hang around for months halting a Russian advance. The USSR takes two more blows when a massive kamikaze strike cripples their Pacific Fleet, and the A-bomb building facility in Kamchatka is destroyed - both hits scored by the Japanese.

The U.S., having secretly completed the Manhattan Project a few months before and built up - with a large amount of help by thousands of people from the future Multi-National force - a large enough stockpile of bombs to take on Germany, Japan and the USSR at the same time, if necessary, obliterate Berlin using three nuclear weapons. In response to the U.S. blast on Berlin and the Japanese one in Kamchatka, the Soviets nuke Tokyo, killing the Emperor. The Axis Powers give in to unconditional surrender but the damage has been done. The USSR has pushed into Asia securing gains in Persia, Afghanistan, Korea, Indochina and is probably going to share occupation of Japan with U.S. and Australia; in Europe the USSR has gone around Germany and has taken all of Eastern Europe including Greece, plus Northern Italy and chunks of Vichy France and Austria. With the war over, most of the main characters move into the private sector and start anew.

Historical characters featured

British Commonwealth

*Vera Atkins, British agent
*Thomas Blamey, Commander-in-Chief, Australian Army; Commander-in-Chief Allied Land Forces, South-West Pacific Area
*Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister
*John Curtin, Australian Prime Minister
*Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, British ambassador to the US
*Bernard Montgomery, General, commander of British forces in France
*Philip Mountbatten, Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Navy
*Kim Philby, Soviet agent in hiding; aids Skorzeny's commandos.
*Archibald Wavell, General, commander of British defences
*Prince Harry, younger brother of the 21st century British King, a Special Air Service Major, age 38.

Germany

*Walther Bothe, physicist
*Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist
*Kurt Diebner, physicist
*Walter Dornberger, German army rocket scientist
*Hermann Göring, Chief of the Luftwaffe
*Otto Hahn, physicist
*Werner Heisenberg, physicist
*Heinrich Himmler, SS Chief
*Adolf Hitler, Reichschancellor
*Ernst Kaltenbrunner, SS Security Service chief
*Günther von Kluge, Field Marshal
*Karl Albrecht Oberg, SS commander in Paris
*Otto Skorzeny, legendary Waffen-SS commando
*Albert Speer, Head of Armaments
*Franz Stangl, SS Gruppenfuhrer
*Kurt Zeitzler, Army Chief of Staff

Japan

*Hirohito, Emperor of Japan
*Hideyoshi Obata, General on Saipan
*Takijiro Onishi, Admiral of the "tokkōtai" (Kamikaze) squadrons
*Hiroshi Oshima, General and ambassador to Germany
*Asaiki Tamai, Commander of a kamikaze unit
*Isoroku Yamamoto, Grand Admiral of the Combined Fleet
*Seki Yukio, Kamikaze pilot

USA

*Henry Arnold, General, United States Army. Commanding officer in charge of the U.S. Army Air Force.
*Dwight D. Eisenhower, General, United States Army. Supreme Allied Commander of the European Theater of Operations.
*Leslie Groves, General, United States Army. Director of the Manhattan Project.
*W. Averell Harriman, ambassador to the USSR
*John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Captain, United States Navy. Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Armanno, a Halsey-class guided missile destroyer.
*Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief, United States Navy. Chief of Naval Operations.
*Douglas MacArthur, General, United States Army. Commander of Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations.
*George Marshall, General, United States Army. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
*Joseph McCarthy, 'future' United States Senator (killed in combat)
*Marilyn Monroe, 'future' actress.
*George S. Patton, General, commander of US forces in France
*Elvis Presley, 'future' rock star.
*Jackie Robinson, 'future' baseball player with the U.S. 761st Tank Battalion
*Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States.
*Raymond Spruance, Admiral, United States Navy. Commander of the Combined Pacific Task Force.
*Henry Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War.

USSR

*Lavrenty Beria, Head of NKVD
*Ivan Konev, General, Red Army
*Igor Kurchatov, physicist
*Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, People's Commissar of the Navy
*Georgy Malenkov, CPSU member
*Lev Mekhlis, political chief of the Red Army
*Vyacheslav Molotov, Foreign Minister
*Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the CPSU
*Semyon Timoshenko, Defense Minister
*Ivan Stepanovich Yumashev, Admiral, Sea of Okhotsk
*Georgy Zhukov, General, Red Army