Operation Blackbeard

In the fictional universe of Harry Turtledove's American Empire novels, Operation Blackbeard was a surprise attack ordered by Jake Featherston on June 21, 1941. The operation was named after Blackbeard, a notorious English pirate in the Caribbean Sea during the early 18th century, and it is analogous to Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.

Events preceding the attack

Ever since the Great War, the Confederacy had longed for the return of Kentucky, Sequoyah, Houston, and pieces of Sonora, Arkansas, and Virginia. The United States had been dealing with rising violence from the populations of these lands, who wanted to rejoin their country. The Confederate States had also petitioned and requested the return of these lands since 1933. Eventually, United States President Al Smith agreed to plebiscites to be held in Western Texas, Kentucky, and Sequoyah, under the conditions that Confederate President Jake Featherston would not ask for more territory and would not remilitarize any returned territory. Kentucky and Western Texas voted to rejoin the CSA, while Sequoyah chose to remain in the USA. Soon Featherston remilitarized Kentucky and demanded the return of all the captured territories (even Sequoyah which had voted to remain with the US, due to the high, illegal influx of white US citizens into the Native American state.) Smith refused and decided the time to stop trying to appease Featherston had come.

Tensions grew when German Kaiser Wilhelm II died. His son, Crown Prince Wilhelm and new Kaiser, refused to return captured territory to France. In response, France, Britain, and the CSA declared war on Germany. Featherston decided the time had come to take the war to North America.

Operation Blackbeard

The operation was ordered on June 21 and began at 3:30 am, June 22, 1941. Confederate bombers hit Philadelphia and troops crossed into Ohio. Featherston did not even bother to declare war. The United States was unable to stop the bombings or the advance into Ohio.

Featherston's plan was to split the US from Kentucky to Lake Erie and thus prevent raw materials from the West to reach the factories in the East. The US would be forced to surrender and return the captured Confederate territories. After one more war, the US would never be a threat again.

On paper one might believe that even-sized air forces and superior Northern numbers on the ground would have ensured Southern defeat. In fact, the CSA won several early advantages that ensured its success. Confederate Hound Dog fighters managed to establish partial air superiority, more due to catching several US fighters on the ground during Day One than any intrinsic advantage, and used it to create chaos on refugee-clogged roads. Mule dive bombers (equivalents of the German Stuka from our world) knocked out US artillery and terrorized infantry, earning them the nickname 'Asskickers'. CS barrels (tanks) under George Patton smashed holes in the Northern lines, swiftly exploited by truck-borne infantry armed with submachine guns and automatic rifles (as opposed to US soldiers using Great War-vintage Springfield bolt action weapons). Finally and most importantly, Confederate soldiers of all ages had picked up combat experience fighting in the Mexican and Spanish Civil Wars, several interwar conflicts in South America, and black rebellions after Featherston's presidency began.

As it was, US barrels under Colonel Irving Morrell managed to slow the Confederates down at times, while Brigadier General Abner Dowling mostly managed to keep the US defenders of Ohio from being outflanked or routed. Patton himself said as much, claiming that his men could have advanced further and faster if not for his opposite numbers. What the CSA "did" accomplish was extraordinary enough. In two months, the Gray Army encircled a large pocket of US troops in Columbus, Ohio and succeeded in cutting the United States in half at Sandusky, OH, on Lake Erie. With the raw materials of the west split from the factories of the east, and Great Lakes shipping and Canadian railroads nowhere near enough to make up for Ohio's loss, the United States were placed in a perilous position.

With the US facing a revolt in Utah, being defeated in Bermuda and the Bahamas, and fighting a stalemate in the Pacific against Japan, Featherston was sure Smith would give in the Confederate demands, especially since the US would not give up any territory not taken from the CSA. Featherston was shocked when Smith refused to surrender. This was a major setback for the Confederacy as it had planned for a short war, not a long drawn out one in which the US would have time to use its massive population against the CSA. During the fall of 1941 and the winter of 1942, Featherston and his War Department made plans for a "knockout punch" (Operation Coalscuttle) against the USA to come in the spring of that year. They were further convinced for the need of this operation when US General Daniel MacArthur attacked in northern Virginia, threatening Richmond.