The People's Collective

The stock Market crash shattered the faith many people had in a free market economy.  Nowhere was this more evident than in the upper Great Plains.  Largely agrarian and Christian, these people did not have much to begin with.  After the crash, all they had was their faith in God and the Populist preachings of the great orator, William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan wanted desperately to keep the union together.  When he realized this was impossible, he reluctantly accepted the Populist Party’s nomination to lead them in establishing a new nation.  The Populists were aggressive and their message popular in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas.  In most areas they were unopposed in local elections.  Using the Soviet Russian model for organizing the government to reflect party structure, they quickly brought order and stability to the new nation.

The Collective has a substantial aircraft industry centered around Wichita.  Unfortunately, engineers for Beech, Cessna, and Piper had little or no combat aircraft design experience.  Many of those who did, fled to Texas, Dixie, or the ISA when Premier Bryan announced his intent to nationalize the industry.  Added to this is the fact that virtually no aircraft engines are produced anywhere in the Collective, and you have the formula for a woefully inadequate industrial base to compete militarily with Texas, Dixie, or the ISA.

Poorly equipped and ill-prepared for war, the Collective moved quickly to reach a compromise with the Lakota Indians of the western Dakotas, when they asserted their right to self determination.

Sensing weakness in their western neighbor, the ISA moved against Des Moines.  Premier Bryan skillfully appealed to the collective during an address over the state-run radio network.  He told the Collective that they had to stop the aggression, otherwise Des Moines would become another Chicago, full of gangsters, hootch, and painted ladies.  He went on to explain that, one by one, each city in the Collective would fall to the same fate, much as a line of dominos tumbles one into the next.

When the air raid siren sounded the next day, over sixty Collective aircraft took to the skies over Des Moines.  The ISA pilots easily downed many Collective aircraft.  Most of the Collective aircraft were little more than wood and paper crop dusters whose pilots had flown all night to reach Des Moines to defend their new nation.  Their only armament were hand held rifles, pistols, and Molotov cocktails.

In the end, the Collective lost over 40 aircraft, but not a single ISA pilot escaped Collective airspace.  Premier Bryan finally understood comrade Lenin’s statement that there is a degree of quality in quantity.  This became the blueprint for the Collective Air Guards.  Inexpensive aircraft and plenty of pilots are the order of the day.  They will dispatch their enemies like the honey bees dispatch an intruding bear.  They salvage every piece of downed equipment.  State of the art enemy aircraft are repaired and sent to elite units.  The power and strength of the Collective Air Guards grows every day.



Statistics Aircraft Companies

BeechCraft Airworks - Wichita
Cessna Airworks - Wichita
Piper Aero Airworks - Wichita

Air Militia

Dusters
    "the Avatars" 14th Sqdn
    "Wizards of Oz" 24th Sqdn
    "Husker Harriers" 19th Sqdn
    "Cyclones" 1st Sqdn

Privateers

Communist Freedom League

Pirate Groups

Jayhawks



Back to Map Room