A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

The place to discuss anything relating to anime or manga.
Post Reply
User avatar
APendragon
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2011 1:08 pm
Location: Avalon

A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

First off, I hope this isn't too terribly out of place, I figured it mostly fit in here in anime/manga.

I'm in the process of setting up a Gundam RP forum that starts midway through the One Year War, and although it will split off from the canon timeline essentially as soon as it starts based on player actions, I want it to at least conform to start with. Does anyone know, or know exactly where I could find, the areas where the Zeon were occupying in both space and on the Earth at around the time that GMs began to see active use on both fronts?

October/November of 0079-ish? I think that's about when 08th MS Team took place if I recall.

Thanks in advance!
Imperial
Posts: 1017
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:52 pm
Location: Athens, GA
Contact:

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

I am by no means the guiding authority on this sort of thing, but here's the breakdown as best I can manage.

Space: Zeon occupies Side 3 (clearly), A Baoa Qu, Solomon, Granada and the "iron triangle" between those three bases. (I believe they also hold a substantial amount of the dark side of the moon, but I'm running off of vague recollections there.) There's also that secret base in Texas colony. They may also presumably hold a lot of sway over just about every other corner of space with how badly the Earth Federation Space Forces suffered during the One Week War and the Battle of Loum. All the Federation really has to is name at this point are Luna II, Von Braun and Side 7.

Earth: This one is a lot trickier, so I'll just throw sources at you, like Mark Simmons' handy dandy UC time line. There's also an article about it over on the Gundam wiki, but I've always been wary of trusting anything the wiki has to say. It's notoriously inaccurate.

Ctrl+F "0079.03.01" for the beginning of the first landing operation and read over the next several entries. Mark gives a great blow-by-blow of the Earth invasion, which should give you a fairly solid idea of where Zeon's line are for a given time.

If you want something a touch more visual but less official, go with this image. Or you could try this one, which is very similar but a touch different in a few areas.
This space for rent
User avatar
APendragon
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2011 1:08 pm
Location: Avalon

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

Oooh, this is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for, thank you very much! I didn't think to look at Deviant Art at all, but those are nice, simple maps. Much appreciated!

Now to scour that timeline!
User avatar
mcred23
Posts: 4200
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 2:12 pm
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
Contact:

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

Imperial wrote:Space: Zeon occupies Side 3 (clearly), A Baoa Qu, Solomon, Granada and the "iron triangle" between those three bases. (I believe they also hold a substantial amount of the dark side of the moon, but I'm running off of vague recollections there.) There's also that secret base in Texas colony. They may also presumably hold a lot of sway over just about every other corner of space with how badly the Earth Federation Space Forces suffered during the One Week War and the Battle of Loum. All the Federation really has to is name at this point are Luna II, Von Braun and Side 7.
I don't think Zeon had a real base at Texas, but were just using it for a testing ground at the end of the war. Also, I don't think they really held anything other than the locations you mentioned (Side 3, the assorted asteroid bases, and presumably the moon, but more on that in a moment), as it's never suggested they bothered to occupy anything else in space.

And on the subject of Von Braun, is there a source that says the Federation held it? I was under the impression that Zeon had control of the entire moon, or at least all the major lunar cities. The Federation has Luna II, where the remains of the EFSF are, and Side 7. I'd assume they also retained control of any survivng colonies in Sides 1, 2, and 4, since we never hear anything about Zeon occupying them, but we never hear anything about them period, so who knows what the heck is going on in those places. :P
I must betray Stalindog!!!

RPG TRINARY: Mash
Die Anti-brutale Kraft: mcred23 (Call me 'red', not 'mcred')
User avatar
Gelgoog Jager
Posts: 1640
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:09 pm

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

mcred23 wrote:I don't think Zeon had a real base at Texas, but were just using it for a testing ground at the end of the war. Also, I don't think they really held anything other than the locations you mentioned (Side 3, the assorted asteroid bases, and presumably the moon, but more on that in a moment), as it's never suggested they bothered to occupy anything else in space.

And on the subject of Von Braun, is there a source that says the Federation held it? I was under the impression that Zeon had control of the entire moon, or at least all the major lunar cities. The Federation has Luna II, where the remains of the EFSF are, and Side 7. I'd assume they also retained control of any survivng colonies in Sides 1, 2, and 4, since we never hear anything about Zeon occupying them, but we never hear anything about them period, so who knows what the heck is going on in those places. :P
Well, the Antartic Treaty considers 3 neutral parties: Side 6, the Jupiter Fleet and the lunar cities.

As for Granada, according to Gundam Century, Zeon had already been conducting some MS exercises on the craters near the city after the Mobile Training Batallion was formed, which would be sometime after May U.C. 0076.

If Granada was allied with Zeon since then, it could explain why there seems to be hardly anything that refers to an invasion of Granada and why it didn't became neutral again after the signing of the Antartic Treaty.

As for the other Sides, we are told that Ramba Ral did capture a colony's facilities almost intact early during the war, so I do was under the impression that Zeon did occupy some colonies and operated their facilities to some extent. Maybe the colonies that were gassed were specifically targeted in order to also secure their facilities intact.

Edit: I forgot to mention, regarding the map of the Earth Invasion, in the first episode of MS Igloo 2 you can "partially" see at the end of the intro a map showing Zeon's advance as a red stain that starts on the decent points and spreads across the territories that they invaded. I do say partially since the map starts burning before the red stain fully extends, but it could still be considered useful.
Imperial
Posts: 1017
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:52 pm
Location: Athens, GA
Contact:

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

mcred23 wrote:I don't think Zeon had a real base at Texas, but were just using it for a testing ground at the end of the war. Also, I don't think they really held anything other than the locations you mentioned (Side 3, the assorted asteroid bases, and presumably the moon, but more on that in a moment), as it's never suggested they bothered to occupy anything else in space.

And on the subject of Von Braun, is there a source that says the Federation held it? I was under the impression that Zeon had control of the entire moon, or at least all the major lunar cities. The Federation has Luna II, where the remains of the EFSF are, and Side 7. I'd assume they also retained control of any survivng colonies in Sides 1, 2, and 4, since we never hear anything about Zeon occupying them, but we never hear anything about them period, so who knows what the heck is going on in those places. :P
I'll take these by paragraph.

On Zeon and the rest of space: I didn't mean to imply they actually set up any bases or the like. Rather, I was trying to convey the idea that with the EFSF so badly battered and holed up in Luna II, they've effectively ceded the rest of the Earth Sphere to Zeon by default. Zeon isn't exactly in a great position after Loum either, but I've always had the impression they came out of that bloodbath with a marginally stronger hand. They had enough leftovers to invade Earth, after all. If either side was in any sort of position to launch an operation outside of its safe zone (Luna II/Solomon, A Baoa Qu, Granada), Zeon seems like a stronger candidate.

On Von Braun: I think I'm guilty of letting the novels bleed into other pockets of my memory. I know the Federation used Von Braun as a staging point for the assault on Granada in the books, and, having thought on this further, I can't seem to find anything that says Von Braun was Federation-held in the animation.
This space for rent
User avatar
Gelgoog Jager
Posts: 1640
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:09 pm

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

Here are a couple of screenshots from MS Igloo showing some of the maps indicating Zeon's advance on Earth:
-Zeon's Global Advance somewhere between March and April
-Territory occupied by Zeon just before the beginning of Operation Odessa

I also checked and compared the map of the MS Igloo 2 intro and it seems it is also rather inaccurate, even compared to the other MS Igloo maps, but I included some screenshots anyway for those interested:

-Frame 1
-Frame 2
-Frame 3

And as a bonus, one of my favorites:

-Zeon's projected Global Advance by August
toysdream
Posts: 3164
Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:24 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA
Contact:

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

The onscreen maps from MS Igloo, presumably, would be more official than the ones we've previously seen in third-party books. If we take them at face value, here's what we can conclude:

The initial landing sites are exactly as described in the MSV books. The first one is in the Aral Sea; the next round take place near northern California and the Carolinas, accompanied by a supplemental drop in the Caspian Sea; the third set appear to be near the Gulf of Thailand, Borneo, and the Gulf of Carpentaria. (As per the MSV books, these are all in or near large bodies of water.) Finally, there's a splashdown in the Red Sea.

Since the MS Igloo 2 episode begins on April 26, U.C. 0079, the map we see bursting into flames is presumably fairly current as of that date. At this point, Zeon has captured the continental United States and the southern fringe of Canada, not to mention Cuba (which seems to be providing a staging point for invading the Yucatan Peninsula). It also controls most of Asia and Australasia (excluding Russia and the northern part of China), with only a handful of holdouts such as Tasmania, New Zealand, the southwestern corner of Australia, and the southern tip of India (i.e. Sri Lanka and Chennai, AKA Madras). Finally, Zeon also controls the area around the Mediterranean - southern Europe (all teh way up to the Alps and Carpathians, etc) and northern Africa.

Whew! That's quite a laundry list. But one of the interesting things in watching the time-lapse sequence is that, after a while, the boundaries of the orange areas (conflict zones) stay fixed even as the red areas (Zeon territory) continue to expand. This suggests that the Federation Forces have fallen back to new defensive lines which they're actually able to hold throughout the month of April.

The map from the original MS Igloo series comes from episode 2, where it appears as part of a propaganda reel broadcast between the prologue (April 29) and the main story (May 9). I don't think this map is actually valid - for one thing, it shows virtually no Zeon presence in Europe - but if it's even partially accurate then it would indicate that the Federation Forces have already managed to launch a substantial pushback from places like Tasmania, southwestern Australia, and the oft-mentioned Madras base in India.

-- Mark
Iron_spear
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:54 pm
Location: A-baoa-qu

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

The only problem with MS Igloo 2's map is that it shows the east of Australia to be firmly in Zeon control, which means that Zeon owns Torrington base and its supply of nuclear weapons. It also completely contradicts Rise from the ashes, which shows that the Federation have been holding out in the east at the time of the counter offensive.
Zeonista
Posts: 1178
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2009 5:47 pm
Location: in ur colony, steelin ur gundam

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

It should be noted that "Zeon control" was highly variable in its exercise in many places. The five ZMF divisions and their support elements were thinly spread away from the supply/R&D bases, and in the fronts where actual combat was taking place. A single EFF or Resistance victory over a ZMF group could swing control over a couple hundred square kilometers.
"I am fire. I am death. I am Hashmal."

"Discontent is the first step in the progress for a man or a nation." - Oscar Wilde
Jaynz
Posts: 163
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 10:28 pm

Re: A Question of Zeon Occupation During the One Year War

Something to keep in mind, "Zeon Control" only really meant that they might have units there, and the Feddies simply did not - at least not in any numbers. Most of these areas were vacant of any reasonable 'military power' and were eking out subsistence existence without the presence of a true governmental power.

So, controlling what is now the United States would mean a base in San Fransisco, Chicago, and New York. The rest of the area was on its own. (So much so that certain resistance groups operated with impunity even in solid Zeon sectors.)
Post Reply