We've got a heck of a job to do

Returning to the Pacific War, and the struggle to liberate China and Korea and keep Japan from conquering the Pacific Rim: January 1945 ended with a pair of research breakthroughs with technology for the ballistic missile --- and research leads for the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile --- becoming available, and atomic weapons finally reaching the point where their construction could be researched. I would set technology teams to work on that as soon as the research slots made that possible. The next breakthrough, in nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, would come the 22nd of March. This didn't give me any nuclear carriers, just the background technology to research them and later put them into construction. Similarly for the 13th of May a breakthrough in the basic rocket interceptor came from the technology teams who were clearly having a very good year.

( It was a rather busy year: the United States invaded Japanese-occupied China, and Japanese-occupied China, and Japanese-occupied China ... you know, China is a surprisingly large place. Also I have issues with the British General Election.  )

So as 1946 entered, the world was still at war; the Allies, the Netherlands excepted, putting on an excellent unified front, and eastern China is liberated under two native regimes and the United States government. Korea and the Japanese home islands are not yet penetrated. However, Japan's industrial base has been knocked down from comparable to Britain's to about the level of Canada's; on the other hand, Canada might just win the Most Valuable Player trophy for this conflict. While Japan's Navy is formidable gathered in one location, they have to concentrate all their forces to beat the United States or British navies in the area.

Trivia: Twenty United States planes were lost in combat in the attack on Vice-Admiral J Ozawa's fleet group at the (United States) Capture of the Marianas Islands, ordered by Admiral M A Mitscher when it was noticed Ozawa had remained around the battle area (he'd believed his planes had landed on Guam). Eighty were lost or crashed in the return flight and recovery after dark. Source: History of the Second World War, B H Liddell Hart.

Currently Reading: The Day Before Tomorrow, Gerard Klein. Fascinating twist on the time-travel premise: the Federation goes back in time to poison the societies of potential future rival powers so they can't develop into menaces; but, to avoid paradox, one can't travel back within one's historic light-cone. As there's faster-than-light travel this works out all right for the Federation, but it's a neat restriction on the game that I hadn't seen before. (The story ends as most stories about Eternal timecops propping up empires might be expected to.)