marathag
Banned
Would look a lot better in USN and USMC paint than FAA schemesUSN buys buccaneer instead of A6?
Would look a lot better in USN and USMC paint than FAA schemesUSN buys buccaneer instead of A6?
Would look a lot better in USN and USMC paint than FAA schemes
I think the British would be a good guide; V bombers and the Shorts Belfast or the Russians with the Tu 16 and 22 and Antonov An 22.
What would the KM air wings look like? Would they have the same large-small carrier debate as the British? Would they have the Buccaneer or the Etenard?
Indeed yes, the Germans here have the equivalent to the V-force, or the shorter legged Soviet Bombers you mention, the intercontinental mission is only good versus the USA and I think the USA is not a primary threat. But I think they can lean on missiles just a little more than the UK did, albeit not quite like the USA or USSR since they have no room for dispersed fields. And I give them a more robust air refueling capability because they need to also in theory reach the USA with no options for bases unlike RAF who has Canada and the Caribbean in theory. So I give them either older models converted to tanking or a dedicated tanker (KC-135) based off a civil airliner. They might opt for a dedicated tanker version of their C-141/Il-76 equivalent as follow on, my thinking is that the Germans are very sensitive to dispersal and first strike being that much closer to all threats. That saves on an airframe and offers potential to put the tankers off the runways needed by the bombers with more dispersal. And I tend to think the Germans are building a B-58 equivalent, its high tech, ideal for getting on target quick and less reliant on a long range escort fighter, the role the F-101 was conceived for. This might keep the RAF more bomber friendly, dare I say more inclined to want a TSR?
I would argue that Germany has less need for carriers than does the RN but still has reason enough to build them if money allows. My thinking is that the German Navy is going to be a open ocean ASW force going after Soviet SSBNs (British and French included), that means North Sea, Med, North Atlantic and Artic Seas are all in need of ASW aircraft coverage, that is within range of land-based air so the small carriers are first off carrying fighters with a limited (likely nuclear) bombing element to direct attack bases). I foresee the Germans leaning heavy on nuclear, with the USSR as enemy number one, the assumptions are it goes nuclear very quickly, likely a launch on warning style twitchiness, the Germans have too few minutes to react so sit on tripwire. So at sea the nuclear option is just more logical and solves problems. Thus the fighter focus and the nuclear response are intertwined. My thinking is a two or three ship CV fleet, not unlike how the RN operated with a few multi-role aircraft in smaller numbers, less offensive oriented and less "all" mission, the USA might still be the big CVN force with huge onboard wings for global blue water but Germany needs to defeat the Soviets first, suppress the British or French as needed, and maybe have something for out-of-area for icing on the cake as a great power.
France never left NATO. Only the integrated command of NATO.do they buy from France (also not in NATO)
For ICBMs I think Germany would be the first to make then rail mobile, even if only to move flights of them around the country in a 'shell game' much like the dispersal of the V bombers.
I also agree about a German B58-esque plane, more than the TSR2/F111 and more lie the Tu22M or something. I'd also suggest that the victorious Kaiser Reich would have a number of overseas bases available from its MittelAfrika holdings from which to stage nuke bombers from, or hide out of the way.
The bases in Africa would give the KM a presence in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans and New Guinea would give it the opportunity to have a presence in the Pacific, I also think a union with Austria would give them a base at the head of the Adriatic. I imagine the Germans to be richer than OTL France and more interested in the sea than OTL Soviet Union so would build bigger and more powerful carriers than either, which pretty much puts them on par with OTL postwar Britain until about 1968. I'm guessing 3-5 CVAs, able to form a 2 carrier CBG in an area of interest and keep one up their sleeve elsewhere. This many carriers allows them to have plenty of local forces in Europe as well.
Spitfire II
After the collapse of the Eurofighter Project with Germany pulling out following the reunification of Germany and the Subsequent destabilisation of Italy following a number of failed parliaments in the early 90s - Britain ended that project and decided to build the 'Eurofighter' alone and the first prototype was unveiled as the Spitfire II wearing the camouflage and D-Day stripes of WW2 Spitfires at the 1994 Farnborough International Airshow and was billed as a competitor to the F16 and Mig 29.
"A hard act to follow" Spitfire Mk 2 leads the new 'Spitfire II' during its unveiling at the Farnborough International Airshow in 1994 - both aircraft went on to perform individual displays that thrilled the crowds
The Spitfire II would achieve sales in Saudi Arabia, India, Switzerland along with Spain, Austria and former Eurofighter Partners Italy and Germany (their F4s reaching end of airframe life, the Tornado fleet expected to do so at the end of the 2010s and the former East German Mig 29s starved of spares) eventually building them under licence - Oman, Kuwait and Qatar also buying them.
Australia had ordered 36 in 1998 but a change of government the same year reversed the decision and the RAAF went the F/A Super Hornet route instead.
The RAF would eventually operate 7 Squadrons plus an OCU - 3 Squadrons of Interceptors basically Tranche 1+ with incremental improvements intended to defend British Airspace from an increasingly aggressive Russian Federation with the other 4 Squadrons currently at Tranche 4 and fully capable of Multi role capability - in 2018 it was decided to retire the remaining Tornado fleet and instead stand up another 2 Spitfire II squadrons of Tranche 4+ aircraft and No 1 and 617 Squadrons
In 2000 the decision to build a pair of 65,000 Ton carriers resulted in the requirement for a suitable fighter - HMG and BAe controversially at the time spent a small fortune adapting the Spitfire II design into a carrier capable aircraft - with the Criticism from pretty much all sides suggesting that the Navy would have been better off buying US F18s or French Rafale.
Despite this 51 Aircraft dubbed 'Seafire IIs' would be built between 2007 and 2018 - and operated by 2 Squadrons plus a small OCU (the majority of pilot training conducted with the RAF)
In 2014 HMS Eagle the first of the 2 Super carriers conducted her first operational tour and embarked 18 Seafire IIs of 801 Squadron along with 23 other Rotary and fixed wing AC - with the type performing well in carrier ops so far
India bought the designs for the carrier and is currently at time of writing working up their first Super carrier and with the Spitfire II already in Service with the IAF - Actually called the Typhoon or Aandhee (आंधी) in India - the majority being licence built by HAL - has also begun to licence build the 'Seafire II' for its naval air arm
In all as of December 2018 - 723 production Spitfire II and Seafire II have been built including both British and licence built aircraft and the type forms the backbone of Europe's fighter defences
As for the Aircrafts future with the UK a tier one partner with the USA on the F35 Lightning II Project which despite delays and cost over runs is looking to buy 137 F35C between 2017 and 2032 with many of the current Spitfire II operators also seeking to buy the new Stealth fighter it is looking like the Spitfire II is going to be the last all British built fighter Jet in RAF and RN service.
Thinking outside the box.
Would it be better just to develop this instead BAe's P110 proposal
View attachment 456128
View attachment 456129
Regards filers
a rail-based solution is on track
If the Germans want a dedicated first-strike arsenal, that would be easy. All you would need are missile silos like the French had at the Plateau d'Albion. They wouldn't need to be dispersed, but they also wouldn't have the warhead sponge effect of a highly dispersed missile field. Strategic bombers with cruise missiles would probably be able to fulfill that role almost as well, but they wouldn't have the launch-on-warning capability of a missile.
Second strike capability depends on survivability through hardening or dispersal. At its most basic, it could be something like strategic bombers on airborne alert. The six minutes of warning you would have for Soviet IRBMs would not be enough to get aircraft on pad alert off the ground and away from the airbase. The road- and rail-mobile ballistic missiles are a good idea but you'll run in to significant NIMBY issues, not just with civilians but also with local and regional governments, because you'll have to use the entire country as a dispersal area. Hardened shelter facilities could be built in the Alps, but you'll have to protect against ballistic missiles coming in from the Soviets to the east, the Americans and British to the north and west, and possibly SLBMs coming from the Mediterranean. An overlooked option is the ground-launched cruise missile. You would be able to deliver the same payload-to-range as a 10-ton ballistic missile in a package weighing one or two tons. The Tomahawk GLCMs weighed 1.2 tons and a truck could carry four of them. In the German context, GLCMs could be mounted in disguised launch vehicles that would be completely innocuous, so nobody could complain about them, or find them quickly enough to target them.
As far as SSBNs go, they might still be useful but you would have to use them as alert weapons rather than standby weapons. Instead of the continuous at-sea patrol that countries on the ocean can do, you would have your submarines living in hardened bunkers, probably in Bremerhaven and Rugen. When a war-warning goes out, the submarines would sortie out into the North Sea and Baltic Sea under a heavy umbrella of German tactical and patrol aircraft. In the Baltic, the mission box would be west and south of Bornholm, requiring no more than two hours of high-speed sailing. In the North Sea, the submarines could probably get out 150 miles from Bremerhaven along the Jutland coast in five hours. After this, they would have to sit completely silent so the entire area can be turned into an anti-submarine free-fire zone to combat encroaching enemy submarines. It's a significantly more complicated deployment concept than CASD but it would play to the strength the Germans would necessarily have in the air rather than at sea.
If you want a completely different approach, South West Africa is almost three times the size of Germany and has only two million inhabitants. Building huge missile dispersal fields would not be difficult, especially in the sparsely populated deserts of the central and southern parts (only the northern strip of Namibia supports pastoralist agriculture, so everyone south of there lives in cities). You could also have a submarine base on the coast there. The main problem with these deployments would be range. Your submarines would have to sail all the way to the North Atlantic to get their missiles launched; getting to launch positions in the Western Atlantic or Norwegian Sea would be a journey of more than 7,000 nmi, which would take several weeks at the speed an SSBN sails. It's also 14,000 km to the US missile fields, so you would need heavy ICBMs in the 100-ton class to get the payload-to-range capability