Recent content by ArmchairPhilosopher

America was not particularly liberal or progressive then, I doubt many would have cared. This was before the Civil Rights Era hit its stride.

The Soviet Union ends sooner because it is now being bled fighting a two-fronted war in southwest Asia.

How do you get a Utah, or some other state, that is settled and governed by the Watch Tower Society (JWs) instead of Mormonism? How do you get Charles Taze Russell and his students to found their own political entity and a viable, self-perpetuating culture that is powerful enough to survive the...

"Gleefully distorted" of what? Stalingrad or the Korean War? So... you are disputing that Hitler pulled a real boner in creating a long and undefended southern flank in the second half of the year, that there was a significant North African front (and threat of a Norwegian one) that tied up much...

Argentina will lose this war unless it gets the same Sidewinders the RAF has. If it does it's at least a draw, as Argentina is probably one of the best small modern militaries in the world in the early 1980s (probably comparable to SADF) and its population size isn't terribly smaller than...

No, the 1950 Chinese had several things on their side (numbers, General Winter, and a restrained U.S. command)--but military skill wasn't one of them.

Considering that OTL's version of this (Stalingrad) was only possible with oodles of Lend-Lease to the Soviets, a significant western front to draw off German strength, and Hitler's stupidity, this situation is close to ASB.

I can see a more radical SA government attempting to take over Rhodesia by force, perhaps.

The JS-2 was over 20 tons lighter than the King Tiger, but almost as well-armored (and much of the gap was due to inferior-quality Soviet cast armor, although late-war German forged armor was missing many key alloys), and its main gun was much more powerful for the antipersonnel role (though...

Numbers aren't the answer to everything. Look at how vastly outnumbered Israel was in all of its wars, facing Arab opponents with mostly modern Soviet equipment. Look at how outnumbered Hezbollah was in 2006, without any armor to speak of or any air force at all. Training, familiarity with...

The Argentine troops sent to the Malvinas were hastily-assembled conscripts. Their best troops were on the Chilean border. They would have given Britain a much tougher run.

Didn't think of that but I guess it makes sense, the more complex system was necessitated by the high weights of the German tanks, which was itself caused by their height (in part), right?

T44/54 and from there on out all had torsion bar also and were about 60% as high as the Panther.

According to Wikipedia the entire SADF was circa 80,000 by the late '70s. Not sure what it was in the '80s. Presumably most of this was the army: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Army#The_.22Border_War.22_.281966.E2.80.931989.29

Why not? I seem to have seen something on a WWII forum many years ago that there was some obscure directive late in the war to drop the King Tiger by some 17cm (that sounds like a stretch, but 10 should be doable). A few inches and the weight saved therein could mean much thicker armor.