Recent content by GarethC

@Nevarinemex made a post lampooning stereotypical British bigotry of the period. @lhagambia either missed the point and read it straight as anti-Japanese racism, or understood it and is reading the satire as current anti-British racism; I'm not entirely clear which.

Perhaps Red Parks lives. If Midway has Corsairs, then VMF-221 has a performance advantage over Lt. Tomonaga's escorting A6Ms, and so should have far more of the two-dozen-ish F4Us successfully engage the attack squadrons, causing significantly higher losses. However, after the first pass, to...

Note that at OTL Coral Sea, VT-2 hit Shoho with 5 torpedoes and VT-3 with somewhere between 2 (IJN accounts) and 10 (USN accounts) more, so it can be done. On the other hand, the following day, the same squadrons went 0 for 21 against Shokaku, so it's not easy by any means.

The usual suspects for a trouncing of the Axis - sickle is blunted, or the Méchelen crash causes the deaths of the German flyers and Jodl goes with a hurry-up offence to invade Belgium on 13 January that finds that snow is a bigger problem than the French. Italy never declares war, Germany is...

It's less clear than that. Broadly, you might as well say that there isn't much in the A6M vs F4F-4 pairing. Turn & burn favours the A6M, boom & zoom favours the F4F. The SBD vs D3A and TBD vs B5N pairings are similarly much of a muchness, though the TBF that's just being introduced is a step up.

Crutchley plays his hand differently, and the cards fall where they may. Separated from their respective task forces on about 8th August 1942, Aoba and Australia square off (the County is not really in Chokai's weight class here, so let's give a duel of the flagships a miss).

I admit I'm a bit confused as to the Japanese options here - is that about bringing KB into the South China Sea, in order to stage a few days of airstrikes in support of the army? Because while it's a powerful force, it's also one that's lacking in staying power - even if some of the torpedoes...

Isn't he just executing the Asiatic Fleet's part of Orange?

Not with all six carriers of OTL. Zuikaku doesn't commission until 25th September 1941. Even Shokaku is doubtful, commissioning 8th August, and needing to work up its airgroups.

The Ju-87 is actually so slow (cruise of ~180kts) that the Blenheim IF night fighters would be capable against them, which won't help either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams Wikipedia is not that bad on this one. Fundamentally, any radiolocation system has a problem in that if the enemy is smart enough to figure out what you're doing, they will have transmitters that are nearer the target and can thus successfully...

About a fifth of the Stuka force was destroyed in the week beginning Aug 11th 1940. If they continue to be committed against targets that are not on the coast but require an additional twenty minutes over England, the numbers will not get better.

Wikipedia says that it's still used by the Bangladeshi police, but that some antique Mosin-Nagant receivers are still used in the Finnish Army's sniper rifle, so that gets the nod.

OTL it was ASV Mk 2 radar in a Swordfish from Ark Royal that found Bismarck for the golden BB torpedo, so if the weather is not too rough for flight ops at all, it will help to trail Lutjens if Holland has a carrier at the Denmark Strait.

The presence of up to 5? light carriers in the RN probably means earlier critical butterflies - that Courageous is not doing ASW patrols but rather one of the ex-Hawkins meets her fate, and that Glorious is not used as a ferry to Norway but rather retains a strike group, and then actually...