Recent content by Gunnarnz

  1. Malaya What If

    Yes, but rum has been phased out.
  2. WI: The US Navy Goes For Nuclear Seaplane Bombers Instead Of Nuclear Submarines?

    Me too, and I was getting all excited about nuclear-powered ekranoplan carriers launching IRBMs. Oh well... :(
  3. Malaya What If

    Sounds more like Cockney rhyming slang to me. Scoobie Doo = clue.
  4. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Yes, that's possible, although the radiation levels would drop quite fast from airbursts. You wouldn't need many ground bursts to soften up a landing zone, mostly what you want to do is prevent reinforcements arriving, and the beach defences themselves can be handled adequately with conventional...
  5. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    There are several solutions to that problem, but the most obvious one is probably also the simplest: nuke your way in, starting from the outside. Use nukes to clear a path through the air defences, starting from where you can reliably get a bomber to. It doesn't take many nukes, even on...
  6. Short Stirling used as Maritime Patrol Aircraft for Battle of Atlantic?

    Well, most of them do, at least in theory. But have you ever noticed how many Russian transport aircraft have windows on the underside of the nose? That's so they can be converted to bombers more easily by building-in a bomb-aimer's position. It's also worth noting how many transports get...
  7. The Malouines War: France in the Falklands Redux

    That's assuming the Argentines practice the same things. If they see the Harriers as carrier aircraft which don't need arrestor wires, they might not be ready to deploy them like that.
  8. AHC: Make Escort Carriers Prevalent Among Developing Nations During The Cold War.

    They've also started getting LPH-style vessels, which make sense given their huge archipelagic nature. But with helicopters, not prop birds from the 1950s. The Thai carrier is basically a royal yacht - I don't think it even carries any aircraft any more, and it never carried more than a handful...
  9. AHC: Make Escort Carriers Prevalent Among Developing Nations During The Cold War.

    Forget power projection - developing countries can't do it, and if they try they deserve everything that happens to them. My question about the remaining roles is "which of those are helicopters not suitable for"? Because I can see a role for a CVE-sized helicopter carrier in them, but I can't...
  10. Can the Avro Arrow be saved?

    Agreed. They'd need some significant bomber threat to make it a plausible purchase, and a more-capable Indonesia was about the only one I could come up with.
  11. Can the Avro Arrow be saved?

    I agree with this point, although Australia might also fit into that category. If faced by a Red Indonesia that made better use of its Tu-16s, I think the Aussies might be remotely plausible purchasers. They're not going to want to fund or run an orphan fleet either, of course, so in anything...
  12. Stuka's used on precision strikes on London during the Blitz?

    What it boils down to is at night, the Stukas can't find their targets. In daytime, the Stukas are the targets. All the WW2 combatants quickly learned that divebombers cannot operate in circumstances where the enemy can effectively fight back. Enemy fighters eat them for breakfast, any...
  13. "Sanity options" 2.0 - RAF, 1935-43

    Yes. That's what's being described. It could be rewritten as: "(prostitutes were referred to as gay women, and a womaniser was referred to as a gay man)".
  14. What is the earliest point in history for a viable space program?

    There was a book called "King David's Spaceship", in which a society with early 1900s tech (spark gap transmitters, clockwork mechanisms with punched metal tape controlling them, etc) managed to launch a crewed craft into orbit. The crew was injured, but survived. The propulsive agent was...
  15. Your own Spitfire wank

    New timeline idea!
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