Recent content by Mote

It does prove that the “We can win the war on our own!” talk of the strategic air power advocates was rather nonsense and they should’ve been kept firmly subordinate to everyone else.

In the grim dark alternative past of the USAAF, there is only the Lightning. Twin engine fighter, Jabo, whatever random thing we put the Mosquito to, we'll put the Lightning to! Want a four engine bomber? Congrats you get Twin Lightning just kidding you get nothing because that's a total waste...

The problem with that is that you have to feed them and food that is going to your slave labor is food that is not going to your armies and civilians, who are already short on food, and who really don't want a repeat of the starvation of WWI.

Nothing wrong with the design itself, the engines just didn't work right was the issue. The loss rate also went down dramatically when it deployed from an angled flight deck.

Germany is fundamentally incapable of winning WWII. Even if they do remarkable better conventionally, that just means we start seeing Herr 29 delivering instant sunshine packets to Nazi Germany. Even without nukes, Germany is gonna get eradicated just from thousand bomber raids that carry twice...

I'll second the Hustler. Pretty and neat plane, but really a waste. The A3J/A-5 Vigilante is also up there, even if it is my favorite plane of all time.

And the A-7F of today wouldn’t be the same as the one of 1991 nor are today’s F-16s the same as those of 1991. “Lives and breathes the CAS mission” is also meaningless when it’s entirely dropping smart bombs nowadays and BUFFs and Lancers make for good CAS platforms because of their load and...

It's fantastic that she was able to RTB (and given the DFC not the expectation) but, quite frankly, so what? The airframe was only suitable for spare parts afterwards and that certainly would've been all that it was used for had it taken similar damage in a Cold War gone hot scenario. Might as...

Can you prove that you can actually manage to get anywhere near the required SHP? And you've also neglected the provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty.

Tennessee-class: 28,600 SHP North Carolina-class: 115,000 SHP South Dakota-class: 130,000 SHP Iowa-class: 212,000 SHP Remind me again how you plan on refitting, and the funds for that matter, to quadruple or octuple the power capacity? Or how that'll affect fuel economy?

It's interesting that you focus on a single mission by (PoW and Repulse) where they faced only limited early war AA with a rather defective fire control system and no air cover. They did quite poorly attacking the anchored ships at Guadalcanal and while they did, eventually, sink Chicago at...

I guess the Catalina, Privateer, Neptune, Orion, and Poseidon never existed in this timeline? Standard, Harpoon, and LRASM are but fabled myths?

Low level development, sure. But it doesn't need the super high priority that we gave it in reality. 2. The P-38 doesn't make long range bombing suddenly effective, just mildly less suicidal. It's a decent Jabo, but doesn't solve the "Four engines bad, two engines good" problem of bombers. 3...

Some things that come to mind: 1. Build the Mosquito domestically and focus on short to medium range actual precision bombing, 2. Unescorted daylight bombing is the dumbest idea ever, it and the bombers designed for it get nixed beyond what's necessary for maritime patrol aircraft. 3. ETO, focus...

1945. It wouldn't be war ending, but the B-29 would be capable of penetrating and nuking Germany, especially if simply on the periphery, as soon as the bomb is available. No one, much less the Nazis, is capable of reliably intercepting B-29 raids such as to ensure denial of nuclear weapons...