Over the 20 years or so prior to the Washington Conference, the Royal Navy moved from 'next two largest combined' as its standard to '60% more than the next largest' to '60% more than the next largest, but ignoring the United States' as it became apparent that the US would be able to outspend...
The forces in Southeast Asia were going to keep heading southeast, with ZIPPER capturing bases in Malaya, followed by MAILFIST to recapture Singapore. The Australians would have struck south from the Philippines into Borneo, Java, and the eastern Dutch East Indies.
The Chinese were making good...
It's not a question of modifying the aircraft - it's a question of doctrinal readiness. If the COAN isn't set up to provide logicstics, maintainers, command and control, etc. at an improvised field, then they may not be able to do it regardless of the aircraft.
No they didn't. They might have surrendered due to the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, which never had that name - it doesn't fit the way the Soviet Union named operations at all.
It's not at all clear, AIUI, what the tipping point was, or if there even was one. The start of the...
The closure of the Suez Canal put the UK economy under severe pressure and lead to an oil shortage severe enough to see petrol rationing reintroduced. The US blocked IMF aid, and was prepared to dump its Sterling holdings to cause devaluation and further exacerbate the issue. The UK economy was...
Easy answer, have a couple of big John Deere customers (maybe agricultural firms who handle a lot of traffic by rail?) ask about adapting tractors to use as railcar movers for their yards. It's a perfectly valid use case, and with the right timing they could become a significant player in that...
There were the East Africa Rifles mutinies in 1963-1964, which were post-independence and (interestingly enough) seem to have been partly enabled by the revolution in Zanzibar.
While not intending to defend colonialism, this is indicative of 'Treasury brain' striking again.
Yep, it's a possibility, and seems to be one that was considered IOTL. It was reckoned that a garrison of one battalion would be needed, with reinforcement from elsewhere if needed, but that there...
It looks like the Arab Nationalist Party, representing the Arab elite, wanted independence ASAP, while the Afro-Shirazi party, representing the African majority, wanted a longer period of British rule to secure their position before independence. The UK didn't seem to think much of either...
I did wonder about Zanzibar remaining as a protectorate, but I think the most that can be expected from the UK's point of view is that it's held a little longer, facilitating a transition to a more stable form of governance, Zanzibar remaining independent of Tanganyika, and favourable a...
The Persian Gulf states presumably were profitable, but weren't considered by the UK to be colonies, but rather independent states under the protection of the UK by bilateral agreement. For the residents thereof, this may well have been an academic distinction.
An interesting possibility, IMO...
IIRC, the only British colony that was really profitable in the 1950s was Malaya. Once Malaya went, the entire logic of what was left of the British Empire collapsed like a house of cards.
All the schemes (groundnuts, coffee) to develop industry in African colonies were desperate attempts to...
That's a really dangerous timeframe for the USSR, from what I recall - the US nuclear warfare apparatus had developed to the point where a USSR first strike might have been literally impossible. There was a reasonably high degree of confidence that the US intelligence apparatus could identify...
TBH, you don't need to hit that specific spot - just miss the target by an acceptably large margin. Although as late as 1955, when the RAF was debating whether it was worth the V-Force carrying Tallboy, they reckoned on a 50% circular error of 1,200 feet, so you're still loooking for a fairly...
They were nearly picked as a stick to beat Boeing with. There was never any real risk of the atomic bombs being carried by a British aircraft that couldn't fly high enough or fast enough to survive the delivery.
B-29s were dropping Grand Slams on U-boat pens in May 1946. Yes, you read that date...