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That's the only other one I picked up on - Infantry expecting to hold in place against an armoured attack for a period of time until relieved, and being provided with significantly more AT guns.

More a case of The Whale Has Tracks?

Well, not 100%. The Archer was a 17pdr gun on a Valentine chassis, and they built quite a few. By the time it entered service (late 1944) the Valentine was borderline obsolescent and the tanks they did shoehorn the 17pdr into were either much bigger and still badly compromised by the gun...

One thing I've learned from writing it (and the associated reading) is that finishing the war in 1943 is really hard. If Germany doesn't knock over France in summer 1940 then they're in a terrible position and even without anybody else joining the war it's all over by early 1942. I'm in January...

They want bigger aircraft and more tankers ITTL, so probably further south and east!

There's a very simple answer to that - rapid mobility. In OTL, this was one of the driving forces behind Sandystorm - the UK couldn't afford the big conventional forces needed by the existing strategy. To his eternal credit, Mountbatten realised this - he offered Marines and Carriers for East of...

RN wouldn't have the manpower in peacetime unless they laid up all the carriers. I haven't decided about the NelRods yet, but everything else is going to be rapidly heading for scrap after the war as soon as the Hostilities Only ratings are demobilised. The modernised ones might stay in reserve...

I think the fundamental issue was that New Zealand wasn't offered anything in exchange. "The British government are investing NZ£### million" is a very different story right before an election to "The British government are going to use us as guinea pigs for a new and terrifying weapon". With no...

Not what happened. FO got asked for somewhere really remote to test it, suggested Kermadec, asked NZ PM who said no. Mildly irked, they looked for somewhere else the locals couldn't say no. Aldermaston and the RAF didn't start working out at test programme until after this had happened - they...

Different times, different rules. New Zealand was much closer to the UK at the time, and the US were using the fact that they had thermonuclear weapons and nobody else in NATO did to ensure they controlled the alliance at the time. Given that the expectation was that New Zealand would be under...

The original British preferred test site for thermonuclear weapons was the Kermadec Islands, which are uninhabited extinct-ish volcanoes. Sidney Holland turned down the request due to a pending election, and the testing moved to Christmas Island instead after issues with the Americans over...

Montreal :cool:

Not sure - TBH it'll be quite a long while before I get around to editing it and putting it up, so it'll probably run to the end of the war. 70% is a bit of an exaggeration for us, but it's pretty grim. I've also suddenly found a project I've been on for a while becoming a #1 top priority...

See https://histdoc.net/history/1940-03-16.html - a nordic alliance was under consideration before the German invasion of Norway. Afterwards - largely because they were so isolated from outside resources - the Swedes backed out and in desperation the Finns signed an alliance with Germany. Here...

Off-the-shelf RN designs aren't likely - the RCNC doesn't have the manpower to design all the world's warships. A collaborative effort under the aegis of the Admiralty is highly likely however - particularly as warships get more complex and thus expensive over time. Multinational projects...

Really doesn't make any sense for the MN - quite apart from national pride issues, they'd come with absolute nightmares supporting them due to different practices and standards. The Dutch are a little different - they've only really got three very light cruisers/destroyer leaders (the two Tromp...

The reality is that the German army has almost completely collapsed - central command is essentially gone, and desertion rates are sky-high. It needs to be remembered that essentially the landsers have nothing left to fight for: the only victory they've had was Poland, Hitler has vanished, etc...

Narvik is the main transit point between the two countries thanks to the railway - they pretty much all arrive there, although many won't stay.

As mentioned elsewhere, there won't be that many refugees - my working assumption is that most who cross the border are potential combatants who will be heading straight for Narvik as soon as they can. It isn't quite that rosy, but a shorter war generally means much less destruction. So far the...