Search results

So, I was skimming the internet today, and learned that, apparently, the SR-71 was originally going to be the B-71, a high-speed penetration bomber. I freely admit I don't know much about aircraft, but this strikes me as just immensely cool. Is there any way for this to happen? And would it...

Back in the 1950s, there was a big debate in the US over whether government or private industry should take the lead in building nuclear power plants. This was in many ways a continuation of the debates over the Tennessee Valley Authority, with Democrats and unions lobbying for a...

IOTL, US defense strategy in the 50s was focused on Massive Retaliation - the threat that, in the event of a Soviet invasion of western Europe, we would conduct a massive nuclear strike on their population and industry. In the 60s, Kennedy and McNamara brought a different approach to the White...

In the late 50s and early 60s, in response to the UK and French nuclear programs, the US government floated a plan to build a joint NATO nuclear-armed navy, consisting of 25 ships carrying 8 Polaris ballistic missiles each. It would have been called the NATO Multilateral Force (MLF). There...

WI: The Technocracy Movement Takes Power Has anyone ever done anything with the Technocracy Movement in the US? (Short version: advocated a planned economy a la the Soviet Union, but saw engineers and professionals as the leaders and precipitating agents of the new society rather than the...

What if the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test did not overyield? My understanding is it wouldn't take much of a PoD to accomplish this - all you need is for someone to discover before the test that Lithium-7 splits into Lithium-6 and a neutron when struck by a fast neutron. So, aside from On the...

Here's something I was pondering the other day... The nuclear strategists at RAND, some of whom went on to become McNamara's Whiz Kids, were significantly influenced by neoclassical economics. Partly this is just a natural overlap since both RAND nuclear strategy and neoclassicism use game...

Every few months or so, there's another thread about "WI the Nazis got the bomb?" And the answer is usually, "well, they couldn't have." Well, what if the Nazis tried to get the bomb, but failed? Let's say they use the money that would have gone into the V2 on trying to build a...

If Eisenhower doesn't run in 1952, for whatever reason, and Taft wins the election, it's going to spook a lot of European countries. According to his wikipedia page, he was opposed to NATO and thought the Korean War was unconstitutional. Even if he dies in his first year in office and his...

What would the effects be on post-war air power if the Germans hadn't built the V2 rocket? Let's say, just to keep things simple, that they spent the freed-up money on a mix of more V1s and something completely useless, like sonic weapons, so that the effects on WW2 itself are negligible...

I'm working on a TL that starts with a delayed Korean War that goes very badly for the United States, and I wanted to see if this passed the smell test. The PoD is in 1949, with the early death of Stalin. With the Soviet leadership fighting over the succession, the Korean War doesn't happen...

I've been doing a lot of reading about the 50s lately, and discovered an interesting gentleman by the name of Brien E. McMahon, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut. He got his start as a prosecutor, going after a coal company for violations of the Wagner Labor Relations Act, but made his...

I'm working on my first real timeline, and I've reached the outlining stage, but I wanted to get the board's opinion before I commit to this set of events. My PoD is in the early 40s, when the Nazis decide against building the V-2, and instead put the money into their atomic weapons program...

I'm not entirely clear on why he didn't run, although I'm guessing it had something to do with losing in 1948 and 1944. But, if Eisenhower hadn't been interested, could Dewey have run for a third time?

ATLs have lots of examples of technologies that were proposed over the years that would have worked, at least for some definition of "work," but were never developed in our time line. Orion is certainly the most commonly mentioned example, by a substantial margin, but there's also zeppelins...

In the late 50s and early 60s, in response to the UK and French nuclear programs, the US government apparently seriously floated a plan to build a joint NATO nuclear force, consisting of 25 ships carrying 8 Polaris ballistic missiles each. It would have been called the Multilateral Force...

So, for my own nefarious reasons, I'm working on a TL where the USAF maintains its monopoly within the US military over strategic nuclear weapons, and I wanted to get the views of the board on the subject. I'm not trying to give the USAF a permanent monopoly on strategic nukes, just long...

(Not sure if this is the right forum for this, so if a mod wants to move it, I don't mind). I'm looking for resources on the US and Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft programs of the 50s and 60s, but most of the online material I've found so far has been very general overviews, lacking specifics...

So, back in the late 70s-early 80s, it seems to have been generally thought that missile silos either were or would shortly be obsolete, due to improvements in Soviet ICBM accuracy. In order to stay in the ICBM game, the USAF was considering all sorts of crazy basing options, with the most...

I think it's pretty well-established that NATO can take the Russians, coming or going, in any scenario where anyone survives. But, for mysterious reasons of my own, I want a scenario where the Warsaw Pact in, say, 1983, really is the unstoppable juggernaut it was generally portrayed as. Not Red...