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The army sizes are vastly exaggerated. We see the same thing in lot's of ancient Greek sources. The numbers provided in the sources are more useful as a sense of how things seemed rather than the actual number of people there. However, I think it's fair to assume that the armies were still much...

-The Ottoman Steam Navy, 1828-1923 by James Cooper -The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy 1871-1906 by Theodore Ropp, Stephen S. Roberts -Steam, Steel, and Shellfire by Robert Gardiner -Ironclads in action:a sketch of naval warfare from 1855 to 1895 : with some account of the...

Too late and too early, respectively. Combat would have looked more or less like a hybrid of the two conflicts, though biased toward that of the Spanish-American War. As mentioned, the 1880's was a period of intense change and development in naval technology (and society as whole, for that...

Maniakes response is a superb one. However, I'll give it a go too. Not strictly true. There are textual provisions in the Constitution prohibiting the exclusion of people on certain grounds: race, national origin, sex, failure to pay poll taxes, etc. Were a state government to try to prohibit...

What about the US procurement process is idiotic and ensures cost overruns? I don't doubt you're correct, but I'm curious as to what exactly makes it so.

Indeed. With a POD that early in someone's life it is essentially authorial fiat as to what the individual does withtheir life. He might well become a banker, but he just as well end up in the army. His life will be so different neither is any more likely than the other and so it's whatever the...

That leads to the same question as above; if the spear was primarily a thrown weapon why does everything I read make a distinction between different types of spears carried? Everything I've seen that talks about the Roman equipment of the period makes a distinction between a thrusting spear and...

The thing is, so is a spatha or similar longsword. In a dense formation the infantryman won't have enough room to swing the sword very effectively so he'll be relegated primarily to stabbing motions. To be sure, the spatha is far more wieldy in close quarters than a spear, but a shortsword is...

That does make sense. After all the spatha started out as a cavalry sword before the infantry picked it up. Same with the clipeus that replaced the scutum. Although the counter to that argument would be that the infantry spear is an even better weapon against cavalry than a Spatha, so why...

Simple question: Why did the Late Roman infantry adopt the spatha over the gladius? I understand that the infantry transitioned to using the spear as their primary weapon but it seems to me that that would be a case for keeping the gladius as a secondary weapon, not adopting the spatha instead...

I'm also a fan of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. In my opinion no one else comes close to his flair and sheer range of abilities. A superb admiral as well as cavalry commander and a true Renaissance man to boot.

It's already udderly devoid of humor.

The siphons used for Greek Fire were certainly tricky, complicated devices but they didn't seem too bad if the people using them knew what they were doing. Byzantine fleets were able to use them on a pretty large scale despite they're opponents being unable to make it work. At one point the...

You have to be kidding with this thread. (;))

The idea of trebuchets and glass grenades seems overly comlicated. Most of the OTL plans simply involved filling glass or iron shells with material and firing them from a normal canon or mortar. From memory, the best proposals were filling shells (of either glass or iron, apparently either would...

For what it's worth the English term is filibuster. A government supportive of the filibusters wouldn't necessarily have to be dominated by the South, but it's certainly much more difficult if it isn't. The filibusters were, as you point out, primarily popular in the South because the...

It's worth remembering that Greek fire wasn't a wonder weapon. The Byzantines still lost naval battles even though they had it. It was also limited in that it could only be deployed in relatively calm seas and with favorable winds. That said, there's always the possibility of Greek fire deciding...

Just an FYI but Springsharp's not a site it's a program that you download onto your computer. It's a great resource for playing around with warship design but it's optimized for certain kinds of ships and is, in any case, only a simulation.

I'd add Spain to your list. You're doing the South American navies so the Spanish is deserving of inclusion. That's correct with respect to the Brazilian and Argentine ships. Though remember that HMS Agincourt was originally built for Brazil but then sold to Turky and seized by Britain...