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  1. Short Stirling used as Maritime Patrol Aircraft for Battle of Atlantic?

    The best route would probably be an earlier Butt Report and Tizard/Blackett winning out in the subsequent bun fight. So it is accepted that Bomber Command is not hitting much and that the main benefit is distracting/tying up German resources in air defence, that means a much smaller 'main force'...

  2. Short Stirling used as Maritime Patrol Aircraft for Battle of Atlantic?

    Given the Lancaster only had a 102ft wingspan, the 99ft wingspan on the Stirling should have been fine. The real problem with the Stirling was it's size and the weight gain during development, the fuselage was just far too long, it had massive interior bulkheads and various heavy structural...

  3. Alternate Bristol Engine Development (Mercury & Pegasus)

    There shouldn't be much extra metal in the block and if anything the manifold might be a bit smaller as you'd (probably) have fewer valves per cylinder. You'd gain weight from the larger cylinder head, but save by removing the sleeves themselves and the valve train probably ends up being lighter...

  4. Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.

    I admire the effort but the meme is too strongly established at this point. It is far easier for the fanboys to blame HM Treasury rather than admit the War Office/British Rail/Whoever-else actually made the really critical mistakes.

  5. Malaya What If

    I just add on that the USN's Mk 15 torpedo (the standard destroyer torpedo) was also initially very unreliable. As it was developed alongside the Mk 13 and 14 by mostly the same people it had the same problems, though at least one major fault was apparently all it's own. The older destroyers...

  6. Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.

    180 soldiers on a training mission is a tiny commitment compared to the manpower and resources required for the Burma Road. China is a low priority for Britain, so low cost support like Tulip Force are fine and may even expand a bit. But anything major will need the US deciding its a priority...

  7. Pulverised Fuel (one-shot)

    If the Grand Fleet can do 24-25knots sustained vs 21knots of OTL that could make a big difference at Jutland or whatever the big fleet battle ends up being. I think the lack of the 'Splendid Cats' is also an advantage, it means the Battlecruiser Force from OTL doesn't exist as the capital...

  8. British Rail sanity options : 1948 - 2000

    It was 1991 under the Delors Commission that the EEC first start saying it liked the idea of splitting track operators from train operators - Council Directive 91/440/EEC of 29 July 1991 on the development of the Community's railways - "if a distinction is made between the provision of...

  9. "Sanity options" 2.0 - RAF, 1935-43

    Was that really a serious problem though? I'm not arguing they were using old kit, but the RR armoured cars did a decent enough job in Iraq and Western Desert. As for the Far East, would any of the modern kit even have been sent there? And given all the other problems would it have made a...

  10. British Rail sanity options : 1948 - 2000

    The version I heard was it was a UK civil service goldplating of the EU Rail Regs. There is a requirement in the first railway package that the train operating company and the infrastructure owning companies have to be separate, which the civil service and lawyers insisted mean a Big Four...

  11. "Sanity options" 2.0 - RAF, 1935-43

    This was the position of the British Army pre-war, they wanted an artillery spotter and one of the complaints against the Lysander was that it was too fast to do that job properly. As I understand it neither Army nor RAF had any doctrine for a Stuka/Il-2 type CAS aircraft pre-war and so would...

  12. Another U-boat thread.

    Who said it would be easy? Possible is not the same as easy, though I accept this entire thread hinges on ignoring that fact. As I said, letting the Germans play around with IVS where the British had a spy gave them an inside line. Forcing it to shut would not have stopped the Germans...

  13. Another U-boat thread.

    Sigh. Germany already did this in OTL. Look up IVS, a dummy company setup in 1922 in the Netherlands to build submarines. All the shareholders were German shipbuilders, the chief designer and design staff were all Germans who had worked on U-boat design before/during WW1. When the submarines...

  14. Malaya What If

    This was in the time when P&O loved slightly strange power plants. The HMS/RMS Mooltan had quadruple expansion engines and turbo-electric transmission; RMS Mooltan

  15. BISMARCK & TIRPITZ cause Germany to lose the Battle of the Atlantic

    Perhaps technically correct, but in a meaningless way. Japan built a lot of steel works that it had neither the ore, scrap or coal to run and so almost all of them sat idle. In terms of actual production of steel they were broadly flat across the entire period. If you built a steel works but it...

  16. What if Germany went full tilt into U-boat production from 1936 on?

    Something that has not come up is what is the reaction to this in Germany, it is a complete reversal of foreign policy from Britain being a potential ally to a definite future enemy - there is no other use for a U-boat only navy apart from war with Britain. Eventually this switch would occur in...

  17. BISMARCK & TIRPITZ cause Germany to lose the Battle of the Atlantic

    You've been told this before and ignored it, but what the hell lets try again. UK Official History says that in 1936 the Admiralty had 3million tons of fuel oil in the UK, stocks built up a bit after that but were storage limited. This was reckoned as being a bit under 6months of wartime usage...

  18. "Sanity options" 2.0 - RAF, 1935-43

    As a Vulture was just a pair of Peregrines, if you save Vulture then Peregrine carries on as a side effect. Easiest option is probably cancelling the RR Exe and putting that design team on Vulture / Peregrine. As that team was led by Rowledge who designed Lion, R, Kestrel and development of...

  19. "Sanity options" 2.0 - RAF, 1935-43

    The thing is the Air Staff did treat Home Defence as a priority and spent a large amount of time, effort and exercises on aerial defence. Dowding gets the credit but he was building on a system that had been a high priority since mid-WW1, one the "Trenchardists" had funded and encouraged. It...

  20. Malaya What If

    The RAF spent years thinking about grass vs concrete runways pre-war. Their conclusions was that the most onerous part wasn't the take off or landing but the braking and sharp turns of taxiing aircraft around. The concern was tyre pressure not weight per se (because it was the tyres touching the...
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