Modern devices duplicated in 1920's tech

Do you realize how large a cell phone would be with Tubes instead of a printed circuit? .
Depends on how small you can make micro tubes, and by the 1930's they were definitely Micro tubes. This miniaturization drive was aborted by the development of the Transistor.
 
There's still the question of whether they could have developed the transistor any earlier. Microchips are probably not an option without ASBs, but transistors I can see.
 
Dr. Gatling attached an electric motor to his famous gun, getting an unheard-of rate of fire--but that rate of fire on a black powder gun would produce an amazing amount of smoke, and the gun had reliability issues, from what little I've seen of it.

Suppose that someone had run with it after smokeless powder came along...
Actually, the prototype was smokeless; the problem wasn't the mechanism so much as the magazine (which was huge, didn't feed reliably and held two seconds of ammunition.) Well, that and nothing on Earth needing that kind of RoF in 1899.

Setting up a phone to broadcast and receive on radio frequencies was doable by the late 1920s; the issue was mostly one of coverage, which is much more important for the sake of a cell network.

...also, for the sake of militaria: at least one variant of the Thompson SMG was set up for a proprietary round that matched .44 Magnum ballistics. If that had been introduced, it would've introduced the military thumper decades earlier (and for general usage, rather than being a special-forces thing), and possibly butterfly the idea of "intermediate rifle cartridge." That would have some consequences...
 
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And wasn't the Model T one of the first flex-fuel cars made? if you made the 1920 equivalent of E-85 more widespread, you could keep Flex Fuel tech well until today.
 
And wasn't the Model T one of the first flex-fuel cars made? if you made the 1920 equivalent of E-85 more widespread, you could keep Flex Fuel tech well until today.
Ethanol is inferior in every imaginable respect to gasoline, and there is no sane reason for using it.
 
Ethanol is inferior in every imaginable respect to gasoline, and there is no sane reason for using it.

It's also a lot easier to make in your back yard. Anyone who played the 80's game Twilight: 2000 will recall entire campaigns dedicated to feeding the cavernous maws of their still, desperately trying to distill enough fuel to move their M1 to the next portion of the devastated Polish countryside.

Err, I think that might have got away from me a bit... anyway, the point I was trying to make is that ethanol is easier and cheaper to make on a small scale. In situations where a robust production/refining and transportation infrastructure doesn't exist for petrol, it might start to look more attractive.
 
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Sior

Banned
Just imagine drop tanks on the Bf 109s in Battle of Britain.

The drop tank was first used during the Spanish Civil War to allow fighter aircraft to carry additional fuel for long-range escort flights without requiring a dramatically larger, heavier, less maneuverable fuselage. During World War II, the German Luftwaffe began using external fuel tanks with the introduction of a 300 liter (79 US gallon) light alloy model for the Ju 87R, a long range version of the Stuka dive bomber, in early 1940. The Bf 109E-7, introduced in August 1940, also used this type of drop tank, as did subsequent Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. The 300 liter capacity of drop tank became the standard size used in German service, and examples of drop tanks of that capacity were also made from non-strategic materials.

I suppose some kind of clusterbomb will be possible too.

I believe there was some German WWI cluster HE-frag bomb that was really put into use, and that it was post-WWI used also by Polish Air force and later on improved a bit, will have to dig the archives to find the name though...

it was "Myszka lotnicza nr.2", a small 1 kg frag bomb, dispensed from box-like cases. In 1930s it was modernised to Myszka lotnicza T wz.34.

http://pl.wikipedia....a_lotnicza_nr_2


An angled flightdeck on an early carrier would mean a much more speedy launch and recovery of big strikes.

I wonder if a wire guided bomb/missile dropped from high altitude would make level bombers a real threat to moving warships or be used against massive fortifications? Perhaps a wire guided AA missile for close-in defense of warships, or a wire guided torpedo?

A "Squid" type anti-submarine mortar is quite simple to build and use once you have Asdic and the idea.

The recoil less gun and the hollow charge principle ought to be possible much earlier, as ought man portable anti tank weapons like Panzerfaust or Bazooka.
Davis gun 1912 recoiless gun.
http://landships.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=63528&p=3&topicID=9535077

Napalm?

Or what if the P-pill becomes widespread in the 1920s and the hippie movement blossom in the west in the 1930s - while Hitler goes on as OTL - bad pill, very bad pill...

Starting in 1927 with Kurt Beringer's Der Meskalinrausch (The Mescaline Intoxication), more intensive effort began to be focused on studies of psychoactive plants. Around the same time, Louis Lewin published his extensive survey of psychoactive plants, Phantastica (1928).

A versatile tank with sloped armour, a three man turret and a medium-high velocity gun in the 50-75mm range will be possible as soon as a reliable engine with 250+ shp is available. Ought not be a problem in the 1920s. A lot of 40-45 calibre 75mm naval guns with 600-800 mps MV would be available for main armament. Just need a revised recoil and recuperator system.

120mm and 81mm mortars as (Soviet and German) from WWII should be possible in 1920s and would give cheap, heavy and mobile firepower to infantry from batallion to Divisional level.

Stokes motar designed 1915 all other motars are derivatives of this.
http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/smortar.htm

A bomber relying on speed rather than defensive armament (i.e. Mosquito) might add some realities to the claim: "The bomber will allways get through!".

The production Hart day bomber had a single 525 hp (390 kW) Rolls-Royce Kestrel IB 12-cylinder V-type engine; a speed of 184 mph (296 km/h) and a range of 470 mi (757 km).[10] It was faster than most contemporary fighters, an astonishing achievement considering it was a light bomber, and had high manoeuvrability, making the Hart one of the most effective biplane bombers ever produced for the Royal Air Force. In particular, it was faster than the Bristol Bulldog, which had recently entered service as the RAF's front line fighter. This disparity in performance led the RAF to gradually replace the Bulldog with the Hawker Fury.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hart

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

Reply interspaced
 

Sior

Banned
It's also a lot easier to make in your back yard. Anyone who played the 80's game Twilight: 2000 will recall entire campaigns dedicated to feeding the cavernous maws of their still, desperately trying to distill enough fuel to move their M1 to the next portion of the devastated Polish countryside.

Err, I think that might have got away from me a bit... anyway, the point I was trying to make is that ethanol is easier and cheaper to make on a small scale. In situations where a robust production/refining and transportation infrastructure doesn't exist for petrol, it might start to look more attractive.

Or gator fat!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...petrol-scientists-convert-biodiesel-fuel.html
 

hammo1j

Donor
The R4M unguided missile seems to be a concept that does not require high tech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R4M_(rocket)

Apparently it was successful as a bomber destroyer, but introduced too late in too few numbers. Though, perhaps, it may suffer from the Luft-46 overhyping of late war German weaponry, it may have been a game changer.

Imagine Spitfires and Hurricanes using something similar in the BoB?
 
Another thing is computing. Motorola was founded in 1926, and the first transistor was patened in 1928. Theoretically, we could accelerate it about 20 years. ENIAC and the Peenemunde Machine could (theoretically) look like '60s vintage IBM, Wang, and Digital Equipment mainframes, albeit with magnetic tape and drum hard drives replaced with punch cards and oversized vynil records.

If we can get to the microchip by the Korean War, we could get to personal computers by the late '50s. Just think; Jay Miner would still be a young man, Jobs, Woz, Gates, and Balmer would still be in elementary, Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn would be in high school, Phil Estridge would be in the Air Force, and Nolan Bushnell would just be some Mormon Missionary.
 
The recoilless rifle was actually invented by the Soviets in the inter war period. There was a Soviet desinger who's name escapes me, who designed recoilless rifles from 75mm truck guns to aircraft guns and large caliber naval guns. He was popular with the Soviet brass, but fell in with the wrong crowd. Stalin had him killed in the Great Purge.

The 75mm truck mounted weapon was used in the Winter War, a few where captured by the Finns and the Germans took those over.
 
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