I come a little late to the Christening party, but your excellent work here has inspired me to add my own ideas into the mix, oh fellow enthusiasts!
- Firstly, I would like to thank you good fellows for setting loose a new wave of SOUTHERN VICTORY discussion (special thanks to cortz#9 for these excellent illustrations - how DO you make up those firearms pictures, might one please ask?).
- Secondly, I would like to say that one enjoys the idea of the Confederates using a canine naming theme for their Armoured Fighting vehicles (though one quibbles a little over names like "Dingo" and "Jackal" which seem a little cosmopolitan for the rather backwards/inwards-looking Confederacy); I would, however, like to suggest that names such as "Bird Dog" be reserved for aircraft rather than Armoured Fighting Vehicles (in fact one might go further and suggest that names which tie into the themes evoked by known aircraft - like the Mule, Gator & Hound Dog - be reserved for Aircraft, if only to keep things intuitive*).
*For example, mention a Hound Dog fighter but then go on to mention a "Bulldog" without describing it and reader will almost certainly think "Plane" rather than "Ground Pounder."
-Thirdly, I was thinking a bit on possible naming conventions for Southern Armour and it struck me that a plausible theme would be "Archetypical Soldiers" (as opposed to the famous individual soldiers after whom the US would appear to have named their armoured types** since Jake Featherston HATES the "Great Names" of the Confederacy - or at least what the likes of JEB Stuart Junior have been allowed to achieve because of them - almost as much as he does Confederate Coloureds), suggesting names like "Cavalier" "Dragoon" "Rifleman" "Volunteer" or "Stalwart" (it seems very easy to imagine the Stalwart being the first barrel designed under the aegis of the Featherston Administration and equally easy to imagine the "Cavalier" being built under a Whig Administration - this may well be a name retroactively applied to the tanks constructed in Mexico between the Wars, possibly known locally as "Caballero").
**Names like "Pershing" and "Roosevelt" seem plausible additions to the "Custer" Model.
-Fourthly (and not actually concerned with names), I wanted to suggest the idea that the Southern Arms Industry is well-funded but suffers from the constraints imposed by the industrial base of a still largely agrarian nation (and one which appears to be able to breed individual geniuses, but not foster a steady supply of them to quite the same degree as a more progressive nation - consider that most of the Best Confederate Brains we see were educated "Up North" at places like Harvard); I'd suggest that many Confederate designs have a strong element of "Individual Excellence" (a visible hint that they're most put together according to the ideas & design sense of a single, overworked Genius) and also that they always look a little rough-around-the-edges, as if there's never quite enough time for the small pool of Southern Experts to 'work up' a design until its 100% before they're asked to produce the next one, especially after the Second Great War starts, and never quite enough skilled labourers for every war machine to enjoy exactly the same loving care.
I would also like to suggest that a strong element of improvisation be the mark of Confederate States design; there's never quite enough skilled labour, seldom enough time and designs tend to be pulled together from an astonishing variety of inspirations (native, Entente and even Yankee) because Industrial Espionage or Licensed Designs are more economical than expecting the South's relatively small pool of talent to think of everything, but what the Confederate States builds WORKS ... mostly.
- Finally, I would like to note that one pictures the North as an Industrial Colossus and the South as an industrial middleweight trying to provide a heavyweight punch; quite frankly the North can afford to experiment with a variety of designs (some of them wildly different and a few outright bangers) because they need never worry about being out-produced by the South (because the Northern Industrial base is SO MUCH BIGGER), so they can afford to deal with a number of companies and prioritise the "lowest bidder" over minor niceties of design.
The South, by contrast, has to get things RIGHT (or at least "Good Enough") at the design stage because the Confederacy can't afford to spare the time to fix problems on the production floor (much less maintain 'lemons' in the fighting line); they need tanks that WORK and they need to build them as quickly as possible in order to keep up with the Yankees. This probably leads to long production runs of known quantities - tanks that have proven their reliability again and again - as well as a good deal of variations on a theme (instead of designing an entirely new tank and wasting time on restructuring everything in the Factory, they prefer to build a variation on an older tank so that much the same production lines can be used).
One hopes that I have been able to convey my ideas without waffling them up - please let me know if any points require clarification!
