TL-191: Yankee Joe - Uniforms, Weapons, and Vehicles of the U.S. Armed Forces

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The Curtiss-Wright P-46 "Super Shark" - Essentially an upgraded version of the P-27 Sky Shark with a Lockheed L-301 engine (a licensed produced version of the German Junkers Jumo 213 engine,) a taller tail, and a longer fuselage.
 
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The Lockheed P-38 Lightning of the 14th Fighter Wing, circa April 1943 prior to the roundel change.

The P-38 was initially designed as a long range fighter, the aircraft would throughout the war would be used for a multitude of roles such as escort fighter, ground attack, night fighter, and photo reconnaissance. The highest scoring ace of the Union forces, Richard I. Bong, used the P-38 as his personal mount, shooting down a total of 114 Confederate aircraft throughout the Second Great War.
 
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A few more Union Air Force aircraft (this time being about the evolution of the Sky Shark family.)
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A Curtiss Wright P-24A Hawk of the 9th Pursuit Squadron based at Remembrance Field outside of Philadelphia, circa Spring of 1940.
The P-24 Hawk (aka the Model 75) would be the Union Air Force's most numerous fighter at the outbreak of war making up for 44% of the Union Fighter Force. It was also widely exported before the war as well, it's foreign users would notably be Finland, the Ottoman Empire, Quebec, China, Persia, Ethiopia, Norway, the Netherlands, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Haiti, and even was licensed produced by the Lohner Werke company in Austria-Hungary as the LW. 75.

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A P-27B-3 Sky Shark from the 65th Fighter Wing during the Battle of Detroit/Operation Jupiter, circa Spring of 1942. (This pretty much my interpretation of the DB601 P-40 aka the Sky Shark.)

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A P-46A-2 Super Shark belonging to the 14th Fighter Wing during the Battle of Chattanooga, Winter of 1943-44. The P-46 design was essentially an upgraded Sky Shark that had an extended tail and rear fuselage and as well as receiving a licensed copy of the venerable Junkers Jumo 213 engine. The early versions of the plane had featured two Browning machine-guns in the nose and a 20mm M1943 autocannon through the propeller hub as well as six .50 cals in the wings. The later D models and onwards had it armament changed to two M1943 autocannons mounted in the wings. The design was first introduced in August of 1943 and proved equal to the newer models of Hound Dog fighters that had entered service weeks earlier. As the war progressed, the P-46 much like all other aircraft in the Union Arsenal were enjoying the increase of air superiority on their side. By the time that production cease in May of 1947, a total of 12,436 airframes would be produced and the type would be used by the US Air Force until finally being retired from service in 1956. Other users of the type would be Quebec, Alyaska, Texas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Sweden, Ireland, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Guiana, Australia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, Jamaica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, and Persia with the final military operator, the Royal Ethiopian Air Force, retiring them in 1985.
 
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Like RamscoopRaider said, it was Morrel who came up with the idea for a steel helmet and I suppose it could be different from the stahlhelm design but the way its described in the book, it sounds like a stahlhelm.
RamscoopRaider makes a good case for US barrel development too IMO.
a bit late in the game of response, but I feel it's worth mentioning that the USA wouldn't be entirely incapable of original designs. Let's not forget the first tank prototypes were built on US-desgned Holt Crawler tractor chassis. I could see some of the same design philosophies that inspired the British coming to Union Engineers, and let's be fair, France and the UK both developed the concept of the Tank in the same timeframe, the British just fielded a...functional, design first. if tanks were solely a British idea, then the French and Germans would also have fielded Rhomboids because they would have just copied the British. As for the British themselves, they certainly didn't have anything like the FT-17 later in the war, instead producing dead-end designs like the Whippit, which in form was essentially a scaled-down Rhomboid.

In short, not EVERYTHING the US uses has to come from Germany. Case in point: they use the Thompson SMG rather than the MP18/28.
 
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The livery of a Northrop A-17E-4 Nomad light bomber belonging to the 30th Bombardment Wing based at Wright Field in Ohio at the time of Operation Blackbeard in 1941.

First introduced into service with the United States Air Force in 1936, the Northrop A-17 "Nomad" was the mainstay light bomber of the USAF throughout the late 1930s to early 1940s before being replaced by more modern twin engine designs. The aircraft would prove to very popular with it's crews, however in 1940, the USAF would declare it obsolete and had ordered more modern designs to replace it. But by the time of Operation Blackbeard, a good number of the type were still in frontline units, and with the shortage of adequate light bombers in early months of the war, the Nomad found itself seeing heavy combat use, with many of the aircraft that were reassigned to 2nd line roles that had been upgraded with new engines being pressed into combat use. The A-17 would prove to easy targets for the Confederate Hound Dog fighters, which caused them to have the need to escorted. By late 1942, with enough more modern light bombers in service, the surviving A17 Nomads would be re-delegated to roles such as training and as target tugs. Before the war, the model would be exported to a number of nations such as Norway, Quebec, Sweden, Ottoman Empire, Persia, Peru, Brazil, China, and the Netherlands.

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A North American A-33 Hunter with the 65th Bombardment Squadron in Missouri, circa Spring of 1942. (Note that the faintly visible stripes on the tailplane have been pained over.)

When the Union was thrusted into the Second Great War with Operation Blackbeard, it's Air Force realized that it lacked adequate numbers of light bombers. Therefore they were forced to improvise with the various 2nd aircraft that they had and modifying them into bomber aircraft. One notable example was with the North American T-6 Texan as in it's light bomber role was designated the A-33 Hunter, which was modified with bomb racks and a rear mounted machine-gun for self defense. In this role, they proved vulnerable to both AA ground fire and to Confederate fighters due to their slow speed and it's bomb load was a pitiful 4 100 pound bombs. However the A-33 proved to be good enough as an interim bomber until adequate numbers of more advanced aircraft came into service which replaced by August of 1942. After that the remaining A-33s either were converted into the T-6 configuration as trainers or continued on with their bomber role with both their use in Anti-Partisan Warfare in Canada and Utah and also a night time harassment bomber against the Confederates.
 
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To start....
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The US navy's embryonic Naval Air Force had been well-honed by the outbreak of the Second Great War, going so far as to launch a Carrier air raid on Charleston, South Carolina on the opening days of hostilities. From its early days following the end of the First Great War, the USN's Aircraft Carrier program had been a world-leader, pioneering many of the techniques and operational strategies, and experience in the Pacific War had demonstrated that Carriers would determine the future of Naval Warfare.
As the USN's first carrier, the converted battlecruiser USS Remembrance, had advanced, despite the languishing years of Socialist rule and Depression, she had needed updates to her aircraft infrastructure to maintain parity with overseas developments, such as those of the British and Japanese.

Grumman Aircraft had provided such updates by the beginning of the 1940's, as the Aggression of the rebuilt CSA had reached a boiling point.

the F3A "Katzenjammer" was the first USN fighter to have retractable landing gear, a fully enclosed cockpit and folding wings, allowing for storage of more aircraft without needing to increase the size of the carrier's hanger. Armed with 6 Browning .50 Caliber machine guns and capable of being fitted with drop tanks for extended range, the fighter was devleoped from experience in the Pacific War, where the USN's Biplane fighters had struggled with the new Mitsubishi A5M monoplanes the Japanese had fielded from their carriers.

Despite the advances that allowed the fighters to go toe-to-toe with both carrier planes and land-based aircraft, the F3A's weren't enough to save Bermuda, the battle for which saw pitched air battles with CSA-built "Sea Dog" Navalized versions of the Hughes Hound Dog fighter, or the Remembrance herself, which was sunk on December 7th 1941 off Midway Island. Marine squadrons based on the Island itself, bolstered by those planes able to escape the sinking carrier, held off the Japanese for a few more days, but the island eventually fell to the Japanese, forcing the US to withdraw to the Sandwich Islands and the West Coast.

The loss of Remembrance was a blow to the USN, but a temporary solution was found in "Escort" carriers, freighters converted with flight decks to hold smaller quantities of planes until new Fleet carriers could be built. The first two such vessels, the USS Trenton and USS Chapultepec, were soon jined by more such conversions, named for Famous battles and aviation pioneers. Marine units operating out of the Sandwich Islands had also engaged with Japanese bombers, and CSA and Mexican air patrols off Baja California.
 
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The Wright 26 was a major step forward for the USAAF from the machines that were in service in the years after the Great War. Amalgamating a variety of features such as enclosed cockpits, monoplane wings and retractable landing gear into one aircraft, the 26 was already being phased out of service by the outbreak of war, but continued to see service as a trainer, and with second-line forces such as Quebec. Several were also captured by the Utah rebels from US air bases in the territory.

the Wright-27 was by and large the USA's most important fighter of the war, and remained in service in some form or another throughout the entire war. Updating the Wright-26 airframe with a more powerful engine, the plane was faster, more agile, and had a longer range than it's predecessor and could be configured as a fighter-bomber. These machines went toe-to-toe with the CSA's "Hound Dog" fighters throughout the war.

The Boeing P8A benefited from the alliance with Imperial Germany, and is something of a reverse-engineer of the Focke-Wulf FW-190 used by the Luftwaffe. Designed as a long-range bomber escort, the "Colt" could also serve as a heavy ground-attack fighter with its punishing 8x Browning .50 caliber Machine guns, and made short work of Hound Dogs and Razorback bombers in the air.

a revolution in the air war came with the Boeing 71 "Turbo." Powered by two Westinghouse Turbojet engines copied from a German design, the fighter could push past the maximum speed of any aircraft flown by the CSA, and it's nose-mounted 20mm cannons made it a fierce opponent to both air and ground targets.

while the Boeing 17 dive bomber was no match to the Turbo or Colt in terms of speed, it was robust and strong. It needed to be, for it was more than a match for the CSA's "Mule" Dive Bomber, and in both naval and land-based variations it served well. Later in the war, a number of the aircraft were modified to carry twin 37mm cannons to knock out ground targets and Confederate Barrels.

the Douglas DC-2 was the primary transport of the USA during the war. Robust, well-built and long-ranged, the DC-2 came into its own once the war came back in the USA's favor following the battle of Pittsburgh, and was deployed in its most well-known role of Paratroop transport during the assault on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain during Irving Morrell's drive into Tennessee.

one of the most important aircraft of the USA's effort was the Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortress," which was the USA's primary heavy bomber. Hundreds of these planes pounded Confederate industrial targets and cities throughout the war, further weakening the CSA's already strained industry and war effort, and would continue to punish the CSA throughout the conflict.

[=]

the Wright-26 was Influenced by the fine work of S. Marlowski. Not trying to step on your toes, friend, I love your work.
 
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The Wright 26 was a major step forward for the USAAF from the machines that were in service in the years after the Great War. Amalgamating a variety of features such as enclosed cockpits, monoplane wings and retractable landing gear into one aircraft, the 26 was already being phased out of service by the outbreak of war, but continued to see service as a trainer, and with second-line forces such as Quebec. Several were also captured by the Utah rebels from US air bases in the territory.

the Wright-27 was by and large the USA's most important fighter of the war, and remained in service in some form or another throughout the entire war. Updating the Wright-26 airframe with a more powerful engine, the plane was faster, more agile, and had a longer range than it's predecessor and could be configured as a fighter-bomber. These machines went toe-to-toe with the CSA's "Hound Dog" fighters throughout the war.

The Boeing P8A benefited from the alliance with Imperial Germany, and is something of a reverse-engineer of the Focke-Wulf FW-190 used by the Luftwaffe. Designed as a long-range bomber escort, the "Colt" could also serve as a heavy ground-attack fighter with its punishing 8x Browning .50 caliber Machine guns, and made short work of Hound Dogs and Razorback bombers in the air.

a revolution in the air war came with the Boeing 71 "Turbo." Powered by two Westinghouse Turbojet engines copied from a German design, the fighter could push past the maximum speed of any aircraft flown by the CSA, and it's nose-mounted 20mm cannons made it a fierce opponent to both air and ground targets.

while the Boeing 17 dive bomber was no match to the Turbo or Colt in terms of speed, it was robust and strong. It needed to be, for it was more than a match for the CSA's "Mule" Dive Bomber, and in both naval and land-based variations it served well. Later in the war, a number of the aircraft were modified to carry twin 37mm cannons to knock out ground targets and Confederate Barrels.

the Douglas DC-2 was the primary transport of the USA during the war. Robust, well-built and long-ranged, the DC-2 came into its own once the war came back in the USA's favor following the battle of Pittsburgh, and was deployed in its most well-known role of Paratroop transport during the assault on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain during Irving Morrell's drive into Tennessee.

one of the most important aircraft of the USA's effort was the Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortress," which was the USA's primary heavy bomber. Hundreds of these planes pounded Confederate industrial targets and cities throughout the war, further weakening the CSA's already strained industry and war effort, and would continue to punish the CSA throughout the conflict.

[=]

the Wright-26 was Influenced by the fine work of S. Marlowski. Not trying to step on your toes, friend, I love your work.
Impressive work there

Anyways, I have been meaning to post this for a while.
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A Douglas A-20J Havoc from the 19th Attack Wing during the Battle of Richmond, circa 1944.

Developed in the late 1930s as a requirement by the US Air Force of a new twin engine light bomber, the A-20 (aka the DB-7) would first enter service with the Union AF in 1940 and would serve throughout the Second Great War as a light bomber and later an attack aircraft. The aircraft would be praised by it's crews for it's high speed, ease of flight, most importantly, it's versatility. The Type would serve in various roles, from Light Bomber, Attack Aircraft, Torpedo Bomber, Reconnaissance, and a Night Fighter (as the P-62.) At the end of the conflict, a grand total of 7,514 airframes would be built, and would even by license produced by the Avia Company (building 1.074 airframes) in Austria-Hungary as the B. 84, serving alongside the Junkers Ju-88 and other bombers on the European Front.
 
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So, I had made my interpretation of the Rank and Insignia System used by the Union Army during the Second Great War. Which for these, I had taken inspiration from the Wehrmacht Ranks of WWII and I had also added an American twist to it.
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So, I had made my interpretation of the Rank and Insignia System used by the Union Army during the Second Great War. Which for these, I had taken inspiration from the Wehrmacht Ranks of WWII and I had also added an American twist to it.
View attachment 547792
Very nice. A few things:
1) IMHO, the US ranks should be inspired by the Germans, not a direct copy.
2) Four grades for Corporal should realistically be two.
3) Lieutenant Colonel should only have one silver oak leaf.
4) General officers: Brigadier, Major General, Lieutenant General, Four Star General, Field Marshal.
 
And you're forgetting that in the books, there are mentions of U.S. Generals getting stars. Irving Morrell is mentioned as getting his, along with Terry Francis out in West Texas.
 
US ranking systems would have been in place before the Civil War, and wouldn't really change just because of the alliance with Germany. And I don't think the US has a rank of "Field Marshal."
 
US ranking systems would have been in place before the Civil War, and wouldn't really change just because of the alliance with Germany. And I don't think the US has a rank of "Field Marshal."
General of the Army would be the highest rank. That's five stars, by the way.
General of the Army existed because George Marshall did not want to be called Marshal Marshall. If the US is operating a force as big as implied then it is very likely that 191 US would create a 5 star rank called Field Marshal, as it would view a 5 star rank as neccesary, and field Marshal is the international precedent. Now it's not certain they would call it that, but I put odds at better than even
 
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