King Augeas said:
I don't think there is the industrial and financial strength to defeat Germany via invasion or strategic bombing.
If Britain continues to follow the OTL path, maybe not. In changed conditions, however, why do the Brits stick to the same solutions?
Britain lacked the industrial & manpower capacity to achieve victory by city-bombing, & to survive U-boats with OTL A/S. So, what does she do? What
can she do instead?
Two simple changes: basing Stirlings in Newfoundland cut losses to U-boats quite dramatically. Switching to mining of rivers & canals, bombing of canals, & bombing of railyards, cuts bomber & crew losses to nearly nothing, & creates chaos in Germany's power grid, weapons production, & weapons/equipment delivery, in a matter of weeks.
Enough change to defeat Germany? IMO, more than enough.
King Augeas said:
UK puts out peace feelers in late 1940/earliest 1941, from a position of relative strength following victory in BoB and in Cyrenaica
With Winston as PM, I really doubt it.
If it's somebody else, tho, this could just happen. And I think Hitler would go along.
King Augeas said:
Tube Alloys begins a Pu bomb programme (AFAIK, the cheaper but less certain method?)
The uranium (Thin Man) design was easier, simpler, & more reliable. The implosion design (Fat Boy) was much more likely to fail

--& needed plutonium, which is harder to make...
King Augeas said:
[Japan] has to strike south, she cannot assume that the US will remain neutral with the PI across her communications, and Malaya is much stronger than OTL because of "peace" in Europe and Africa. I still think she attacks PH, with similar results
I find this likely, but it could happen Japan gambles the U.S. will stay out & leaves the P.I. alone. In that event...
King Augeas said:
The UK and US are, if not allies, then at least cobelligerents
...the U.S. will inevitably enter the war against Germany, because the U.S. knew Germany was the greater threat, & Hitler planned to attack the U.S. eventually.
King Augeas said:
how does the UK actually get troops into Germany
Why do you presume the Free French won't still want the country liberated?

Ian Hathaway said:
Personally I don't see the UK lasting much beyond April / May of 1941 without US oil. Britain I suppose could use every bit of its gold reserves to purchase the high octane fuel the fighters of bomber command relied on to give them the edge in the BoB but then it has to forsake other things such as manufacturing materials and goods or food.
There's also Venezuela, & Western Canada...
I agree, the U.S. had the know-how to produce 100 octane. This is cheap to get, compared to all the other stuff Britain can source elsewhere. (Or she could get it from {patriotic}
Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. petro companies...

)
As for gold, a lot of that was because Winston chose to give away radar & other tech with no licence fees. Plus South African gold could cover expenses... Plus Canada (at least) was willing to just give the Mother Country stuff.
Add a change in approach...
That's
without considering what Free France is doing...

It seems possible (if a bit unlikely) there's a deal for Free France to buy weapons & gear & "Lend Lease" it to Britain. (That does need Winston not to treat de Gaulle like a lapdog,

which may be ASB.

)
bsmart said:
The British were doing research but the actual production of Atomic Weapons was a huge industrial undertaking. I believe the U.S. was the only nation that had the extra capacity to throw into the effort required. The U.S. attacked the problem on 4 fronts
Two different methods of purifying nuclear material each requiring HUGE amounts of electricity that was only available because of the prior building of the TVA and Columbia River power projects. Then there was the building of the bomb itself in New Mexico
Why do you presume the Brits take the same Cadillac approach, rather than going with a single-track uranium bomb program?

As for electric power, Canada's hydro could be upgraded quite a bit, even if a
major hydro project wasn't done to support the Bomb. (I'm thinking of
Kemano in particular, which was in development before war started; there may be others.)
bsmart said:
delivery system (The B-29)
A bomber that had to deliver a 12000 pd load from Saipan... The Lanc could already deliver more than that to Berlin. More engine power & higher altitude performance would be useful; add jet pods & pressure cabin?
M79 said:
Britain was working on ASDIC systems and other anti-sub programs from early in the war.
And you think I don't know this why?

It wasn't helping against U-boats much OTL, especially since they mostly operated
on the surface.
M79 said:
Besides, US ships might still be able to carry goods to the UK or via a neutral but pro-Allied Ireland.
Which they didn't OTL. And if they're carrying war material, U-boats can still
sink them.
M79 said:
You haven't demonstrated any improvement over OTL.

Indeed, TTL RN is denied U.S.-built corvettes & DEs.
M79 said:
their naval supply routes to Crete, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and elsewhere would be open.
Which presupposes the ships aren't being slaughtered by U-boats the Brits don't have enough escorts to stop.
M79 said:
The massive mobilization of World War II had profound effects on the US economy
Which doesn't change the fundamental statement: the U.S., in a depressed state, still
outproduced all the others combined.
M79 said:
the dominance enjoyed by Washington in the post-war years will not be present
Britain will be burdened with enormous war debt, plus the need to rebuild & retool. The U.S., untouched, won't.
M79 said:
without the GI bill many of her best and brightest will remain locked into whatever parts of the country they came from
This much is true.
M79 said:
There were muscle cars involving '32 Fords
No, there weren't. There were custom-built hot rods. A muscle car is a factory package: large engine, small (relatively

) car. This was a product of Delorean at Pontiac, in response to the Baby Boom. It
does not happen without the Boom. At best, you get the likes of the Chrysler 300, & even that, without the War, I'm dubious happens.
M79 said:
NASCAR was built on the premise of moonshiners racing hotrods

I am so sick of the "NASCAR was made up entirely of moonshiners".

Yes, there were racers. Yes, NASCAR had some shinerunners (tuners for stock cars). Would both those things still converge TTL?
M79 said:

That's a bit like asking if the
Mafia is a bad thing.
M79 said:
TV is a pre-war technology
Which didn't become commonplace until the '50s...
M79 said:
in the interim the UK will suffer greatly
So you do or don't think ASDIC & lack of escorts harms Britain's chances?

M79 said:
You could see Henry Kaiser contracted to build shipyards for Canada's East Coast though...
There were yards. They needed expanding. An expansion in St John's or St John, so there was a repair yard for escorts near the departure point (instead of having to sail all the way to Halifax

) would have been a good idea.
I'm also not sure why you think Canada was incapable of building shipyards without Kaiser.
M79 said:
Even with the US involved the UK did not produce a bomb until 1952
After the U.S. actively interfered with Britain's efforts...
M79 said:
Fat chance.
And this is presuming Britain doesn't start a Bomb project
during the war. Frankly, I doubt that, so a start is going to be even later. If it is, the Sov program will be later, too. And that presumes it survives the death of Stalin--or gets started at around the same time, with the SU doing much worse in the war...
