Recent content by Driftless

Churchill might appreciate the irony of pointing out mining your neighbor's coast as an act of war, considering the plan to mine (then Neutral) Norway's territorial waters. Kind of a similar situation of who acted first as being the aggressor. Yeah, I know, different siuations, but also some...

How much of a surprise will Matador be to the Thai's and Japanese, once the attack is launched?

Nemesis - (2020) An altered version of the Agatha Christie story, where Miss Marple's nephew Raymond West is added to the cast (ala 2007 ITV version). The gist of the story is that a prior acquaintance of Miss Marple, Jason Rafiel, as his dying commission sets Miss Marple to resolve a murder...

Any idea on calorie level of those rations (on average)?

I don't think conditions existed, even with a Republican run in the White House for a larger standing Army. Resistance to that idea went back to the 1700's, even predating the existence of the United States as an entity. Any increases in the size of the Army, i.e. the ACW, were viewed as...

Elba would make a great Bond, with the brooding intensity of Dalton and Craig.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - 1940 A fairly faithful version of the Agatha Christie classic Cast: Hercule Poirot - Charles Boyer* The un-glamorized off-screen Boyer was a bit balding and also had a bit of a belly. It didn't take much makeup to have him fit the Poirot persona (*I stole...

The OTL US Army was tiny by European standards (until late 1917), poorly trained for large scale operations, with a small cadre of leaders. Even with a TR or Elihu Root as President, there would be great popular resistance to creating a large and professional army, until late in the program...

Interesting. I hadn't considered there is a leap of scale for the metallurgy of armor manufacture. Sometimes the infrastructure isn't there at the time it's wanted. Also, I seem to remember that one of the issue for the British 6lb cannon that needed development was the long tool (yeah, yeah...

My enduring impression of Percival is that his great strength was in high level staff work - analysis and planning. His mid-30's study of Malaya's defense set up was accurate and he also identified what needed to be done to bring the setup to where it should have been. His recommendations got...

A reminder that there is desperate and large scale fighting going on thousands of miles away in North Africa? That (to this point), its more of an ominous threat in Southeast Asia, and from a different enemy?

More "tooth" and "tail" to this universe's Commonwealth Air Force. The historical and AH construction crews and radar teams will be far busier than they anticipated. A off-tangent question: did the Blenheims rigged as night fighters have sufficient speed to intercept the Japanese bombers, even...

D7 Cat and LeTourneau(?) scraper - 1940 (Both pretty heavy duty workhorses for the era) Photo from IMCDb.org

No. If there were a non-Wilson President from 1912 on, then some of Elihu Root's earlier suggested reforms of the US Army might have made more impact, even in compromise form. Those reforms were more to modernizing the top brass administration and forming the onset of a true General Staff...

Wasn't the biggest issue for financial growth the limit of native industrial resources, such as petroleum, iron ore, coal and other materials? They would need some skillful diplomacy to gain safe and sustainable access to those type of resources. Libyan oil was a potential, but needed some...