Recent content by Gridley

How plausible would it be for the Winter War to start either much earlier (within days or at most a few weeks of the invasion of Poland) or much later (Spring/Summer 1940)? Is there really any major factor driving the date other than Stalin's whim (within that range)? What are the (reasonably...

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=140356

OK, I think we need to get more specific. On 12/7/41 the US Asiatic Fleet had SubRon 20 with 29 boats. These would be the ones available for immediate operations around the PI. By hull number these were: SS-141 to -146 "S-1" class SS-172 to -178 "Porpoise" class SS-182 to -197 "Salmon" and...

I'm quite sure there could be some situation somewhere where they'd be cost effective. However, under the present bias against nuclear anything and the limited scale of launches I suspect there is no present or near future application where it would be cost effective. Now once we really get out...

This thread makes me smile. I wish to thank both Cymraeg for writing it and others for contributing comments.

And submarines date to the 18th century. The development of complex systems (and there are few more complex systems in the world than a fleet carrier) is not guaranteed to happen in 30 years. Only three nations in history have ever had true operational fleet carriers (US, GB, Japan), plus half...

I respect the British. I do not respect the British Parliament. Guess who writes the checks? Politicians are capable of incredible levels of illogic and self-deception over and above their general lack of touch with reality. One would think, for example, that it would be only sane and logical...

Nope. The prototype was ordered in June of 1941. Modifications were made based on combat experience, but the F6F would still have existed and been an incremental improvement over the F4F. Eh, what? As of 12/7/41 I count nine fleet and light carriers in the IJN, plus a pair of CVEs. the USN...

All true, though last I saw there was no budget for air wings for those RN carriers. (!?!?) Which, of course, circles back to my point: we don't need a TL where carriers are actually inferior to battleships, we only need to have one where the people who sign the checks...

The OSS was quite active in the Pacific - among other things, they worked with this guy named Ho Chi Min. You might have heard of him. :-) Remember, the US put its ethnic Japanese in internment camps. The Nisei units were all sent to the ETO so they wouldn't have a chance to defect (probably...

Parties exist nowhere in the Constitution. In the original version the VP was supposed to be the Presidential candidate who got the 2nd most votes - picture Bush as POTUS with Gore as his veep! The electoral college, by its nature, strongly favors having only two serious candidates for POTUS...

I was actually hoping that the last election (2008) would wind up splitting both parties. IMO that is the only way you're going to get more than two parties in the US at present because if one party splits and the other doesn't, it is committing suicide. However, if a pair of hyper-ambitious...

What Mark E. said, plus this: there are two kinds of 'good' bio weapons. The first type is something of a weapon of war - it is highly infectious, either airborne or has multiple vectors, it has a short incubation time, has a high mortality rate, AND A VACCINE that you alone posses. You release...

All true - but a fighter only carrier won't REPLACE battleships, now will it? :-) Or Infernal intervention... Something that occurred to me last night; only ONE navy has actually carried Fleet carriers forward into the modern era - the USN. If Fleet carriers don't play a key role in WWII...

Yes, but carrier aircraft aren't automatically equal in development to land aircraft, or the RN's FAA would have had good monoplane fighters and bombers when the war broke out. Absent reasonable numbers of carriers, who's going to be developing carrier aircraft? Sure, you'll get a few here and...