alternate history

IOW - earlier & greater cooperation with SAAB and the British companies, while the cooperation between the later and the French and other European NATO is much smaller? Draken was powered by the British engine, Viggen was supposed to be powered by the Medway, while the Gripen should've been just...

An appropriate subject for the night that is in it, methinks. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVlnER8SxfQ View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRjmQXDhyps

I keep bumping into this from different angles, its technically very interesting to me so I'll ask the question here and see what happens. In the late 50s Britain was looking for a more commercially oriented nuclear power reactor type to follow on from it's operationally successful but not very...

Greatly inspired by the "Longer B-58 Hustler service?" thread by @Rule of cool How could the B-47 have had a more impactful service life? Improved engines and aerodynamics? Exports to friendly nations? As a total What-if thought, I would consider a four-engine B-47 evolution as seen with...

As any deeply invested Spitfire fan knows, the intended major developments never eventuated and the history of the Spitfire was one of interim variants that did very well. The dead ends are as follows: SPITFIRE III: Merlin 20 development with four cannon and major airframe revisions; abandoned...

Hi everyone, I tend to be quite interested in discussing the details of a scenario where the Entente holds the front near the Franco-Belgian border in 1940 (mostly in other forums). I was now wondering what the impacts would be for the RAF. Obviously we may see fewer American aircrafts in...

I saw a B58 Hustler for the first time the other day, I was surprised by how small it was. I also finally understand what the combination fuel-weapon store is and does. Was the design too specific and limited to remain in service beyond 1969? Could it have carried SRAMs or other advanced...

The saga of the Royal Navy's carriers after 1966 has been the main focus of interest here, but the workhorse of the RN then as now was the frigate. By the 1970s the RN had plans to replace its Type 12 Leander class frigates with the larger all missile armed Type 22. Leanders were designed...

I found this photograph on tvd.im, a website that covers militaria and sundries. The entry and caption were for a Curtis SC Seahawk. Obviously, this ain’t it, but what is it? I did a cursory look at Luft’46 didn’t come up with anything that looks like this seaplane. The tail looks like it came...

Excerpt from i need to get pictures, real pictures of this beauty

The USN acquired 142 Lockheed EC121s in the early 50s to mount long-range early warning barrier patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific. The main strength was 5 sqns for each ocean with various cats and dogs supporting units. The barrier patrol lasted until 1965 and afterwards the USN transferred 30...

Good Afternoon everyone, hope you are all doing well Lately i have been having a lot of thoughts about engine capabilities and i thought long and hard in regards to Orenda and other smaller engine manifacturers of the 50s and 60s, i thought about the Iroquois engine a lot and not only because of...

Apart from on the pages of Eagle comic there is no such thing as the Royal Space Force. 1957 ;saw not just the infamous Sandys White Paper but also the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union. PM Macmillan and Defence Secretary Sandys realise how vulnerable this makes the West and Britain in...

So as part of as a what-if scale model, I wrote up a backstory (if you want to see the whole build process check out whatifmodelers https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=53008.0). The interesting part was I wrote up a basic story and then used Google Gemini AI to re-write and basically...

The possibility of the UK avoiding the 1965 aircraft cancellations has been discussed ad nauseam. I don't propose to get into it here - assume a collective delusion of the UK government, the discovery of a massive gold deposit, or intervention from extra-terrestrial intelligences, as you see...

Just came across Operation Downfall, and was pondering. What might be the political situation that would warrant the plan coming to fruition? What projects would be pursued and put into production, and what wouldn't? Who would win the war? Perhaps the 3rd world war would be caused by a...

Although the excellent AH1 Cobra was deployed to Europe in the 1970s and received TOW missiles to help it kill Soviet armour, noone else in NATO could afford it. That left W Germany sticking six HOT missile launchers on its Bo 105 light observation helicopter and the British Army SS11 missiles...

The fledgling Lufftwaffe and Marineflieger appeared to be interesting in buying British in their earliest days. Of course this was the worst possible time to deal with the British, so every effort fell over. Wiki referencing Wood. The German Defence Ministry first expressed interest in the...

At the end of WW2 the myriad RAF & USAAF combat aircraft were drawn down, scraped or in the UKs case “given back” (either literally to the US or again scraped in the UK). But what would the out of service dates be of these iconic aircraft if the war continued to 1950 or later. Frontline...

The US Navy in the 1980s deployed an impressive range of non-AEGIS cruisers. Long Beach was the largest and oldest of the nuclear ships and the only one to start life as a cruiser. The remainder started as frigates then became DLGNs. Bainbridge and Truxtun were one-offs followed in the 70s by 2...