alternate history

We have covered individual projects and the infamous Sandys 1957 White Paper in some depth but I wanted to draw together what we have learnt with some open questions: Which missile projects across the board: Malkara to Blue Streak would you bin or save? Which Foreign systems would you have...

Those of us who grew up in the 1960s with the TV21 comic derived from the various Gerry Anderson TV shows remember the weird and wonderful machines featured. After my BAOC Fireflash I decided to revisit Fireball XL5. In the TV21 summer special of 1966 there was a brief glimpse of a possible...

In the very first Thnunderbirds Episode "Trapped in the Sky" the London Airport building features the letters BAOC (based on the British Airways predecessor BOAC) as a rival to the Air Terrainean company who flew the Fireflash. As a BOAC fan I always hoped to see the BAOC version. So 50 years...

I found this in a 1990s 'Yellow Peril (Japan)' techno-thriller called 'The War in 2020' (1991), the book ends with a note indicating that the writing of it was finished in April of 1990. It features this tank which I am guessing was based on the reports of these tanks in the west. Here are the...

During the process of evaluation of the proposals to F.155T, De Havilland wanted to make a alternative last minute submission, and Saro was strictly prohibited from this. Yet what if the board had instead allowed all the firms submitting, the chance of a last minute submission? We know Saro...

As discussed all too many times, in real life Dassault was not entirely happy with participation in the AFVG program, with British design leadership for the airframe. This would lead to Dassault putting forward its own alternative designs and in the end contribute to the French abandoning the...

I love very much the delightful novel "The two Georges" in which American revolution (and French revolution) never happened,and in a 1995 in many respects very similiar to 1935, British Empire reigns over great part of the world. My question is which can be the more plausible alternate timeline...

Some older ideas from another timeline greatly influenced by recent threads. So our original pod was not directly British (it is Greece in the early 1920s). It's first effect on Britain is that alternative vote as an electoral system passes in 1931 but this hardly affects the course of the next...

After the Sino-Soviet split the PLA really stagnated until they opened to the west in the late 70s, but even then the slow trickle of technology didn't help the PLA too much. It was the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russians providing them with lots of relatively advanced equipment and...

The arrival of a new book on the F8 Crusader got me thinking of the old chestnut of giving the RN a fighter for Ark, Eagle, Victorious and Hermes I have always felt that if we had done what France did and purchased the F8 we could have kept a carrier force as long as the French did. We could...

On 2 april, 1968 premier Stanley Kubrick masterpiece 4 years earlier he decided to make The "Perfect" Movie and he succeeded 50 years later 2001: A Space Odyssey has nothing lost of its Magic, its mysteries Its Space Hardware still looks realistic, even timeless Allot of Sci-Fi Movies made...

The Thunderbirds series from the 1960s featured in its first episode a wonderful airliner called Fireflash, which was totally improbable but looked very cool. In the series it crops up in a few episodes in the livery of "Air Terrainean", a sort of mixture of Pan American and BOAC. However, in...

In the late 60s the Germans were looking for a replacement for its ground attack Fiat G 91s. As an offset against costs for BAOR and RAF Germany the UK succeeds in selling Harriers to the Bundeswehr and getting Dornier involved in its production and a joint trainer which becomes the Hawk. HS and...

Not trying to provoke either side of the current debate but I am old enough to remember a time when the 6 original members of the European Community discussed the setting up of a full blown EDF in the 1960s. It was never a runner politically but had it been, I imagine the following equipment...

Listening to "The Birds" on Radio 4 last week reminded me of a paperback novel I bought in the 70s by Daphne Du Maurier about a US warship landing in Cornwall during a "near future" in which Britain had left the European Community as it then was and was forced into a Union with the US. I recall...

Immagine that Richard Nixon instead of JFK was elected President of United States in November 1960,and that Alan Shepard was the first man in space (but not in orbit) in Febraury 1961. Two events that could happen. In this scenario,if President Nixon not consider necessary a manned mission on...

This is a suggestion to the administrator. How about a thread or threads of fictional TV and movie spacecraft and aircraft?

Updated This is updated artwork for the F-23A illustrations I did for Scott Lowther's APR article. Ogami mushashi had noticed some errors in the top view of the F-23A, so I finally got around to updating it. All views were updated. I'll probably do some updates for the NATF as well. I added...

As we know the Russians managed to standardise their tanks forces in the 60s and 70s on two designs: The T55 and later the T72. What tank should NATO have chosen if politics had been no object?

In the spirit of what-if? Scotland votes to exit the United Kingdom and re-join the EU. As part of the negotiations with the London Government, the Scottish First Minister insists that all nuclear warheads for the Trident submarines must leave Scottish territory as soon as Scotland becomes...