It's one of those beautiful places ruined by the people within them.
There must have been a point when the Foreign Office weren't terrible, without having put much thought into it I am going to blame Viscount Grey as the man that started the rot, with perhaps Campbell-Bannerman as the real root cause.
There is definitely an interesting timeline in which someone competent is Britain's pre-WW1 Foreign Minister instead of Grey. Not just a chance to fix the Foreign Office and avoid the Great War (or at least avoid Britain getting dragged in) but it's early enough that Imperial Federation is just about plausible if pushed competently. Alas not.
now call me old fashioned, but I for one, take a gorgeous building ruined by people inside, rather than a hideous building. after all, Aesthetics is everything.
Also it should be easier to sack everyone inside than rebuild the hideous building.
TBH Ship designing at the Interwar era was quite maddening. as were certain doctrines on land war as well.
Absolutely true.
The RN has an actual naval shooting war with a 'modern' navy in ttl though, in which they used all classes including battleships and carriers to great effect. I suspect they'll draw the conclusion that carriers are very useful, especially in the vast pacific, and that battleships are 'clearly' still vital as battle winners and fleet pinners.
Post Abyssinian Review was way back in Chapter LXIV. Broad conclusion was as you say, battleships are the main battle wining ships but aircraft are needed to support that. FAA is still "Find, Fix and Strike" with the emphasis on the first two.
Fair, and something that I doubt most people consider. With much of the North Sea within range of land-based air, clearing a deck load of aircraft is probably a time-intensive evolution, which leaves significant forces on the deck, which if you get caught with the proverbial pants down is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention that no one wants their aircraft sliding around and breaking stuff.
Or aircraft being pushed off the deck completely in rough weather. The RN may have focused on the North Sea and Atlantic in that regard, but the Pacific has it's rough moments.
The Japanese had an incident in 1935 where the 4th Fleet on wargames got caught in storm that became a Typhoon. That was one of the factors that put them off deck parks, anything that had been on deck would have been lost. Though admittedly they weren't keen even before.
Wouldn't the Wasp be a better candidate for "trying to cheap out to fill tonnage"? The USN at least recognized that Ranger wasn't going to be facing down the IJN, even when there was a premium on flattops.
Original plan was for a class of five
Rangers to get the most carriers out of the US' treaty tonnage, luckily Congress gutted the plan and only one got built. (Not something the armed forces are often grateful for
)
War games revealed it was too much of a compromise so the USN went for the OTL plan, where as you say
Wasp was a 'what we can fit in' carrier tacked on the end.
I'd hate to be the engineer trying to work out a catapult that has enough oomph to throw a loaded C2 Greyhound or E2D Hawkeye into the air while at the same time being able to be retractable...
As I tell the minions almost everything is possible, it's just some things are difficult, slow, expensive and probably not a good idea. But if the client asks then our first answer should always be "If you pay for it, then yes we can do it". Seeing the cost estimate tends to put them off, but then you can talk them round to something sane.
Glad you got the DS9 reference and excellent picture.
Brunel could do it. But then again, it would involve Brunel with ship design and that is a very dangerous thing to do for both the ship and whoever is funding it.
Ship would be absolutely fine. But I agree the owners and funders would be in all sorts of trouble.
Well - 'twould appear that the stern to bow method was favoured as (it was thought) it was easier to do an emergency breakaway and minimised the OOW manoeuvres required for abreast replenishment.
Most interesting, thank you for that. Presumably then something that actually regularly practising RAS would demonstrate as being a bit dodgy?
But I think your last point is the strongest - why, with a well developed network of bases around the world, was RAS anything other than something for in extremis situations only. It was the BPF experience where the RN saw the capacity of the USN, coupled with the lack of resupply facilities, that gave it an insight for the future.
I'm unsure on that one. Pacific operations were always a red herring for the RN and they knew it. Gulf of Thailand / South China Sea absolutely, maybe even the East China Sea for the push onto Japan. But deep Pacific Operations were a different matter entirely.
That said RAS is always useful and it's a useful tool to add flexibility so it's probably coming regardless.
At this point I am not commenting on the QE-class and modern NATO as both make me slightly depressed.
I love how the french and british keep trying to make stuff together and keep falling out all the way along the line.
It's honestly most of Europe... I think the best weapon system developed by a joint European conglomerate was the Eurofighter Typhoon, which took the title from the Panavia Tornado. I don't know why NATO can't get their collective stuff together, aside from the 5.56mm round... oh well.
You will notice the common factor in Typhoon and Tornado - No involvement from the French. This is not a coincidence. It's also unfortunate as the French are the only people in Europe apart from the British to take defence seriously and not see it as an industrial subsidy programme (Yes Germany I am looking at you).
If the Japs don't bomb pearl harbour and the US stays rotting in itself, does their armed forces and navy stay poor? I suppose it would but that's a spectacular butterfly right there for R&D and world security/economy.
Things will happen in the US beyond just festering internally and I don't think it's a massive spoiler to say there will be no OTL Pearl Harbour attack.
I'd imagine that given the shift in Butterfly, that there would be a lot more fertile ground for an isolationist party to come to power. Less chance for an embargo riling up Japan. And less chance for the uboat menace to cause America to come out of said isolation...
Oil embargo is a funny one, I sort of belief the theory that it was an accident. The theory that FDR didn't intend a full oil embargo, because everyone warned him it would provoke Japan into war, but when the bureaucracy of the State Department semi-accidentally issued a complete embargo he was too proud to back down.
On the isolationists, it does depend how well Landon's moral neutrality goes. If it goes badly the blowback (to use the approved US term) could be unpleasant.
Greater chance for the corporate fascists to gain more power though? The US army I imagine is pretty poor...but the navy, while tradition bound, is large and well funded...and the air force is also well funded.
The Army is in a poor state, but nothing noticeably worse than OTL. The Navy remains large but only moderately well funded, more on that later. The Army Air Corps has avoided the OTL Air Mail scandal, which is partly good (more pilots alive, less distractions and disruption, etc) but mostly bad as many of the deep problems around training, navigation, radios, etc have not been revealed and sorted.
US corporates are badly split, the lure of money (or at least the promise of money) has many of them backing the Republicans in Spain over the side they probably identify more with, but even there I think the Monarchist branding has put them off. Overall though with Landon in power they've got a more pro-business figure so corporate fascism looks less attractive, and it was a fringe movement to start with.
Amercia being isolationist does help japan with oil, and japan has thus even fewer reasons to turn south to the pacific and fight a nation currently fueling it and the resurgent british empire that just sent it's entire fleet to their backyard.
Landon would object to being called an isolationist and he has issued the hostage of fortune of 'moral neutrality'. If anything that is going to apply extra political pressure on him if Japan starts getting really nasty like in OTL, nothing serious but enough to be a bit awkward.
But as previously discussed, if Alf fixes the economy he can get away with almost anything, while if the US remains in depression he is doomed in the next election regardless.
But japan does still need to expand. Maybe they'll try and rebuild the old british alliance or at least friendliness, and then go after russia instead? Given how its looking like germany is going to launch a do or die invasion of russia itself with little other option, everyone else might have to pile on too.
All of this will be discussed when we get to the Japan election update.
