TBOVerse FAQ

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Francis Urquhart
Post subject: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.6)PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:03 pm
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Quote:
The Big One FAQ About Frequently Misunderstood Aspects Of The TBOVerse.
Revision History:
v0.1 - Began writing (4 January 2006)
v0.1.1 - Minor Revision to "Why does the US commit Genocide?" question (4 January 2006)
v0.1.2 - Changed Author from 'Mark Sheppard' to 'Everybody'; added "Why LeMay as POTUS?" question (5 January 2006)
v0.1.3 - Added Herrick's "Why didn't we launch the little one" reply. (5 January 2006)
v0.1.4 - Added Stuart's "Why do aircraft talk" and "Why does American Equipment Always work." (5 January 2006)
v0.1.5 - Added Herrick's "How can the US build and hide the B-36s for so long without anyone noticing?" (5 January 2006)
v0.1.6 - Added Shep's "Why does the US believe in such an immoral policy as Massive Retalitation?" (5 January 2006)
--------- Added Shep+Herrick's "Why is the US so much less liberal than in OTL?" (5 January 2006)
v0.1.7 - Added Stuart's "Why does American technological development continue, while german development comes to a halt?"(5 January 2006)
--------- Added Stuart's "Why is Goering portrayed as such a likable character?"(5 January 2006)
--------- Added Stuart's "I read that the Ta-152 had a service ceiling of 52,000 feet blah blah"(5 January 2006)
v0.1.8 - Added Stuart's "Why does nobody oppose the US Hedgemony by forming their own alliances, like the Europeans?" (7 January 2006)
--------- Added Stuart's "How does the US get the B-36 half a decade earlier? Isn't that sort of Deus Ex Machina?" (7 January 2006)
v0.1.9 - Added Stuart's "Why are the French so incompetent and condescending?" (10 January 2006)
--------- Added Stuart's "What's this thing called Pizza Dacha?" (10 January 2006)
v0.2.0 - Added Stuart's "Why does the US commit Genocide?" (11 January 2006)
----------Added Stuart's "Why does the US have 200 nuclear devices in 1947? Isn't that 1950s level in 1947?" (11 January 2006)
----------Added Stuart's 'Why didn't America spare the cities that surrendered?" (11 January 2006)
----------Added Shep's "Why isn't this FAQ updated to reply to my pet question right away?" (12 January 2006)

v0.2.1 Added Are the Demons Evil? (Stuart)
v0.2.2 Added This Stuart Slade is making it all up, he doesn't know what he's talking about (Stuart)
v0.2.3 Consolidated some bits and added "Isn't the TBOverse USA totally vulnerable to stealth technology (Stuart)"
v0.2.4 Added What about the BV-155C then" (Stuart)
--------Added "Why does the US buy B-70s when Hercules missiles can reach 150,000 feet"

v0.3.0 Added "what's up with the targeteers" (Stuart)
--------Added "Why do you have working ABM in the 1960s? We can't even do it today! (Stuart)"
--------Added *If High and Fast is so great, why did we go low and fast with the B-1B? (Stuart)"
--------consolidated the text from some other threads.
v0.3.1 Consolidated text from other threads
--------Added "why didn't Japan strike Peral Harbor? (Stuart)"
--------Added "Isn't the bombing of Paris some anti-French BS? (Stuart)"
v0.3.2 Added "What about MIRVed ICBMs? Wouldn't they be cheaper to build than ABMs, and overload the defense? (Stuart)"
--------Added "What about Re-entry vehicle Decoys? Wouldn't they overload ABM defenses? (stuart)"
--------Added "The TBOverse is nothing but uber-American propaganda masquerading as a story (Stuart)"
v0.3.3 Added "What's with the author's bias against Kennedy and McNamara? (Stuart)
v0.3.4 Added "Why is Europe so weak post war? Is this an anti-european bias by the author? (Stuart)'
v0.3.5 Added "Why is there a Caliphate?" (Stuart)
..........Added "How can the Caliphate work? Why aren't the Shia and Sunni killing each other?" (Stuart)
v0.3.6 Ammended and enlarged comments on treatment of French (Stuart)



Quote:
This Stuart Slade is making it all up, he doesn't know what he's talking about (Stuart)

This question can be better re-written as "He doesn't agree my favorite and really cool Nazi uberweapon can conquer the world before breakfast." However.....

I've been working in the defense industry for 34 years, starting with various aspects of ship design and technology for them. After a few years, I migrated into defense industry analysis with special emphasis on industrial capacity analysis and evaluation. Then, I was active in the military electronics area with specific attention to the workings of command systems and air defense systems. I worked on several real world air defense systems implementations including the Royal Thai Air Defense System (RTADS) and the British IUKADGE. That lead me into the ABM area and nuclear strategy/policy which occupied me from 1981 through to 1994. Then I moved back to military electronics, stayed there until 2001 when I resumed covering naval matters and also started doing political-economic studies of countries in the Far East.

The important thing is that working in that industry, I was able to supplement my own knoweldge by consulting with my colleagues who (very generously) supplemented my expertise with their own. So, the TBO series isn't just my expertise, its that of a large number of people who are world-level experts in their areas. Finally, of course, all of that has been supplemented by the people in this community who've (again very generously) added in their own knowledge and expertise.


Quote:
Why does the US wait for two years, and suffering countless deaths on the Russian Front while waiting to launch The Big One, instead of launching a smaller scale attack against a few German cities in 1945 once they have a few dozen bombs? (Sheppard)

Because of two things:

1.) Comparisons with Japan in our timeline do not apply since the strategic situation is very different. When we dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan in 1945; we were at the endgame with Japan:

A.) Their navy had been largely sunk, except for a few units hiding in harbors
B.) Their air force could no longer contest the skies over mainland Japan
C.) We were destroying most of the urban areas of Japan with B-29 raids on a regular basis.
D.) The Japanese had been evicted from most of their conquests of 1941, and from historically Japanese territory like Iwo Jima and Okiwana.
E.) The supply lines that supplied Japan with raw materiel had been cut by the United States through various means.
F.) The Japanese Homeland was going to be invaded come hell or high water in Fall of 1945; everyone knew that.

So it was possible for the two atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to push the Japanese over the edge into surrender.

Germany in the TBOverse is still ascendant over virtually all of the territory she has conquered, sitting atop Europe from the shores of England to some frozen front line in the middle of Russia. Her losses in manpower are terrible, but so are the allied losses as well. Some territory has been lost during counter-offensives (On the Central part of the front in the Great Bend of the Volga), but the German holdings remain basically untouched.

Western Europe, while suffering heavily from US Carrier strikes, is still producing war materiel and manpower, which while suffering some losses from US naval interdiction strikes, is largely reaching Germany's coffers. Deleting a city via nuclear strikes and then expecting a surrender won't work, because Germany had that happen to her, albeit via conventional bombing, at Hamburg, and no surrender occured. A Japanese surrender almost didn't happen even after two strikes, because of an attempted coup by a clique of militarists. With Germany in a much better position compared to Japan in 1945, the chances of a surrender will be zero.

Also, there will be a strong perception amongst the German policymakers that the US has just used up it's entire atomic arsenal in those strikes, especially after they talk with Heisenberg, who thought that you needed quite a lot of fissile material for a single bomb.

2 .) In OTL, the B-29's capabilities were known to the Japanese, and it was very hard to intercept by Japanese defenses, so there wasn't a problem with using it to deliver the Model 1561 and Mark One over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In TBOverse, the capabilities of the B-36 (especially being able to fly above 50,000 feet) is a military secret comparable to the atomic bomb. You can only launch a single attack taking full advantage of the B-36's ultra-high altitude capabilities, because after that, the Germans will know it can fly that high, and can do a few things to defend against it, such as having He-111 Zwillings carry Me-263 rocket fighters to altitude. Since the Me-263 is capable of reaching 52,000+ feet by itself from a ground launch, launching them from an aircraft flying at 15,000 feet would allow them to present a much greater threat to the B-36 than one launched from the ground, since they would be able to reach around 67,000 feet and be able to glide down onto B-36s flying at 52,000~ feet. Other options are air launches of SAMs, giving them more energy to manuver at altitude.

If the US only hit Berlin, Munich, and Nuremberg in a first strike, and then hit three more cities three days later (same interval between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings); the Germans would have had enough time to do the following:

A.) Recall all high altitude fighters (Go-229, Ta-152H, BV-155) from across Germany's holdings for Defense of the Reich duties. On June 6, 1947 in TBOverse, the deployment of the Go-229 fighter which can at least marginally get up to B-36 altitude is:

1 Group (JG-26) in France, re-equipping from Ta-152s and BV-155s to Go-229s; only one squadron equipped so far (9 Aircraft)
2 Groups (JG-1 and JG-52) on the Russian Front. (60 Aircraft)

B.) Modify the high altitude fighters for even more altitude. On the Ta-152H, they could remove the two MG151 20mm cannons in the wings, which saves 84 kg (185.18 lbs) from the guns alone. Remove any armor on the aircraft, saving even more weight. Perform tests to determine the optimal method to climb to altitude in the shortest time, and distribute said instructions to all Jagdeschwaders.

With zero prep time for the German defenders, they were able to inflict the following casualties during The Big One:

RB-36 "Case Ace" - Hit by Wasserfall, ditched in North Sea
B-36 "Angel Eyes" - Hit by Rockets fired from Me-263 in the right place at right time, no survivors.
B-36 "Haley's Comet" - Engine Trouble, couldn't maintain 50,000+ altitude, picked off by fighter.
B-36 "Dragon Lady" - Engine Trouble, couldn't maintain 50,000+ altitude, picked off by fighter.
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36

Ones that took heavy damage from the defenders, but survived were:

B-36 "Texan Lady" - Hit by Go-229 30mm Burst.
B-36 "Juicy Lucy" - Engine Trouble, couldn't maintain 50,000+ altitude, lost rudder to german fighter launched missile, reached home using asymmetrical engine power to replace lost rudder.
B-36 "Death and Taxes" - Damaged over Paderborn by Me-263, made it home with damage and casualties to crew.
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36
Unknown -36

Out of the 600 B-36s assigned to nuclear strikes, and the 300 RB-36s preceeding them, casualties were:

1% of B-36s Lost in Action
Less than 1% of RB-36s Lost in Action
2 % of B-36s Damaged in Action
180~ aircrew KIA.

With a much smaller "Little One" spaced out over several days, casualties would be much higher, due to there being a lot less B-36s, allowing the German defenders to concentrate around the Hometowns and swarm them, hoping that at least one fighter gets into the right place, which is how "Angel Eyes" was lost. Also, with space between the raids, the Germans can execute all the options I mentioned beforehand to gain a higher kill rate.


Quote:
Why didn't we launch smaller scale attack against a few German cities in 1945 once we had built a few dozen bombs? (Lord Herrick)

The decision to use the nuclear weapon against Germany was never in doubt - if the war was still going on when "it" was ready, "it" would be used. A mushroom cloud over Germany was inevitable from the moment Einstein signed his letter. The only questions were "when?" and "how many?"

Two distinct answers to that problem came about, and the debate over which answer to choose took more than three years to resolve.

The first answers were "as soon as possible" and "few." They were termed "The Little One;" the most well-known advocate of The Little One was General Leslie Groves. The Little One was rooted in the pre-war assumptions about airpower - a quick devastating blow that would force the enemy's capitulation by destroying a few vital centers. Ultimately, it assumes that Nazi Germany was a rational power and they would submit rather than risk destruction.

The major and most persuasive argument in favor of The Little One was the possibility of ending the war now. By 1945, the Front in Russia had "stabilized" and was bleeding everyone dry. It was not a World War I style stalemate, where lines shifted a few miles at most. Indeed, in some places considerable amounts of ground changed hands. The problem was, it had little strategic value.

The Germans physically could not knock Russia out of the fight - their resources were sapped trying to hold the territories they already held. America's wealth and resources were completely untouchable. The only way Germany could win was to attrit the Americans and Russians to the point where they would consider driving Germany out of her conquests too expensive to be worth persuing.

On the other hand, neither the Russians nor the Americans could break the Wehrmacht in the field. Though the battles over the East Front bled the Luftwaffe almost white, they still managed to put enough force into the air to contest the air. At best, the skies were neutral. That meant the Allies could not reach into the German rear and reliably prevent them from moving reserves to crisis points or providing replacement troops, equipment, ammunition and supplies, let alone deprive them of their industry. Nor could they stop the near-miraculous German ability to throw together the remains of long-dead units and get a live one out of the amalgam. Life was nasty, brutish, and short for the landsers and nasty, very exciting and short for the Fhrer's Fire Brigades. But they held, and the German generals were able to shift reserves to meet local crisis after local crisis, and still mass a fist to counterpunch. Both sides brought out new weapons, both sides grabbed every man they could spare, but neither could get at the enemy's vitals on the ground.

The idea of the amphibious "right hook" had been advanced at all levels to break the deadlock. Plans varied between "small" amphibious landings of regimental or division size in the Baltic, Caspian and White Seas to massive army group sized ones against France or Britain. All foundered on the same insoluble problem - the only "expertise" in amphibious operations was theories in the minds of Marine Corps officers. The equipment and practical expertise to sieze a lodgement did not exist, let alone the ability to rapidly expand that force into the multiple army groups necessary to drive from the French Atlantic Coast into Germany, let alone to clear Great Britain and/or Ireland first. It just couldn't be done.

Thus, the decision had to come from the air - it was the only open flank. There was no discussion of a compromise peace - Germany was going down for the count.

However, many policymakers believed the fundamental assumptions of The Little One were fatally flawed. Nazi Germany, they believed, was not a rational state, and their actions were not governed by reason but madness. German soldiers had withstood the worst the Americans and Russians could throw at them - their government would not collapse at the first real blow to the nation.

Furthermore, they feared that The Little One would give away the American hand and grant Germany the time to develop counters to American bombers and their own nuclear weapons. They repeatedly brought up 2nd Ypres, where the German advantage in introducing chemical weapons was quickly nullified by the simple expedient of pissing on cotton and holding that to your mouth. More sophisticated gas masks quickly followed, and the Allies soon had chemical stocks of their own. Mad the Germans were, stupid they were not.

America's nuclear arsenal should be expended just as her artillery shells were - concentrated in one massive wave in a very short period of time so the enemy could not adapt. The nukes should be husbanded until there were enough to utterly remove the German ability to wage war in a single stroke. That would present the Germans with a single option - surrender. This nuclear Time-on-Target was called The Big One; it's champion was Curtis LeMay.


Quote:
Why does the United States commit genocide on a massive scale, killing virtually all of the German population, and then feel good about it? (Stuart and Shep)

The first thing to remember is to look at the situation with the eyes of the 1940s, not with those of the early 21st Century. In the 1940s, strategic bombing (defined as the use of heavy bombers against enemy cities and industrial production centers) wasn't just acceptable, it was regarded as being a humane and merciful way of fighting a war. It was seen as a means by which a few well-placed bomber attacks could cause the quick collapse of an enemy without the hideous blood-letting that distinguished the Western Front during WW1. It was that horrifying casualty list that made nations look for an alternative strategy. Strategic bombing appeared to offer just that.

So, strategic bombing was a widely-accepted strategic option that pretty much everybody took for granted in the 1940s. Voices were raised against the concept certainly, but they were muted and not very forceful. By and large, the idea was that if a nation went to war, it should expect to get bombed and that was that.

Now, add in a second factor that appeared then but does not apply now. Back in the mid 1940s, atomic bombs were regarded as being just very large bombs, they were not recognized as being the totally different class of weapon that we, today, realize that they are. Back then, people did not recognize a conceptual difference between an atomic bomb and an explosive bomb. It was just that the first was a lot bigger and did more damage. Therefore, that attitude slotted in with the acceptance of strategic bombing is a viable, indeed laudable, strategy to make it certain that if nuclear weapons were available, they would have been used. Nobody who looks at the situation with the eyes of somebody responsible for formulating strategy in the mid-1940s should have any doubt on that.

Today we might well think and act differently - but this is seventy years later.

By the way, the targeteering of The Big One was not aimed specifically at the civilians in those cities. The targeting priorities were (in this order)

a.) German military infrastructure
b.) German military industrial facilities
c.) Other German strategic industries
d.) German energy, fuel and chemical facilities
e.) German transport infrastructure
f.) German political and military leadership
g.) German communications

Unfortunately for Germany, by the time that lot has gone, there isn't much left of the country. However, the civilians weren't deliberately targeted, they just were unfortunate enough to be in the way. It's illegal to deliberately target civilians but killing them by accident is just one of those unfortunate things. Shinola happens.

Also, because unlike OTL, the American population is exposed to what the Nazis were really doing. In OTL, we dismissed a lot of the stories coming out of Russia and Eastern Europe as wartime propaganda distortions, due in large part to World War I propaganda by the Allies claiming the 'Hun' was doing horrible horrible things. When these turned out to be blatant utter lies, we ended up rejecting a lot of what was really true in WWII as exaggerations.

Most of our fighting against Germany in OTL took place in relatively 'clean' theaters, e.g. the African Front, Italian Front, and Western Front, where German atrocities were generally very few in number, and could be palmed off onto "overeager commanders" like Peiper "exceeding their orders". Also, we engaged in self deception post-war by palming off all the atrocities which we did see onto the SS, because we needed to rehabilitate the Germans post war as an ally against Communism in OTL (e.g. the "German Army was pure as driven snow, it was all those evil bastards in the SS" defense).

In TBOverse, with 72 divisions and several million men fighting on the Russian Front, the US population is exposed to the brutal and harsh truth of what the Germans really are all about.

To give you an example:

Quote:
Retyped and cleaned up from the original Russlish (Russian/English) that I found on the World Affairs Board from the poster "Garry"

During the Great Patriotic War (World War II to the Russians), the Nazis fought against Soviet Partisan movements in occupied territories severely. Due to the difficulty of actually locating and killing the partisans, and having to show "progress" to their higher ups, destroying entire villages along with their inhabitants became a easy and quick way to show "progress" against the Partisan menace.

One such example was the destruction of the village of Khatyn. It was destroyed in a joint action by the 118th Police Battalion, which was stationed in Pleschinitsy, and the SS "Direlwanger" Battalion, stationed in Logoisk.

Among one of the worst hit areas was Byelorussia, or present day Belarus.

Statistics wise from the beginning of the occupation in 1941 to final liberation in 1944, the following happened in Byelorussia:

Settlements destroyed with most or all of their inhabitants during punitive expeditions/operations:

186 were never rebuilt at all.
442 were rebuilt postwar.
628 in total were destroyed from 1941-44.

Settlements destroyed with part of their population during punitive expeditions/operations:

325 were never rebuilt at all.
4,342 were rebuilt postwar.
4,667 in total were destroyed from 1941-44.

In total, the Nazis destroyed 5,295~ settlements with all or part of their population in Byelorussia during the war.

In the Vitebsk Region:
243 villages were burned down twice.
83 villages were burned down thrice.
22 villages were burned down 4 times or more.

In the Minsk Region:
92 villages were burned down twice.
40 villages were burned down thrice.
9 villages were burned down four times.
6 villages were burned down five or more times

Percentage wise:
3% of the settlements destroyed were destroyed in 1941.
16% of the settlements destroyed were destroyed in 1942.
63% of the settlements destroyed were destroyed in 1943.
18% of the settlements destroyed were destroyed in 1944.

The outcome of this and other Nazi policies was that 2,230,000~ people at least were killed during the three years of occupation from 1941 to 1944. Early post-war counts indicated that one out of every four Byelorussians died. Later refined counts indicate that every third person in Byelorussia died.


That's just the tip of the iceberg. With the US knowing what the Nazis are really all about, and with the casualty lists in the newspapers going on and on every day without any end in the sight, the American population just wants the war to be over, and so what if we have to kill 60+ million Germans? They were all Nazis, anyway.


Quote:
TBOverse's reliance on Nuclear tipped air to air missiles can be defeated by flying at a very low altitude. They wouldn't dare inflict fallout/damage on their own territory! (Shep)

The AIM-47 Falcon, which is the primary long range nuclear-armed AAM in the TBOverse from the 1950s to about the 1980s, when it's replaced by an evolved version of OTL's AIM-54 Phoenix, was originally going to have a 0.25 kiloton W-42 device before the device was cancelled in 1958 OTL.

Doing the math using the effects calculator available at Stardestroyer.net (yes, I know it is not the official Effects of Nuclear Weapons formula printed by the US Government, but it's close enough for now)

0.00025 megatons (aka 0.25 kilotons) delivers the following damage:

3rd Deg Burns: 389 meters (1,276 feet)
Airblast Radius (4.6 psi): 468 meters (1,535 feet)
Airblast Radius (20 psi): 177 meters (581 feet)
500 REM Radius 646 meters (2,118 feet)
Fireball Duration 0.93 Seconds

In effect, anything within a quarter mile is going to get some level of damage, and anything under half a mile is going to get a near-lethal dose of radiation.

The distance from initation at which local fallout ceases to be a concern, along with fireball radius can be easily calculated from the math available in "Effects of Nuclear Weapons". The aforementioned 0.25 kt initation will have the following characteristics:

Fireball Radius (minimum) 16 meters (51 feet)
Fireball Radius (airburst) 19 meters (63 feet)
Fireball Radius (ground) 25 meters (83 feet)

Initation height at which local fallout ceases to be a concern:

32 meters (103 feet)
41 meters (134 feet) (+30 Percent)

From "Effects":

It should be emphasized that the heights of burst estimated in this manner are approximations only, with probable errors of +30 percent. Furthermore, it must not be assumed that if the burst height exceeds the value given by equation there will definitely be no local fallout. The amount, if any, maybe expected, however, to be small enough to be tolerable under emergency conditions.

Looking at the data from the calculations, it is possible to destroy a target that is following the ground terrain contours at an altitude of only perhaps 15 meters (49.2 feet) by initating the AIM-47's warhead slightly ahead of the target's flight path, and at an altitude of 150 meters (492.12 feet), allowing the airblast, thermal radiation, and radiation to destroy the target aircraft, while being significantly above the minimum altitude for local fallout. There of course, will be some fatalities and damage on the ground, but it is infinitely superior to allowing a possible nuclear armed aircraft to reach it's target and deploy it's much larger weapons, and besides, everyone in the TBOverse would be in their basement bunkers the moment the air raid sirens started wailing (Unlike OTL, TBOverse Civil Defense isn't starved for funds or mocked as a joke).

There will be virtually no damage on the ground, if the target to be intercepted is flying at a relatively high altitude (20,000 feet or 6,096 meters) except for a slight nuclear sun-tan for those exposed in the open.

In any case, this is a non-sequitur, since in the TBOverse, there are conventionally armed versions of the long range air-to-air missiles available, and the F-114E Tomcat's standard loadout is four nuclear AAMs and two conventional AAMs, so there is a choice between self-frying the target or shredding him with fragments.


Quote:
This is a timeline written by an Air Supremacist! How else could Curtis E. LeMay be elected President? (Shep)

The answer to this one is really quite simple.

The Eisenhower Effect.

Just as Ike was responsible for overseeing the liberation of Europe in OTL, LeMay is effectively the one man most responsible for ending this timeline's World War II, through Strategic Air Command, and was basically the high architect of The Big One. So he is very politically popular, much like Eisenhower was in the 1950s; due to millions of American veterans who remember him as the Man Who Won The War.


Quote:
Why do the planes talk? (Stuart)

There are several reasons for this. One is that most people talk to their cars and aircraft (think on a cold morning and your car is reluctant to start as you turn the engine over you think or say "Oh, come on. Start." Who are you talking to but the car?) Pilots particularly talk to their aircraft and some are quite convinced that their aircraft talk back - on some sort of level. So it struck me as an amusing aside to include the aircraft talking back for real. Only a limited number of aircraft have the rapport with their crews that allows them.

Secondly, there is a Thai animist religious belief that everything in the world around us is inhabited by spirits called Prets. These can be friendly, malicious or neutral, they live everywhere, in trees, on land, in waterfalls in machines. If one wants to get along, its wise to be conciliatory to the Prets. If one, for example, builds a house on a piece of land, one may well have displaced the Pret that lived there so when they build a new house, Thais put up a little house (a spirit house) in one corner for the pret. Avoids bad luck.

Thirdly in story-telling terms, the attitudes of the aircraft symbolize America at a specific time. "Texan Lady" is diffident, slightly uncertain of herself and her power. "Marisol" is brash, brassy, over-confident and forward. "Sigrun" is much more mature and reflective, tending to be much more aware of the consequences of what she's doing. "Jolene" is a conceited yuppy.

Above all though, the aircraft talking is a bit of fun, an opportunity for some light relief and also a look at a situation through some very non-human eyes.


Quote:
Why does American technology always work? (Stuart)

The simple answer is that it doesn't. Some examples. In The Great Game "Marisol" has two major malfunctions, one of which almost destroys the aircraft. In Crusade, The Surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles fail quite badly with 10 - 15 percent hit rates while the Marines on the shore get their asses handed to them by a much inferior force. In RotV it's apparent that the Valkyrie, despite being almost ten years late, still has major equipment and reliability issues (to the point where the crew doing a Skybolt launch have to be careful what's under them when they launch in case of a failure). In HF its shown that getting multi-phase engines just don't work until a Russian design team make a break-through. In terms of decisions, Crusade is deliberately written as a story where repeated screw-ups and mistakes lead to a disaster that shouldn't have happened.

So the assertion that American equipment never fails is quite wrong. In fact, hit rates and malfunction rates in TBO are taken from OTL experience with the OTL equivalents of those TBO weapons.


Quote:
How can the US build and hide the B-36s for so long without anyone noticing? (Herrick)

The truth is, they didn't. Yes, America took some active measures to mask the B-36 fleet. The C-99 air bridge and the promotion of a "massive" B-29 fleet were used to explain away just where all of those airframes and men and money went. Similarly, a lot of men died to get the idea in German heads that this was a "low altitude" war. But the Germans pulled the wool over their own eyes because they flat-out believed that The Big One was impossible.

The Germans knew there was a massive American bomber fleet. That is the rationale for building the NAIADS air defense system, after all. Where the Germans were fooled was about the capabilities of the US bomber fleet, not it's existance.

Instead of a transatlantic high-altitude bomber armed with nuclear weapons (the B-36), they thought we had a medium medium-altitude bomber fleet armed with conventional weapons (the B-29).

Because their nuclear weapons program was such a shambles, Germany concluded the atom bomb was impossible. Herrick and Goering say that while they wait for them to fall on Berlin. Similarly, the Germans thought they knew what the American bomber fleet was, and they had a system that did negate the threat they thought they faced rather handily. That impression was confirmed by the 1944 B-29 raids and their complete ineffectiveness. Thus, they were gulled by success - we did defeat a heavy bomber, therefore we can defeat all heavy bombers. Thus, when the rumors of six and ten-engined monsters reached Germany, they thought they were prepared.

(Addition By Stuart)

In addition, the security that surrounded the B-36 construction program was very tight. The bombers were built in three separate facilities (Fort Worth, Segundo and Wichita) that were kept isolated from each other. The plants were built so they were exactly identical, even down to the placement of pictures on the walls so that if a photograph of one leaked out, workers from all three would "recognize" it as their plant.

Much more importantly though, its important to think of this through the eyes of people who lived in the 1940s. National security was taken seriously, secrecy was taken seriously. If a worker started talking out of school, he'd get shut up (forcefully, with a knuckle sandwich) by his mates. The idea of a newspaper deliberately going out of its way to reveal classified material to promote its own political agenda was unthinkable - they'd have been lynched. Also, people didn't travel much then, most people stayed within a few miles of their homes for all their lives. So, they saw small parts of something, not the whole thing.

Finally, the C-99 fleet (about 600 aircraft) masked the B-36 program. Somebody saw a B-36 for some reason, 'why, it must be a C-99, just like we saw at the movie house. Wonder what its doing here.' 'Shut up, don't you know there's a war on. Keep your lips buttoned.'

For all that, the secret was leaking out - there are references in TBO to the Germans knowing the Americans were experimenting with six- and ten-engined bombers. For reasons Lord Herrick has described very well, they didn't do anything about them. However, like all secrets, this one had a finite shelf life. The B-36 and the atomic bomb were going to be discovered sooner or later and that put a finite life on the window of opportunity to use them. Hence, the decision to go when they did.


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Why is the US so much less liberal than in OTL? (Shep + Help from Herrick)

Because the US suffered 1.5 million casualties on the Russian Front over several brutal years in the TBOverse, saw the worst the Nazis could dish out to subhumans, amongst other things. So there is a lot less tolerance for "touchy-feelie" ideas or mindsets. Also, since millions of men served on the Russian Front, they saw for themselves how Communism messed up the Russian people, rather than the rather rosy mindset that was promoted by Moscow, of workers of the world uniting, etc.

Communism has also basically been discredited by the collapse of the Communist party in Russia following the fall of Moscow; so there really isn't that much of an alternative to Capitalism in the 1950s and early 1960s. By the late 1960s, Chipan has enough influence worldwide to start pushing it's own version of "Communism Lite", but it never gains the traction that Soviet backed communism did OTL.

Another significant factor is that in the TBOverse, there's no long drawn out Vietnam War to slowly discredit the US Government and what it stands for. Even the Yaffo strike which kills 100,000 Caliphate citizens in the 1960s doesn't cause much angst, since it was a short, sharp action, rather than a long drawn out war.

Even so, it's a lot more liberal than our world in some ways; because without the Vietnam War absorbing all of his time and energy, Johnson was able to devote a lot more to his "Great Society" programs, and with the Demons in the background running things, the Great Society programs don't become bloated behemoths sucking up money and turning inner city areas into burnt out shells, so the image of "Government = Good" isn't discredited the way it was in OTL.

Also, there is a much higher level of social collective consciousness; e.g "It takes a Village to Raise a Child", due to the effects of TBO WWII; as your life depended on the men to either side of you in the US Army on the Russian Front, and with a lot more men serving in combat, more people will come home from the War with that kind of support network drilled into them, compared to OTL.


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Why does the US believe in such an immoral policy as Massive Retalitation?" (Shep)

There are two points to make:

1.) This was actually American Policy in OTL 1950s. An OTL National Security Council Document summed up America's policy at the time as "America doesn't fight it's enemies; it destroys them".

SIOP-62 in OTL called for the US to fire off all the nuclear weapons it had at the time on it's alert force, some 1,459 devices, for a total of 2,164 megatons onto 654 targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. China was to be hit because it was part of the Sino-Soviet Bloc, and Eastern Europe was to be hit because it contained hundreds of Soviet air defense radars and missile sites, which had to be taken out to clear the way for SAC bombers to hit Russia. Albania, for example, would be virtually obliterated because of a very large Soviet air defense radar within it's borders. The calculations were that the alert force alone would kill 175 million Chinese and Russians. If we decided to launch all of SAC; then the attack would involve 3,423 devices with 7,847 megatons, killing 285 million Russians and Chinese, with 40 million more injured severely. The heavy casualties in Eastern Europe that would result from SIOP-62 weren't mentioned at all.

2.) America in the TBOverse is deeply scarred by the results of WWII. The thought process of the typical American on June 7, 1947 is: "We lost a million and a half of our boys and achieved nothing but a stalemate, and then the atomic bombing ended the war for the loss of a couple of bomber crews." This solidifies into a distrust of conventional military forces, which are viewed as a solution looking for a problem (leading to foreign interventionism), with SAC viewed as the thing that keeps America safe, and keeps her from having to send a million and half more boys to their deaths again.


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Why does American technological development continue, while German development comes to a halt? (Stuart)

It didn't. However, I suspect this question could be better rephrased 'how come my favorite German uber-weapon wasn't included'.

In fact a significant number of advanced German weapons are included. For example, the Gotha 229, the Hs-132 and advanced versions of the Ar-234, the X-4 air-to-air missile, Wasserfall, the Me-263, some of the new-generation German tanks and some of their late-war radars. The Ta-152 is in widespread service although it hardly classifies as an advanced weapon. A variety of Type XXI submarine derivatives are also included. It's stated that the Germans are extensively using the A-4 and Fi-103 as artillery on the Russian front. In the final analysis, German technology in TBO is significantly more advanced than they had in OTL 1945.

What have not been included are the napkinwaffe, things that were no more than rough ideas sketched out on the back of a napkin. Also, ideas that were fundamentally impractical, engineering impossibilities or devoid of an operational rationale were excluded. In short, a strict standard of reality and practicality was applied.

In terms of aircraft, two things determined what was going to happen and what was not. One was engines. The Germans had a power crunch because of their lack of access to vital metal alloying ingredients and fundamental defects in their engine design technology. The three advanced German jet engines, the HeS-011, the Jumo-012 and the BMW-018 were all deeply flawed and none of them were workable. Despite many great efforts and the investment of a lot of time and research work, nobody could get them to work properly. Thus, all the aircraft that were predicated on those engines were non-starters. I allowed an uprated Jumo-004 (2250 pounds of thrust) and an uprated BMW-003 (2000 pounds of thrust), each representing about a 10 percent improvement over OTL power levels and I allowed the rocket engines.

Within these constraints, German technology does advance and I actually allowed it move a bit further than strict applications of practicality and engineering plausibility would allow. Put another way, the level of German technology shown in TBO is just about the best they could expect; the realities of what the Germans really could achieve on what their technical and economic base preclude anything better.


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Why is Goering portrayed as such a likable character? (Stuart)

Because, unfortunately, most accounts make it clear that, on a personal basis, Goering was a very likeable person. It seems quite clear that, when he wanted to be, he was affable, charming, extremely courteous and an excellent host. That's what made him so dangerous.

It's very easy to write up a villain as being a monster; Masanobu Tsuji is a good example which is why he doesn't feature much; he's boring. He was a truly monstrous villain, looked like it and acted like it. Goering is an example of evil that wears a smiling, friendly face and manner. He's a monster but his monstrosity isn't on display for all to see, its hidden under a facade of bonhomie and hail-fellow-well-met cheerfulness. He's a very frightening man indeed, all the more so because his frightfulness isn't apparent until it is too late.

He's also an immensely challenging figure to write about. As one researches him and tries to imagine him reacting to the situation, one can almost feel him reaching out of the page (and the grave) to pull one into his spell. I've tried to catch just how seductive Goering's evil truly was.

Remember, this is the man who was so liked by his American jailors at Spandau that one of them smuggled poison in to him. And he was also the man who created the Gestapo and founded the first concentration camp.


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I read that the Ta-152 had a service ceiling of 52,000 feet, while the B-36 had only 40,000 blah blah (Stuart)

B-36 first. It's necessary to define what the USAF meant by ceiling. They define a Combat ceiling as that where an aircraft has a 500ft/minute climb rate while carrying a 50 percent warload and 2/3 fuel load and a service ceiling which is where an aircraft has a 200ft/min climb rate with a full bomb and fuel load. On that basis, a B-36D in its original configuration has a service ceiling of 45,020 feet and a combat ceiling of 44,000 feet. A B-36H had a service ceiling of 45,500 feet and a combat ceiling of 44,000 feet - all figures taken from the official B-36 documentation.

However, that's not the whole story, a low rate of climb doesn't matter too much when one has 24 hours to make the climb. This is an aircraft that could fly for two days without refueling.

B-36D mission logs make frequent references to the B-36Ds carrying out mock bombing attacks on American cities at an altitude of 48,500 feet and B-36Hs doing the same at 49,000 feet. They took a long time to get up there but the fact that they did is solidly documented.

The catch is that the B-36s used in TBO are featherweights; they've been stripped of their guns and armor and everything else not necessary for their mission. This was done primarily to increase range; the OTL documentation on the Featherweight program states that the Featherweight III effort (the standard used in TBO) made a negligible improvement in speed, a 20 percent improvement in service ceiling and a whopping 40 percent improvement in range. This gives a B-36H Featherweight III a service ceiling of roughly 54,000 feet.

Also B-36 documentation includes thorough notes on engine restart procedures at altitudes of over 50,000 feet, provision for pressure suits (not required unless the aircraft was to fly at over 50,000 feet) and a stern admonishment to the crews not to fly at over 50,000 feet "unless demanded by operational circumstances" (a euphemism for being at war).

In other words, the ability of a B-36 Featherweight III to fly at over 50,000 feet is throughly documented. In the TBOverse I've assumed the mass-produced B-36s can't do quite as well at this and they top out at 52,500 feet.

Now the Ta-152H. It's given ceiling is defined by that point where the fighter has no ability to climb any further - in other words the maximum altitude it can possibly reach; what the USAF defines as the absolute ceiling. For the Ta-152H, this figure is 48,550 feet with GM-1 boost.

However, there is a catch. The aircraft can only achieve this altitude by using GM-1 boost (nitrous oxide injection) for its engine. Without GM-1 it's ceiling is about 43,000 feet (available figures differ slightly plus, or minus 500 feet). It carries enough GM-1 to last for five minutes at full rate of use. In other words the Ta-152H can just about get up to the same altitude as a fully-armed B-36H and stay there for three minutes before running out of boost and stalling. Even under those conditions, it is still 4,000 feet below a B-36H Featherweight III.

In short, the Ta-152H cannot intercept a B-36H-FIII.


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Well, what about the BV-155C Then? (Stuart)

The BV-155C actually appears in The Big One although it isn't successful. It's on the borderline between a far-out design and a napkinwaffe, there was an earlier aircraft (the BV-155B) that flew a few times in early 1945 but it's performance was very disappointing. The BV-155C never flew and it's performance, especially at altitude, is a manufacturer's claim only. There is no indication that it would have reached the performance levels claimed, it should be noted that very few aircraft did meet their manufacturer's estimates. So, the best that can be said is that the BV-155C would have been a marginal performer. It is still outmanoeuvered by the B-36 at those extreme altitudes and would be hovering on the brink of a stall. It's worth noting that, in OTL, the Germans decided to adopt the Ta-152H as their high altitude interceptor which suggests they didn't believe Blohm + Voss's estimates either.

Thus, in theory, the BV-155C could (if it performed according to the manufacturer's claims) have just about got up to B-36 operating altitudes. However, once up there, the BV-155C would have had to perform well above spec to be a serious threat and that simply seems very unlikely. Also, it depended on a turbocharged engine and the Germans had severe problems with building turbochargers due to their shortage of suitable metals.

The BV-155C paid for its high altitude capability by being a complete dog at lower altitude (the very few test flights carried out with the BV-155B showed very disappointing behavior). So that raises the question of why the Germans would build it at all. In OTL high altitude fighters (everybody tried to design them although "extreme high altitude" in the terms of those days meant 40,000 - 45,000 feet) were limited production items, a few dozen being produced at most to handle "high altitude" (again circa 40,000 feet) reconnaissance aircraft. To be an adequate defense against the B-36, the Germans would have had to build thousands of BV-155Cs. Why would they do that?

One of the precepts of The Big One is that the all the air fighting in the 1943 - 1947 era was done at low altitude - that was over the Russian Front and in the carrier strikes on Western Europe. This reflects OTL experience where air fighting on the Russian Front was very rarely at altitudes above 15,000 feet and most took place below 9,000 feet.

Thus, there was no perceived need for a specialized, high-altitude fighter and the crying demand was for more jets. Jets used the same scarce alloying metals as turbochargers so any production of a turbocharged fighter engine would cut down jet production (note in OTL the Germans used GM-1 for boost despite its known habit of wrecking engines). So, production wasn't going to happen. In effect, they'd be trading Me-262s and He-162s that were desperately needed for BV-155Cs that (as far as they knew) had no real operational use.

In TBO, production of the BV-155C is limited to a few dozen aircraft that perform well below specs. In exchange, I gave the German Air Force the Go-229 jet that has much the same altitude capability but is better low down and is a jet. It should be noted that the Go-229 was a very suspect design and was probably destined to be a complete failure (a common feature with all flying wing designs until computer flight controls came along). So, I was very generous in allowing the German Air Force to have them.

However, both types have the same problem, there just are not enough of them. The crying need was for fighters and attack aircraft that performed well at low altitudes, not a high-altitude fighter that was to counter a threat the Germans didn't realize existed. So, while the Bv-155C might have been marginally capable of intercepting a B-36, it lacked the performance margin to be a real threat and the numbers of them would have been inadequate to mount an effective defense.


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Why does nobody oppose the US Hedgemony by forming their own alliances, like the Europeans? (Stuart)

There are many, many theories of how international politics and relations work. Every one of them has its cadre of supporters who insist that they have the true image of reality and everybody else is hopelessly deluded. I happen to believe that the historical evidence supports the theory known as "Maximal Realism". In a nutshell, this envisages international relationships as being a game where everybody is struggling to reach the top of a pile. However, once a nation reaches the point where it is the undisputed hegemon, the paramount king of the hill, the rest do not attempt to organize against the hegemon; instead they make accommodations with it and get along with it as best they can (an effect called bandwagoning). This situation only continues as long as the Hegemon isn't seriously challenged and acts that way. If its position is seriously challenged, that's the point where the challenger starts to gain support from others. In short a hegemon who acts that way and does not allow challenges to its position to develop does not face a coalition of opponents, instead other nations will ally with the Hegemon against the challenger.

In TBO, the United States is governed solidly on "Maximal Realism" policies. Any challenger is swatted before their challenge is serious enough to start garnering support. On the other hand, the other proposition of Maximal Realism is that the Hegemon doesn't interfere with other countries as long as they don't present a challenge and will support them if they are threatened by others who also may represent a challenge to the Hegemon. As The Seer (an archtype Maximal Realist) says "We can't stop all wars but we can make sure they stay little ones."

In the TBOverse, the USA is using its position to ensure the world stays largely peaceful (with enough minor conflicts to let off steam) and that national entities that remain peaceful can count on US protection. As the comparison is often stated - the US is regarded as a particularly vicious watchdog - nations value it's protection, they just don't want it too close to them.

A classic example is the conversation The Seer has with Snake when she's suggesting Thailand may expand the war by attacking Chipanese bases in China. He says

That gives you the perfect excuse to refuse to join the conflict because if you try, the Chipanese wont take your Air Force out, we will. But, this also gives you the opportunity of offering to act as a peaceful intermediary. Thats as far as were prepared to go.

You wouldnt really bomb us would you. The Ambassador was shaken by the concept.

Do you really want to know the answer to that Snake?"

Read carefully, he's not threatening to bomb Thailand, he's giving the country the excuse of American power and anti-war attitude as a reason not to get involved. Snake shouldn't ask whether they really would bomb Thailand because the answer may be "No" and that would destroy the country's excuse not to get involved.

So, the situation is that, according to Maximal Realism, there will be no coalition against American interests as long as America responds forcefully to any challenge against it. I agree that those who believe in other theories of international relations may use their theories as a basis for disagreeing with that, the point is I believe that Maximal Realism is the most accurate representation of international political mechanisms that we have. A given world has to based on a theory of how nations act and react and TBO is based on Maximal Realism. Those who support other theories are welcome to dispute the validity of the theory, but that dispute belongs in a Political Science classroom.


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How does the US get the B-36 half a decade earlier? Isn't that sort of Deus Ex Machina? (Stuart)

In OTL, the B-36 was first proposed in a memo dated around June 1940 and by September 1940 the initial design studies were formed up. Work proceeded very slowly because priority was given to the B-29. In October 1941, Convair received the contract to build the aircraft but, again, work proceeded very slowly since Convair was ordered to give top priority to the B-32 Dominator and it stopped almost completely in June 1942.

Work wasn't resumed until late 1944, even then it rated below the B-32 and B-24 in priority and stayed that way until late 1945. So, for more than three years, work on the B-36 program was virtually at a standstill. When it did resume, the US was working on a peacetime economy and, again, work proceeded relatively slowly compared with wartime conditions.

In TBO, the collapse of Britain on June 18, 1940 shows the US it is unlikely to have foreign bases, thus the B-36 is needed urgently. In order to free up resources, the B-24 Liberator and the B-32 are cancelled completely, the B-17 is terminated with the B-17E and the B-29 production is slashed from 7,920 to barely 1,000. The B-36 is given top priority from November 1940 onwards. Therefore the aircraft is running at least four years ahead of OTL. Given the urgency of wartime production, a further year is picked up in the 1945-47 era.

In terms of resources, the US cancels 12,371 B-17s 18,482 B-24s and 110 B-32s, a total of 31,323 aircraft in exchange for 6,234 B-36s. The OTL bomber production requires 125,292 aircraft engines as opposed to the TBO bomber production requirement of 62,340 engines for the B-36 and 4,000 for the B-29.

In terms of crews, the OTL production requires 344,553 aircrew as opposed to the TBO B-36 aircrew requirement of 93,510.

In short the TBO B-36 program produces roughly 20 percent of the number of aircraft requiring roughly half the number of engines and just over a quarter of the number of trained aircrew. It is a far more economic program in terms of resources than the OTL strategic bomber effort and by giving it a high priority much earlier, its timing is extremely practical.



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Why are the French so incompetent and condescending? This is obviously a sign that the author is a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey-racist! (Stuart)

Actually the two speeches in question, one by Gamelin and the other by Petain are taken almost verbatim from French official records. They're translated of course, and tweaked very slightly - three or four words at most to fit them to the circumstances - but they're genuine.

However, when the comments by the French are taken in context with the rest of the stories, a very different picture of the French emerges. When Britain dropped out of WW2, they left the French in the lurch and abandoned them. The French fought on longer than any other European nation despite having no real chance of winning, were the first country to set up a functioning resistance movement and worked assiduously to bring about a German defeat. In fact, from a French viewpoint, their comments and expectations are entirely justifiable. Post-war, they are the first country to rebuild their armed forces and country. They stage a heroic fight in Algeria against teh Caliphate and are the primary reason why Caliphate expansion stalls. In fact, the overall TBOverse depiction of the French is that they are brave, courageous, loyal, determined, honorable and civilized - just cursed by poor leadership in 1939-47. That is historically accurate.


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What's this thing called 'Pizza Dacha'? (Stuart)

Pizza Dacha is a Russian Pizza chain started by an American retired Marine and his Russian wife. He got the timing just right, Pizza was easily produced using products available in Russia, it was cheap to make yet it gave an exhausted Russian nation a taste of something different and "luxurious" after more than a decade of privation and rationing. The Pizza Dacha chain was a great success in Russia and spread internationally in competition with Pizza Hut and the others. Pizza Dacha's speciality "signature dish" is a pizza using a Russian black bread base with seasoned tomato sauce and onion, spam and cheese toppings. It's called the "Frontniki" and its origin is described in "The Great Game"


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Why does the US have 200 nuclear devices in 1947? Isn't that 1950s level in 1947? (Stuart)

In OTL, the US built one Mark One nuclear device and five Model 1561s. The Mark One was expended on Hiroshima, one Model 1561 at Alamagordo and another was used on Nagasaki. Of the remaining three 1561s, one was scheduled for a laydown on Japan that was cancelled because Japan surrendered. That device and another were later used at Bikini where the use of the remaining 1561 was cancelled because the device had deteriorated beyond repair. At the time Japan surrendered, the US was gearing up to produce six Model 1561s and one Mark One a month.

However, when Japan surrendered, the US looked at its production lines and made a courageous policy decision. The existing lines were not well designed, had been thrown together hurriedly and were not optimum. Thus, the US stopped nuclear weapons production for over a year while it took down the old lines and built new ones.

In TBO that doesn't happen. The US keeps its old lines running - it has 24 months of production which gives in 168 devices from the old lines. Also, I assume it built the new lines in addition to the old lines and that these contributed 10 months worth of production (100 Mark 3 devices) to give an available total of 268 nuclear weapons. Of these, 232 are used in The Big One, leaving a reserve of 36.


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Why didn't America spare the cities that surrendered? (Stuart)

At its simplest, because they couldn't. How does an aircraft at 50,000 feet accept a surrender?

In order to be credible, a surrender must be made to somebody who is capable of accepting that surrender. An aircraft 50,000 feet over a target has no means of accepting that surrender and its transient presence means that it has no means of ensuring that the surrendered entity maintains its surrender. As soon as the bomber goes away, the entity can simply renege on its surrender. Therefore, a city attempting to surrender to the bomber overhead is a meaningless act, the bomber can neither accept nor enforce the surrender.

The city in question that made the attempt (Gutersloh) was perfectly well aware of that and thus was not acting in good faith. It was making a desperate attempt to prevent the laydown by deceiving the bomber crew into accepting an invalid and unenforceable surrender, one that those making the attempt knew would be reversed as soon as the threat was lifted. In fact, if anybody was guilty of anything at this point, it was those making the surrender attempt; they were committing an act (a false surrender) which is explicitly listed as being prohibited by the rules of war.


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Isn't the TBOverse USA totally vulnerable to stealth technology (Stuart)

It's first important to understand what stealth technology is and does. Stealth is properly known as "reduced signature technology" and that describes it very well. It doens't make things invisible, it simnply makes them harder to see. In terms of radar, it reduces the range at which they will be detected. Also, it does so at specific frequency bands; what is stealthy at one set of bands may not be at another. This is treading on classified areas now, so I won't take that any further.

The TBOverse fighters in the USA all use long-range missiles armed with nuclear warheads. This has two effects. One is that radar sets are much more powerful than in OTL (an order of magnitude more so) to give greater range. The effect of a reduced radar signature is that a lesser proportion of the radar energy hitting the target is reflected to the receiver. Note - proportion, the reduced radar signature doesn't eliminate reflections completely. Since the TBOverse radar sets pump out much more energy, more is reflected, increasing detection range - although it should be noted that an order of magnitude increase in reflected energy does not equate to an equivalent increase in range.

So OTL stealthy aircraft are not so stealthy faced with TBOverse interceptors. Detection ranges will be increased signficantly compared with those achieved by OTL interceptors. The exact amount by which they will be increased is hard to calculate but could be anywhere from 40 to 300 percent greater.

The other thing is that long range engagements mean a target identification problem which is addressed by equipping the aircraft with powerful electro-optical cameras and forward-looking infra-red sights. These were developed in the 1950s but were in cold storage and only appeared in the 1980s (on OTL US aircraft anyway). You may remember early OTL F-4s had FLIRs as well. So this gives TBOverse aircraft a secondary search system that doesn't use radar.

What all this means is that OTL stealth aircraft are completely vulnerable in daylight; even withour radar, they can be seen using electro-optical sights and engaged like any other aircraft. Night would be more of a problem due to radar's reduced detection range but it's still solvable.

Another thing, remember those nuclear warheads. Most stealth aircraft are fragile, unstable and hard to fly. That certaily applies to the B-2 and the F-117. The TBOverse interceptor doesn't need to score direct hits with its missiles; a near miss will do for the target just as well.

Finally, the TBOverse aircraft have a major advantage in speed and operating altitude. They can use look-down shoot-down tactics. This is quite effective against stealthy targets since the ground underneath is static but an aircraft like a B-2 flying over it creates a moving shadow of "no returns". When a B-2 is over a patch of ground, that ground doesn't generate a return. That shadow can be detected. It's quite adequate to target a nuclear air-to-air.

So, the TBOverse doesn't bother with stealth technology, it just doesn't fit their operational and technical profile. As a corollary to that, stealth technology isn't a threat. it makes the defenses job a bit harder but nothing revolutionary.


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Why does the US buy B-70s which fly from 75,000 to 100,000 feet when the ceiling of the Nike-Hercules SAM is 150,000 feet? (Stuart)

Most reference sources on missiles give two pieces of data on range. One is maximum range, the other is maximum ceiling. The critical thing to remember is that these figures are mutually exclusive. Achieving one precludes the achievement of the other. If the maximum range of a missile is 100 miles and its ceiling is 150,000 feet, it's range (when measured as a horizontal distance from its launch point) when fired to 150,000 feet will be zero. It goes straight up and come straight back down.

So, the critical point is not what a missile's maximum range or altitude is, but what its range is when fired at a target at a specific altitude. These figures are mostly strictly classified. However, it takes a lot more energy to climb than it does to fly level so it is reasonable to assume that range decreases sharply as altitude goes up. A measure of how sharply can be determined by dividing the missile's horizontal range by its vertical range; this gives a rought indication of the ratio it takes to make a missile go up as compared to along. For most missiles, this energy ratio varies between 8:1 to 3:1.

The key here is the launch kinetics of the missile. A very energetic missile will burn its fuel fast, giving it a low energy use ratio that allows it to climb fast and have a larger range at high altitude. But, by burning its fuel fast, it loses horizontal range. A less energetic missile will burn its fuel more slowly giving it a greater horizontal range but it will have an unfavorable energy ratio and thus will have a limited range at higher altitudes.

Now, add into that manoeuverability. Missiles that depend on fins for manoeuvering (pretty much all off them until very recently) have a problem in that their small control surfaces are ineffective in the thin air at high altitudes. What may be a very agile missile in the thick air low down, are barely capable of manoeuver high up. Aircraft with their much larger control surfaces are effected to a lesser extent.

The effect of all these considerations is that each type of missile has an effectiveness graph of range against altitude that isn't a simple cylinder, its shaped like a lemon standing on one end. It has a narrow base (determined by radar horizons), swells out quickly as altitude increases then tapers off to a long thin spike at the top. If the altitude of the bomber is plotted across that lemon, it gives a cross-section of a circle, the radius of which is the range of the missile at that altitude. In order to score a hit, the missile crew must fire their missile so the target is within that circle at the time the missile reaches that altitude. In order not to be hit, the bomber shouldn't be in that circle. The smaller the circle, the easier it is for the bomber to change course and not be there. Also, the faster the bomber is, the less time it takes to cross that circle and thus the narrower the time window for the missile to be in the right place at the right time.

Even if the bomber is within the circle, it still is far from certain it'll get hit; that depends on the agility of the bomber versus the missile, the destructive radius of the missile warhead and the capability of the electronic warfare equipment on the bomber. This probability of a kill is called PK and missile producers like to claim PKs of anywhere from 80 to 100 percent. In the real world, 20 percent is doing very, very well and few missiles get that high. One gets around that by firing a lot of them........

Applying this to the B-70, even against missiles theoretically capable of reaching 150,000 feet, the missile range at 77,500 is so much smaller that the bomber has an excellent chance of being able to not be within that radius. At Mach 3.4 (37.3 miles per minute) even if it is within that radius, its vulnerability window is very small, a matter of a few seconds. Even if the missile is capable of getting to the B-70 in that time window, its chance of scoring a hit is pretty low.

By the way, the fastest anti-aircraft missile in the world today is capable of a tiny hair over Mach 6. That means it has a speed advantage over a B-70 of around 1.75. To have a marginal capability against a target, a missile is required to have a speed advantage of 2.0. This implies that the best anti-aircraft missiles in the world today have onlya very marginal capability against a B-70 type target.

Compare this with OTL; in OTL there has never been a successful attempt to intercept an SR-71 Blackbird (claims to have done so are either fictitious or wishful thinking). The B-70 flies higher than an SR-71, its significantly faster, is much more agile and has much better EW capabilities. And the B-70 shoots back.

In terms of numbers, the defense needs the following:

2.0 Speed Advantage and 1.0 Altitude Advantage for 25% pK
3.0 Speed Advantage and 2.0 Altitude Advantage for 50% pK
4.0 Speed Advantage and 3.0 Altitude Advantage for 75% pK
5.0 Speed Advantage and 4.0 Altitude Advantage for 90+ pK

So this means that when the SA-2 or it's equivalents come out in 1957, having a mach 2.0 (1,320 MPH) capability, this puts at severe risk the B-36J, having a 50% pK against it, due to having a 3.21 speed advantage over it, but against the B-52D, which flies 200 MPH faster, the SA-2's pK falls to 25%, since it only has a 2.08 speed advantage.

Against the B-70, the SA-2 doesn't even have a chance, it's advantage ranges from 0.67 to 0.59 depending on whether the Valkyrie is at Mach 3 cruise or Mach 3.4 combat speed.

When the SA-5 (S-200) enters the picture in 1967, it's Mach 4.5 (3,000 MPH) speed allows it to gain a 50% pK on the B-52D, but still can't begin coming close to killing the Valkyrie, as it's advantage is only 1.51 to 1.34.

When the SA-10 (S-300P) comes around in 1978 with its 3,800 MPH (Mach 5.75) speed, it's advantage rises to 1.92 to 1.69; it's still not really enough to gain a 25% PK on the Valkyrie.

Finally, when the SA-20 (S-300PMU-1) hits the market in 1992 with a 4,690 MPH speed (Mach 7.02), it can achieve an advantage of 2.37 to 2.09 against the Valkyrie, marking the first time a 25% PK is achieved against the B-70.

Of course, this is with historical missile development, e.g. trying to retain some sense of sanity in regards to dimensions. The enemy could simply say "screw this, I want a missile that can hit Mach 7 now" in the 1970s if he's willing to accept a massive increase in missile size, which decreases the amount actually available to the defense at any site, imposing virtual attrition. If you have to go from 4 SAMs on a TEL to just 2 in order to get a reasonable advantage over the B-70, the Valkyrie has killed half your missiles before he even shows up through said virtual attrition.

There are two additional factors that have to be included. One is electronic warfare; once an aircraft is in the engagement envelope of a surface-to-air missile, it depends on its electronic warfare capability to reduce the missile's PK. In this environment, bombers have a significant advantage because they have the power and internal capacity to carry fairly comprehensive EW systems.

The other is systems behavior. The SAM's (along with the fighters and everything else) fit into an air defense environment which has a built-in reaction time due to the delays inherent in its configuration. If the threat to that system develops faster than the system can respond to those threats, then the threat gets inside the reaction time of the system and said system falls steadily behind what is actually happening.

Missiles have the plus that they come in very, very fast so the defense system has a limited time to react. However, the problem with missiles is that they have no means of changing or developing their threat. They're coming in on a known ballistic arc and their position on that arc at any given time is predictable. That means the defense system doesn't have to react to them; it can predict what and where the threat will be at any specific time and then reacts to that predicted threat. In other words, it's inherent within the nature of the operational scenario that the defense system is far ahead of the threat. Since missiles don't - and can't - have defensive EW systems of their own, that makes them very, very vulnerable. The only problem is exploiting that vulnerability.

With manned, Mach 3.4 bombers, no such predictions can be made; the flight path of a manned aircraft is, by definition, not predictable. It can turn, climb or dive plus it can use its built-in electronic warfare capability to ensure (hopefully) that the defense system is receiving false data. So the bomber is ahead of the defense system. This was something that took us a lot of hard work to convince people of when we were consulting on the design of air defense systems; the performance of the system as a whole is much more significant than the performance of any one component of the system. Improving one (for example buying F-16 interceptors to replace F-5Es) makes onlya limited difference to the performance of the system as a whole. If, using that example, the improved performance of the interceptor is to be exploited, the whole system has to be upgraded with faster communications links, better operational display systems, better surveillance and target acquisition systems etc. If all those good things aren't done, the air defense system effectively has F-16s performing to F-5E levels. (It works the other way as well of course; if the interceptors cannot match the performance of the ground-based environment, then the added performance of that environment is wasted. So, a ground based environment that can exploit F-16 performance but only has F-86L interceptors doesn't have any advantage over an environment designed around the F-86L.)


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What's up with the targeteers? (Stuart)

Not quite sure what this means. However, "The Targeteers" are the TBO analogues of the OTL Beltway Bandit consultants and think tanks that advise the Pentagon on policy etc (please note that a lot of organizations call themselves think tanks but aren't). In OTL, they grew up in the 1950s to advise on nuclear policy issues. In TBO they grew up a decade earlier for obvious reasons. They relationship is very close and the characters and their gruesome sense of humor are all taken from life.


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Except the Jets that were hung off the B-36 were from the B-47, which didn't even start as a project till 1945. (Mark)

1.) The B-47 began as a June 1943 informal request by the USAAF in OTL, and by November 1944, the USAAF had issued a formal request for a jet-powered medium bomber, with a range of 3500 miles, a service ceiling of 45,000 feet, and a maximum speed of 550 mph. By November 1945 in OTL, the XB-47's design was finalized.

2.) The XB-47 was originally powered by GE J-35 turbojets, which was available by December of 1945 in OTL. (that's when the XP-84 prototype was completed which was powered by the J-35). Early model TBOverse -36s with jets have these. Apparently there were few changes needed in the XB-47 to accomodate the change from J-35 to J-47 later on in the development cycle.

The J-47, which powers the B-36s used for TBO, was a development of the earlier J-35, and first flew in OTL 1948; given the wartime pace of R&D in TBOverse, it's feasible to knock a year or two off the J-47 IOC. (see below)

3.) Development of turbojets and various other programs was severely impacted in OTL in 1945 when WWII ended, and everyone wanted to bring the boys home. Military spending was cut dramatically, and it would take until the Korean War for us to get serious about a peacetime military buildup.

Just look at the F-84 Thunderjet. Design began in 1944, with the USAAF ordering 403 aircraft in March 1945.

Then, the war ended, and virtually all outstanding orders for aircraft and their development were cancelled completely. It took until January '46 before the USAAF finally decided that yes, it did want the F-84, and placed an order for 15 YP-84As and 85 P-84Bs; and it took until the summer of 1947 before Republic could deliver them to the USAAF.

In TBOverse, the war is still going on by 1947, with no end in sight, so there's a wartime development pace; there's no pause while plants are shut down from war production, the USAAF decides it wants something, and then the plants having to respool back up.


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On B-36 Priority (Mark)

The B-36 program was massively delayed in OTL. Convair had a wind tunnel model ready by 1942; but by then the program had been derated from top priority to a much lower priority by the much improved war situation, and the B-36's project priority was not enough to get it wind tunnel time against all the other projects we were working on; so the wind tunnel testing was delayed an entire year, until 1943.

Also, the program's priority was like a yo-yo; Early through 1942; it was high priority; but at the end of 1942; with Torch going ahead and things not seeing so grim, it got downgraded. Then in 1943; with China looking like it was going to fall, and with that, no B-29 bases; B-36 priority was moved up again; before being downgraded as we captured more and more Pacific islands close enough to Japan to base B-29s from.

Run at max throttle for the whole way in? Like all large multi-engined bombers the B-36 was prone to engine fires. That would be an unacceptable strain on the radials.

Actually, you're confusing the nature of the B-29's engine problems with the B-36's engine problems.

The B-29 had very little excess power on take off and during climbs to altitude, so the engines had to be run at full power at or near sea level; where temperatures were much hotter; causing overheating of the engines; the B-29 never really licked it's engine fire problems, due to the need for the engines to be run at full power continuously at sea level to get the plane up to altitude.

The B-36 on the other hand......did not need to run it's engines at full power at sea level and during climbs to altitude; so air-temperature induced engine fires were not very common....

Page 206 of Big Stick:
I'll never forget my first flight. It was a low gross weight local flight and, to me, it was spectacular. Being so accustomed to the B-29s, which accelerated so slowly and climbed begrudgingly, I could hardly believe what the "Magnesium Monster" was doing. With the brakes locked and full power applied, I could feel and see the empennage vibrating and twisting. I was convinced that it would fall off. Upon brake release, the 36 rammed me into my seat like a catapult and did not accelerate smoothly like a normal aircraft. It surged, I pulled hard to a rotation angle, and we were airborne in a fraction of a B-29's distance. I had been briefed to hold 150 MPH IAS. I established what I felt was a reasonable climb attitude, but the first pilot kept yelling at me to pull up the nose. By the time I had raised it enough to keep the airspeed from increasing further, I felt as though we were going straight up. I was utterly convinced that it would stall at any moment. I anticipated the initial buffeting, but it never came. It just kept climbing nearly "straight up."

Page 208 of Big Stick:
The B-17 and the B-29 in a maximum gross load condition were real ground-huggers. The B-29, in particular, needed everything going for it at heavy weights, high temperatures and light winds to become airborne. become airborne. The B-36, on the other hand, had take off power to spare. As the jets were fed in on the take off roll, even at heavy weights, the B-36 literally popped off the ground.

There were some rather severe airspeed limits that were not to be exceeded until the landing gear was retracted. The huge door that covered the gear when it was stowed was called the "canoe door," and it would be carried away if the airspeed was too high before the door was stowed. This meant that on take off, even at heavy weights, the climb-out angle of a B-36 was quite steep, in order to hold the airspeed down. This power available on take off was a blessing to an ex-B-29 pilot.

The R-4360-41s installed on the early -36 models had many developmental problems; engine fires were common; in one instance, an engine literally burned through the wing, and fell through into the ocean. The B-36 flew on to land with it's remaining engines.

This all changed when the R-4360-53s entered service; they lasted past their overhaul times; and engine fires became rare.

The only times you needed to run the R-4360-53s on a -36 at full power was during your attack run above 40,000 feet; and guess what? External air-temperature at those altitudes was -69 degrees Farenheit; which meant that the engines would simply keep running as long as fuel was fed to them with no overheating problems; they actually liked the cold air more than the jets; it was usually the jets which failed earlier at high altitude speed runs.


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The US can't build that many B-36s!!! (Mark/Stuart)

A very useful rough rule of thumb for estimating aircraft production capability during WWII is the empty weight of the aircraft. Since in the TBOverse, the US cancels or never issues production contracts for the following aircraft:

12,371 B-17s at 32,720 lbs empty (G Models)
18,482 B-24s at 32,605 lbs empty
110 B-32s at 60,278 lbs empty
2,943~ B-29s at 74,500 lbs empty

That frees up the following amount of aviation materials (aluminum, wiring, etc etc)

202,390 tons (B-17)
301,303 tons (B-24)
3,315 tons (B-32)
109,627 tons (B-29)

for a total of 616,634 tons.

At this point, ammended by Stuart

However, that's only up to 1945. The OTL 1946 aircraft program was cancelled but would have added.

2,092 B-29s adding 77,927 tons of material
1,598 B-32s adding 48,162 tons of material
5,168 B-24s adding 32,605 tons of material

for a grand additional total of 158,694 tons of aviation material, giving a grand total of 775,328 tons

The B-36D's empty weight was 161,371 lbs (80.7 tons)

If we assume that there will be about 40% lost due to various means (retooling factories, waiting for new factories to be built that can accomodate the B-36's size); that leaves us with 465,197 tons, which at a B-36D's empty weight gives us 5,764 B-36s, making it quite possible to build the numbers needed for TBO (2,600 aircraft), as well as the various early models which can be converted into various specialist roles; as well as the C-99s for the Air bridge.

In fact the numbers square exactly since we also have first half 1947 production whose potential OTL wartime hasn't been included and the grand total of TBOverse B-36 production also includes post-war deliveries. Looked at another way, the OTL 1946 aircraft production tonange requirement (158,694 tons) is adequate to produce 1,966 B-36s.

This raises an interesting question. Why do the numbers square so exactly? The answer is quite simple. The industrial/economic/production side of TBO was worked out in very great detail. I calculated the commitment the USAAF made to strategic bombers in OTL with a high degree of precision (not just material but engine production, weapons, electronics etc) and then worked backwards from that to determine what B-36 force structure could have been built had that effort been devoted to the B-36 rather than the B-17/24/29/32. That's how the number of B-36s built was computed. In fact, as has been pointed out, its much larger than the force structure actually needed for The Big One. It would have been quite possible to fly The Big One with a force as low as 600 aircraft - in fact the floor minimum would have been 300! The use of over 2,000 aircraft was a reflection of the degree of resources the US had available, not the requirements of The Big One itself.

A minimum-force The Big One would have seen the nuclear bombers doing their thing, returning to the USA, reloading with conventional bombs et al and then returning to hit the conventional bombing targets. In other words, the minimum force TBO (conventional and nuclear) would have taken place over a week than in a single two-day mission. But its doable.

For those impressed by the sheer volume of resources the United States had available, reflect on this. In OTL, the United States never fully mobilized While other nations were straining every nerve to maximize production and wring every last drop of war effort out of their economies, the United States barely broke into a sweat. In fact, the United States was (in an industrial sense) demobilizing from the end of 1944 onwards. One study has suggested that if the USA had mobilized its economy to the same extent as the United Kingdom, America could have more that doubled its military equipment output.


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"Are the Demons Evil?"

The simple answer is that they are people, just like us, complex, with conflicting motives and thought patterns. Some are autocratic and ruthless, others are intensely humanistic. Some are massively self confident, others are torn and riddled by doubt, guilt and anguish.

However, the simple answer doesn't really answer the true question here. The real thread is that the question author belives that the nuclear devices should have been used on the German Army in Russia, not Germany and since that wasn't done, those who planned the attack were evil.

The answer to that comment is two-fold. Firstly, its an assertion that dropping nuclear weapons on allied territory is good while dropping them on enemy territory is bad. That opinion is, quite honestly, a sign of terminal bewilderment. It's nonsense and doesn't deserve a further response.

The other is, as we have already seen, strategic bombing was an understood and accepted strategy at the time The Big One took place and nuclear wepaons were just seen as a better means of executing that strategy. Even if the idea of using them tactically had been raised, it would have been rejected out of hand. Even had the front-line German Armies been crippled by a 200-device tactical assault, there is no guarantee that it would have ended or even shortened the war. The German Army demonstrated a remarkable ability to recover from pretty cataclysmic disasters and there is not doubt they could have done the same after a massive hole was blown in their front that way. Oh, they'd have lost a LOT of ground and a LOT of people but they'd have recovered the front and held, almost certainly still on Russian territory. The war would have gone on, only the nuclear cat is out of the bag and the B-36s trump card is blown.

The idea of wasting those trump cards on a tactical strike is so absurd that it wouldn't have been considered for more than a single meeting.

Conference Room, Offutt Air Force Base, June 1946

Phillip Stuyvesant, better-known as the Seer looked around the room. "Has anybody got anything to say in favor of the tactical option? Anything at all?"

There was a complete silence. This was a Red Team meeting, one where the participants were required to bring up objections and alternatives, no matter how absurd they were. The idea of using the nuclear devices that were now filling American arsenals as a tactical weapon to break the deadlock on the Russian front was one such. From the phase of the delegate who had proposed it, he didn;t even believe in it himself.

"I can't think of anything either. It doesn't get us anywhere, won't end the war and will reveal a lot of things the bad guys shouldn't know until its too late. Unless there are any objections, I rule that the tactical objection be rejected as unworkable, impractical and undesirable." The Seer looked around again, there were no objections at all. "So noted. Now the next proposal - that we consider the French Atlantic Ports as suitable targets for a nuclear attack instead of the currently planned conventional bombing. Curt, this is your idea, what's your thinking on this?"


Quote:
Why aren't SAC's bombers falling out of the sky from SAM hits?

Because the SAMs don't hit them is the simple answer.

In the TBOverse, SAC's bomber fleet is kept at the cutting edge of technology, both in terms of performance and electronic sophistication. When they come, they do so behind a wall of anti-radar and air-to-ground missiles supported by specialized "strategic recon aircraft" (actually strategic versions of the OTL Wild Weasels) and optimized long-range escort fighters. The defense suppression missiles are all nuclear tipped and are used with a free hand.

At their various times, the B-36, B-52, B-58 and B-70 are all right on the upper edge of the true engagement capability of the SAMs that existed at that time and their electronic warfare capability is very capable of handling them. In reality, in OTL today, there are very few missiles capable of successfully engaging a B-70 that's carrying out a fully-supported penetration mission. The latest Russian missile, the S-300 is pushed right to its limits by the challenge (its successor, the S-400 doesn't work and shows no signs of being made to work)

To give you some idea of the magnitude of the challenge facing SAM defenses, a SAM capable of getting a 50 eprcent Pk (probability of a kill) against a B-70 would have to have a maximum speed of Mach 9, a range of over 250 miles and a maximum ceiling in excess of 200,000 feet. ANything less than that and it doens't have the excess performance required to make an intercept. The best missile currently available has a speed of Mach 6, a range of 175 miles and a maximum ceiling of around 150,000 feet.

So, when SAC's bombers fly, they will suffer some losses to ground defenses. However, historically, air defense systems shooting down 20 percent of the inbound bombers would be doing extremely well and that level of success is very rare. Shooting down 20 percent of a conventional bomber fleet is a disaster for the attacking bombers. Shooting down 20 percent of the nuclear delivery bombers is a catastrophe for the air defense system. Remember, bombers can be retargeted, missiles can't.


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Why doesn't the use of nuclear weapons knock out TBO electronics? (EMP) (Stuart)

Because they're hardened against such effects. This is a known and well-understood art that's been in place in OTL since the early 1960s. The TBO timeline has the same provisions (probably even sooner due to their greater experience of nuclear weapons use). Hardening an electronic system against electronic effects isn't hard and only adds about 5 - 10 percent to the cost of the system


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How can you see through nuclear initations? (Stuart)

Again, this is a non-problem to which the answer is very easy. The shadowing effect of a nuclear initiation isn't really a shadow at all; when an initiation takes place there is a sudden release of broad-band radiation, some of which is interpreted by the radar as a response to its pulses, thus creating an illusion of a massive target. Essentially, this is no different form normal barrage jamming used in electronic warfare and is countered the same way. The radar set is programmed to give its outbound pulses a set of non-natural changes in frequency, amplitude, modulation and other factors such as jitter and chirp. These factors are retained in the return pulses. The noise emitted by the initiation is "white", that is its random in terms of its electronic characteristics. Thus, if the radar set is programmed to ignore all returns except those that have the selected characteristics, all the electronic noise from the initiation is filtered out. The "shadow" miraculously vanishes.

Again, a technology and operational practice that's been known and used for decades (since WW2 in fact).


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Why do you have working ABM in the 1960s? We can't even do it today! (Stuart)

Actually, perfectly effective and capable ABM systems were available in the 1960s. The first missile-to-missile intercepts were actually made in the late 1950s. During the 1962-66 era, Zeus family ABMs made a total of 64 attempted intercepts of which 59 were successful. A classified number of those intercepts were skin-to-skin hits.

There is nothing difficult about intercepting ballistic missiles. They are on a predictable course and their location at any instant along their flight path can be predicted with absolute accuracy. The only real problems are in getting the system to react fast enough; ironically this affects tactical ballistic missiles much more that strategic ones. It should be noted that the Indians recently conducted a successful ballistic missile intercept and are developing their own ABM.


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If High and Fast is so great, why did we go low and fast with the B-1B? (Stuart)

By TBO standards, the B-1B isn't fast, its slow, subsonic at low altitude, Mach 1.25 at high. Compare that with the Mach 3.4 for a B-70. In OTL, the US went to low-altitude penetration as a substitute for the speed and high altitude capabilities lost when the B-70 was cancelled. It's a very poor substitute and attempts to use ultra-low altitude penetration have not met with great success. In TBO, the US did not make that mistake.


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The US can't build thousands of B-36s! They cost $4 million compared to (such and such amount for B-17/B-24/B29) (Shep and Stuart)

Let us look at OTL USA's strategic bomber production:

We built:

18,482 B-24s, 12,726 B-17s, 3,900 B-29s and 118 B-32s

during the war.

The cost of a B-17 was:
$301,221 in 1939-41
$258,949 in 1942
$204,370 in 1944
$187,742 in 1945

for an average of $238,071 per B-17.

The B-24 cost:
$379,162 in 1939-41
$304,391 in 1942
$215,516 in 1944
$299,690 Average

The B-29 Cost:
$893,730 in 1942
$605,360 in 1944
$509,465 in 1945
$669,518 Average

The B-32 Cost:
$790,433 in 1942
$790,433 in 1944
$790,433 Average

The OTL program costs, using the averaged number for each bomber's cost was:
$3.03 billion on B-17s
$5.54 billion on B-24s
$0.09 billion on B-32s
$2.61 billion on B-29s
$11.27 billion total.

Now, in TBO; the US B-36 program consists of

2,600 B-36A to -36Gs
1,850 B-36Hs produced (i'm assuming that the nuclear strikes were all -H models with the second wave of conventional bombings handed off to the slower, lower -Gs etc; since they could fly in the aftermath of the shattering nuclear strikes.)

For about 4,550 B-36s produced by the time TBO took place (more were built post-war).

The production cost of an OTL B-36J was $4.1 million (the total cost was about the same for all the combat equipped B-36s, cheaper airframe costs were offset by more extensive electronics fits).

(Note from Stu) This is also a 1951 program cost and includes the high OTL post-war inflation. Correcting for inflation reduces the unit cost to US$3.6 million each

However, mass production makes a tremendous difference in bomber costs.

We can guesstimate the difference of mass production as applied to the B-36 by looking at the B-29's cost:

$893,730 in 1942
$509,465 in 1945

The B-29s built in '45 by mass production methods cost 57% as much as the first B-29s which were handbuilt.

A B-36J built using the same mass production methods as the B-29 would cost about $2.8million, as opposed to OTL's $4.1 million, taking into account only a 30% reduction in cost, instead of 43%, due to squish factors. Again. allowing for inflation, this reduces to US$2.45 million

Here are the estimates for the TBOverse USA's WWII Strategic bomber program costs:

300 B-17s built in TBO for $301,221 (1939-41 costing); for $0.09 billion

1,000 B-29s built in TBO for $750,000 (taking into account the 1942 price, and reducing it a bit to take into account mass production) for $0.75 billion.

4,450 B-36s built in TBO for $2,896,688 each for $10.9 billion.

Total of $11.73 billion for TBO's bomber program between 1941 and 1947; which is a a little more expensive than OTL's $11.27 billion for 1941 - 45 placing it well within the realms of wartime funding, because in 1945 OTL we ordered the following aircraft for the 1946 program:

2,092 B-29s for a cost of $1.4 billion
1,598 B-32s for a cost of $1.26 billion
5,168 B-24s for a cost of $1.55 billion
8,858 aircraft total for a total cost of $4.21 billion

All this was cancelled when Japan surrendered. This means that the OTL strategic bomber program cost US$15.48 billion as opposed to the TBO program of US$11.74 billion - in other words, the OTL expenditure on strategic bombers was 30 percent GREATER than the equivalent TBO expenditure - and that does not include any hypothetical 1947 OTL "wartime" construction.


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Why didn't the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? (Stuart)

First, it's important to note that, in OTL, the Japanese decision to go ahead with the Pearl Harbor attack was far from unanimous. It was a very finely balanced decision where it would have needed only a couple of people to have changed their mind or abstained to abort the whole operation. In TBO, those people did change their mind and the attack was cancelled. The reasons why they did so are as follows (none of these reasons were, in themselves, decisive but taken together they were enough),

Firstly, the decision by the British to conclude an armistice with Germany in June 1940 came as a severe shock to the US. It meant that the USA kicked into high gear war production a year earlier than in OTL. This meant the flow of equipment started to ramp up earlier BUT that flow of equipment was earlier models (for example, more P-36s, fewer P-40s). Most of that equipment went to the Pacific where Hawaii and the Philippines were heavily reinforced. Most importantly, there were a lot of extra PBY reconaissance aircraft in Pearl and the authorities there were nearer to a war footing. In the Japanese estimation, that gravely increased the possibility the attack force would be spotted and promised much heavier opposition.

Secondly, the Japanese saw that American military production was ramping up and they could replace losses very quickly. Thus the advantages of a first strike seemed to become more and more elusive.

Thirdly (and perhaps critically) the whole Japanese strategic objective was to obtain access to sources of raw materials. With the effective collapse of Europe, the Asian European colonies were thrown onto their own resources and had to survive as best they could. The only way they could do that was to trade with Japan. As a result, Japan had free access to NEI oil, Malayan rubber etc on very favorable terms (buyers market) all without need of going to war. That gave them their strategic objectives in the Pacific and allowed them to concentrate their military power on China - which was always their first priority.

Fourthly, The Japanese were able to conduct their China operations without worrying about supply of raw materials. The American embargo was ineffective. Also, once America entered the war and committed troops to Russia, they had to supply those troops. In OTL, 25 percent of lend-lease supplies went via the Arctic Convoys, 25 percent via the Persian Gulf and 50 percent via the Pacific. In TBO, the Pacific route is even more important and the amount of material being shipped is much greater (think the amount shipped by Lend Lease in OTL PLUS the OTL amount supplied to Europe to keep American and allied armies in Western Europe going). That made for a very vulnerable supply line that was close to Japan and almost indefensible. The Japanese played that very skillfully, effectively gaining a free hand in China in return for not interfering with the supply of US forces in Russia. In effect the Japanese played Germany and the US off against eachother, asking Germany, "what will you give us to interfere with that supply line" and to the Americans "what will you give us not to". The Americans made the better offer. Again, the Japanese got what they wanted without a war.

In fact, viewed objectively, in the TBOverse, the Japanese are the other really big winner of WW2. They pretty much got everything they wanted without having to fight a war with the USA.


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Isn't the bombing of Paris some anti-French BS?

No, it was a part of the widespread conventional bombing of targets in Western Europe that formed the second wave of The Big One. Those were aimed at military, economic and political targets (an example of the military targets being the destruction of the Gosport submarine base in AoN). The bombing of the Champs Elysee was a political operation, intended to be an object lesson to nations that might be thinking of starting their own wars. By hitting the heart of a capital, it was a message that the war was O-V-E-R. The target was selected quite ruthlessly. Berlin was out, it was obliterated by nuclear attack. The Hague and Brussels, few people had ever heard of. London and Paris were the two big-name capitals that had the desired impact. So, by elimination, the demostration would fall on one of them.

The purpose of the attack was to demonstrate that in any future war, the US would be coming after the government of the country that, in American opinion, started it. Coming after them personally. So the target in each city was the street that contained the administrative center of the city. In London, that's Whitehall, in Paris it's the Champs Elysee. So the decision on which one to hit boiled down to which made the better target. The Champs Elysee is almost straight, Whitehall has a large bend in it that made it impossible for the B-36 to track its bombs down the length of the street. That threw the decision irrevocably to the Champs Elysee. If Whitehall had been straight as well, I'd have flipped a coin but the bend decided the matter.

Whether the decision was a wise one is highly debateable. By RotV, the Americans are beginning to regret it and wonder whether it really was a good idea. But, nobody said they're perfect. All the stories are full of errors of judgement by everybody (Crusade is a mass of mistakes and judgement errors). The bombing of Paris could well be considered one of those mistakes.


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What about MIRVed ICBMs? Wouldn't they be cheaper to build than ABMs, and overload the defense? (Stuart)

A major point here is that MIRV has nothing to do with evading ballistic missile defenses. It's an outcome of the cost balance in ICBM construction that confers considerable cost benefits in avoiding destruction on the ground by enemy ICBMs. MIRV is virtually irrelevent when considered in the ABM context.

The reason why is that the warheads are contained on a bus that is lofted by the missile. That bus is equipped with a manoeuvering system that makes a series of alterations to its course and fires a warhead at a pre-selected target. This isn't very accurate and there is a major accuracy penalty in shifting from unitary warheads (one warhead per missile) to MIRVs. That loss of accuracy sets a maximum distance at which a warhead can be discharged from the bus. Also, the warheads are discharged one at a time from that bus which puts further constraints on how far they can be released from the target and the degree of separation between the targets engaged. The effect of that is that the bus containing the MIRVs is within the range of the ABMs before it starts to discharge its warheads and would be shot down before those warheads are released. In fact, this is so prominent a factor that MIRV is not only not an answer to ABM defenses, MIRVed missiles are only viable in the absence of such defenses.


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What about Re-entry vehicle Decoys? Wouldn't they overload ABM defenses? (Stuart)

Put in a nutshell, decoys don't work. That's about as simple as it gets. There are more than three dozen technologies available to distinguise decoys from real warheads. The decoy question was throughly investigated in the early 1960s and all the practical forms of decoy were discounted. By 1964, the decoy problem was essentially solved. Since that time, decoy developers have been trying to produce better decoys and the counter-decoy people have been devising ways of distinguising between the decoys and the real thing. At the moment, the filtration techniques are so far ahead that decoys have been discounted as a viable technique.

To work, a decoy would have to be exactly the same size, shape, weight, weight distribution, appearance, thermal characteristics and thermal distribution as a real warhead; if one's going to do that, why not just use a real warhead? By the way, before anybody repeats the old line "don't make the decoy look like a warhead, make the warhead look like a decoy", that was one of the earliest ideas that was tested. It doesn't work.

The British based an entire Polaris update around the use of decoys (it was called Chevaline). Chevaline ran years late and was horribly over-cost, the problems with the decoys being the primary and largest single cause of the problems. In fact, those problems were never solved. By the way, even using decoys from a ballistic missile is not as easy as it sounds; there's quite a few problems there that have never been solved either. Mostly because it wasn't worth spending money solving those problems when the decoys wouldn't work anyway.

However, decoys are very useful for one thing. If somebody quotes decoys as a reason why ABM doesn't work, it raises two possibilities. Either ( a ) they don't know what they are talking about or ( b ) they do know what they are talking about but are lying with the assumption that proving they are lying would mean disclosing classified information. So quoting decoys is a mark of somebody who is stupid, dishonest or both.


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The TBOverse is nothing but uber-American propaganda masquerading as a story (Stuart)

I suspect this question can be re-written as "Hey, those wonderful and really, really cool Nazis didn't win so its all American propaganda."

Put in a nutshell; the equipment that is used by the U.S. in the stories up to High Frontier all really existed. Some of it was cancelled in OTL, some of it saw only limited production in OTL but it all really existed. The policies adopted by the U.S. really existed. The big change is in 1958-62 when in OTL the US shifted from bombers to missiles and abandoned massive retaliation for flexible response. In the TBOverse, missiles are abandoned in favor of bombers and massive retaliation remains US policy much longer. From the point of view of things going wrong, everybody makes their share of mistakes and equipment malfunctions or fails quite regularly.

So the uber-American propaganda assertion is absurd, it simply doesn't correspond to what is actually in the stories.


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What's with the author's bias against Kennedy and McNamara?

A carefully-reasoned position isn't bias.

Kennedy was a very foolish man who should never have been President. He was lucky that he got assassinated since that imbued him with a mystique and a legend that prevent the actions of his presidency being evaluated on a logical basis. In reality, his presidency was marked by errors and misjudgements that impacted policy decisions for over a decade. Had Kennedy not been shot in 1963, historians would take off the kid gloves. The "Missile Gap" campaign crap, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, further fiascos trying James Bond escapades to whack Castro, the Cuban Missile "Crisis" and how Kennedy was pushed around by the Russians - all would be laid at Kennedy's doorstep. Kennedy would also get splattered with the Vietnam fallout that claimed Johnson, and people would quite convincingly argue that any president would have sent us into space, just because the Russians were pushing there, so Kennedy gets no special "moon legacy" either.

In other words, Kennedy would get the same kind of critical scrutiny as Johnson - international screw-ups wipe out any domestic policy successes - instead of being protected by the aura built up by the assasination.

Robert Strange McNamara was a monumentally incompetent disaster as SecDef. Every decision he made was wrong, every project he started was a disaster every action he took lead to catastrophe. The "reforms" he instituted cripple American defense procurement to this day and are largely responsible for the excessive cost we pay for our military equipment, why it takes decades to develop and why it is never procured in the numbers we need. If we look at any procurement or military policy disaster in the USA and trace it back to its roots, those roots are labelled Robert Strange McNamara.

He was responsible for the Edsel as well.


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Why is Europe so weak post war? Is this an anti-european bias by the author? (Stuart)

To be honest it rather amazes me that anybody could believe that TBO Europe wouldn't be in a dreadfully weak state in 1947. In some cases, the attitudes just defy belief - ther was one "demand" that TBO be re-written to reflect a UK greatly strengthened by the experience of being occupied and going on to found "The Third British Empire". Quite insane.

It's instructive to look at the state of OTL Europe in the 1945-47 era. The continent was flat broke, its industry and economic structure was completely non-function, starvation and famine were rampant. In the UK, the government was so bankrupt that it was selling warships for scrap to get money to pay civil servant's salary bills. That's in OTL.

In TBO, Northern Europe is much worse off. Mostly, its been occupied by the Germans for seven years and thoroughly looted during that period. Everything of real value was taken back to Germany where it was destroyed. The stuff that wasn't taken back was run into the ground supportung teh German war effort in Russia. The UK and France were smashed up by carrier-based air raids that levelled the infrastructure - much more efficiently than the OTL strategic bomber offensive managed. To cap it off, the conventional B-36 raids on occupied countries that complemented the nuclear strike on Germany were immensely destructive - each B-36 carried more than four times the bombload of a B-29 and ten times the bombload of a B-24. Whatever was left, they flattened. The Germans themselves weren't too kind; they applied the same tactics they used in fighting partisans in Russia to resistance movements in Europe. If there was an attack on a German unit, the Germans went to the nearest village and destroyed it, kiilling every man, woman and child there. In OTL that was done at a place called Oradour sur Glane. In TBO, it was standard German practice everywhere. As a result, the resistance movements were very low key but the economic and social damage done by the reprisals was significant.

All that lays bare one of the great lessons of TBO. The better the Germans do in WW2, the worse the outcome is for the world in general and for Europe in particular.

Post-war TBO is quite different from OTL. In OTL the Marshall Plan (which put Europe back on its feet although its long-term effects are more arguable) was a response to perception of a growing threat from Soviet communism. In TBO that threat does not exist so there is no Marshall Aid for Northern Europe. The US basically leaves them to stew in their own juice. There is Marshall Aid but it goes to Russia and to Eastern Europe.

Then there's the effects of the nuclear strike. It blew the center out of North Europe and caused a famine that lasted two years. There's also the psychological effect of the nation that had been at the center of European affairs suddenly being blasted into a blackened, smoking ruin.

The overall effect is that North European recovery starts two years later than in OTL, is much slower and starts from a lower baseline. Overall, I estimated that the North European recovery lags some ten years behind OTL. The good news is that starting from a lower base means that they have less of a legacy to absorb.

These comments apply only to Northern Europe. In TBO, southern Europe sat the war out and is much better off as a result (something that was made clear in Crusade). Eastern Europe was devastated as well but had Marshall Aid to help it recover. So, what in OTL is "Europe",. in TBO is a triumverate of three groups. Southern Europe much better off than OTL, Eastern Europe, better off than OTL, probably about level with OTL Western Europe and Northern Europe which is a little worse off than OTL Western Europe.


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Why is there a Caliphate? (Stuart)

The immediate response is a counter-question, why not? In fact, I think the real question here is "how did The Caliphate get to exist?" The simple answer is that it formed as a result of the 1949-52 trouble in Iraq (identical to that in OTL) only in TBO there was no intervention by the US/UK (the UK wasn't capable of intervening and the US wasn't interested in so doing). So Mossadegh got into and help power, the Shah departed for exile. Then, the religious fundamentalists deposed Mossadegh - and they were already trying to do in OTL and set up a theorcratic regime in Iran by around 1955/56 - some 20 years ahead of OTL schedule. So what we see in TBO as the Caliphate is the current Arab world but twenty years down the line. It's culture and behavior are a combination of OTL Iran and Taliban Afghanistan.


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How can the Caliphate work? Why aren't the Shia and Sunni killing each other? (Stuart)

A simple answer to that. They are. The Caliphate isn't a unitary state; its a very loose agglomeration of different states that is (very, very loosely) organized by a ruling council of clerics who (sometimes) put their differences aside to achieve a common aim. There are also groups of others (military etc etc) who have their own agendas and pay only passing attention to what the ruling council suggests. To get an idea of what The Caliphate is, take todays OTL map, draw a red line around teh TBOverse borders for the Caliphate and look, that's what The Caliphate is, a group of countries whose only common factor is they hate the rest of the world a little more than they hate eachother. About the only difference between the TBOverse Calipahate and the OTL same-area is no Israel and a claim that the area is unified.

The Caliphate works essentially because it excites so much enmity from everybody around it, the outside pressure acts to force the various parts together. If that outside pressure is relieved, the Caliphate would disintegrate - and the authorities know it. So they go out of their way to promote pressure and hostility.

It's a very dystopic concept but its very close to what's happening in the Middle East right now. Iran in OTL is doing exactly what the TBOverse Caliphate does - excite as much hostility as possible because that forces the components of the country together.


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How come you have the F-85 Goblin as a successful operational type? Wasn't it a tremendous dog in OTL?

No, it wasn't. The XF-85 was summarized as being fast, very agile although tricky to fly for an inexperienced pilot but short-ranged and poorly armed - more in the sense of inadequate fuel reserves than anything else.

What killed the XF-85 in OTL was the concept that each B-36 would carry one. The problem with that was that the operational ceiling of an F-85 was 45,500 feet, far below that at which the B-36s would be cruising. So, if the F-85 was deployed, when it ran out of fuel after a few minutes (note in TBO, the F-85s are running out of fuel and ammunition within about five or ten minutes of launch and after a few short bursts of gunfire) the B-36 would either have to come down and get it (exposing itself to fighters) or abandon the F-85 and its pilot. Coming down was a greater risk to the bomber than not having a one-fighter escort while abandoning the F-85 was just not on. So, at the time the XF-85 was around, it didn't offer much added defense and was overall something of a liability.

By the time enemy fighters could climb to the same altitude as a B-36 (1953 -55), those fighters outclassed the F-85 making the whole concept obsolete.

The aircraft in TBO are used in a different way. They are dedicated to carrying the F-85 with three aircraft each (a configuration that was drawn up but never built) and operate in formations of three thus providing nine fighters as a solid group rather than one single fighter. They're job isn't to act as a standard escort but to provide cover for damaged bombers that were already operating below their maximum ceiling. The GB-36 motherships come down to launch and release their fighters which exposes them to risk but they have a large enough force of fighters to make that risk acceptable.


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What is the state of the Russian Navy circa 2000? Do they have any Kuznetsov- or at least Kiev-class carrier analogues?

A very light coastal defense force. A few old destroyers and frigates and fast attack craft plus submarines and long-range land-based bombers. No cruisers or carriers. Remember Russia is much weaker than in OTL and spends most of its money supporting its army.


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What happens to (Ukraine, the Baltic states, etc.)? Do they just rejoin with Mother Russia? Were they too depopulated to care?

They get rejoined to Mother Russia, not much choice in the matter. Same motivation as in OTL; They're part of Russia's defense in depth.


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Does Sukhoi produce a four-seat supersonic "business jet" version of the Su-34?

Never thought about it to be honest. In High Frontier, they're using an Su-28 bomber as a liason craft so I'd guess not. Once again, Russia was chewed up, they have a mass of rebuilding to do. Luxuries are just that and are low down in the priority list. For example, Russian universities are all hard science and engineering, no "liberal arts" courses.


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How can the US Stand 1 Million Dead in Russia?

Simple answer, they can't. The immediate result is The Big One, a result of pressure to end the war NOW. The US wasn't going to give in but equally it wasn't going to tolerate that level of casualties indefinitely. That contradiction was solved by The Big One and wa sone of the reason why the assault wasn't delayed any longer.

In a longer term, the result of that death toll was a universal American reaction of "Never Again." Hence the refusal to get involved in (ie commit troops to) foreign affairs unless a vitral national interest was involved, a small army to ensure that there was no commitment to such involvements, the reliance on the bomber fleet and the doctrine of massive retaliation to deter attacks, the emphasis on a home defense system, and the grim determination to stop small wars becoming big ones (and ending in The Big One).


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Why is Alger Hiss the Democratic candidate in 1952? Wouldn't Adlai Stevenson be more likely?

Because, in OTL and the late 1940s, Alger Hiss was seen as being a great Democratic hopeful and was probably the leading candidate for the '52 election. He was also a Soviet spy - or at the very least an agent of influence. In OTL he was nailed and knocked out the running. that didn't happen in TBO and the '52 primary was between Stevenson and Hiss. I had Hiss win - but it doesn't really matter, its eye-candy. Patton won in '52 because of the Eisenhower effect.


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Why was Robert McNamara the Democrat's back-up candidate in 1960 after JFK's untimely death? Why not either a more established political figure (LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, Estes Kefauver) or a different sacrificial lamb?

Because taking over the candidature with only a few weeks to go is political suicide and all the experienced politicians knew it. So they begged off and let McNamara ride gallantly to political oblivion.


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How, exactly, did the Caliphate form? It seems a little unlikely that a group of Sunni and Shi'ite Islamic radicals would, even with some Nazi and Chipanese assistance, organize themselves into a nearly unstoppable horde that took over the Middle East and North Africa.

Essentially (and very briefly) Mossadegh took over in Iran as per OTL but in the TBOverse an isolationist USA didn't remove him. Unfortunately, M. was too liberal for the fundamentalists, not liberal enough for the reformers, too authoritarian for the democrats and not authoritarian enough for the dogmatists. So he didn't last long and got thrown out, effectively what happened to the Shah in OTL happened to him 15 plus years earlier. That means the history of Iran is as OTL but moved 15 years earlier. The entire fundamentalist Moslem movement moved forward by 15 years as well. And, yes, the Shiites and Sunnis hate eachother,they just hate everybody else more. Finally, the Caliphate's expansion is very deceptive; essentially they filled a power vacuum left by the German occupation of Europe. As soon as they hit serious resistance, their advance stopped.


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How come the space program, up until the 1970s, runs largely as OTL when Russia is a US ally, one that is weakened by nearly 2 decades of war and occupation at that?

Same effect, different motivations. In TBO, the whole avionic stress is higher-faster. Keep flying higher and faster one ends in orbit. ALso, the need for reconnaissance, communications, earth resources etc satellites are the same as in OTL so the space programs still go ahead.


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What is up with the "unique" ends for Michael Moore and Ramsey Clark?

Author's privilege. I despise them both and it amused me to create suitably gruesome ends for them. Also, the fate of Ramsey Clark allowed me to show just how ruthless Naamah is when it comes to dealing with a threat while the death of Michael Moore allowed me to end a story with a magnificent pun.


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Why, as of "Interstellar Highway", are there NO muslims at at all?
Actually, that's not strictly true. There are surviving groups but they keep a very low profile and don't publicize their existance. It's literally more than their life is worth to reveal their existance. One of the outline stories I have drafted for this era features such a group.


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How much does this super US military cost?
Its not a "super-military", its a different military with different priorities. I costed it out very carefully and it actually costs less to build and support than the US military of the 1980s. For example, there's no large tactical air force, no ICBMs, no SSBNs with their missiles, the command control network and all the elaborate systems that go with it don't exist. There's no overseas basing which is horribly expensive - the US only sends forces abroad on brief TDYs. The US Army is smaller and weaker, the US Navy has more strike ships (20 carrier groups as opposed to 16) but the forces devoted to ferrying reinforcements over the Atlantic are simply not there. Also, procurement practices are much more efficient because McNamara never got a chance to wreck things with his "reforms".

It's not a super-military but a military that's optimized for purely strategic warfare rather than a mix of strategic and tactical warfare. It has plusses and minusses compared with the OTL force structure of the 1970s - 1990s, it has immense firepower but is less flexible.


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What is with the giant American cars, their gargantuan engines, and the 120 mph speed limits? Wouldn't this lead to a horrific accident rate?
No, because the roads are built for them and traffic laws are strictly enforced. Also, driving tests are tougher and overall standards higher. Again, its a different path of development from OTL; it's what cars might look like today in OTL without the Japanese and the 1972 oil crises.


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Why does JFK get killed before he takes office?

Because I wanted him out of the way - so he was sitting in the car instead of Mary Jo Kopechne. The difference is actually quite slight, LeMay serves two terms ending in 1964, Johnson gets two terms then we're back to Nixon who gets one term instead of two. So, we end up with the same number of terms served. In effect LeMay gets Kennedy's and Johnson gets one of Nixon's.

This brings us to another point, the degree of parallelism in TBO. There are two competing viewpoints on alternate history. One is that the point of departure (PoD) changes everything and there will be very little similarity between history in the new timeline and the old. The other is that the effects of teh PoD are limited, it affects some of history but not all of it and that the unaffected parts will produce marked similarities between the two lines. I believe in both and neither.

My personal theory is that the PoD produces short term effects that change things out of all recognition but those changes are restricted to a limited portion of the historical landscape. For example, the change in PoD doesn't change the Bush family's desire to get into politics (that stems from Prescott Bush's behavior prior to WW2 - before the PoD and therefore the impact of that behavior remains untouched). So, the PoD that starts the TBO timeline doesn't instantly change everything, it is one part of a vast tapestry of trends and developments, some ofwhich get affected, some don't. A lot of the drivers behind American politics aren't affected by TBO so many of the same things happen simply because the drivers that resulted in them either pre-date TBO or are unaffected by it. This applies on a national sense as well - for example Finland joins Germany in the attack on Russia in May 1941 in both OTL and TBO - because the motivations for the attack pre-date the PoD (its interesting to note that one self-proclaimed 'expert' on Finnish history proclaimed that Finland would never have attacked Russia in 1941 - for all his claimed 'expertise' he was quite unaware that Finland actually did just that!,

In the longer term, things diverge again as the tapestry of history diverges. So we have a picture where the TBO timeline swings violently away form OTL, then converges with it before swinging away again. One thing; I believe that a major biological war is coming, almost certainly before the end of the 21st century, and that it could well be an extinction event for humanity unless we start doings omething about it. The mid-21st century parts of TBO are a scream of warning over what unrestricted biological warfare could mean.


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stardude
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:39 pm
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Is Staurt Slades - 4 th book - Ride of the Valykries out?


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The Admiral
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 1:08 am
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stardude wrote:
Is Staurt Slades - 4 th book - Ride of the Valykries out?


It'll be released in about a week to ten days.

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Kunkmiester
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:46 am
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Probably asking a many-times-answered question again(heck, I think I asked it before), but would the Have Blue project have happened? The results would obviously be interpreted differently, no F-117, but would there still be interest in seeing if low observable tech is viable?


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Marko Dash
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 12:31 pm
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I believe Stuart said once that the Have Blue/F-117 doesn't work as well as in the OTL because any patrolling fighters radar would be looking down from high altitude and thus notice a anomalous moving spot that was not reflecting, and that a nuclear tipped A2A missile coming anywhere close would send the rather unstable aircraft out of control if not destroying it utterly.


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Kunkmiester
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:19 pm
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He actually says that in the FAQ, nuclear armed missiles make it much easier to kill them. Question is, would the Have Blue project ever have been funded and done? Have BLue didn't build the F-117, it did some radar studies and built a single stealth plane.


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The Admiral
Post subject: Re: TBOverse FAQ (v0.3.5)PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 4:17 pm
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There was an interest in stealth technology that produced the F-117 but it was a very limited production run aircraft for SOCOM work only. The F-122 and F-123 that combined reduced radar cross section with higher performance never got beyond prototype stage. In their place the US build the F-124 and F-125 fighters that used turbo-scramjets to reach much higher speeds and altitudes.

The problem with stealth is the very different threat environment. Because the US uses nuclear-tipped AAMs, it is optimized for very long range environments. That means it uses extremely powerful radar sets. Stealth doesn't make aircarft inivisible to radar it simply reduces the range at which it can be detected. With TBO aircraft, those ranges are so long that even a major reduction still means the target can be seen a long way away. The high altitude look-down detection is also important. TBO aircraft hold the high ground and that gives them a lot of advantages.

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