alternate history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In late 1956-early 1957 the RAAF received Cabinet approval to acquire 30 F104A to equip a single sqn, this was announced publicly, but in mid 1957 this order (or approval) was cancelled and instead the RAAF ordered 40 Australian built CAC Avon Sabres. It is important to note that this order, if...

I am going to tread carefully with this one but I think it is worth a look. Instead of the Hitler regime from 1933 Germany is run by a conventional centrist party. The Weimar Republic survives. But its strong willed Chancellors still seek to overturn the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty on...

Quick background: I like building what-if scale model aircraft, especially cold-war timeframe and I have a collection of kits that I wanted to weave into a comprehensive story. To that end as a thought experiment I did a little alternative history. The timeline basically starts in the late 50s...

In 1960 some 64 Canberra B2 & B6 in 4 sqns based in Britain and assigned to SACEUR were replaced by 24 Valiants in 3 sqns. Despite the significant decrease in numbers this was considered a net benefit because of the Valiant's all weather capabilities. By 1964 the RAF still had 9 sqns of Canberra...

In response to the demands of the Vietnam War RoE forcing 'dogfights' the US developed the AIM9E version of the Sidewinder and the AIM7E-2 version of the Sparrow, while the AIM9D had started production in 1965. WI if the British and/or French found themselves in a similar situation as the US in...

I am unsure if this is the right forum to post this, or if SecretProjects is even the right site, but if i understood correcrly this should be fine. If this post needs to be taken down just tell me and i will remove it! I've been trying to come up with some at least partly believable combat...

IIUC the P1083 was a Hunter with a thinner 50 degrees swept wing and an afterburner, giving it mach 1.1 performance like the Super Mystere. When it was almost ready to fly in early 1953 the RAF decided it wanted it to have a radar and AAMs, these proved to be too hard to incorporate and the...