great britain

Greetings friends, Some time ago there was a site called apss.org.uk which contained information about the work a gentleman named Alex W. Duncan did whilst employed at Ferranti. It contained a fascinating essay titled "Ferranti and the Buccaneer S1 Delivery system". I have this essay saved on...

This month's 40th anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas war does not happen because for some reason or another Argentina does not invade. The most noticable change would have been in the Royal Navy. HMS Invincible would have been sold, becoming HMAS Australia. HMS Hermes would have followed in...

The Harrier has become such a crucial part of the Royal Navy and Royal Navy history that I dont think we have yet risked a thread about a world in which it never entered service. Like all early VSTOL designs the P1127 was not easy to fly..It only existed at all because of US funding and...

I have just heard, via the latest Hawker Association newsletter, that Roy Braybrook passed away last June. Another of the great authors who got me, and probably many on this forum, interested in aircraft has gone to the great aviation library in the sky. He was also, of course, a designer in...

In this Douglas P-70 night fighter of the 419th NFS, crash landed at Piva-Bougainville by Lt Donald Dessert, the fixed quarter wave dipoles for azimuth receiving have been replaced by four german style “Stachel” rods. Can anyone identify which radar they belong to?

One of Harold Wilson's achievements as Prime Minister was to resist President Johnson's pressure for Britain to make some visible military contribution to the Vietnam War. Wilson had only narrowly beaten a Conservative Government in 1964. The Conservatives may well have resisted Johnson too on...

Bristol Britannia BEWARE: as pictured in Chris Gibson's books 'The Air Staff and AEW' and 'Battle Flight'. I followed the drawing, with one exception: after Chris mentioned the limitations of Britannia's electrical system, I added a large APU under the left wing root. Hawker Siddeley...

A previous thread suggested that Orange William fed into Swingfire. I am not sure how this might be. OW was a command-guided weapon using a complex two-sight system, a computer, and IR links to the missile to control its flight through rear-mounted control surfaces. The rest of the system was...

Have read that some MDAP money went into the program and that the USN had expressed "a mild interest" in the type. So lets just amp that up to buying it. This will probably kill the A-6 program, though it may have been far enough long that some prototypes may have been built.. not sure about...

France had a colony in the Falklands in 1764, and referred the islands as Iles Malouines, from which the Spanish name Malvinas later derived from. Eventually France left the islands due to pressure from Spain. So in this scenario lets assume the following: 1. The islands remained French this...

Over on the What if Iran never had a revolution? thread Pioneer mentioned that at one point Iran was looking at buying a pair of Invincibles. If that is the case, then the 4 Kidd DDGs they cancelled would have likely been the AAW escorts for the carriers. Which got me wondering - what if, after...

Ive seen the Blowpipe in its original configuration the one mounted on land rovers (as well as the submarine one), but this..? its a bit unusual! Could be just a concept/proposal, or even a prototype? The image was taken out of the MACH 1 magazine, where an article detailed the operation of...

In the 1960s, the RAF started to examine options for land-based AEW aircraft. NASR.6166 was a joint RAF/RN requirement issued in 1962, for a carrier-borne AEW aircraft that would also be used from land bases. This requirement specified an FMICW radar. That didn't stop companies from offering...

The M3 Halftrack and the Sdkfz 251 are the most well known ones, but did the other major powers have APCs? What about WW1?

... that is after the Spitfire is established both in production and service. If it becomes the 'British Dassault', commercial-vise, I'm more than okay with that.

Dad was involved in trials of the secret Johhny Walker bomber dropped during the Tirpitz raid but never knew how it got the JW name. He believed it was named after the favourite tipple boffins drank during drawing board research, or one of the actual scientists? Anyone know? robin bird ref...

This is a question troubled me while I was reading Rebuilding the Royal Navy. At the start of the second chapter, which is the chapter titiled "The Demise of the cruiser", there is a paragraph like this: "The new design had a flush deck, which resulted in a saving of only 40 tons over Design...

Over the last couple of weekends, I've come into ownership of a couple of volumes of Janes Fighting Ships. Some people might call this a problem, but not me. In several of these, the earliest one in my possession being the 1982-1983 edition, the following statement (or one very much like it in...

If the 1956 Suez crisis had not happened (Macmillan Prime Minister instead of Eden so no military response to Nasser's nationalisation of the Canal) the following might have been the impacts on British Defence Procurement. Royal Navy Without experience of operating helicopters at Suez there...