Rickshaw

Aluminium is only one side of the problem. The other, which hasn't been touched upon is the production and storage of the Hydrogen. As the Germans found in WWI, it takes quite a large industrial effort to produce and store millions of litres of Hydrogen either in gaseous and even harder at the time, liquid form. At each of their Zeppelin bases they had huge Hydrogent production facilities. Accidents were frequent and often catastrophic. It required hundreds of specialist railway cars, the production of gas cylinders (quality control of which has to be very high, by the way) and the production of quite large quantities of energy in order to drive the chemical processes to make the gas. One of the reasons why the British in particular lagged behind the Germans in rigid airships (but led them in the smaller non-rigid type) was that very reason - production of Hydrogen. The Germans led the world in chemical engineering before WWI. Personally, I've always liked airships. Despite their bad press they have quite a lot of uses, as heavy lift craft, reconniassance and surveliance platforms and passenger transports. During WWI and WWII, they were found to be excellent convoy escorts with no convoy under their protections having lost a single ship due to U-Boat activity. Having spent several hours watching the Bond Airship 500 cruise over Perth several years ago when they were using it for advertising purposes, I can appreciate they can manoauvre as well as a helicopter and have a much longer endurance. Zeppelins were doing long range cruises to central Africa in WWI and by the early 1930s were undertaking around the world flights, crossing the Arctic and revolutionising naval strategy.

You mean this one?

They were used extensively in Italy, I seem to remember seeing photos of their effects on Italian airfields. Kenney wasn't that great. Like many under Macarthur's wing, his memoires were a bit self-serving.

Parafrags would hav ehad nill effect on the polders. They are designed to explode above the ground, suspened on a parachute. They'd have scythed through any infantry and AT guns though. The smoke would have obscured any AFVs advancing up the road, making it difficult to sight on them from a distance.

I agree that Brererton was one of the problem players in the mix. Remove him and "Boy" and you get rid of two of the worst problems facing the Allies. I've been wondering about the problems besetting XXX Corps and their advance after Nijmergan. I've always believed that Monty stepped too far outside his normal careful and meticulous planning with its associated massive application of firepower. What he should have done was use Bomber Command to bomb 1-2 ,000 metres each side of the road, using a mix of parafrag and smoke bombs on a continious shuttle basis. It would have disrupted any German defences and obscured XXX Corps as they made their dash up the road - provided they could make a dash.

Actually, I think with a little imagination the problem could have been overcome - dogleg courses with altitude differences would have allowed streams to cross without too many problems. Using radar control, fighters to act as guides and formation leaders, etc. would cut down on confusion.

Pah! HMAS OVENS, an Oberon Class submarine in the RAN took some very embarassing pictures of the Enterprise when the USN was on joint exercise KANGAROO II (or was it III?) way back in the late 1970s. Despite the escorts being told she was there, she still snuck past them.

They didn't get delivered with big dents in their hulls? The COLLINS are apparently quieter than the UPHOLDERs, despite what you might have heard. I also believe they may be deeper diving. They also have a towed sonar array which is amongst one of the most advanced in the world (interestingly, I once met the DSTO scientist who developed it. Lots of interesting stories about how they figured out how to build the array cheaply). As has already been mentioned, more torps, sub-harpoon and the potential for Tomahawks as well (if we can get the yanks to sell 'em to us).

The CH-47? In dimensions, they appear pretty much of a muchness, to me: Dimensions - from the two Boeing websites on the V-22 and the CH-47 CH-47 • Length, fuselage, ft (m) - 52.0 (15.9) V-22 * Length, fuselage, ft (m) -- 57.33 (17.48) CH-47 • Length, rotors turning, ft (m) - 98.9 (30.1) V-22 * Width, rotors turning, ft (m) -- 83.33 (25.55) CH-47 * Width, fuselage, ft (m) -- 15.75 (4.80) V-22 * Width, stowed, ft (m) -- 18.42 (5.61) CH-47 • Height to top of aft hub, ft (m) - 18.7 (5.7) V-22 * Height, vertical stabilizer, ft (m) -- 17.65 (5.38)

I think that the Mk.41s have considerable deck penetration whereas the 32 cell Sea Wolf VLS doesn't. Whats the range on ESSM compared to Sea Wolf?

But why do you need a very large number? VL Seawolf allows you basically put as many as your deck space can handle a board. As you're now able to intercept the incoming missiles much further out, surely that is a massive advantage?

Taking into consideration all the things said here, how does say, Seawolf measure up as an anti-missile system?

I understand the problem in US service was that the USMC didn't believe it needed a two-seat trainer version. As a consequence when it attempted to transition pilots from conventional aircraft to Harriers their accident rate was considerably higher than the RAF's. You'll note that all the other services which bought Harriers also bought trainers and the USMC when it adopted the AV-8B, also adopted TAV-8Bs.

I remember reading the Jane's articles when they were published. They were specifically about what the referred to as the T72M1 version, if I recall correctly. The claim according to the German tests were, "immune to all NATO AT weapons from the front". Must have thrown quite a scare into them, to learn that.

P.1154, anyone? Or we could resurrect the P.1214: Alternatively, how about the Yak-141?