larrikin

HMAS Canberra was not sunk by gunfire, not even close. The absolute best that can be said is that her power was killed by it. What put her to the bottom were torpedoes fired into her courtesy of Fletcher. She was eminently saveable, and not only could have, but should have, been put under tow. Except Fletcher decided not to even stick around long enough for the smoke to clear, he was going to be out of there, and that was that.

Or George HW Bush - after all he served on the bloody things as a part of their weapons system. I still think the USN needs a Comfort Ship, named the William Jefferson Clinton, stocked to the gills with hookers, etc., for deployment to shit holes like the Gulf.

Merry Christmas, Gerry, and thanks for your always fascinating information on Brit tanks at the regimental level during the war. I hope Bali treats you better over the next little while than we are treating your cricketers.

Because it was the only 2 seat fighter out there, except for the FAA's disasters. The other main nightfighter during the height of the Blitz was the Blenheim.

Go take another look at the A12. Where and how does it stand if you don't have to put it on a carrier deck? Kenneth, I believe you did some work on it, what's your take?

The Soviets built OTH arrays in the '70s, same as the US. Then they found they couldn't read the results, so they shut them down. It took a couple of bright boys at DSTO in Adelaide in the '80s to come up with an algorythm that would translate the returns.

The Serbs knew exactly where it was gong to be, when it was going to be, and pretty much filled the air around it with ordinance. Thanks to a French officer in the NATO HQ that was running the mission.

With OTHR there is a large degree on uncertainty in the return. It will tell you that there is something in an area say 20x20 miles, moving in roughly Y direction, at about X speed. Jindalee can tell you approximately what size, and whether it is in the air or on the ground, but there is a minimum size it just won't pick up. For example, it can pick up Indonesian fishing boats, even in pretty rough seas, and they are about the size of a military aircraft. Light civilian aircraft are right at the bottom end of its capabilities, but are doable under most conditions. Thus, even if you know something is out there, you either have to be a ble to paint it with something capable of more precise resolution, or send somebody out to Mark One it.

Truth. The first that the US discovered that OTHRs could track it reasonably well was when they were doing tropical trials and Jindalee picked it up. It still doesn't matter, as the only functioning OTHR establishments that can actually tell what they are looking at are in Oz and the US. The Soviet OTHR installations had the same problems as the US' in that while they could transmit and recieve return waves, they had absolutley no idea how to read their returns. It was only with Jindalee in the mid-80s that anybody got it to be useable.

This is, in many ways, what the A-12 should have been if it had succeeded. It just goes to show you what happens when you pull aircraft out of service when their replacements aren't ready. Nobody much has anything that can do the roles of the F111s and A6s, even on the drawing boards, after the failure of the A12.

Rebuild the Furious as an NGFS for the USMC. If 8" are good, 18" have to be better. "Take that you camel jockeys"

Ah, they want to replace the Pig. Funny that.

Nope, about a decade ago they managed to have one sink in the middle of the Swan River in Perth with members of the media on board. When they fished the news camera out the local Army PRO looked at it and dumped it in a bucket of fresh water with the comment "Well, it cant hurt, and it may help".

No, that's "THE Regiment" with capital "THE", rather than "the Regiment" with a lower case "the".

Regiment, old bean, Regiment