Recent content by Jabberwocky

Swedish ammunition data for their m/39 & m/39A: AP (1939): 50.75 grams, 800 m/sec HE-T (1939): 42 grams, 900 m/sec, filler of 3.2g of tetryl AP HE I (1944): 46.75 grams, 815 m/sec, filler of 1.2g of HE and 0.8g of incendiary material. It seems like a basic FMJ ball round (possibly a training...

Now those were some interesting guns. Somewhat lighter than the US version and faster firing too, with HE and incendiary rounds ready to go. The Swedes got a production line up and running in during the war, and not in the easiest of circumstances.

I might be mistaken, but the Boys Gun originally used a 13.2x99 Hotchkiss round and then after trials in March 1936 they decided to neck the round out to .55. As such, I don't think there would have been a suitable automatic weapon available for the Boys 0.55 round. I also think the RAF had...

Indians can't be particularly happy with Russia as a defense supplier. Reports are that T-90S tanks that were supposed to be exported to India are turning up on battlefields in Ukraine.

Mix of claims by Ukraine Black Sea Fleet command/communications centre hit by at least three (large) weapons. Likely Stormshadow or SCALP. Also reported damaged/destroyed are another two Ropucha-class landing ships, along with three Su-27 family aircraft at Belbek airfield (Russian naval...

The Czech-led artillery ammunition purchasing programme announced it has now bought 300,000 shells for Ukraine. There are non-binding commitments in place for another 200,000, but no purchases formally agreed to. Apparently, negotiations with a number of countries in the Balkans are ongoing...

I know all about the WayBack machine. I've even contributed financially in the past (great way of getting around certain paywalls). I just can't remember the address for the website for the life of me, and a casual 10 minutes on Google wasn't any help. Closest I can come is this site: MiG-1/3...

MiG-1 gets my vote. Dangerously unstable in flight both laterally and longitudinally, with controls that were both unbalanced and very heavy/tiring for pilots. The aircraft had center of gravity issues, which led to unpredictable stall behaviour. If it did stall, it was difficult recovery and...

Right now. Funding is in place and a couple of countries (Romania and possibly Moldova) are already shipping small amounts of 155mm and 122mm ammunition that have been purchased by either the Czech Republic or Norway. There was also an announcement by Germany at the end of February that they...

Reports about the Sergey Kotov are that it's either so heavily heavily damaged its going to be out of service for years, or that it's been sunk but maybe in the process of being recovered. Russian social media reports the ship was disabled by seaborne drone strikes while in the Kerch Strait...

Not to mention that the vast majority of vehicles in a German armoured formation (or any armoured formation for that matter) weren't tanks at all. For a late 1944 German armoured division, the table strength was 150-170 tanks, another 20-40 assault guns and about 10-20 heavy armoured recovery...

They should have, but the industry was still risk averse from the GFC and Airbus was eating Boeing's lunch with the A320neo. Boeing needed a competitive response, and it chose the option it could bring to market the quickest with the least cost. The 737 MAX's software was like that because...

Commercial aerospace strategy is a (small) part of my job. There's a short answer, a long answer and a REALLY long answer to that question. There's also a book length answer, but something like that might be coming out later this year ;) Short answer is - Boeing doesn't know exactly what it's...

Appendix 1 & 2 from THE LIBERATION OF NORTH WEST EUROPE, VOLUME III, THE LANDINGS IN NORMANDY provides a breakdown of what equipment was available to the RAF, FAA, Costal Command and the USAAF in the UK immediately prior to D-Day. Here's a rough summary of the OOBs given on pages 261 through...

The revised edition of Black Cross/Red Star is probably as close as we'll get to a comprehensive history of the Soviet Air Force in WW2. The first edition was published in the early 2000s. Christer Bergstrom has revised and expanded it over the last two decades. Volume 1 & 2 have now been...