Recent content by mlsco

So what do people think the cost of a pilot these days is? The numbers for production line planes have been kicked about here pretty well, but maybe we're missing another useful piece of information since cost effectiveness and survivability calculations also involve replacing that part of...

This one does seem a little over the top. Chester Nimitz, per a quick Wikipedia scan, ended his active career in 1947, which was a bit before the Nautilus. Even his son, Chester Jr., left the USN in 1957 and only with retirement was a rear admiral.

Inevitably there will be changes. The group here is incredibly fortunate to benefit from people with direct knowledge of and relationships with the participants. If someone even as careful as Rich Leonard passes his insights to a new generation, there will still be losses in certain details...

Fair comment. But could I come back and argue that enough had been seen of the Zero in China to know that a bigger engine (R2800 vs R2600) to improve speed and climb was already a pretty clear choice? The other major features for survivability (lots of armor plate, self sealing tanks) were...

Interesting question, but it partly depends on the numbers, too. If we move those up, I agree the Hellcat would seem a strong contender. In addition to speed and range over the Wildcat, huge numbers were made over a short period of time. While the F4U was a somewhat higher performing plane...

Just replace every FM2 and F6F order with a Bearcat and keep the same number of Corsairs for ground attack. It seems fair to say that there were enough resources to support having two airplanes. Now if you limit me to one, that's tough. The Sea Fury idea sounds good for flexibility, since...

How to define "true" Pacific combat seems tough to me. If the Bearcat was deployed 6-12 months earlier, it still would have faced a depleted Japanese pilot corps and a significant number of outdated (A6M) opponents. And it was not much configured for ground support a la Corsair, was it?

A lot of us clearly ended up thinking about mines. Question: floating or sunk to the ocean floor? I'd assume that most WW2 mines floated by virtue of air inside and would have by now pretty uniformly corroded, so sank.

I'd argue this was not a benchmark, but rather a landmark proof of concept showing something small and really cheap that flies can trump size and complexity of something huge that floats. Agreed, learning how to do it effectively with conventional weapons required a lot more work, time, and...

Interesting discussion. I may be doing revisionist thinking, Viking, but another way of looking at this is: "you are what you build." From April, 1936 through December 1941, the Navy laid down 9 battleships (BB55-63) but only 5 carriers (CV7-11; the new Yorktown and Intrepid made it in a...

Excellent point. If people behaved rationally, Mitchell's demonstration should have been the end of the argument. Both then and now, though, it seems the idea did not take immediately. The USN clearly didn't get it until the war began. Maybe Pearl Harbor, more than just the loss of a...

I will cynically suggest the Prince of Wales and Repulse. By going down rapidly in the face of an undefended air attack early during the war, they clearly demonstrated the end of the battleship era. I'll cite as evidence the tonnage of BB's versus CV's built from 1942 to 1945. We can...

How could you not pick something from every era? Even an almost completely US-centric view yields some spectacular possibilities. Some of them are actually doable. Turtle: who could pass on the first military submarine? Constitution: a high point of sail powered design that's too...

The point about overall size being not that different is well taken, but I still wonder how comparable avgas, fuel, or munitions stores would have been. Perhaps Jane's addresses that question, though the Shinano never became fully operational. It could easily be similar to the comparison...

That may be a little misleading. Lengthwise, the Shinano and short hull Essex class ships were almost identical (872' O.L.), while the long hull Essex variants were slightly longer (888 ft O.L.). However, beam is a different matter: the design waterline beam for the Essex ships was 93...