Recent content by NevadaK

Exploring another line of thought here, but following my earlier argument that a plane should have impact across all theaters and affected the course of the war beyond the limits of air to air combat I am proposing the Lockheed F-4/F-5 Photo Recon Lightning. It served in the ETO, MTO, CBI, and...

and five years on in the debate. Reminds me of a ten year debate some of my coworkers had about who was the greatest basketball player of all time. That one was never resolved either although I was pretty resolute in my support for Wilt.

Agreed with 1937. The Eurocentric POV focuses on the German invasion of Poland but the large scale conflict starts in 1937 as others have stated. The emphasis on 1939 impacts how we statistically understand the war such as the underreporting of Chinese casualties from 1937-1939 which are often...

Greetings GrauGeist, Policy and Technology have a way of informing one another. I admit my argument is a bit hyperbolic, but it is intended to respond to the OP's question rather than be a full summation of the events that transpired in 1941. In some ways this reminds me of how the F-117...

Greetings EwenS, There is no disagreement about when the USSR began moving troops, however, we may interpret the reasons for it differently. Soviet intelligence, especially Richard Sorge, had provided intel that Germany was preparing Barbarossa. This was largely ignored with disastrous...

I'm pretty sure that the USSR would say that the tide kept rising until either winter 1941/42 or 1942/43. In my opinion, trying to identify an aircraft that did the most to "turn the tide of the war" is practically impossible since the war had many tides and theaters. At the very least, we...

Prototype B-17

There was a brief, but informative thread about the F2G a little while ago. Here is the link: https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/why-was-the-f2g-so-slow.55497/ The second tab has charts showing that the F2G excelled at low altitude.

Imagine, French bombing flight togs design by Chanel

Maybe if the French had B-29’s……

Agreed, but since this is an aviation focused site the discussion has centered on aircraft. Overall, the bombing survey presents a fairly comprehensive review of what factors contributed to the victory over Japan. If you haven't read it, here is a link to the summary report...

It’s hard to ignore hindsight. Contemporary thinking (1945) questioned whether or not the US population would be willing to absorb the kinds of casualties that the US was experiencing in the later stages of the war. The bombing survey points out that the US had very little understanding of...

The fear of stalemate on the American side was real. America's support for the war was flagging and the casualty rates for Iwo Jima and Okinawa were viewed as unacceptable to the American public and the impact of the Kamikaze attacks raised significant concerns as to the cost of the invasion...

We can disagree. The bombing survey’s opinion is that the B-29 bombing campaign effectively destroyed the Japanese population’s will to fight as well as crippled Japanese industry. That was the foundation of the surrender in 1945. Otherwise the war goes to 1948 or 1949, possibly ending in a...

Well, now that we've taken that turn. How about the plane that did the least to alter the outcome of the war: The BA 349 Natter...