Recent content by yulzari

One should note that the RAF in the BoB were not short of fighters, they were short of pilots.

Hanging over Vichy was the spectre of 'Case Anton', an occupation of Vichy France by the Axis and the many thousands of French PoWs held by the Germans. The whole purpose of Vichy was to avoid occupation and preserve the safety of the French PoWs. To that end Vichy acted as a hostile neutral to...

The thought occurs that a neutral Italy might be able to shop for weapons in Vichy France and North Africa. Possibly to arm Libya and Italian East Africa and reserving the Italian resources for defending the homeland from Germany. A large part of their doctrine was maintaining a strong Alpine...

And it was not alone. British units were increasingly being added to the Canadian forces who were also running out of men. In 1945 RAF aircrew in training were being diverted to infantry and, despite the vital need for coal to support wartime production and power generally, the ‘Bevan Boys’ who...

One might remember that the French navy was to take the Allied lead in the Mediterranean, releasing some of the Royal Navy into the Atlantic. That was fine, until it wasn’t.

And what else would they have been flying? It should have been Typhoons, that was the plan. But they were not in time or in enough numbers. They had a shed load of already manufactured parts with the parts makers still finishing their contracts on their production lines. Hawker and Canada had...

To cover the shortfall and delays in Typhoon production. And they were used. Last in operational service in Cyprus in1946.

One should run metallurgy history alongside the jet history. The temperatures etc. involved mean that you cannot make viable jet turbines without the metals and alloys that can stand up to the challenges. Early jets used alloys developed originally for other uses so one has to wait until those...

A minor point but the RAF in Malaya had access to naval stores and dockyard stores if they found the Brewster armour ineffective and too far away to obtain better in a hurry from the UK nor USA. It would seem probable that they would turn to the naval dockyards for better armour plate sufficient...

The British were well aware of their limitations even before the BoB and were determined, amongst other things, to give anti aircraft gunners meaningful training. Hence the efforts put into diverting front line capable aeroplanes into the task of high speed target tugs even at the cost of losing...

Just to be pedantic. The Blackburn Skua was a dive bomber to throw a 500lb Semi Amour Piercing bomb at a ship. Also 320lb of light bombs as well. It also had the range/endurance to see off long range shadowing bombers or recce so had 4 wing mounted .303” machine guns to poke holes in those. Not...

Á diverse suite of tank types is the last thing the Italians needed. What they needed was a single good medium tank with an effective dual purpose @75mm turret mounted gun upon which the available heavy engineering sources etc. could be applied. Essentially a Cromwell, T34, Sherman, PzIV...

As I said, for a single broadside. ‘Light cruiser’ is a practical shorthand for a bit less than many cruisers but more than most destroyers. The point is that a full set of 8 rockets is a very big bang, if somewhat spread about. A far bigger bang than a single 6 Pounder bang. I agree that there...

That ‘big gun’ Mosquito had the 57mm 6 Pounder gun chosen to use a solid anti armour round with maximum penetration to put holes into submarine pressure hulls. It had the potential to swap it for the ROF QF 75mm gun which used a chamber and barrel to use the same HE round as the US M3 gun as...

And the S-Gun armed Hurricanes in Burma sank many riverine vessels with their twin 40mm HE fire. The 6 Pounder ‘Tetse’ mosquitos sank U976 and shot down a Ju88.