Eh? Given that the biggest ship ever built in Australia was 18,200 tonnes displacement and launched in 1984, I suspect an expectation such as this was a little bit of a stretch, to be honest...
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So, no building a 72,000 ton BB in Australia before Sept. '39 (after war is declared).
It's a fair point, and the main reason HMAS Australia had to be scrapped less than eight and half years after entering service. I would have liked to have seen how the battlecruiser would have been updated between the wars.... or converted into the RAN's first carrier.
But with Lend-Lease - I thought Australia received P-40s before New Zealand? Otherwise known as the "Kitthawk"....
Possibly written by someone who thinks Austria and Australia are the same country
The Royal Australian Navy was a separate entity from the RN and was fully autonomous. Dunno about the Canadian navy, but in New Zealand, the navy did not become autonomous until 1941 when it became the Royal New Zealand Navy for the first time - ships stationed in New Zealand before then were known as the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. The likes of the light cruisers Leander and Achilles, both of which were part of the NZ Div had the prefix 'HMS' before 1941.
Purchasing foreign, i.e. non-British equipment was certainly frowned upon in the dominions. It was New Zealand that bucked the trend first - Prime Minister Peter Fraser was friends with FDR and made a deal where the New Zealand armed forces would be supplied with aircraft diverted from British production batches, initially P-40s and Hudsons. Churchill expressed his disapproval but there was nothing he could do, really. The Australians were less likely to take the same route and also didn't approve of the New Zealand approach - to this day Kiwis are far more liberal than Australians in many things, but it was inevitable that Australia follows suit.
A slight but not inappropriate diversion, here are some piccies that I thought might be of interest to you guys. My uncle used to work at Cockatoo Island; he was involved in overhauling the RAN's Oberon Class submarines. I think he worked on the supply ship HMAS Success, which was built there, before he retired. I remember my auntie saying she went to the official launch of the ship. It's now closed and is a tourist stop and you can visit it by catching the ferry.
This is the front entrance where workers would disembark from their ferries and enter the yard.
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This is a view of where the main machine workshops were, but have been pulled down, a lot of the old buildings still remain, though, as the place is a listed heritage site. Harbour bridge in the distance.
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One of the docks where the submarines were berthed to be worked on. I have a book that could tell us which ships were built in this particular dock, but it's away at the moment.
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This was used as an anti-aircraft gun platform in WW2. Note the Aboriginal flag painted on the centre stem.
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These are brochures on the launching of HMAS Success, to this date the biggest ship built in Australia, a displacement of around 18,200 t. HMAS Success (OR 304) - Wikipedia
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The slip where Success was built.
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Enjoying this thread, carry on...
DunnoWas it written in America?Joke, guys...
HiThose that have worked on the A6M know that the wings use the same British and Spitfire wooden technology (built up ribs) instead of American technology (pressed ribs) and even the strut inflators are straight British. The fuselage is purely Japanese with ideas that no one else had.
You are right of course.Hi
Really? Here are illustrations pressed ribs used in the late 1920s and 1930s on Fairey IIIF, Gordon and Seal:
View attachment 639559
From 'Metal Aircraft Construction' by M Langley, Pitman 1937.
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Fairey IIIF wing in production, from 'Fairey IIIF, Interwar Military Workhorse' by Philip Jarrett.
There were all sorts of rib designs in use, indeed more than one 'type' were used on individual aircraft type of all nationalities. The Spitfire also used 'pressed ribs' in the outer mainplanes and also tail plane and fin.
View attachment 639561
View attachment 639562
From 'Aero Engineering' part work (1930s), Volume II.
I believe Hawker and other companies also used 'pressed' parts, Hurricane wings below:
View attachment 639563
From 'Aeronautical Engineering' Ed. R A Beaumont during WW2.
US types certainly used a mixture of ribs, eg. Boeing, Curtiss, Grumman, Consolidated etc. as did German, Russian, French, Japanese companies.
So I think the statement is very simplistic as methods used depended on what the 'engineer' wanted the structure to 'do'. By the way there were various different rib designs in WW1 as well. There were certainly different rib types around when I undertook my airframe apprenticeship in the early 1970s.
Mike
These are the exact examples I want to reverse in this what if scenario. I want Australia to accept and agree to an earlier and expanded rearmament.At this stage it may well be time to dispel the fallacy of Britain's abandonment of Australia. To the contrary, as early as 1919 Admiral Jellicoe in conjunction with the
then Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, William Watt, formulated an Imperial strategy for defence which would see a British Pacific fleet based in two parts, Singapore
and yes - Sydney.
Britain offered to pay 75% of all costs with New Zealand giving 5% and Australia 20%. Australia declined the offer. A reserve base, again at Sydney was proposed. Again
Australia declined.
Britain asked that Australia and New zealand helped finance capital ships to be built for Singapore. Australia declined. Britain asked that Australia and New Zealand help
finance the building of the base in Singapore. New Zealand agreed - Australia declined. Troops were asked for to help garrison Singapore - Australia declined.
Australian governments from then on actually used Singapore as an excuse to sit on their hands as the faraway bastion would be there if needed, therefore there was
no need to bother - a base they had not funded with ships they had not funded. Complacency is probably a mild term to use for this.
Australia also reduced the defence budget over time to a piddling 1%. 3 to 5% would have funded a major upgrade all round and would have helped to have a decent
base in Australia (Sydney) along with far better air assets. This would have been very useful in 1942. Due to politics it didn't exist when needed even though Britain
had offered to fund 3/4 of it.
The Imperial defence requirements were ignored by Australia - these included that each nation provide for it's local defence.
The lack of capability to respond to Japanese attacks in 1942 falls squarely on successive Australian governments, not Britain.
The fall of Singapore was inevitable under the circumstances - Churchill had already suggested that Singapore be evacuated which Curtin (Prime Minister of Australia
at the time) called a betrayal - this was only said to cover the fact that Singapore was still being used as an excuse for inactivity. The loss of British and Empire troops
at Singapore was not as some would say - Britains fault alone.
Next we come to the fact that Britains policy was that they were willing to abandon even the Middle East should Australia be genuinely threatened. All British shipping
going around Africa to the middle east was to be ready at any stage to divert to Australia should the threat arise.
Britain had also promised to move a large portion of the RAN to the Indian Ocean within 6 months of a real threat manifesting itself. This occurred in April 1942 and
included five battleships, three aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and sixteen destroyers, at the time the largest allied naval fleet in any theatre. To do this the Mediterranean
was basically emptied which allowed Africa Corps and Italian forces to build up and move as far as El Alamein. The result was that the line from Britain to Australia was
kept open and Japan ended up with it's own two front ocean war which it could not win.
The fallacy of abandonment and betrayal has been kept alive over the years again by politicians to be trotted out whenever they have some other problem they wish to
mask.
When it comes down to it Britain made sound offers which were rejected while at the same time Australia failed to grasp the significance or the need for a local defence
strategy.
With this in mind any talk of what could have been must be tempered with the fact that the main decision maker in all this - Australia - was going to make damn sure it
didn't.
Sadly Admiral, with the benefit of hindsight, with a Japanese invasion in late 1941/early 1942, the same thing would happen to this garrison as what did to Singapore and the repercussions would have been enormous. Following an invasion, the Japanese would have less expenditure on resources as a base was already there...Gents, what about RAAF base expansion outside of Australia? There are several existing airfields in PNG and the Solomons that could be expanded. The latter is British territory, so let's get London to pay a share.
For the RAN you will have to get comment from others as I have never had an interest in RAN history.
I was pickingEh? Given that the biggest ship ever built in Australia was 18,200 tonnes displacement and launched in 1984, I suspect an expectation such as this was a little bit of a stretch, to be honest...