Recent content by Dayton Kitchens

  1. What if the League of Nations still existed?

    The current UN is kind of a "successor non state" to the League with somewhat more muscle. What has made the UN somewhat more effective than the league is nuclear weapons which moved many major power confrontations from battlefields to diplomatic arena.
  2. Why Did Early Dreadnoughts Have Wing Turrets?

    I thought it was to maximize starboard (or port) firepower for classic "crossing the T" manuevers
  3. Map of Africa if decolonization was handled decently?

    In that case probably a nonexistent World War Two or at least a much, much shorter and less expensive one for European nations.
  4. Voodoo (Economics) Won't work Here

    Was that the debate where Reagan explained "I am paying for this microphone Mr. Chairman!' Or was it the one where Reagan said "Sit down George!" to Bush and Bush without thinking complied and thus humiliated himself?
  5. Map of Africa if decolonization was handled decently?

    Creating countries along straight up ethnic lines of control and the general idea of "self determination" is an idea fraught with disaster. there is never enough land and resources available to "buy" everyone off and get them to be happy with their share. This quickly promotes tensions and...
  6. WI: Iraqi Scuds strike Israeli nuclear plant during the First Gulf War

    IIRC containment vessels are built to withstand the force of a large airliner crashing into them.
  7. WI: Cuba Steals Soviet Nuclear Weapons

    This was basically a "mutual consent" system and not truly equivalent to the Permissive Action Links.
  8. WI: Iraqi Scuds strike Israeli nuclear plant during the First Gulf War

    Not likely. IIRC SCUDs didn't carry large enough conventional warheads to breach a reactor containment vessel.
  9. WI: Cuba Steals Soviet Nuclear Weapons

    Assuming the Cubans tried but were beaten back Soviet forces stationed with the weapons, it is possible it could have launched a new era of caution by both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. In particular with the practices of where they stationed nuclear weapons and how much they trusted "allies".
  10. Scenario For Combat Aircraft To Be Available During the U.S. Civil War?

    What about rocket powered heavier than air aircraft?
  11. Scenario For Combat Aircraft To Be Available During the U.S. Civil War?

    I've been interested in doing a highly illustrated book where the American Civil War (1861-65) had a couple of hundred heavier than air combat aircraft available on both sides along with a substantial number of combat balloons and battle blimps. Given that the time between the run up to the...
  12. WI: Japan Attacked With Superheavy Nuclear Torpedoes

    Anyone ever read the novel "Icefire"?
  13. WI Democrats take back Congress in 1996?

    A Clinton not threatened with possible impeachment and accusations of "wagging the dog" (waging an overseas war to distract from a domestic scandal) would probably have ordered the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1998 as was a possibility.
  14. Soviet Union with no World war two and Stalin

    In Matthew White's "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things" he observes that so many big dictators came from countries on the periphery of the nation they led. Stalin was a Georgian. Napoleon was Corsican. Hitler was part Austrian. Wonder why that is?
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