I do not know whether even a more conservative, faschist Germany would have avoided a war with the USSR. Because of Germanies sucessfull campaign in the East during WW1 the idea of a Germany dominated Russia was quite popular in those circles. (There was a popular book about that idea called...
The logical persons to lead the Luftwaffe were either Milch or General Weaver. Milch was a far more practical figure than Goering but Weaver would have been much better. He was pushing for a strategic arm of the Luftwaffe, being behind the Programms that lead to the J89 Bomber.
He would also...
Sorry, when I reread my post I saw inconsistencies which shouldn`t have happened. Posting in a hurry in a in a language not your own.... Exuses aside the planes I had in mind were the Martin "Seamaster" see http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avcmast.html for a closer look and the Convair "Seadart"...
All it would take is a stronger feeling that airfields are vulnerable. That is not as far off as it may seem. During the 60`s the German Luftwaffe considered that all of it`s combat planes should be VTOL-capable since airfields were considered as large targets.
Make the early air-launced cruise...
The FX might be the FX1400 or Fritz-X, a guided free-fall bomb against shipping. It was used in the Med a couple of times. It`s greates success was the sinking of the brand-new Battleship "Roma" which was about to defect to the Allies. It`s main problems were lack of decent heavy bombers (1400...
The best way for this to happen-a slim chance at best- looks for me like that: Germany adopts a fleet treaty with Great Britain sometimes at the beginning of the Century-it limits the German HSF to 50 % of the British Fleet. There is also some colonial swapping (like with Heligoland before) Net...
A more competitive space race could work, also different technologies. Last not least, kill the Vietnam war. It was getting the resources that NASA needed.
More competitive space race: The USSR deceides that the race to the moon is already lost, take the time to perfect the N1 booster (30 %...
Stirling engines-while very efficient-share one vice of steam engines:they are quite heavy. For example the WhisperGen, a Sterling power generator sold widly in Australia, weights 190 kilogramms for an output of 4 kw.
An you need a clutch and gearttrain arrangement in order to use it. So in the...
The only way I see around that is a TL a bit like "Red Alert", no Adolf and a far more agressive USSR (Probably with Trotzky at the helm) The Red Army overruns Western Europe in 1940 and forces Great Britain into a Finland-like status.
That derpives the US of a lot of the scientists they needed...
One possibility is that either Germany and the UK or France and the UK deceide for whatever reason to invade the US at the end of the 19th Century. Neither the US Navy or Army had the resources to do withstand the initial invasion. Even after mobilisation it would still be very difficult to...
I introduced Germanies semi-retreat from the EU since in such a scenario the West would probably be far less happy with reunification. It could either be another of the USSR wishes or a reaction of Germany to heavy restistence towards reunification from the EU partners. In OTL Germany accepted a...
When the possibility of reunification came along in 1990 for real for quite some time it looked that if the German reunification were to happen at all, Germany would have to leave NATO. For a number of reasons including the impeding collapse of the USSR and some hard bargaining by Helmut Kohl...
The difference that Minnie rifles make is hard to overstate: they raise the range for effective fire from abt. 80 to 400 meters. The Russian army found to it`s dismay that columns which were so sucessfully employed during the Napoleonic campaigns were simply butchered by more modern rifles in...
If the Red Army is in about the same state that in OTL Finland invasion or I suspect in some ways worse, then they will have the mother of all nightmares on hand. The most important reasons for that are: Leadership and transport.
Leadership: In the 1930`s Stalin got it in his head that the...
That depends on the timeframe. As soon as the CSA Army has enough minie rifles things get very bad for the Grand Army. One of the reasons that the ACW was so bloody was that it combined mostly Napoleon-style tactics (Grand Batteries, huge blocks of soldiers) with more modern weapons (better...