Let's Examine Crusade

[Skgoa]

How much sense does a supersonic inter-city shuttle make? None, for the same reason we don't have inner city bullet trains: travel time is so short already, the huge increase in cost would be prohibitive.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah; it does depend on the size of the city, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is pretty huge, but overall I would say having a streamlined metro train system of some kind is probably far better than having an air shuttle.

Now, intercontinental and international travel, that's another matter, and I could see supersonic/hypersonic aircraft being of more utility in those areas, if somewhat high-priced...

[Pelranius]

Supersonic would be useful for going across the continent too (like East Coast to West Coast), though it might be smaller than the intercontinental ones and more pricier, for people like couriers and business folks.

There are also 'people hauler' aircraft if I remember. They seem to have something like 400 to 600 people a flight, mostly for going in between large urban areas, I think.

[Edward Yee]

Someone wrote earlier that Stuart had this whole thing about how you really have to think through the effects the changes you make will have,

Amusingly, I believe that the timelines I've followed on AH.com (yes, THEM) have actually been pretty good on this... then again, it could just be selection bias from hewing mainly to "well-written" timelines that include this as one of their positive traits.

[MKSheppard]

How much sense does a supersonic inter-city shuttle make? None, for the same reason we don't have inner city bullet trains: travel time is so short already, the huge increase in cost would be prohibitive.

That slot is IIRC filled by rotodynes.

[MKSheppard]

There are also 'people hauler' aircraft if I remember. They seem to have something like 400 to 600 people a flight, mostly for going in between large urban areas, I think.

Basically, think full length double deck aircraft like the A-380, but 40 years early.

From: "Aircraft: The Biggest Bird", Time, Friday, Jul. 12, 1968:

Lockheed plans to put out a nonmilitary version of the C-5—the L-500—by 1971. In an all-passenger configuration, the L-500 could conceivably carry up to 1,000 people, which would allow airlines to slice New York-London fares as low as $75.

Initially, Lockheed plans to produce and sell the L-500 as an all-cargo plane only—but the economics should be equally dramatic. Airlines presently account for less than 1% of all North Atlantic freight traffic, but have been making encouraging inroads on ocean shipping on certain types of goods—notably clothing. The L-500's huge payload in its 121-ft.-long cargo area would enable airlines to carry freight for as little as 2¢ per ton-mile, low enough to give surface shipping a great deal of competition on a broader range of cargo.

[Simon_Jester]

How much sense does a supersonic inter-city shuttle make? None, for the same reason we don't have inner city bullet trains: travel time is so short already, the huge increase in cost would be prohibitive.

That slot is IIRC filled by rotodynes.

I would hate living anywhere near anywhere near an airport in the TBO-verse...

[Stark]

Time articles are now 'evidence'? That's even better than taking project projections as facts!

[MKSheppard]

Time articles are now 'evidence'? That's even better than taking project projections as facts!

It's the quickest thing I could find.

There's been loads of studies on full length double deck aircraft for quite a while -- the Convair Model 37 (Civilianized XC-99) is one example from the late 1940s for example. 200+ passengers; and fifteen were actually ordered by Pan Am for transatlantic service in OTL; but cancelled when improved powerplants didn't materialize fast enough.

Another quick and dirty example would be the Super VC-10 Double Decker -- 295 passengers in all economy.

[Stark]

Can I post pics from a children's book speculating that by 1989 everyone will use hydrofoils, jet packs and robots? Cancelled by McNamara!

[MKSheppard]

Can I post pics from a children's book speculating that by 1989 everyone will use hydrofoils, jet packs and robots? Cancelled by McNamara!

The first DC-10 designs were double deckers; as were the first 747 proposals. What killed them at the time was the airlines' safety concerns regarding passenger evacuation in an emergency, along with the costs of jetway construction to reach both aircraft levels at the same time for rapid loading/unloading. (Remember, they'd just spent money to build the first jetways in airports for the 707 and such at the time).

That said, double decker aircraft are the most efficient way to have very large numbers of seats in a passenger aircraft without reaching absurd dimensions or requiring exotic concepts (blended wing bodies); so their arrival in commercial service is a function of airline estimates for route seat capacity needed.

PS, that's not a 'children's book', but a brochure put together by BAC for prospective airline customers to gauge the interest in such a concept. Why do you hate British GRAEPHS?

[Stark]

Wait are you saying development isn't just based on spending money forever? WHOA!

Its obviously pretty childish to accept any projections based on unstated assumptions or unreliable estimates. So ... Why mention them? Who stopped the holy engineering of progress toward my artists impressions????

Ironcially feasibility studies, risk:reward analysis, failed progress and practical shortfall kill projects with good reason. I mean, if there's no money in it and it's fairly likely to never work, why continue? To keep artists and Popular Science writers employed?

And man, some of the stuff people write in tenders and proposals - are you ready for this - aren't true. Especially in edge cases with high risk, talking about stuff that might not work in a proposal nobody is going to pick up isn't a big deal.

[TimothyC]

As a bit of an aside I found the core post from which TBO sprang (I have it saved) in July of 2002

How is this for a strategic scenario?

We're in 1947, the US has successfully tested a nuclear device (and managed to keep a lid on it). They've built up an arsenal of around 60 devices, all Mark 1s of average 10 kiloton yield (up a bit, down a bit, things weren't terribly precise back then). They have a production rate of around one Mark 1s per month with a single 15 kiloton Model 1561 every four month. Coming up is the 25 kiloton Mark 3 (one a month from mid-1947) and the 50 kiloton mark 4 (one a week from the start of 1948 ) . This is a somewhat faster production rate and reflects an acceptance of wartime engineering standarsd rather than peacetime. It means the devices shorter lives. By the way, Super (fusion device) is on the way.

Bomber force will be 500 B-36s, all jet equipped (the B-36s have priority for jets precisely because of the nuclear device). B-29s are there but mostly face the Pacific.

In Europe, the Germans occupy from the Urals to the Pyranees and from the UK to North Africa. They range into but do not hold the Sahara. In the east they have a hell of a partisan warfare problem in the occupied territories. That requires a major force commitment. Western Europe is relatively peaceful. Spain is doing a balancing act - pro-German enough not to be invaded by Germany, not pro German enough to be pounded by the US.

At sea, the Germans aren't so lucky. The US Navy and what's left of the RN have swept the seas of the German fleet. The Atlantic is a US lake. The US carriers are pounding the Western edges and there isn't much the Germans can do about it. Of their submarines, only the Type XXIs can do anything useful and they are hunted mercilessly. The older subs have an at-sea lifetime of hours rather than days. There are no transatlantic convoys to sop up Allied resources so everything goes into an attack fleet.

In the air the German jets had a temporary transcendence in 1944/45 but thats fading fast. The P-80 and the new Grumman F9F are marginally inferior to the latest German jets but they are enormously greater in numbers. Both the allies and the Germans have a problem; there isn't enough jet fuel. This forces them to keep piston engined fighters in the inventory (historically correct by the way - that problem took until the late 1950s to solve - know you know why the ANG kept Mustangs so long). The US carriers are running in, grabbing local air superiority, smashing targets and the defenses then pulling back out to sea before the germans can concentrate to match them. The areas the Germans stripped to do that then get hit by another carrier raid. The Germans know the B-36 is coming and are trying to do something about it but they have problems. Their older piston-engined fighters are useless; they can't get up high enough and fast enough to intercept. They have specialized high altitude piston engined fighters but they are too lightly armed and the performance differential is too low. The jets have a better chance but they have problems all of their own. Oddly the German plane that is best suited to a B-36 interceptor is the He-219. It has the speed, altitude, firepower and endurance to be a threat. The Germans are building them again (despite its shortcomings) and they have replaced most of the older twin engined fighters. They're taking a beating from the carriers though.

The Germans have spotted something else. A stripped recon version of the B-36, the RB-36 has been making runs all over Germany. They've tried to intercept and failed. Whatever's going to happen is about to start. They've heard a codeword but don't know what it means. That codeword is "Dropshot".

Hows that for a base. If we can all live with that strategic situation, we'll go ahead and plan a nuclear war.

[Stark]

so the whole thing started because a fat middle-aged man wanted to impress his fake internet friends with his failed demographic analysis?

it's quite apt really

[Simon_Jester]

So how did it inflate from 60 to 200 and the bomber force used to do the dropping get so big?

Puffery?

[Thanas]

I guess the same way a Germany with aid from the UK does not manage to build enough jet fighters?

[Stark]

if that's the 'core post' of it, remember that he is bascially just making shit up by fiat. they'll 'have' 500 b36s, remember? cause he says so.

sure it's just a thought experiment so he can lord his ability to pretend to kill millions on the internet, but it clearly shows the lack of actual research or insight that unlies tbo

[TimothyC]

So how did it inflate from 60 to 200 and the bomber force used to do the dropping get so big?

Puffery?

I don't know. I don't have those threads, and I think I've sent you a zip with the thread that the quote is from.

Edit - and I think he meant the He-419.

[D.Turtle]

Actually I am surprised that the number of nukes is so low. Some time ago, I relatively easily found this memo (pdf) which combined with other easily accessible data makes it obvious that the US could have a lot more than 60 nukes ready in 1947. And the production rate is downright horrible in comparison to historical, in which the expected production was 7 a month in December 1945, with the number increasing "decidedly" in 1946. The 200 he had in TBO is definitely plausible.

However, Stuart, supposedly being an expert professional in this area, should be better informed than what a short time googling can deliver.

[Coiler]

So it started as a forum post. How utterly unsurprising.

I can actually see the progression as more and more fanboyism creeps in. First it starts as talk on a forum, then it becomes a "story" with a thinly veiled plot just to set up that scenario. Oh sure, the history is contrived to set up that scenario, but what vs. debate isn't? Then the fans talk of how great it is and how they want more, and more is written. Then the author gets more and more positive "yeah!!", and begins to become ever more convinced of the series' accuracy and artistic merit.

While the stories are being written, they're treated as inside, juvenile, "oh cool", "Ooh, look at that (insert military equipment here). But after they're finished, they become serious works that must be defended, to the point where a giant "FAQ" will be posted and countless words spent attempting to justify the work to critics, but none actually changing it.

[Simon_Jester]

I guess the same way a Germany with aid from the UK does not manage to build enough jet fighters?

I'm not sure the Germans would get very useful aid from the UK on that front. Pro-peace government may be in place and take Britain out of the war, but regardless of whether the Germans later occupy the place or just leave it alone, there aren't that many collaborationist aircraft designers. Nazi Germany wouldn't be popular in British factories, either.

(Note, this argument is totally separate from any question of TBO canon, which I don't really want to get into)

Since in real life the US, the British, and the Russians all had jet fuel shortage problems, forcing them to keep piston-engine fighters in service into the '50s even with downsizing of postwar air forces, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that the Germans would be unable to keep up a large jet air force in the 1940s, and would pad out the numbers with piston-engine aircraft. Even if no one's bombing their factories, they still have limits.

[Thanas]

Since in real life the US, the British, and the Russians all had jet fuel shortage problems, forcing them to keep piston-engine fighters in service into the '50s even with downsizing of postwar air forces, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that the Germans would be unable to keep up a large jet air force in the 1940s, and would pad out the numbers with piston-engine aircraft. Even if no one's bombing their factories, they still have limits.

Not arguing the jet fuel stuff, I am instead arguing the number games of the US managing to launch a lot of carrier-based bombers, building a vast navy etc. all alone while the Germans, who can focus mainly on army and air force (and with british support to boot as the USA is launching carrier raids on Britain, and with soviet resources) fail to keep up with the learning and production curve.

[Simon_Jester]

Since in real life the US, the British, and the Russians all had jet fuel shortage problems, forcing them to keep piston-engine fighters in service into the '50s even with downsizing of postwar air forces, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that the Germans would be unable to keep up a large jet air force in the 1940s, and would pad out the numbers with piston-engine aircraft. Even if no one's bombing their factories, they still have limits.

Not arguing the jet fuel stuff, I am instead arguing the number games of the US managing to launch a lot of carrier-based bombers, building a vast navy etc. all alone while the Germans, who can focus mainly on army and air force (and with british support to boot as the USA is launching carrier raids on Britain, and with soviet resources) fail to keep up with the learning and production curve.

I don't think I understand what you're getting at.

This is basically the historical US Navy (what was available for the war against Japan in 1945-47), against the quasi-historical German navy (which was scheduled to be tiny compared to the USN, even in 1945-47 and even assuming no production troubles whatsoever).

The Germans were planning a battleship-heavy force with only a handful of modern capital ships; they didn't have the capacity to do more, and the demands of the Eastern Front would prohibit total concentration on building more ships, so there would be no hope of matching the USN in tonnage. Carriers were largely an afterthought in this proposed order of battle. Naval design in Germany was in a poor state due to the hiatus of design efforts after World War One, so the Germans tended to get less out of a given tonnage than other nations.

USN versus Kriegsmarine in the 1940s is a matchup that will see the Kriegsmarine go down hard. There's really no way around this; it's a matter of building capacity, and of Germany being a continental power that views its navy as a strategic afterthought while the US is more navy-oriented.

Given this, it is not unreasonable to predict that the US Navy would launch carrier airstrikes against the European coastline, although the quality of air defense which meets them ashore is a fully open question. The US carrier fleet being powerful is consistent with history- the US did build those carriers, and a large army, and a large strategic bomber force, separately and independently from what Britain or anyone else was building.


As to learning curves, the Germans might be ahead in jet fighter quality, but they won't be vastly ahead if we compare historical designs from the two powers- P-80 versus Me 262 is an informative comparison. Quantity matters, and the US has larger total aircraft production capacity than Germany.

Or am I missing some important part of your argument?

[Bakustra]

The fact that he's talking about how Germany isn't building up a navy and so can devote proportionally more resources to its air force and army?

[Stark]

If they captured the UK, wouldn't they steal their jet technology?

Or is synthesising new events too hard for poor Bart?