History, Politics And Current Affairs

My original write-up had 487 Squadron being stood up as a wartime-emergency two-flight unit operating out of NAS Whidbey Island, then being retained as our second fighter squadron in the post-war environment. (What can I say? 487 Squadron flew Mosquito fighter-bombers in WWII, and I’ve had a soft-sp...

Even the 13th ACR had standards with regards to the treatment of captured Soviet servicemen and women. The men got what they got, but the women were treated with a degree of civility… When one-percenter outlaw bikers hold themselves to higher standards of behaviour and discipline than your own troo...

Lordroel wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:44 am OOC, so you where they on that created the OOB for New Zeeland, i used a old version on my forum i found on the Red Dawn Wiki, i hope it is okay that I posted it.

No problem.

I’m a little baffled. I’m not directly familiar with densitometers, but contextually they are clearly devices that in some way interact with and measure nuclear radiation levels; such a device gives an ‘off the scale’ reading, and Frank’s first reaction is to dismiss it as ‘must be an instrument mal...

For fear of picking up the stick to resume beating my favourite dead horse... reposting the NZDF OOBs for WW3 has prompted me to revisit the topic of the Project KAHU upgrade for the RNZAF Skyhawks. I know it was agreed that the historical programme was not viable under wartime pressures, so the cur...

[Placeholder for fuller RNZAF OrBat(s)] ROYAL NEW ZEALAND AIR FORCE, 1985-1990 — 2 Squadron (RNZAF Base Ohakea/RAAF Base Nowra) Aircraft: TA-4K Skyhawk; later also A-4G [replaced by JAS 39E/F in 2007] Re-established July 1986. Initially used as OTU and to provide aggressors for RAN air-defence exerc...

ROYAL NEW ZEALAND NAVY, 1985-1990 Frigates Rothesay (Type 12M) Class F 111, HMNZS Otago Leander (Type 12I) Class Batch 1 (Ikara equipped) F 18, HMNZS Taranaki (ex-HMS Galatea ) F 38, HMNZS Northland (ex-HMS Arethusa ) F 104, HMNZS Southland (ex-HMS Dido )* Batch 2.TA F 55, HMNZS Waikato Batch 3 (un...

[Placeholder for NZ Army]

Photo: The British. Australian and New Zealand Taskforce (BANAT) consisting of HMAS Swan, HMAS Derwent, HMNZS Waikato, HMNZS Wellington, HMS Sirius, HMS Edinburgh, Behind is HMS Ark Royal and RFA Olwyn, Singapore, 1988. Must be late in the year, since it looks like both Waikato and Wellington have ...

You really have to wonder what the Mexico City Head Shed thought(?) they were doing by pulling the trigger. After the post-WW3 build-up in the Continental Forty-Eight, matched against the steady degradation of Mexican capabilities without active Soviet support over the same period, no sane military ...

I’m pretty sure that it was here that I recently learned how in the Soviet Union, a conscript received only a month(!) of basic training before being assigned to their designated unit, which handled what a Western force would consider ‘trade school’/MOS training (and also conducted the bulk of the d...

But again, I can’t see those birds getting much in the way of upgrades before delivery, certainly nothing on the scale of my beloved Project KAHU. » With US industry on a wartime footing, the performance improvements might be notable, but I doubt they’d be enough to justify the expense and additiona...

[facepalm] Goddammit, Mantell. You and your weird-ass luck. Reassuring to see he had the sense to pass this one up the chain. I know that some sport-fishermen who go after marlin or swordfish practice tag-and-release with the really big specimens, but when you hook a fish that big, the whole situati...

Matt Wiser, poohbah, thank you both. Now all I have to do is figure out enough about Paint.Net or PhotoShop to grab a pic of an -18E and recolour it in RNZAF livery. It should only take me about thirty years....

Query regarding RD+20 fighter development: did the F/A-18E/F ever get made ITTL? In our history, it was a McDD ‘just-in-case’ project that ended up replacing the (cancelled) A-12, not to mention its own previous A-D models, and buying time-in-service for the next ‘clean-sheet’ fighter design (the JS...

More like “We never promised to pay you” right before they execute the idiot… This. "Will you look at that, Yevgeniy, the fool really thinks we are going to pay him...and let him live." “... we promised fifty thousand US dollars to anyone who could kill Praporshchik Sophia Henrix — the wo...

Why do they always ask how many runs? Almost certainly a matter of SOP — CAS is about maximising warheads-on-foreheads-per-sortie, whatever the opinions and inclinations of the drivers involved. Most aircraft that expend their external warloads can still come back and make gun-runs until their ammo...

CNN is reporting from their Pentagon Correspondent that a missile test was in progress, and instead of the missile being ejected from the boat, breaking water and then igniting the first stage? The missile stage apparently ignited in the tube . Result was loss of boat and crew. Yikes . Don’t those ...

One way to get it, and some green ink in the log book . Huh. I presume that ‘green ink’ is USAF policy for recording time flown on combat sorties? (I know there’s a similar thing in cricket — a batsman whose innings ends ‘not out’ has his score recorded in red ink.) I have learned a new fact today....

[Fair enough to appease my OCD. One of the dangers of writing alt-history fiction like this can be keeping people around long after their reasonable shelf-lives; to a certain extent writers can get away with that when dealing with fictional characters or expies, but known historical figures can be a...