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Mounting such a beast on an airplane? It'll never catch on!:rolleyes: Like that guy who was snubbed for his plan to make a ship sail against the wind by lighting a bonfire under her deck. :rofl:
 
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KaiserMuffin - I've got to admit that was a surprise, based on your earlier comments I'd have thought you'd want Power Jets (along with everything else) nationalised.

Nathan Madien - It's true I was waiting for the top of the page, but that shouldn't diminish the might of your achievement. ;)

RAFspeak - The advantage of the history of the British jet programme is that it's almost impossible for it to go worse than OTL, almost any change you care to mention would have been an improvement!

KiMaSa - While the OTL Labour Party may have been stuffed with idiots the TUC was the very model of hard-line anti-communism so the jets are safe even if Labour do get into power. The traitors of Bristol South East (Cripps then Benn) will not be allowed to stuff everything up this time.

trekaddict - Such beautiful music. :D

RAFspeak - It appears you have fallen into my cunningly laid trap. Excellent - the next update should come as a great surprise!

Le Jones - In all fairness some of Whittle's frustrations were entirely self-induced, he never even approached any of the big engine makers for fear he would lose control of 'his' idea.

Nothing wrong with that of course but building an engineering firm from scratch required a completely different skill set from the one Whittle had. Management was not his forte and his choice of financial backers was not particularly wise, for instance OTL the bankers O T Falk dropped out after failing to deliver promised finance.

DonnieBaseball - I had always thought that, however it turns out Rover didn't actually do that bad a job. Adrian Lombard was the chief Rover man on the job and ended up transferring to Rolls Royce when they took over eventually becoming their Chief Engine Designer.

Mind you I've always found the choice of Rover sadly ironic. As mentioned Whittle avoided the major engine makers as he feared they'd steal his work, so his demands (along with war time pressures) meant he ended up with Rover as the industrial partner. Rover then promptly tried to steal his work, setting up a rival factory and getting Lombard to redesign Whittle's engine into something reliable without telling Whittle or the Ministry they were doing it!

Nathan Madien - Saving the world, it's what I do best of all. ;)

Duritz - As it happens there was a Conqueror tank fitted with a turbine in the 1950s, however it didn't go well. Then again Conqueror as a whole didn't go too well so that's hardly surprising.

Zhuge Liang - The saddest part is America didn't steal anything, they were given it all neatly wrapped up with a bow on top.

A mistake that has to rank well up there on the 'List of Churchill's biggest mistakes' and given how long that list is that's quite an achievement! :(

C&D - Indeed as Rover showed the natural home for a gas turbine is in the JET1 car of the future!
 
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Winston's Mistake however is nothing near what Attlee did, at least Winston can claim he aided an ally.
 
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KaiserMuffin - I've got to admit that was a surprise, based on your earlier comments I'd have thought you'd want Power Jets (along with everything else) nationalised.

No, I only want to nationalise industries such as public transport, raw materials extraction and heavy manufacture. At this point in time, a nationalisation (as occurred in OTL) would do more harm than good. Private enterprise is the playground of the innovator, public enterprise that of the provider. A balance must be struck ;)
 
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No, I only want to nationalise industries such as public transport, raw materials extraction and heavy manufacture. At this point in time, a nationalisation (as occurred in OTL) would do more harm than good. Private enterprise is the playground of the innovator, public enterprise that of the provider. A balance must be struck ;)

This, with the exception of Telecommunications as that makes for very cheap Internet connections. ATM my ISP gets 28€ a month for Flatrate 10 mbit Internet, Telephone flatrate and Cable Television, all through a Fibre-optic Cable.
 
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Probably not. In Germany the equation is that privatized Telecom means shitty management, actual competition on the market and thus cheap rates.
 
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Loved the update, Pippy. Can't wait to hear the rest of the tale as my education is sorely lacking in this realm.

Vann
 
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Ah, jet engines. I expect us to have better planes then everyone else when the time comes.
 
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trekaddict - No Winston aided the US who I would call, at best, a co-combatant and certainly not an ally. Sure they were more helpful than the Free French, but then there were countless Germans who were more helpful to the British war effort than De Gaulle. Put simply allies shouldn't devote considerable effort into working out how best to bankrupt you and leave you utterly broken, and that outcome was one of FDRs main war aims.

Now I'd certainly agree it was nowhere near as bad as Attlee and Cripps' mistakes, but I'm far from convinced it was necessary and damn near certain it shouldn't have been given away. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even at the time surely someone should have asked what on earth tangible did Britain get out of the deal? The square root of sod all as far as I can tell.

KaiserMuffin - Remind me to never ever live in your socialist state, if the state's job is that of "provider" that presumably includes food. You are aware that (one) of the inevitable results of socialism is food shortages and starvation? Soviet Russia had regular famines and went from a grain exporter to a net importer, Cuba still has rationing and of course the biggie in China where the Great Leap Forward starved at least 30million people to death.

And don't think this is just a Communist problem, it's socialism in general. Look at the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, even the Guardian has noticed the food shortages as socialism reeks it's usual havoc on food supply.

So leaving aside everything else that is wrong with your plan, on more levels than I can count, I oppose it on moral grounds; starving the population because of an ideology is just indefensible.

Vann the Red - Jet engines are a wonderful topic and one on which it is hard to know too much.

Though the amphibious IL-2 has got me wondering if there aren't better options out there; What about the original plan for the Short Sunderland which had a 37mm cannon in the nose? Add a second, maybe a couple more under the wings and add a few twin (quad?) .50" Vickers MG for lighter work. That would certainly have U-boat captains terrified if nothing else! :D

Lord Strange - I promise better engines, after all we had better engines in OTL till well into the 1950s and that was with everything going badly wrong. Britain can hardly do worse with things going well! ;)
 
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Put simply allies shouldn't devote considerable effort into working out how best to bankrupt you and leave you utterly broken, and that outcome was one of FDRs main war aims.

And allies also shouldn't devote considerable effort into working out how best to disrupt your battle plan and force you to divert valuable forces and resources to clean up their mess (as was the case with Italy).
 
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While on the subject of better engines, I'd love to see the Sabre go better, to where we see a version with the proposed 3-speed 2-stage supercharger--Tempests escorting Lancs TTL? :)

As for Churchill, given the desperate straights and hard bargaining by FDR can one blame him for throwing the kitchen sink when it came to soliciting aid?
 
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So how long until they bung a power-jet into a Short Empire flying boat? ;)
 
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Nathan Madien - Which just further proves my point. The US and UK in WW2 were, at best, co-combatants who just happened to be fighting on the same side and were certainly not allies by any reasonable dictionary definition of the word.

DonnieBaseball - The super Sabre would indeed have been an excellent performing engines, however I fear it would spend most of it's time falling out of the sky; Napier were never that bothered about reliability in their engines.

They were fine engineering achievements on the test flight, but in service cooling problems, maintenance and the brutal fact they weren't built well gave Napier engines an terrible reputation. Something to ponder, perhaps having Napier brought out earlier than OTL might give the company DNA a nudge in the right direction.

I concede hindsight is a wonderful thing, but as you say FDR bargained hard and Churchill didn't even try. Far more importantly I return to the key point - what on earth did Britain get in return from the Tizard mission? Seriously I can't find a single tangible positive achievement, only empty words about 'forging the Anglo-American Alliance' which is clearly a load of tosh.

Sir Humphrey - Jet powered flying boats from Shorts? Isn't that Saunders-Roe's job with such wonders as the Duchess and SR.A/1? :D
 
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