Got a larger copy of the Jaguar-M pic?

The 1950s-built French carriers Clemenceau (now being scrapped) and Foch (now Brazilian Sao Paulo)
used British BS5 steam catapults.

Charles de Gaulle uses US-built C-13-3 catapults (shortened version of what is in every USN supercarrier).

Brazil, like India, is trying to stretch beyond their current “regional power” role… that is the issue, and SSNs and carriers are an integral part of that for both nations.

SSNs (and carriers) represent the ability to operate effectively beyond their own areas, and to provide major parts of multi-national coalition forces… which further enhance that perception of “more than a regional power”.

In the early 1980s, didn’t Brazil have a plan to have 2 home-built carriers by 2000?

Politics.

If people knew the main fall-back was simply another variant of the same aircraft, they would really feel locked into a “foreign buy”.

Also, for simplicity’s sake, the PR hacks assumed that if one version failed, the whole program would be gone. They may have actually believed this, I don’t know.

The -B was the first choice for 2 reasons:
1. cost. installing & operating the catapults & arresting gear would cost quite a bit, while the ski-jump costs little beyond the steel.
2. commonality. The RAF had ordered -Bs as a specific Harrier replacement, to make use of partially damaged runways, parking lots, paved roads, etc. This meant that if the RN got -Bs they could both operate side-by-side everywhere. This also goes back to cost.

There are advantages to STOVL combat aircraft operating from carriers as well… mainly in cycle rate & a greater range of operating sea-states/weather conditions.
The advantages in cat&trap come in the AEW, A-A refueling, and cargo aircraft that can be carried that are more effective than STOVL/rotorcraft tasked with the same mission.

That is why the “easy convertibility” feature was designed into CVF from the start… so that the RN wouldn’t be locked into one or the other over the ~50 years CVF was expected to be in service.

Does it have the small chin intakes or the large ones.
If the small, then it is anything up to and including an H model, and Glacier Girl was a F.
If the large, it is a J or L model, and you need to find one of those to depict.

AlexT… if you are still here, the estimate of Japanese civilian casualties if the invasion of the home islands was carried out was in the millions (due to the plans for the entire population to actively fight the invaders)… so ~200,000 civilian casualties in the A-bombing of 2 cities that were war-material production centers is a very good trade for the Japanese people!

The estimate that the invasion of Japan would have cost the Allies a million casualties is ludicrous

Ummm.. I never mentioned allied casualties… pay attention.

You people seem only to care about the soldiers, but what about the civilians? They were there too during the war and suffered as much (if not more!) than our troops.

I DID speak of civilian casualties! Which you deliberately ignored!

And for your information, the Allies had been deliberately targeting civilian populations since 1943… note the fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden in Feb 1945… ~800 RAF and USAAF bombers dropped some 650,000 incendiaries, on a city with a total population of ~1.2 million… most of them civilians.

Add the USAAF’s repeated fire-bombing of Japanese cities in 1945… starting with Tokyo on March 9. 334 B-29s attacked, and the Japanese later listed over 83,000 dead in the attack; over 40,000 wounded and a total of 15.8 square miles of the city were burned to ashes with the destruction of 265,171 buildings.

From May to August , U.S. planes firebombed fifty-eight Japanese cities. Official estimates from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 330,000 people killed, 476,000 injured, 8.5 million people made homeless and 2.5 million buildings destroyed.

Japanese estimates of deaths run above 1 million.

Gen LeMay was frustrated at the low hit percentage of normal munitions, and Firebombing promised the ability to destroy targets more efficiently. A “benefit” was that most of the Japanese people lived in wooden houses, and burning them out would cause more disruption and loss of morale than just destroying factories, etc.

The A-bombs were considered “more of the same, just faster”.

Yes, the firebombing was also a nasty, de-humanizing business, but this shows that using the A-bombs was NOT an aberration or deviation from the established pattern of the war.

1. Was the atomic bomb able to carried by any other large WW2? This is a “what if” we didnt have the B29…… or was the bomb specifically designed for the B29?

Consolidated B-32 Dominator. http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b32.html

Designed as the “fall-back” in case the B-29 failed, it was slow in entering production, and the first combat mission took place on May 29, 1945. It was a strike against a Japanese supply depot in Luzon’s Cayagan Valley by a 3-aircraft detachment for a “combat test” of the aircraft..

The 386th Bombardment Squadron of the 312th Bombardment Group moved to Okinawa in late August 1945, so the bombs could have been dropped by this aircraft, and if the B-29 had “failed” in 1943 or earlier, the B-32 would have received more resources and entered service earlier.

AlexT… if you are still here, the estimate of Japanese civilian casualties if the invasion of the home islands was carried out was in the millions (due to the plans for the entire population to actively fight the invaders)… so ~200,000 civilian casualties in the A-bombing of 2 cities that were war-material production centers is a very good trade for the Japanese people!

As to their “surrendering”, their demands for starting negotiations included a promise that the entire Japanese government structure had to remain intact… including the military dominance of the government! The was also a requirement that the military was to remain intact.

There was no way any of the allied governments would accept that, and if any had the others would have cut them out of the process… even if it was the US that did (impossible with the attitudes of the American populace at that time).

So, no… it was either invasion or A-bomb… and the right choice was made.

Also, don’t discount the value of Truman proving to Stalin that the US WOULD use the A-bomb… the value of that in keeping Stalin, Khrushchev (1962 Cuba?), Brezhnev, etc negotiating and using proxies to oppose the US instead of direct conflict in Europe is very real, in my opinion.

How many millions of civilian lives did that save?