![35 years ago, retired Admiral Arleigh Burke and his wife prepare to commission his namesake destroyer, first of a class that will become the backbone of the US Navy's surface fleet. July 4 1991. More in the comments. [955 × 768]](https://preview.redd.it/05sd9rlfl5bh1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=150c92efb7f6b176d08738b77d5a59783525eeda)
This question was very much inspired by the video game HOI4. In the game, the Soviet Union can trade with Japan and its puppets (primarily Manchukuo) for natural resources as long as you're not at war with each other.
Considering that the USSR and Japan were neutral until the very last weeks of the war, how much did they trade with each other in real life, both during WW2 and the border clashes prior? Was there much of an impact from the Sino-Japanese War? Also how much did the puppets, eg Mongolia, Tannu Tuva (before they got annexed), Manchukuo trade with the opposing side, including with each other?
Much has been said/claimed about the Tu-4 and specifically how closely the Soviets copied their captured B-29s, but how much did the B-29/Tu-4 influence later developments? Skimming wiki, the Tu-85, claimed to be developed from Tu-4, certainly bear some resembalance to Tu-16 and Tu-95, especially the forward fuselage with the enlongated nose compared to the cockpit.
So was there any relation between Tu-4 and those later bombers, or am I reading way too much into photos on wiki? Or were they more based off Tupolev's own parallel design thinking? I read somewhere they were working on their own heavy bomber before being forced to abandon it to work on Tu-4.
Also sidenote sidenote, was Tu-4 worth the effort? They were already being retired a mere 5 years after their introduction, they of course never actually did their job, and the Soviets didn't really have all that many nukes at the time anyway, not to mention the other general inferiorities of the Soviet air forces compared to western ones. Yet they made over 800 of the things. Would the money, time and effort have been better spent of other things?
With relations between the West and the Soviet Union warming, Soviet military aircraft were being allowed to go to overseas airshows for the first time since the 1930s. Here we see two F-15s about to intercept/escort the first 2 Mig-29s to go to Canada. The F-15s were from 21st Tactical Fighter Wing based at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, where the Mig-29s were going to both refuel and to make a friendly visit.
If you're wondering how the photo was taken, there were 4 F-15s sent, and photographer Staff Sgt. Kevin L. Bishop was in one of the two offscreen. Also unseen is the (now sadly deceased) An-225 Mriya, which apparently went with the Mig-29s.
While I posted this because it's just cool, I'd also like to take the opportunity to take the mickey out of the US Space Force. 21st Tactical Fighter Wing was deactivated and then quickly reactivated as the 21st Space Wing in 1992. When the Space Force was formed in 2019, it naturally got handed to the Space Force. After some weird shuffling, it was deactivated again, with its component units assigned to Space Delta 2 and 3.
....What the flying fuck is a Space Delta?
Apparently it's the equivalent of an air force Group or Wing. Why they couldn't keep the naming scheme (like they have for "Command" and "Squadron") instead of that cringe-ass haircut "space delta" I have no idea. Apparently someone agreed with me, because they've been renamed Mission Deltas. Actually on second thought that's not any better.
So the US Space Force has "Guardians" serving in "Mission Deltas", wearing delta patches.
This shit's not endearing, it's just embarrassing.
Jon Parshal mentioned in I think an episode of Unauthorized History of the Pacific War that Marshal tried hiring blockade runners to go to the Philippines in 1942, that naturally very few skippers took him up on it and that the ones who did didn't make it.
So what's that all about, where can I read more about this, and do we know the details of the ships and crews that tried to run the blockade and what happened to them?
During WW2, things like the Dowding system or the USN's ship based system of controllers guiding fighters are today praised as being innovative and even ground breaking. Yet forward a few decades and I've heard the soviet system of GCI being shat on for being backwards, yet isn't the principle the same? What changed to cause people to generally look down on Soviet style GCI? Did anything actually change?
And similarly AWACS systems today are praised for being enablers for greater command and control and awareness, but don't the controllers in an AWACS aircraft do the same thing as a GCI controller? They still take in info from a variety of sources, mainly radars, and direct the aircraft at their command what to do. Does being in a plane rather than being on the ground make that much of a difference, and how so? I'd understand in an expeditionary context but GCI is generally for homeland defense, so in that context is there that much of a difference?
Do we know how L3 crews felt about their vehicles in general, and how they felt going up against people with actual tanks and AT weapons? Particularly in North Africa, but also in Spain and Ethopia? Do we know how they felt if they later converted to actual tanks? Are there any memoirs akin to "Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks" but from an L3 crewman?
In hindsight, considering how things have gone, Trumps actions and the lack of any physical reveal of NGAD (both USAF and USN), it feels it would've been much funnier if the first public reveal of J-36 and Shenyang's one was during the Summit.
Sidenote, would the Internet have exploded more or less than back in December 2024, since it feels like the flights didn't really enter the public consciousness outside aviation/defense circles.