considering this is post #6800 , a multiple of 400 , with the tradition of like ı am alive or something .
now ı have killed some time with style , "designed" SW gear for "real life" , you know , with them being so inspired by real life . There are modelling sites on the web , where ı would have to have an account in some picture site to show them , if ı had any desire to show , because ı was like seriously buzzed by jets with my totally made up alternative history of Turkish Navy fielding an aircaft carrier in the Black Sea by real American help , in the 1960s . And of course , people . Some of them , well , respect me and some , ı don't know whether the word hate would be appropriate for more than a few ...
so , in some place ı won't name because they do nicely about not knowing my fake account or anything , because Lockmart keeps them for more important stuff that might later arise , there has been this spectacular post or something about the visual masterpiece of Empire Strikes back . The guy twists the unexisting thing and fits it to an alternative reality , and humppft , nobody makes a comment . Actually , ringing the bell on the rather limited requirement , correct theater , like the correct company but wrong decade .
you see , American Marines started to take the Japanese very seriously after the Great War . (Don't be silly , they didn't want AT-ATs !) And something with legs might have been rather useful for a limited amount of time during the landings that would have to happen in the vast expanses of the Pasific . One final doodle , you know , drawing or something was a cross of these two , not directly but you will have to imagine , because documentation would be like problematic ... Thumbsize pics ı found on the web :
and
the dwarf spider droid and the crab one , put a 37 mm cannon on a half spherical turret on a rather blocky hull looking far stouter with far more straighter lines . Hearsay of course , the guys imply one of them might or might not have been sent over to inspect troops when USMC was training the initial cadre of Amphibious lnfantry and talk might have diverted to that or not . Totally went nowhere because while it could somehow float there was no way of moving it on land , certainly not in a combat situation where the enemy would be anyone but denizens of less developed islands ... armed with pipes and poisoned darts and coconut shells to cover what you will have to guess . There would certainly be Japanese artillery in combat , most probably dual purpose anti-aircraft / coastal defence guns 75 mm/ 3 inches and bigger . (The very thing that immediately made any survivable tank into the 50/60 ton class when they became widespread in the anti-tank duty .) But it lived for a week or two ...
and it would need a maker . For this USN opted for a new choice . Aviation was not exactly popular at the time , battleship partizans objected to any further divertion of funds so the money would have to come from plane people . Who discussed it with aviation companies , to get a return with future airplane contracts . Howard Hughes had a thing against Northrop and as a result Douglas , Grumman had temporarily fallen afoul of some in Washington , car companies were paying close attention to where passenger planes were going , so Navy chose Brewster , literally the American Rolls Royce , because ı checked Wikipedia . Which ı never do before finishing the main section because it tends to cloud things ... Should have offended no one , right ? Project died a rightful death , Navy decided Brewster should stay and Grumman being punished -with Brewster Buffalo becoming the first Navy monoplane fighter- was also given a contract for the Wildcat .
you need some interest in aviation to notice Brewster did a solid start . An optimized shape for both fighter and scout requirement , the latter to mostly serve as a dive bomber in the war . You know , just like a car , fit for serial production . Which finally led to trouble . Brewster given a lot of chance and its managers did their utmost to ruin that , because afterall they were part of the system . Buffalo prototype unable to follow the requirement , so the concept proven in a windtunnel ... So striking that every American plane has had tons of windtunnel work afterwards . Even more problematical was the Buccaneer , the larger Buffalo to become the scout . Navy created the Brewster aviation company , provided funds and stuff and the unions did that their part . Wikipedia gives links to some webpages , from one you learn the factory workers would have sexual intercourse inside fuselages , back luck charm or whatever . Workers so defiantly ignored calls for not stealing tools or forgetting them inside the planes (so that the tools could jam something and cause a crash) ... an entirely new machine was invented . A crane waiting for freshly assembled plane at the end of the line , lifts it up in the air , rotates it 180 degrees down and shakes it mightily for a while , to let anything loose to come off . Nazis using concentration camp inmates as forced labour never needed that ...
there was still hope for Brewster though . Car companies were breaking every record in production and profits , they wanted something extra and that meant a land based fighter for Navy service . Somewhat lighter than carrier fighters which were completely capable of being used from land bases , so rationally should lead to longer range and similar benefits . Which would have been won by the Thunderbolt , with incredible protests to emanate from the Mustang faction but had Brewster had a proper management they could have something available like this in the summer of 1942 to compete with the Hellcat . Could have still been allowed to proceed but the unions had a strike in '43 or so . With an Union boss declaring in the newspapers that if he had a brother in the war and the brother was to die because the union boss didn't deliver the planes , it was a good thing for the brother to die , because the lifestyle of the Union boss had to be protected ...
some Japanese plane captured and tested , also happens to be the best lJN fighter to see combat .
all becoming part of the design process thing as Ralph McQuarrie was talking with George Lucas on what to do . Lord of the Rings being the template and they had trouble realising a spider , to look believeable on the screen . Lucas was far more sold on the Olephaunts and the terror elephants used to strike in the hearts of ancients and the limitations of animation at the time created its own charm . AT-AT being so large that you can fly a plane around its legs ... The thing to remember is of course that McQuarrie came from defence , even if only as an artist in Boeing . So , they put away what might have been a drawing in the 30s ...
actually the very first plan was getting the seperatists do a through analysis of the debacle on Naboo and have all their combat vehicles on legs , while the Republic would be on wheels and combat trucks . Episode lll than ending with realisation that the seperatists were already there with a first glimpse of AT-ATs . The clone tank AT-TE or something was to be basic Roger Roger thing for the duration of the Clone Wars , with the droids totally exposed to elements . ı imagine it will be then fitting to end the post with silly talk on how SW is not merely a real life book about the hero with thousand faces .
