re: Crazy stats on the size of the U.S. Navy by January 1945

Japan wishes it still had never happened

Can you imagine how many gallons of diesel it took to run that many ships, and the cost that would be in today's dollars?

Read 'Arsenal of Democracy'. Capitalism at its finest.

quote:

---

And in the 60 years since then we ain't done shite

---

We first landed on the moon in 1962?

quote:

---

Shows how meaningless Pearl Harbor was from Japan’s perspective. Even if Japan succeeded and wiped out the entire US fleet at Pearl Harbor it would have been easily replaced quickly.

---

The Japanese were under no illusions that war with America was a huge gamble. But from the Japanese perspective in 1941 once we put the oil embargo on them, they had only two options:

1. Withdraw from China
2. Seize the oil from the Dutch East Indies they needed, which would mean war with the US, Britain, Australia, and the Dutch.

And they knew they only had a small window to decide before their oil reserves were exhausted. As we know they chose to roll the dice and go to war with the US. They hoped their plan to neutralize the Pacific Fleet, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, and Singapore rapidly and establish an extended defensive perimeter across the Central Pacific would convince the US and Britain to sue for peace instead of fighting a protracted war in the Pacific.

Where they miscalculated was (1) American Industrial capability to rapidly build up a navy on a never before in human history scale and (2) American resolve to accept the sacrifices necessary to grind the Japanese Empire down to powder in order to secure victory.

quote:

---

The ability to project force across an ocean is something that had arguably never happened in human history.

---

What?

The Brit's held like 25% of the world at one point

quote:

---

NASA engineers use computers to direct the moon landing.

---

Say friend, did you know that the US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

I see, but why did the English build them like that?

Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Well, why did they use that gauge in England?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing?

Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads?

The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts?

The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

So, just what does this have to do with the exploration of space?

Well, there's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's arse.


TLDR: Width of the rocket boosters for the space shuttle had to be transported by rail which limited the width to old specifications first made by the Romans.

So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's arse.
---this is an old internet myth. LINK /

Meanwhile: First flight 1902
nope. December 17, 1903
LINK

quote:

---

Can you imagine how many gallons of diesel it took to run that many ships, and the cost that would be in today's dollars?

---

Which is why tires and petrol were tightly rationed, and many people couldn’t get them at all.