Warmaker

I think he's there for "Boy on Boy Action." But that's my cynical side talking about this rehash.

Indeed. Germany has bigger problems. Like the British on their islands. The French. Oh, can't forget the Soviets Oh well. And this animation's set in 1943! Edit to add: This is all I came up with for the gun you mentioned. My search results were pretty sparse, but it was the best I could find. According to it, the gun you mentioned was developed in 1943 but fielded for regular use in 1948. The USS Des Moines which was supposed to carry this gun was only commissioned in 1948. Her only Sister ships, USS Salem and USS Newport News were both commissioned in 1949.

She was messed up, yes, but she piloted with style

Better yet, they would be more than happy to "blow s**t up... and planets" in enemy space. Not counting the Death Stars and such, the Empire also fielded powerful, large warships. The other thing was that New Republic leadership was fragmented. You even had portions of the New Republic wishing to turn over Luke's new Jedi Order to the Vong in a vain hope that the enemy would leave them alone "Pretty please? Stop killing us! Here, have these Jedi instead!" Not only was leadership fragmented until much too late, it was also hesitant. The Empire? "Planet destroyed, sir. Shall we move on to the next one?"

Autoloading cannons were numerous in WWII. But you're off the mark in on one thing. Large caliber cannons were NOT autoloading until decades later. WWII had automatic cannons in the range of 20mm thru 40mm. The German Hs-129 airplane had a uncommon variant with a rare autoloading 75mm PaK (anti-tank cannon). But there were NO large caliber guns that autoloaded. The famous German 88mm? No. 105mm cannons? No. Soviet 122 or 152mm cannons? No. Battleship 14inch thru the Yamato's massive 18inch guns? Definitely no, and entire crews were devoted to manning these guns. Railway guns?. No, had a large logistics trail and required more men to run than merited. There's a difference on small caliber cannons and the big caliber stuff, namely the size and weight of the rounds. It's easy to make an autoloading / feed system for smaller cannon sizes like 20mm, 37mm, etc. than something like 105mm or 16inch shells (406mm).

Maybe, but hopefully it doesn't come to that. Besides, wasn't the F-111 first accepted by the Air Force then was almost put forcibly through the Navy's throat?

They're still mechs though

I was working launches for the MAGTF demos at 2006's Miramar Air Show. So if he was the Narrator last year for the Blue Angels, then I did hear him. It's unfortunate. But fatal aviation mishaps occur all the time, especially if a military flies alot (training, combat ops, etc). Even experienced demonstration teams have the occasional event like this. Condolences to the man's family. ----- As for the best replacement of the F/A-18C, the jury is still out on that. The Superbug needs to prove itself. The JSF? All I've heard is the numerous problems of development. As for the F-16C replacement, I have very little knowledge on the Falcon's blocks, even less with the newer block being mentioned. The JSF problem still applies with the Naval variant. The JSF to me is suffering from too many requirements from too many services from too many countries. The US Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force all have standards that they need. Fine. Then there's the needs of the RAF and other interested parties who have their own requirements. I guess we'll see how this one goes.

Here it comes ... There was no such thing as autoloading artillery in those days also, which means all artillery pieces required gun crews. What does that mean? The gun crews in the German mech's forearms must have been very dizzy or got alot of motion sickness. Maybe a shell or two flying around loose Since we had P-51's flying around with drop tanks while conducting patrols over a friendly base, sporting D-Day Invasion Stripes in 1943... in the Pacific... Why didn't any of those US Navy Battleships fire at the mech? 16-inch guns firing shells as heavy as cars at one of those mechs would be like dropping a hammer on top of a beetle No ship is left completely unattended!

A 3ft long SSD? I'd love to see that. I've got a 2ft ISD on hand it looks impressive. But a 3ft long SSD? Yummy! Show pics once you've got progress, plz! Edit to add: Just so it's known, the ISD I have isn't built by me. I don't have that level of skill. It was scratchbuilt by someone for me. I won't claim work / credit for myself

A bit, but I was disenchanted by the characters and how the remaining heroes acted that I never finished the series, just checked summaries to know what happened in the end. Let get this off now though. I'm not a fan of the New Republic era for most parts. Some stories have been good from that era (Heir to the Empire trilogy), at least to me. But alot of it seemed very strange and vastly different from the Original Trilogy. Maybe I'm just too die hard a fan of the classical Galactic Civil War with the big, evil Empire vs the underdog Rebels fighting the good fight. If it was after RotJ, most of it I didn't like. I didn't care much for the Y.Vong, since I felt they were a copies of other alien races from other shows. The only thing that was decent with the NJO books was the overall scope of the invasion since it encompassed alot of fleet actions. But the rest of the luggage weighed it down for me. ----- I hear you on that. It seemed he had alot of fun with his last role as Palpatine / Sidious. In the Original Trilogy, you barely saw him, and most of it was only on Ep.VI. In the Prequels, he was that seemingly "Nice old guy, the Chancellor." He had small parts where he gets to play evil. But Ep.III? That's where he got the chance to play bad more. The creepy Opera house scene, concluding with "Not from a Jedi" line. When the Jedi Masters come for his arrest towards the end. His fight with Yoda "... and I threw the WHOLE Senate at him, LOL! True story!" Simply put, Ian McDermid had alot more screentime, and he made great use of it, for the benefit of Star Wars fans. Also, another thing that the Ep.III novelisation did very well was the arrest scene by the Jedi Masters. There's a bit of talk between Master Windu and Chancellor Palpatine, but when it became apparent that the Jedi were arresting him one way or the other with no recourse, Palpatine had this expression of great relief, relishing the moment, "You can't possibly know how long I've been waiting for this" as he brought his lightsaber out. ----- Here's a Star Wars geekery question. A sort of "What if?" Who do you think would have handled the Y.Vong invasion better? The New Republic? Or the Galactic Empire at its height?

I would love to see the 1/72 USS Enterprise out of WWII. All the other subjects are modern carriers, but to see an older ship design along with the proper aircraft for the period would have been great to see. I used to have the issue with the USS Forestal.

WWII mecha has been done before... with Japanese animation, IIRC. I never saw it, but there's stuff you'll find on the 'net for it, even model kits. The ones I've seen were only for German mechs, but had a construction style that you could draw similarities to actual Panzers, even the paint scheme. Military Modeller magazine even had a little review on one of these kits. I wish I can remember the name of the production.

I'm on the same boat. The series' last episodes left me with a "WTF did they do to the show?" thought in my head. I saw the subsequent movies. - A big "Previously on Evangelion" episode. Dull. - A "We want to retell the ending but still leave it a WTF moment" episode. Ugh. My gripe was that the endings (series or movie) were so completely out of whack with the rest of the series, it's like the movie "A.I." but done over the course of several episodes. As for the possible "removal" of Asuka, I'd hate that. Shinji - His self-pity, especially in the movie. Doom. -- Sweet Mother of Meat did I hate him in EoE. Rei - Drone. Gloom. Asuka - Offsetting personality compared to other pilots. Spontaneous. Nice to see they seem to want to retain Y.Sadamoto's designs, but no Asuka? Meh...

Well, we have had time travelling Aircraft Carriers, courtesy of "The Final Countdown."

Lastly, the Mustangs sortied from a nearby airfield... with fuel drop tanks, not rockets or bombs

Take this opportunity and remember NOT to see it. Looking at Kate Beckinsale was the only saving grace of the movie. But it didn't offset the utter trash that surrounded the rest of it!

Quite campy, but oh well. A good amount of effort put in. Funny to see: - The German mech's swastika is backwards on the left shoulder - US Air Force rank chevrons and titles... when the US Air Force did not exist as a service. It was US Army Air Corps back in WWII. - No rockets or bombs by the sortied aircraft. Mech designs needs work, but I agree: 10x better than Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor!

Seeing a black-clad Darth Vader cutting apart and Force Choking Jedi would've been awesome As far as the fight with Dooku at Ep.III, not much to say there. At least in the novelization it was far more descriptive and not as abrupt as the actual movie scenes were. The thoughts going through Dooku's head in the novel were interesting also. I didn't mind Aayla Secura's death. I laughed as much from all the other Jedi deaths since I was looking forward to them dying Each and every single one of them except for Obi-Wan and Yoda were so screwed in so many different ways. Aayla's was abrupt, quick. Then there were the extra shots, "Just to be sure, sir." The Speederbike chick? Bit a rock column! The Jedi Starfighter pilot? WOOSH! Ki-Adi Mundi? He was charging on a bridge, leading the Clones against the CIS. He stops, feeling something wrong, only to see his Clones point ALL their blasters at him. Hostile Clones (with armored vehicles) behind him. Hostile Droids in front of him. Stuck in the center of a bridge. Yeah, you're f***ed buddy! ----- Since someone mentioned Star Wars Galaxies, let me get into what was once in SWG. Combat Upgrade era Jedi Animations I'm using Jedi as an example since they had by far the most varied animations in SWG before the NGE. Combat animation when the later NGE hit was atrocious and oversimplified. Basically, if you took 2 little kids, gave them styrofoam bats, and told them to hit each other on the head with it, it looks a tad bit like combat does in the NGE "New Game Enhancements." Another gift from the NGE era of SWG!

That would be interesting, wouldn't it? How the Mitsubishi Hellcat faced off against the Mitsubishi Zero?

Ah, the NJO and the subsequent Y.Vong invasion. I utterly despised that. Horrible, horrible. To top it off, to make the series important, they killed off Chewbacca just to make an "oh noes" moment. What's bad is that some of the few good EU writers got sucked into that toilet flush. Ugh...

Maybe it's just me, but: Northrop F6F Hellcat Northrop-Grumman F6F Hellcat They both sound ridiculous and "unholy" Why? Because it's another company tacking it's name onto the past works and glories of the original company's, whether they own that company now or not. Let me use an extreme "what if?" "What if" BAE bought Boeing? It could be: BAE P-51 Mustang, or maybe BAE-North American P-51 Mustang? Or BAE-Boeing P-51 Mustang? Either way still sounds sacrilegious. As sacrilegious as Northrop-Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which sounds so wrong coming from every compass direction, legal or not. The purist in me prefers seeing the original company's name with that aircraft when it was produced, not seeing another company's name tacked on because they can.

I never read the novelization of RotJ back then. But anyways, fans by far had no grief with Anakin's injuries resulting from his fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

That game was bugged to hell and back! It came out when I was really into flight simming, and I recall it maybe had 1-2 official patches and that was it. It was still broken afterwards. Which is sad since the idea of it was great.

Even before the Prequels came out, there already was alot of guesswork that Darth Vader's injuries were from a fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi long before even the events of ANH. There were even some correctly guessing that the injuries were a fiery / hi temperature infliction. To me, this works well, since Anakin was defeated by the one man who was closest to knowing him inside and out. Obi-Wan and Anakin have been together since Anakin was a small kid fresh off of Tatooine. Everyone else, i.e. the schmucks at the Jedi Temple and Mace Windu, were cut down. Of course, there were more Jedi in that temple than those small Padawans. It was the Jedi Order's HQ, afterall. You see some examples of Anakin killing Jedi from the Holographic Recordings that Obi-Wan and Yoda checked (and Yoda recommended not to view).