FD AU 3

[Bordkanone 75]

What had I done with myself?
(Schrage on the Hungarian 110G removed.)

[Hood]

Nice additions.

[Sareva]

[odysseus1980]

[eswube]

Nice drawings.

@Bordkanone75
Re: Hungarian Bf-110 - You can have either rear-gunner's MG or the Schräge Musik, but not both of them. There's simply not enough space there.

[Bordkanone 75]

Silver arrows, but there's more included.

[Hood]

Nice work, I especially like the camo effect on the bottom-left one.

[llamaman2]

Love the camo schemes, BK

I've been throwing some South American AU ideas around in my head for a while and finally got around to making a start. Bolivia is the easiest, being landlocked and fairly short on funds, so here's the start. Argentina sold thirty of its ageing Meteor F.4's to the FAB in 1954, the jets being replaced in the Argentine inventory by Sabres ordered a few years earlier than IRL. The arrival of first-gen jets allowed the ageing Mustangs to concentrate on the ground attack role.



The gull grey Meteors would operate in Bolivian skies for fourteen years, before their eventual replacement in 1968.

[llamaman2]

On 30 November 1967, a powderkeg of dissent within all levels of Bolivian society with its leadership ignited. The multitude of factions within the Army had decided that the policies of General René Barrientos Ortuño were more of a threat than the other factions were, and accordingly moved on La Paz and imprisoned Barrientos in a bloodless coup. After some power-brokering, the left-leaning Colonel Juan José Torres González and General Alfredo Ovando Candía were appointed President and armed forces Chief of Staff respectively. The pair turned to the Eastern Bloc for military and economic aid.

The USSR donated 'new' equipment in the form of secondhand MiGs and tanks, namely MiG-21 interceptors, MiG-17 fighter-bombers, MiG-15UTI trainers and T-54 tanks. All of this kit was taken from the scrapheap and sent in small numbers to replace Bolivia's Second World War equipment.

MiG-15UTI:


MiG-17F:


MiG-21F-13:


T-54:


The Soviet Union provided training and maintenance for the donated equipment, but the eventual downfall of Torres and his government led to the equipment being bartered to the USA in return for American gear.

For anyone with a masochistic streak, the full piece explaining the coup is here.

[Sareva]

Something basic, I credited GlaciesFire because I used his tires from the wonderful VBTP drawing. Otherwise, the rest is mine.