Well, I've certainly learned a lot here. I'd heard of Kaiser in a very vague sort of way, and of course we all know who Howard Hughes was over here. What a pity you didn't have the jet engine in the States - those flying boats could have shortened the war, I think, not to mention the enormous saving in lives.

Talking of Atlantic convoys, The horror writer Denis Wheatley wrote a novel (the name of which escapes me, as usual!) which put forward the idea of a large number of shallow-draught rafts, strung together like a great net, with big gaps between them. The idea was that torpedoes would pass underneath them and bombs would drop between them; and they'd be so strung out that, even if one was hit, most of the raft-net would be unharmed, and still attached to itself. The idea was never tried, as far as I know. Apparently DW had been a member of a committe of various, er, lateral thinkers called together in secret by the government to come up with just such clever ideas.

Steve