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Heatloss Profile picture
@heatloss1986
Apr 29 • 7 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Moctezuma was also fascinated by the Spaniards and wanted to either entice them to stay or find a way to entrap them. He was incredibly powerful, and the power dynamics between Moctezuma and Cortes's party have been misrepresented since day one. Short 🧵
Ignoring the fact that Cortes wasn't even really in charge of his own party, people DID try to kill him at first. The Tlaxcalteca, upon spotting the party of Totonacs and Spaniards heading by them, attacked. After over two weeks, they realized that making an alliance was better.
Moctezuma was fascinated by these new people and wanted to either make them allies or make them "exhibits." Montezuma, according to Matthew Restall, was a great collector of wildlife and symbols of power. This was to show his incredible power as Huei Tlatoani.
On the topic of why people hated the Aztecs. It wasn't the fact that they committed human sacrifice. That was normal at the time in Mesoamerica. It was part of almost every religion and every major society, and the Aztec sacrifice numbers claimed are not backed up by archaeology.
The issue was the way the Aztecs abused the inhabitants of subjugated polities. They were slaves, they were occasionally sacrifices to Huitzilopotchli, to make him stronger, or they were forced to give SIGNIFICANT tribute in the form of expensive, labor-intensive goods.
It wasn't ideological, it was practical. The Aztecs were running a colonial empire, plain and simple.
Moctezuma was so powerful that he thought he could do anything he wanted with his visitors, not accounting for the fact that they might not play ball and ally with his enemies.
That's why he invited Cortes in. This would prove to be a colossal mistake.

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More from @heatloss1986

Heatloss Profile picture
May 1
A short thread on a poorly understood AIM-9 variant, the AIM-9B FGW.2, or in US nomenclature, AIM-9F. This was a German improvement program for the AIM-9B that entered service in 1969. (9F on the right) 🧵 Image
The 9F was a license-produced variant of the Sidewinder, designed to improve the seeker performance and reliability of the normal 9B. It did so in three ways: optical filtering, Carbon Dioxide cooling, and solid-state electronics.
To explain the CO2 cooling decision, we're going to need to cover a little bit of photovoltaic detector physics.
A photovoltaic detector produces a small current when it is exposed to a wavelength in its sensitive band. In the rear-aspect AIM-9s, this was Lead Sulfide.
Read 16 tweets
Heatloss Profile picture
Apr 26
In 1943, the US Navy deployed their first single-seat night fighters. These were F6F-3 Hellcats, modified to carry the AN/APS-4 X-band airborne search and gunnery-aiding radar. It was rapidly replaced by the APS-6, an improved system. A short thread on the functions of APS-6. 🧵 Image
Sorry in advance for the poor scan quality. I cannot find a better copy of this document publicly available, nor any other documents that display the radar displays in different modes. I will use some screenshots from when the scan quality is too poor.ibiblio.org
AN/APS-6 was a surprisingly simple radar set, having no range tracking functions and only two scan patterns. However, it had three different display functions, all with unique purposes.
The best place to start is with the two scan patterns, both used for different functions.
Read 14 tweets
Heatloss Profile picture
Apr 24
The AIM-4, Pk, and Hit to Kill, or why the AIM-4 was, in my opinion, the deadliest air-to-air missile the US had in the '60s.

A short thread on why the hit-to-kill method employed by the AIM-4 Falcon was more effective than the influence fuzes of its contemporaries.🧵 Image
The best place to start is with missile development status in 1951. Thanks again to @MassiasThanos for finding this document (ADA8001650 p.158).
At the time, the relative effectiveness of various methods for warhead kill was unknown. As such, different methods were explored. Image
The Falcon was intended to exploit the advantages that its highly accurate guidance and autopilot system provided it. By ensuring a direct hit, the warhead could be much smaller (1/3-1/10 the size), performance could be higher, and front-aspect shots were more reliable. Image
Read 19 tweets
Heatloss Profile picture
Apr 21
F-8's radar controls: A short thread on why on earth the early F-8's radar controls were so bad. Image
Our story actually starts with the F2H-3, the night fighter version of the F2H. In the F2H-3, the radar was controlled by a joystick and a range thumbwheel.


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At this time, radars required high pilot workload. Scope gain was controlled manually, there was no search antenna stabilization, and acquisition had to be done manually by pointing the antenna at the target and placing the range gate over the target. Image
Read 12 tweets
Heatloss Profile picture
Apr 18
"Why you can trust SCMP" You can't. This is mostly hot air.
A short, less-technical thread about this article. Image
The first problem is that I cannot find a study that matches this description and date. I did look, but I came up empty-handed.
Xie Junwei, though, is a real person who does relevant research at "Air and Missile Defense College, Air Force Engineering University".
This is the big claim. This isn't a new thing, radar cross-sections change based on wavelength. Most fighters are optimized for X-band stealth (or other frequency bands around it), as those bands are the most relevant in fighter and missile radars.
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Read 13 tweets
Heatloss Profile picture
Apr 14
AAM-N-3 started life sometime in the early 1950s as a replacement for the beam-riding AAM-N-2 Sparrow I, which proved to be wholly inadequate. It featured an aerodynamic redesign, and, more importantly, an active radar homing seeker.

Sparrow II: the odd one out. 🧵 Image
Developed by Sperry-Douglas, like the first one, the second Sparrow was primarily intended to provide a better guidance system to allow for successful intercepts of maneuvering targets, or from other angles besides head or side on.
A secondary goal was the higher survivability that Sparrow II would offer to the launching aircraft, as it did not have to maintain a target lock. This was very forward-thinking, and would not be properly reconsidered until AIMVAL in the 1970s. Image
Read 25 tweets

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