Sahara Dessert, can planes fly over

I know in the AA42 and Revised you can’t. If you can’t, why not. seems reasonable to allow.

Considering in the real war, there were no battles south of the Sahara there would have never been a reason for a fighter to launch an attack across the Sahara from North Africa. So based on any historical fact of a fighter never crossing it during the war as reason to denounce the idea of it being reasonable that it could in fact cross in to me unreasonable.

Also, considering the advances fighters made in WW2, the fact that it had never been done is a kin to rationalzing that 1.) Japan ships cannot cross into the Mediterranean to help Germany, and 2.) A bomber once it gets longe range aircraft, cannot use that extra space because it has never been able to do it in the past.

I am not an expert in the technical abilities of the aircraft at the time. I do understand however that German troops could not pass through the Sahara without probabbly dying and vehicles would likely breakdown if they tried.
But whether or not a fighter had the ability to fly over it safely, considering how high above they ground they are, is a perfectly rational question. With the basic understanding, (not and expert one) of the development of aircraft, from the first “Lindy Hop” across the atlantic in the 20’s, to the solo flights of Amelia Earhart, to the advances of longrange aircraft by the end of the war, it is not clear to me at all why fighters could not “obviously” fly over the Sahara.

Perfect example. Bad examples are ones where you can point to an example that supports your thesis where the conditions are either unknown or the conditions and variables are just right.

Amelia Earharts sucesses and ultimate failure show what aircrafts were capable and not capable of. For example, her first hop across the atlantic, making her the first female or “The Female Charles Lindberg” was at first seen as luck and, “the conditions were just right”. The idea of course that the only a man could operate under harsh conditions ect… But her following frequest flights were designed to test the abilities of her aircraft as well as her ability to fly it as a female. She flew across good weather and unexpected bad weather and showed that if a female could do it, it was safe for everyone. Which is why the airlines loved her, supported her, and paid her lots of money to be in the public. She herself could not afford her own planes or the repairs. Her final failure gives a realism of what she did, that it was real, and not faked.

Again, I am not an expert on aircraft capability. I only know of various aircrafts and some of there fights and actual flights. Stuff from the Histroy channel and stuff. Also some videos on specific aircrafts.

1.) HEAT The Sahara is not any hotter than many other regions that run along the tropic of cancer which is the hottest region in general across the globe due to the angle in which the sun rays hits it during the Northern Hemispheres summer, or the tropic of capicorn during the Southern Hemispheres summer. As a vetern of Iraq, I will tell you that I was in a maximum of 140 degree heat with kevalar, body armor thicker and heavier than anything in world war 2 and sat in an all metal humvee. I am sure the aircraft of the day had air conditioning due to the fragile instruments. If it didn’t, there are many other regions just as hot that does not have unpassable regions.

2.) I have a lot of experience having to due a lot of maintanence of equipement due to sand. But sandstorms on the the ground. They cover some sky, but common, “have I heard”, how about you obviously have not heard. Sand storms are not as bad 20,000 feet or so in the air. Again, I have no idea at this point how high the normal fighters of the day flew but the premise of my discussion was to find out something new from someone I may be overlooking, not something off the top of your head that seems to make some sense.

I am assuming IL is injecting some sort of humor.

I have seen and been in the midst of sand storms in Iraq. They look menacing from afar and can engulf you much like what appears in the 911 videos after the collapse. But I have never seen on go so high that planes cannot fly over them. Again I have no idea how high these planes of the day actually flew except through my perception of videos I have seen, but my sense is that they could easliy fly over them.

In terms of nowhere to land south of that, well in the rules of the game, planes can do percisely just that, is land just south of the Sahara???. I can see no being able to land in the Sahara, but we are talking about flying over it.

About the impassible part as far as ground units go, I imagine the historical pass did not cross the Sahara due to its terrain being to hard to fight in.

With my experience in Iraq, I can say that vehicle maintenance and weapon maintenance was horrific. As long as we cleaned out air filters and cleaned our weapons daily it did not hamper the mission. Of course if we ever had to do battle just after a sand storm, who knows. I was part of the second wave and spoke to soldiers who indeed had to fight in sand storms. It was difficult.

I can only imagine the Sahara being much worse and vehicles being more prone to breaking down in those days, so I imagine both sides just decided not to fight in the Sahara or try to out flank each other by traveling through it.