I was a Navy aviation electronics technician for about 12 years, and I did many experiments.
What model of Wright Flyer did the Navy have when you were in?
I was USAF and I think I remember Wilbur and Orville coming to our base to try to sell us airplanes.[/QUOTE
The internal resistance of a battery is quite low (otherwise it would have a difficult time sourcing 100-200 amps or more.)
When a battery is charging the current flow into the battery is reduced by the battery voltage, i.e. if you apply 20 volts through a 10 ohm resister, don't expect anywhere near 2 amps because the battery will subtract its voltage (10-13 or thereabouts depending on state of charge) Say the battery was down to 10 volts, then in the example above you'd be giving it about 1 amp. Don't call the electricity police as Ohm's law is not being violated. You have to use a little 'rithmetic (Algebra?) to account for the "backwards" voltage of the battery which subtracts from the "frontwards" voltage of your charger machine thingy.
Need proof? Put three flashlight batts in series but with one of them backwards to the other two. (They are about 1.5 volts each. Measure the voltage across the combination and you'll see it is equal to about one batt, i.e. 2-1=1 and there is no Magic Conveyor Belt involved.
Pat
No, I am not that old, but I did stay at the Holiday INN, and I did fly in P2V, and P3C aircraft for about 22 years.
Now tell me Patrick, have you ever charged a 12 volt battery with 120 v AC? This all started with a circuit to rejuvenate a 12 V lead cell batteries. Now someone said it would be dangerous if the diode shorted, so he was going to test out what would happen. So, if you know for sure what will happen, . by all means go ahead and post your theory. I think you jumped in here not fully informed. I don't discredit what you know, so just tell the true facts as you know them.