Stalins Organ
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Posts posted by Stalins Organ
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Aff I think you are wrong there - stuff that was left in the UK was sold at 10c in the $ rathe than being returned or scrapped, but that was added to the wartime debt for stuff that could not be returned.
the whole was then made into a 60 yr loan at 2% which the Brits finished repaying in 2006.
the graph below shows the value of NZ LL - little enough, but it illustrates tht it wasn't all 1-way.
The official LL "story" for NZ is here
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Dunno that they paid up "fully" - didn't they come to an "arrangement" by which they paid some as "full and final settlement"?
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If the Luftwaffe had concentrated their attack on the control centers, they might have at least neutralized the RAF. But even that would not have made SEALION a winning proposition.
Michael
KO'ing 11 Group's control centres wouldn't really have helped IMO - fighter Command was prepared to withdraw beyond London at strength levels well above "destroyed", and the control centres for 10 and 12 group were never going to be attacked and could probably have taken over the task of controlling 11 Group's area (I don't specifically know this but it seems like a reasonable measure to have available!)
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Of interest to some may be that a Spitfire in Al Deere's markings was recently restored here in NZ by Al's nephew Brendan.
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Heavy machine tools take big bombs to damage - as the USAAF found later int hte way - the "standard" 500 lb/220kg bombs used early on could damage buildings, but even a direct his probably wouldnt' put machinery out of action for long.
As Jon says, the RAF had a heap more in reserve than the LW - RAF panicked when their pilot ratio got down to 1.5 per fighter....but the LW never rose ABOVE 1.1 per 109 (from a paper I did 2 decades ago...), and at one point in 1940 Britain was outproducing Germany in single-engined fighters by 2:1 (450/mth vs 220).
The RAF also never had less than a couple of hundred Spits & Hurricanes in reserve, and never less than 600 serviceable in squadrons, plus those in repair depots etc.
There was no way the LW was ever going to destroy the RAF - of course it didn't seem that way to people at the time, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we can make that assertion now.
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According to this thread there are 5 flying 2-seat spitfires - all of them in the UK.
Assembling 3 in 1 place might not be too difficult given the right incentives, but it doesn't make them any more common.
and of course all of them are conversions of 1 seaters - the one sold above having been converted this century....so there used to be only 4......
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oops - that should be US1.9 million - NZ$2.8 million at the time
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no - tha'ts about right - even a bit on the expensive side, but then yuo can afford to pay ove hte odds when you've got that much money and you REALLY want it.
One sold locally NZ$1.9 million in Sept 2008
Plus it's a 2 seater - not many of them around.
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How long for tho?
It is presumably much easier to find amazing voices like hers now & once another few come out of the woodwork will she be newsworthy any more?
What happens to her then? How long until the dream is over for her?
hopefully she'll be able to cash up in hte meantime tho.......
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Well let's compare it to the Centurion I then .......
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and how many countries doing something about it would it take?
Of course if they actually used it then I suggest it'd be "all bets are off" time....
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I got this from a 3rd party this morning & have no way of checking, but Jane's is usually pretty reliable, and it has to be bad news for all and sundry if true!
(bah - it's one post - for some reason the board insists on inserting a seperate quote for the 2nd para)
Janes Defence Weekly says that according to a Hamas spokesman, the smugglers convoy blown up by an Israeli airstrike on the Sudanese border contained a large number of Russian Igla SA-16 and SA-18, Iranian Misagh 2 and a few early Stinger manpad SAMs.Lebanese sources have told Janes that the Iranians have offered to supply Hezbullah with mustard gas, VX and Sarin warhead rockets. The names of the officials organising this were also passed on, and include senior members of Syrian intelligence and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. If the offer is accepted, the weapons will be supplied from the Syrian facility in Aleppo where dozens of Syrian engineers and 15 Iranian officers were killed when a Scud-C with a chemical warhead blew up in July 2007.
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My sense of humour is scorching......that's how I can spot things that aren't funny:cool:
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Or, possibly, Blucher's memory isn't that hot & you could just read the article to check out what happened...??
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.
He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.
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There's room for plenty of fast actino films - both sci-fi comedies and gritty "realistic" ones with heroes and anti-heroes galore.
Bourne was good, bond was good, bourne got better, bond got better - wtf more could u want?
Why limit yourself?
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Are politicians any less stupid when they are not in power?
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Yep - civil society didn't evolve in the west overnight, nor is it just 1 thing - it consists of a vast range of social, legal and even moral underpinnings, and it's hard to see how you could impose it without changing teh target society to include all those things - ie to gut a society and remake it entirely.
Can't se that happening in Iraq in the near future - nor in any of the othermore-or-less autocratic theocracies, monarchies and seriously limited "democracies" in the Mid east.
they have 1300 years of Islamic tradition - if something new can't build on that then i think it has no chance.
Likely they'll just have to evolve themselves - hopefully "we" can give them a good example to evolve into - but it is a long process - Robber Barons are only jsut over 100 years ago, unbridled capitalism has wrecked the global economy only in the last year.....are we so wonderful?
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By "South Florida" you mean Havana?
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CNAR?? see...nah!
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Yeah - another 100k years of evolution might start getting rid of the instinctive quest for power........
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yep - every peaceful period has been ended by some sort of bloody pogrom.......as soon as there's any sort of threat people start looking for scapegoats, imagineing dangers, etc.
clans, families - doesn't mater what social groupings her are - they are all susceptable to conflict - it doesn't have to cause anything to fall apart sergei - there is plenty of conflict around the world today in societies that are not "falling apart" - but the conflict is still real and part of the constant change that is going on.
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Nice happy co-habitation of different nationalities, races, religons, etc occurs as a fairy tale every now and then - but it never lasts long.
Maybe in 50 years there will be some realisation of this - but alas it's jsut wishful thinking by liberals* extending their ideas to the limits.
there have been eras where there has been more or less tolerance - the Roman Empire wasn't too bad...mostly.....many other rulers have taken a pragmatic approach - "it doesn't matter what race/religon yuo are as long as you do what I say".....but such attitudes invariably fall apart sooner or later.
IMO we've got 100k+ years of evolution where keeping "us" against "them" was a survival trait to get over...and it ain't gonna happen soon!
I have no doubt the last 20 years ** will shortly be consigned to history too.....
* - I count myself as a liberal.....but I like to think I have more pragmatism than the idealist also often referred to as "the looney left"
** - 'cos that's as long as this idea has been extant for "the west" this time around - the allies had no problems with "ethnic cleansing" of Germany after WW2 and it's not so long they were lynching "people of colour" in the 'states, they were seizing Maori land here in NZ as lately as 1952, and only gave Aboriginals full voting rights at State and Commonwealth level in the '60's.........
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My kids were forced to take archery, riding and 10 pin bowling lessons, they are currently being forced to take swimming lessons, they are forced to go to school, forced to go to the dentist & doctor, forced to take medicines, forced to sit around my dance lessons sometimes, used to get forced to be in time out lots, forced to go to bed at given times......
Kid's don't get a lot of choices unless their parents are slack!
Australians wrest obesity title from US
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
I can't believe we actually rejected them before (apparently) forking out the dosh.....usually we have to have stuff in service for ages before deciding not to bother with the expensive refit required to make it actually useful!
Sea trials are normally where everything is proved - displacement, seaworthiness, speed, etc. & any "officials" overseeing construction can only go on what the constructor tells them anyway.