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Merkin Muffley

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Everything posted by Merkin Muffley

  1. Presumably place a cup of tea near the trunk and they get down under their own steam. Thus the phrase - "dropping in for tea".
  2. 3/4 of US supplies to Russia arrived via the pacific ports and through Persia. Of course that means they wouldn't have got all those Valentines and Hurricanes, but they probably weren't pivotal.
  3. Yes. Once it's out I fear I won't be posting here nearly as much as I currently do.
  4. For clarification, dt should have stressed that these cheeks are off the head of a pig.
  5. I'm not having a pop at the Belgians or the thrust of your point, but the Belgians surrendered on 28th May which was some few days before the evacuation at Dunkirk was complete. The French and British were there in much greater numbers, so I'm not entirely persuaded that the Belgians featured so pivotally at Dunkirk as you suggest. That's obviously not to say that there weren't heroic defences at other locations.
  6. >they controlled 98 percent of the available onions in Chicago Blimey! That' shallot.
  7. The first two pdfs referenced here http://www.thinlyveiled.com/kchristensen.htm have two (different) email addresses for him.
  8. from http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/132%2002-09.pdf it says 'KEVIN CHRISTENSEN, B.A., English, is a technical writer living in Lawrence, Kansas. He has published several articles, including the recent, “The Temple, the Monarchy, and Wisdom: Lehi’s World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker,” in Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem. His email is kskchris@sunflower.com.' The document is dated May 2004. The pdf has some details on 'Sunstone', which may have something to do with sunflower.com and might be traceable via that organisation.
  9. When becomes the important difference is presumably the specific use of *medium* in the second quote. For completeness and context (1944) there was the 400 per month Soviet heavy AFV production (and the German equivalent of say 90 per month), and the 600 per month Soviet SU76 production (and German light AFV of say 200 per month). There might be an argument for excluding the light AFV production. It might even be convincing. Why one would want to arbitrarily exclude Soviet heavy AFV production of a third as much again as Soviet medium AFV production eludes me. I think its just easier to say that German AFV production equalled Soviet AFV production in 1944 (as long as you arbitrarily exclude 20-40% of Soviet AFV production). Or, perhaps we are using different sources for AFV production, in which case I can't see that either position can be stated dogmatically.
  10. Did you have some particular day, week, month or year in mind? My recollections was that peak Soviet AFV production was at least a third as much again (as German) - if not more, and a trivial check (Wikipedia - so certainly not infallible) seemed to support that impression. I'm sure you have your good sources, but just stating that something is crock doesn't make it so.
  11. Jason, although your M109 experience gives you a real familiarity with the process, isn't the comparison between an M109 turret and JSII turret marked by a huge disparity in size? It's not going to help the JSII's rate at all.
  12. As usual for odd stuff, the reviews are worth a read. "I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, it was half empty. "
  13. I was hoping that the politeness would be for mine and others' benefit, not your 'target'.
  14. JonS - we get the point. Could you be more polite? I am a delicate flower and it grates.
  15. By spring 1943 1,005 DEs had been ordered but only 563 were completed (the rest being cancelled)! The RN received 78 Captain class frigates - all bar 10 arriving in 1943. Once the shipyards got up to speed, they were progressing from laid down to commissioned in 3-4 months. Because they were Lend-Lease, most of these were returned by the RN to the USN after the war. Just in case they didn't have enough already.
  16. As an aside on the complexities of assessing ships' overall performance I have an amusing excerpt on the (US-built) Royal Navy Captain class/US Navy Buckley class destroyer-escorts/frigates/corvettes (destroyer-escorts in US parlance, frigates in British, but given corvette pendant numbers in RN usage). (Note these are 1942 vintage vessels, not the WWI flush-deck jobs). The CO of HMS Duckworth wrote a comprehensive report: "They are agreeably dry in most weather and after riding out a sharp North Atlantic gale I can report that there is small risk of weather damage. In fact the ships behave like corks. Rolling - since this report is being written at sea it is difficult to describe with reticence the nauseating movement of these vessels in the open sea [...] The violent 'lurching' is the principal controlling factor in in efficiency. As gun platforms these ships are satsfactory only under the most favourable weather. Depth charge reloading is possible in a moderately heavy sea pounding the ship [...] Under average conditions however it must be an even bet whether the throwers lob their charges vertically upwards and on to the quarterdeck or immediately alongside the propellers [...] Limitations on speed and course to windward impose a severe limitation on depth charge attacks while the Hedgehog is inaccurate in a short head swell on account of the unpredictable roll and the resultant tilt." To quantify this - before modification, in rough weather HMS Cooke (a Captain class vessel) had a roll of 56 degrees (from side to side) and a period of 7.5 seconds. I can't determine if the period is from one side to the other and back, or just from one side to the other. Anyway, the little Flower class corvettes (deemed quite lively and 'would roll on wet grass') would roll across 17 degrees in sea-state 5 in a period of 5 to 8.5 seconds.
  17. I've taken the test, but I'm only revealing my score on a nerd to know basis.
  18. For sheer readability, The Battle: A New History of the Battle of Waterloo by Alessandro Barbero and John Cullen is a cracking book. It is much more than that, but is a real can't-put-it-down read.
  19. From Leakey's Luck: (regarding an escapade in Normandy, when he was 7RTR) "Yet, according to my calculations, this German position was in the middle of a wheatfield about 200 yards from where we were. Stupidly I decided to confirm my suspicions. The corn was almost waist-high, abd I had no trouble in remaining concealed as I crawled forward up the gentle slope towards the position where I suspected the observation post was. But, of course, my field of view was very limited, so after crawling about 100 yards, I slowly stood up, looking ahead very carefully. I was standing with my legs apart looking through my binoculars when the Germans fired at me. They had a very cleverly concealed anti-tank gun not more than 100 yards from me, and it was a shell from this gun that they fired at me. I would like to have met that German gunner and congratulted him on his marksmanship. He had evidently been taught to fire at the bottom of the 'bull', and as a result the shot passed between my legs, and all it did was to burn two holes in my trousers and singe my crutch. An inch higher and he would have claimed the family jewels!"
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