ShrikeHawk

Well that's awesome. Congratulations! There's a link to my blog in my sig. Lots of SciFi flash fiction and other stuff if you're interested.

Sounds like you had fun (except for the toe). So were on a writing panel. Does that mean you're a writer? Have you published anything?

Yep. I've got a Tigercat in my install. A ww2 (1947) skin would be great.

I've heard of the GSG-9. They're one of the world's elite units. I'm not thinking that special units are springing up just now, it's that they are called to the scene so quickly. Wasn't it 2,300 police units in the streets within hours? Yikes! That's fast, but that's the world we live in just now. When I was a kid, the police resisted calling in a mere SWAT team. Things had to be dire before that happened. Now a country calls in the equivalent of SEAL Team 6, for a shooting in a mall. Munich did the right thing of course. It was a necessary precaution. It's just a testament of the times we live in. Anyway, this kid was nothing more than a nutjob, though clearly a smart one. He knew how to hack a Facebook account, and get a gun in a country where they're hard to find. What a waste! If he was that smart, he could've done a lot of good. Instead, whatever was screwy in his in his head was allowed to fester and rot. We need a Rapid Deployment Psych Team, the mental health equivalent of GSG-9. There's teams of people looking for domestic terrorists. Why don't we have teams trying to find folks before they take a gun into the mall?

They made a TV Movie about this called, "Raid on Entebbe." Found it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2l49g5

Interesting how quickly "special units" appear these days. It's a sign that we are living in "interesting times."

From CNN: The teen gunman who killed nine people in a shooting rampage in Munich on Friday was a mentally troubled individual who had extensively researched spree killings and had no apparent links to ISIS, police said. Speaking at a press conference in the southern German city Saturday, police officials said the 18-year-old lone attacker -- who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound -- had no political motivations, and no references to religion had been found in documents in his home. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/23/europe/germany-munich-shooting/ So this is a case catastrophic teen ennui, I guess.

Thanks for this, Wrench!

Cool, but what the hell is that? Some early glide bomb?

*Sigh* I always loved the Super Entendard. A beautiful plane, a great plane. Sad to see her go.

Late Pacific war and into a "what if" scenario including Japanese jets.

These guys have some pretty fanatical ideas about women. Would it be even more insulting if Wonder Woman sent them to Allah?

That looks awesome to me. I would love to have that. If the G-system markings are unlikely to continue into 1947, then maybe this is better. I'd still like to have the cannons as in the F8F-2, just because I like cannons. Even the P-47's 8x50s don't kill fast enough on the Ki-201. Then again, I tend to think the destructiveness of 20mm cannon is overmodeled. By the way, I had modded the Skyraider skin to match the weathering on my Corsairs. FM is edited to match the smaller engined AD-1, and the radar was removed from the loadout.ini. Still need to remove one pair of cannons. This is just an edit to the VA-195 skin. Maybe the decals you have above could be paired with this skin. Here's a screenie.

This looks really good. So is this a sim that you are developing?

Hazzah! Let's turn that into national policy.

Awesome. That's great news.

Good point about the Russians. It might be amusing to have American aircraft escorting Russian Tu-2 bombers. I've added the 3W Skyraider and modified it to be an AD-1 (smaller engine, only 2 cannons). I just downloaded the 1946 P-80 I found here. So that will work for jet vs jet. Unfortunately, the FH-1 isn't available here. Bummer. I had wanted to include it.

So true.

I'm not inclined to believe that this religion is good and the other bad, nor that one culture is good and the other bad. Most of humanity (90%?) sits in a gray area. There are folks dedicated to peace to a point of irrationality (monks who wouldn't kill a mosquito), and those dedicated to violence to a point of irrationality (ISIS). I've been in personal contact with primitive cultures and I see no indication that primitivism begets violence. Violent tendencies and peaceful tendencies exist in all societies regardless of technological or societal development. The one wildcard, the one unstable element, in all human organizations is...human beings. Societal pressures, such as poverty or poor education can accelerate aberrant behaviors. As you rightly point out, much of the middle-east was backward and no one would've cared if it wasn't for oil. The revenues from oil benefit a privileged few with fantastic riches while others remain in poverty. This disparity can push a moderate straight into extremism. But someone must be on the verge of psychological instability for this to happen. The thing is, it's not that most of us haven't thought of killing someone. Most of us have. The difference between a normal mind and an abnormal one is the normal person will not carry out such extreme thoughts. Culture or religion provide an excuse for the abnormal mind to rationalize violent behavior. The normal mind might nod solemnly at a preacher's "fire & brimstone - kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" sermon, but then go home to make chili dogs and watch the Bears game as usual. The normal mind is unaffected and unmoved to irrational behavior. We can also thank the internet for a lot of what we're seeing. If it's true (I haven't looked this up) that 1% of any society tends towards insanity, then that means possible 1 in 100 harbor dark thoughts. In a village of 100 with no phone or internet, the one crazy guy can find no one to share his beliefs with. He doesn't fell supported or encouraged so he keeps his ideas to himself. But now with much of the world connected, the world's lunatics can find each other and encounter support. If their economic/societal position slips just a bit, and mind that such people ride the razor's edge of sanity/insanity, they might just find themselves driving a truck into a crowd. The internet truly is a double-edged sword. For these reasons, I don't see religion, or society, or guns as the problem. Faulty human mental wiring is the problem. We need to detect it and act on it better than we ever have before.

Bah! These idiots who claim this religion or that are still psychopathic idiots. Religion is not a factor in the slightest. Humanity has always produced psychopaths who claim they "did it" because of this religion or that one, because of racial purity (Hitler), or uniting the tribes (Ghengis Khan), or retrieving religious aritfacts (Crusades). Psychopaths always have an excuse for killing. Lets not focus on their lame excuses and acknowledge that some people are just wired wrong and they kill because they like to, not because of anything remotely related to religion or anything they claim.

Thanks Fellas. Gawd, I remember Aces over the Pacific. That was awesome. I think I have a few more unused clips, maybe including more high-altitude interceptions. ;) And yeah, I would love to have an F2G SuperCorsair for this install. I might add on an AD Skyraider. There's a Helldiver in this install too. Anyway, if there's interest, I might post this entire install just like the Finland one. Maybe we can have a "Whole Install" category?

My god. My heart goes out to the citizens of Nice. When will this insanity end?

Great article with lots of great info. The differences of force multipliers like GPS make the capabilities of yesteryear in essentially the same plane seem like like sticks and stones compared to now.

Congrats, dude. You've got to be really proud.