Flyby PC

Hmmmm. OK, but less talk, more images. I know what a trench is. 150,000 photos and a 78 minute film to show us, but we didn't see that much. Maybe that's unfair. What I did see was remarkable, but I was hungry for a lot more. Even so, I must have read about Ypres cathedral and cloth house 100 times, but when the airship flew past them in all their distress, well a small penny dropped. Ypres looked as smashed as any bombed city I've seen from WW1 to present. Not a thing left standing. I would like to see the film itself, all 78 minutes, and also spend a few hours going through the box collection. (The 150,000 aerial pics). There was one clear example of the power of air photography. A German Barracks obscured by trees was spotted by the ornamental gardens the troops maintained beside the parade ground. Curious and terribly sad to see the before and after pictures once the artillery zeroed in.

It's an Irish name, sometimes spelled Fearghall or Feargal. Means a brave or courageous man. Fergal Keane is a writer & war correspondent. Only other Fergal I know is Feargal Sharkey, lead singer from the Undertones.

Oh you really think so? Mooooohaaahaahaahaahaaaaaa! (Just in jest UKW, - hope you're sailing into clear blue water soon. )

I was once advised that 400W power supply was marginal, but probably enough, provided the unit was actually kicking out 400W. It might be the case it's performance has declined, especially if it's a bit long in the tooth. Even with a new unit, there's no garuantee what it says on the label is what you actually get. I'd feel guilty advising you to buy a new one, because if everything works, it might not help and you've wasted your money. I'm no expert as you can probably guess, but if you're over clocking etc, it might help.

Stunning. Simply stunning.

I forget which book it was, and WW2 yet again unfortunately, but I think is was Martin Bormans (?) Mosquitopanik that records nightfighters identifying their target by the colour of flame from the exhaust. From memory, I think the British Bombers had a bluer tinge to their exhaust, whereas German nightfighters were a little more yellow. I think I remember one flight record confirming this in their identification protocols before opening fire. They weren't 100% sure what it was, but satisfied it was German. I might be remembering that a bit wrong, and that the exhaust prompted a closer look, until they spotted a swastika on the tail. They dropped back to avoid colliding with debris, lined up the sights, then wham! Even so, to me that's pretty scary having to risk getting that close, but also reassuring that they went to such trouble to confirm their target was indeed an enemy aircraft. I cannot imagine the surge of adrenalin which must have been pumping through the veins whenever you saw anything unfamiliar in the sky, in either war. That said, I'm just a layman, and whenever real pilots talk about such things, they invariably talk as well trained professionals who simply looked upon combat as 'doing their job'. I'm not sure I'd have the same discipline myself though, which is probably why I'd only last a single mission or perhaps two if I was lucky. I think there's a kind of complacency which creeps into your flying in a flight sim which you wouldn't get in real life. Complacency isn't the right word, but when you're doing something intense and dangerous, there's nothing else quite like the feeling. You don't get really scared stiff sitting in your home at a PC, but back when I flew CFS3 pretty regularly, you could fly nightfighter missions with a modified 'H2S/Serrate' TAC, with all dots friendly and enemy being the same colour. You needed to physically see what the target aircraft was before attacking it. You didn't get a sense of fear, but turn off the lights, and the tension alone got pretty intense. You also had to cheat a little and make the nightfighters 'friendly' or else they invariably reacted to your approach. There's no real darkness in CFS3, enemies will always see you coming, but it still wasn't a milk run because there were some real nightfighters out there too. You needed to be in the right frame of mind to fly the missions, because I wouldn't have called it fun.

I didn't upgrade my OS but run a second PC which has Win 7. I really like Win 7, but just beware the 64 Bit side of things. I have lots of things on 32 bit format which just don't work. The upside is it is mainly older software which it is high time I upgraded anyway, but a couple of newer things still surprised me by not working. MS Works surprised me. MS for goodness sake! It's just one note of caution, but all things considered, given the choice I'd take Win 7 64bit every time. You get used to it all very quickly. Only thing I miss is scandisk. I've a dodgy old Ipod which I need to scandisk from time to time. There is a chkdisk utility, but better the devil you know and all that... My old PC still runs a scandisk on it once in a while, but I don't recall the chkdisk on the new PC ever kicking in by itself. It's actually quite a cool Ipod. I got it from Apple and got my name etched on it, (great idea btw) and lost it one day, playing in the snow with the dogs. About a month later, once the snow was gone, some kind person dropped it in the letter box. It looked a very sad ipod, and had obviously been left outside in the damp for some time, the screen backlight didn't work, and it needed a scandisk now and again, but it still worked and held it's charge. I seem to recall 3 or 4 scandisks before Itunes recognised it as an ipod instead of just a mass storage device, and believe it or not, three or four months after I started using it regularly again, even the backlight started to work again!! I'm so happy I didn't plunge inside with a screwdriver to 'see what was wrong'. Good little Ipod got better all by himself.

Yeeeaaaayyyyy!!! 2 Months buried 700m underground, but all 33 Chilean miners were brought back to the surface alive and well. Well done Chile!!! What extraodinary stoicism your miners must have, and what excellent rescue workers you have too. I'm sure I'd be fit for an asylum if I was trapped in the dark like that. I once went down a coal mine as a teenager thinking about being a mine engineer. Believe it or not, as I crawled along a working seam of coal about a mile deep with these massive hydraulic pit props beside me holding up the roof, and the thought actually occurred "what if?" I didn't freak out, but I knew there and then that a life underground was not for me. 25 years later and I'm definitely not a mine engineer, but I still have a deep respect for those who work underground. A near miracle, and such a good news story. What could be worse than being buried alive? Well, 2 had toothache. Ouch.

See your point Streakeagle, but that's a sub that's working properly and under control. Imagine those 82 days if the sub was damaged and stuck on the bottom throughout with your life in somebody elses hands. The thing that gets me is after the accident, the rescue took two months to arrive. That's a long time to for the mind to play it's tricks wondering IF you're going to get out. But on the whole I agree with you. The fact nobody did go loopy would suggest a high level of confidence they were going to get out, and that they had reasonable conditions to get by. But in those first hours, with no light, when it dawns on you you're trapped... Full respects to a submariner though. That's another tough job I don't think I could handle. Too claustraphobic for me - no breeze, no windows... lemme out... Lemme out now...

Sorry gents, I know it's the wrong war, and many of you probably know this site already. I didn't, but some of these pics I've never seen before, and of those I have, they seem to be here is best resolution. There are even pics of the Japanese in Manchuria in the 30's. http://ww2db.com/photo.php

I think there is a marked difference between the German attitude to WW2, and that of the Japanese. Many Japanese are still in denial about their nations conduct in China and WW2, and the brutal manner in which it treated POWs and indigenous populations of the countries which their armies occupied. Maybe you should all watch that video about Nanking. I guarantee it will broaden your spectrum of what constitutes evil. I'm talking toddlers, 2 or 3 years of age, with their eyes put out. It truly beggars description. Some troops were reprimanded, not for carrying out such bestial atrocities, but for sending postcards home about it. If the Japs have no remorse about doing such things after 70 years, then I think I'll let the Chinese have the last word about their forgiveness. Edit - Sorry, got my threads mixed up. The Nanking stuff was in another thread. Here's the link, but be warned, it's not for the faint hearted...

Back on the controversial box again, but remember the Falklands? Or to be more specific, how deeply unpopular Thatcher was beforehand but swept to a landslide victory afterwards? Don't worry admin, this isn't a political jibe, but more a look at the mechanism of power. I remember very well the wave of euphoria which swept the country as and after the British Task Force won it's astonishing victory in the South Atlantic, but I also remember how criticism of the government was swept away as if it was unpatriotic. Remember Thatcher ducking a difficult question with "Just rejoice at that news..!" ? I'll keep my opinions of Thatcher to myself, and no, it's not a comparision with the rise of the Nazis, but I could see how easy it was to manipulate public opinion and isolate those who would 'resist the flow' so to speak. Once a population is so motivated, it takes tremendous courage and no little personal risk to stand up to the machinery. It's difficult to put into words, but I think I can see how the Nazi's made themselves so unopposable. It's an abuse of people's legitimate patriotism, agitated to action by stoking up resentment of some grievance or injustice, with the resulting excesses in behavior celebrated by public adulation. I don't excuse the Nazis, but when ordinary German people say they were swept along with the times, they should be listened to. I think I can see how it happened, and how it could happen in any one of our countries. Once there is evil at the top, (not just evil mind you, but any extreme opinion shall we say), then I believe any population could be manipulated into thinking and doing whatever that leadership wants it to think. That's why Dictators who would take their countries to war with their neighbours MUST be taken very seriously. It's not their extreme beliefs which are the danger, but the fact they have the power to steer the mechanism of their country towards their singular objective. Extreme beliefs can be fought on their merits, but once the juggernaut of a whole country starts to roll and gather momentum, then the opinions of individual people count for very little. Look to our own history, not just the Falklands, but WW1, and men of fighting age being handed white feathers if they weren't wearing a uniform. Wouldn't you buckle under that kind of pressure? Don't feel guilty Olham. Germany has gone through a very bitter chapter in it's history, but all of us need to learn the lessons. The troops in the trenches recognised the ordinary Germans as brothers in arms and victims of war. I, for one, am happy to do likewise. It's our leaders we have to watch.

The German Air Force in the Great War - Excellent stuff.

Did Secret Army ever make it to Germany Olham? It was the original drama series about 'Lifeline' getting downed RAF pilots out of occupied Belgium. It's the series which Allo Allo sends up, but the original series in the 70's was gripping stuff. The series is very dated now, but as I remember it, the Nazi's were all very plausible characters, and the fear that surrounded them was very convincing. Kessler was pure evil, and very scary as the SS played politics with the Luftwaffe to get hold of any captured fliers. It really played with your loyalties and sympathies with good Germans and bad ones, and you often didn't know who to trust. It was a long 30 years ago, but I remember it being pretty good. It's probably hard to watch now after Allo Allo, but maybe not. Yvette, Jan Francis, was central to the whole first series, but she was killed off first programme second series. It was that kind of programme. Nobody was safe.

Good find Tsmoke. Spent a few hours there already. Quite surprised by the Soviet war paintings. Very few pictures feature any Germans. Going by the Pity of Death images, I reckon pity says it all. Everybody lying there dead was somebody's son who'd never be going home. I wonder if their folks ever knew how they'd fallen, of if they wanted to. There's not much dignity left lying there. It's also hard to avoid the conclusion that a T26 quite evidently wasn't the safest place to be.

Search Youtube for Rape of Nanking 2 - Japanese Torture... hosted by sarastarlight. I'd post the link, but it is exceedingly graphic. Without doubt, the most harrowing 40 minutes I've spent online.

12? - Have your lad tread carefully UK-W. What the Japs got up to in China does not make easy reading. I have a book first published in 1958 called The Knights of Bushido, by Lord Russel of Liverpool, which gives a short history of Japanese war crimes, starting in China during the 30's. The book is concise and graphic, but strives to be an objective history, but there several areas, regarding the Rape of Nanking for one, where the author cannot find the words to adequately describe what happened. Nanking even horrified the Nazis, who described the Japanese soldiers in Nanking as 'bestial machinery'. History is very important to remember what took place, but the Japanese activities in China and WW2 is very often the real deal X certificate stuff. In the West, we recall the treatment of our prisoners, and are horrified by tales of beheadings, or pilots abused by mobs before being set on fire while still alive. These are incidents Lord Russel of Liverpool could commit to print. I get a knot in my stomach just to think what atrocities he couldn't describe.

Massive respects and congratulations to you Sir. But after 40 years!!! Good heavens. I'm sure there's a quiet little clerk in an archive office somewhere who's just earned a medal too.

Thanks guys, but such superstitions, while real enough superstitions, don't bear scrutiny. Yes the nine of diamonds is spooky, but there are three other nines in a deck. And making up the saltire? OK, if 9's do, then so do 7's and 5's. Not far off a quarter of the pack 'makes up the saltire'. Even if the order was written on a card, even if that card was the nine of diamonds, even if the nine was cursed, what does it actually mean? The actions of the culprits were guided by a greater supernatural evil? I don't think so. The men themselves were quite evil enough, and their motives were only too secular. As I said, I can see how the Dalrymple crest could be misinterpreted, and assume a malign significance with the curse of a playing card, but it seems to me, the backdrop for the vast majority of such stories is nothing supernatural, but invariably that their audience tends to be people of limited education or who may be just a bit naive. I don't want to be controversial in saying so, nor cause any offence, but playing on peoples fear of what the cannot understand has gone on from the dawn of time, and created more than one religion. (See how I bottled out of saying ALL religions? - BURN THE HERETIC!!!) Scotland should be proud of it's education and build on it as it once did for an all too brief period, not languish in its misty superstitions, bigotry and religious divisions. To be even more contoversial, if the West wants to stem the rise of islam, forget bombs, education is the key. Why do you think the Taliban ban schools and education for women? The last thing the Taliban needs is a population that thinks for itself. Unfortunately, the same could be true for the west. We all take it as read that our TV's deliver the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I think our respective societies would all be much healthier if more people thought for themselves a lot more. Everybody read '1984' again please..... Is Afghanistan Eastasia and Iraq or Euroasia? Or was it the other way around? That's not a pacifist point I'm making, I'm right behind our troops, but my point is how easily our TV's blur the lines which define our enemies.

Been said before I know, but restoration to air worthy condition is a less 'faithful' restoration than non-flying condition. I'm with you guys though, I like to see them flying with appropriate concessions to safety than stuck on the ground but restored to original mint condition 100%.

Remembered the King of Diamonds thing, - but after all that, it's a bit naff. The King of Diamonds is indeed Ceasar, and he's the only one without a 'knife'. - "Et Tu Brute?"

The other curiousity about the nine of diamonds is nine being the 'universal' number of evil to some people. It doesn't matter what number you use, but multiply it by 9, and the answer will add up to 9. For example, 3x9=27, 2+7=9. 4x9=36, 3+6=9. Try it for yourself, with any number. 384x9=3456, 3+4+5+6=18, 1+8=9! For the nine to be everywhere, it must be the work of the devil! Get on your knees and pray!!! There's a small derivative between evil and death. Nine is universal and never ending, just like death.... You can always tell if a number divides by nine if the sum of those numbers adds up to nine. The sum for bigger numbers might not be 9, but 18, or 27etc, but when you add those numbers, and you get 9. 9 is the number of the devil? Doo-do-do-do-do...(Twilight Zone tune) Course it isn't, but one mans voodoo is another man's mathematics. It is kind of neat the way it works though.

I'm sure there's more to the one eyed King of Diamonds, but I forget.... I do know the nine of diamonds is known as the death card in Scotland. It is a commonly held belief that the cryptic orders for the Cambells to massacre the MacDonalds at Glencoe was actually written on the back of the nine of diamonds. Sounds a little implausible, but the orders came from Sir John Dalrymple, Early of Stair, and seen through the eyes of someone who perhaps couldn't read or count, I suppose there is a similarity, and what was taken to be a playing card, could have been headed paper bearing the Dalrymple crest. There's a similar story that after Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland is supposed to have written "no quarter" on the back of the nine of diamonds, thus condemning many Highlanders to brutal slaughter. It is said he was playing cards at the time. It sounds a bit implausible, not least because he would wreck the pack he was playing with. But then again, if he was aware in 1746 that the Highlanders had held the nine of diamonds to be the "Card of Death" since Glencoe in 1692, who is to say that isn't exactly what he did do? He was out to destroy them mind and body. Mary Queen of Scots was supposed to have her death warrant written on a playing card, the nine diamonds form the cross of the Scottish Saltire, in the 16th C there were 9 diamonds stolen from the Scottish crown, (by a Campbell), and a tax known as the Curse of Scotland was levied to replace them... All very "Scottish", and mysterious, but you'll need to make your own minds up. Of them all, I find the Glencoe story the most plausible, and what can't be denied is that the nine of diamonds has been known as the death card for more than 300 years.

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." Winston Churchill (-not George Orwell). Irrespective of religion or politics, it does us no harm to have our enemies reminded of that from time to time.

I heard about 9-11 when I was working on a country house. The site agent came up the scaffold about 2pm looking a bit shocked. His daughter had phoned to say there'd been a plane crash in the USA which involved terrorists. We'd no TV on the job, and nobody understood the terrorist aspect at first, but everybody assumed that two planes being involved must have been a mid-air collision over a city. By the time we got home, the pictures were beginning to arrive, and it all looked completely surreal. Though horrified, it struck me how 'clever' if that's the right word, the terrorists were to ensure the optimum destruction to people and emergency services, added to the maximum TV coverage of the delayed second impact on WTC. I immediately thought about the delayed action bombs of WW2 designed to do exactly the same thing. It wasn't incidental, but a ruthless part of the plan. I have to say in the UK and Europe, we were probably more familiar with terrorist attacks, and less shockable than the US, but it was still a terrible thing to watch even by our standards, and it must have been so much worse for those of you in the US. While I feel bound to concede it was a 'successful' attack from the terrorists point of view, I think they badly misunderstood how the West would react to such an atrocity. In an instant, the whole muslim faith was dehumanised and demonised and it's so called 'soldiers of faith' seen as monsters who deserved to be destroyed. It's easy to attack men women and children at random who don't even know they're under attack. No guts or courage required, nor is there any 'glory' in being the first to carry out such barbarism. You just knew terrible retribution was going to follow. As the troops and bombers moved into Afghanistan just weeks later, even the more moderate amongst us couldn't avoid the conclusion that "Well, you asked for it. You reap what you sow in life, and oh boy did you evil fu____rs ever sow the seeds for this." I wouldn't say I was impartial in this by a long stretch, but I do try to see things from the other sides perspective. But with 9-11, I just don't 'get any of it. That's the work of a terrorist mastermind? I don't think so, there's nothing clever about it. It has no 'cause'. It's just the grotesque and barbaric excess of a dangerous and murderous madman. Even if I try to imagine how I might feel if I was even a jihadist myself, - I still don't 'get it'. - No, no, listen to me Osama, you really do NOT want to do this. It is a BAD idea. Yes, yes, Allah is great, Allah is good, but trust me, he really wouldn't want this little escapade in his in-tray. It is a bad, bad, bad idea!!!" Is that what a Jihad is? -The cowardly murder of innocent people, and the indelible shame these terrorists suffered upon your own religious cause for all eternity? Well I'm sorry Mr Muslim fundamentalist, you'd better keep praying to Allah that the West you hate so much doesn't give up on it's own sense of justice and humanity and seek instead to prosecute it's own 'jihad', unburdened by a sense of human decency and respect for the innocent of your own country. Ourselves in 'the West' may not get it right all the time, and we may be clumbsy in our respect for your culture, but if you force us to be your enemy, we will deliver.