Hauksbee

Aha! That 'modest'.

Olham: not sure how you're using the word "modest". Can you explain a bit.

Very good article on Jutland found this morning on Yahoo with a few new insights (for me.) Such as: Jellicoe and Beatty were co-equal Admirals and hated each other, and refused to co-operate. So where the Germans fought one unified battle, the British fought two; neither supporting the other. . At the end of the article, there's even more good information in the Comments Section. Here's one of them by Anthony Skrebys: . "Jutland being called a draw is still up to great debate a hundred year later .... it was or could have been a great British victory , but for the massive egos and unwillingness of Jellico and Beatty to work together ... The two British admirals , fought as individuals , instead of being a cohesive force that would exploit opportunities as they produced themselves ... The Germans fought as a singular force , and had better aim , and also the German Battle-cruisers where of a much better construction the their British foes .... a pair of German Battle-cruisers limped back to Kiel being more than half under the water .. it was a long engagement and the haze and difficult light conditions played a very massive part in the battle ... both sides changed battle sides 3 times ... the English thinking on more than one occasion that the ships closest to them were the other English Admiral's fleet that filed into a battle line to support the other ... This was proven very wrong when the Germans opened fire with Battleships, Battle-cruisers , Destroyers, and Torpedo boats, at ranges under 5 miles , and during this heated exchanges , the smoke from their stacks, the burning ships, and even smokescreens , made this seem like a bar-room brawl with the lights out which was further magnified by the setting sun and fading light levels ... at the end of the battle the Germans found themselves west of the English fleets and had to steam through the British Battle fleet to get back to port in Kiel .... Hipper got very lucky with such bad visibility , that he was able to pass between the two English fleets .. this gap was about 10 miles wide , and somehow were not seen ... The British lost more ships and sailors than the Germans by a 6 to 4 ratio ... .....But what was learned from this battle ? It became clear that there is no room for two such Egomaniac Admirals of equal ranks that refused to talk to each other about battle tactics and working together to gain this tactical advantage to turn the battle .... There was a Naval inquiry long after the battle which resulted in major changes in having one man in command of a battle like this ... This battle is still a very major class study even today at Annapolis , with further studies at the War College , and in senior command studies ....

Thanks elephant. So it's an Me-108, but not an Me-108. I guess that certainly qualifies as a trick question. I was especially surprised reading the specs.: Crew 1, Passengers 3. So it's a four-seater after all. 'Cannot for the life of me see where there's room for them. The original 108 had seats side-by-side, two rows. Are the seats in this version a single file of four?

Aha! So...what is it? Am I correct in thinking that it's not a four-seater? What country makes it?

Well...I'll be de'mmed! There was a mutiny in 1931. (I never heard of it) The British government was grappling with the onset of the Great Depression and, in an attempt to cut public spending, reduced Naval pay by about 25%. For a lot of the enlisted men, that put their families under the poverty line. This happened when the fleet was at sea. Rumors pervaded, but no one was really sure what had happened until the fleet returned to Firth Comarty, port of Inverton. Then all hell broke loose. Eventually, the government backed down. Nobody was hanged or court-martialed, though a few did spend some time in the brig.

I cannot believe that's a four-seater aircraft. (but...I'll take your word for it.) What then, makes this a trick question, Jim?

OK, that's what it isn't. But...what is it?

Can't be a Bf-108. That was a four-seater. Jim says this is a trick question. I'm betting that it's a commercially available airplane cosmetically altered to look like an Me-109.

Sorry guys. I had run across a cartoon that I liked and attempted to post it. But when I got ready to attach it, I got an Error Message saying that it was the wrong file format and Combat Ace couldn't see it. So I decided "The Hell with it." and just closed out. (assuming that would cancel the posting. Apparently, it didn't and went on without me. Here's the cartoon.

(1) Amazing that he just hung there. Was he too shot up to flee? And then, in the end, you ran out of ammo. Had to be his luckiest day. (2) I knew SPADS were good at Boom-and-Zoom. You were in the quintessential Turn-and-Burn fighter. How are they in a turning fight?

Great Stuff! (as usual) There's nothing better for getting the eyes full open (and the juices flowing) in the morning than a cup of hot coffee and some new films from Hellshade. (1) In the first film (around 2:20) you seem to be struggling with gun jams...yes? And the film fades out, comes back, and fades out, and every time it appears that the same Camel is still sitting squarely in your gunsights. Was that really the same plane? (2) 5 Things Learned In 8 Minutes with Spads: what were they? Other than watch your six. Must say WOFF3 has a dynamite Damage Model. Your Dr.1 was fairly peppered.

'Checked out the screenies. Very nice stuff. 'Love the glossy light on the wings. Real ROF stuff. I may have to upgrade.

Yes, even then. You can build an object with parts that do (or don't) touch each other and when you incorporate this object in a larger scene, all the little bits remain in place. It's still one object. Or, You can build an object with parts that do (or don't) touch each other, then "Select All" the bits and "Group" them. That means you can't accidentally move them until you "Ungroup".

Worked with SketchUp? No, but I've been very interested in it at times. But I've also had some other software in the queue to master first. I've watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube. 'Looks very interesting. (and, 'yes', it can be imported into G-Max.) By all means, yes, things in G-max can be made out of many small things and grouped together to form larger objects. This is true of every modeling program.

Thanks for posting over here, Adger!

Doing a little surfing through YouTube today, I found the Douglas Bader biopic "Reach For the Sky" (1956) in its entirety. Starring Kenneth More in the title role, and a gorgeous Muriel Pavlow as his wife. A very, very watchable film. Not least for the vintage aircraft. At the beginning, there's Avro 504K's; several of them sitting about the field. (and later, a few Gloster Gamecocks) I wondered if these were WWI antiques, or, did the plane stay in production as a trainer? The middle third of the film (the part where he struggles with the legs) dragged a bit, but, what could they do? Then comes WWII and there's scads of Hurricanes and Spitfires (with the factory paint still on!) They even snuck in a Sea Fire for close-ups of Bader in the cockpit. The bubble canopy was the give-away. I found myself wondering where all those lovely planes had got to? Seeing as there's only one flying Lancaster these days and approximately a half dozen Spits. .

'Makes one wonder how the Netflix film makers got it so wrong?

(1) Short answer: "Yes". (1a) Slightly longer answer: Being a retired Olde Fart, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer monitor. As a result, I check in here about four or five times a day just to see if anything new has been posted. You have touched on the all-time-great ball-buster polygon problem. Regrettably, I have never built a tree. But I have thought about it a good deal. (While writing this reply, I thought I'd test one of my theories.) This tree, built in 3D StudioMax is made from 10 cylinders. Each has 6 sides and 5 divisions along the length, or, 30 vertices each. By converting to 'editable mesh' I made each taper. Then I arranged them as trunk and branches. The leaves are Spheres (9 segments with the bottom half sliced off) then re-sized and stacked. To finish off, in Photoshop, make a circular texture map from real leaf photos. Make the leaves point away from the center and stop shy of the edge. Then make a Transparency Map to make rest of the sphere edge go away. Using a Spherical Mapping, map the leaves to the hemisphere. You should get a ragged edge. Make a Bump Map to give the leaves a dimensional texture. I didn't have time to do all that, but the theory is sound. (this tree took about 30 minutes) Map a wood bark texture to each cylinder. You can see that the joins of the branches are pretty sloppy, but that can be cured. This tree has a total of 905 polygons. How does that compare, Robert, to what you've downloaded? . If you're making a small wooded area, or forest, only the trees near the edge need branches and trunk. The rest only need the leafy canopy. Another technique that works at ground level is to map a real tree onto to a vertical plane. (4 vertices) Add a Transparency Map so the plane goes away and only the tree remains. Most animation programs have a way to tell an object "Always Face Camera" so you never see the edge when the camera POV changes. 'Don't know if you can do this with an air-born WOFF camera, but you could probably ask Pol. Might not work when viewed from an oblique in-the-air angle. Burning beard: I suspected the same. That what I was seeing was a surf line. Pretty weird, having a river with a surf line on each bank. And yes, if you want to jump in to 3D modeling for WOFF, buildings are the best starting point.

Yes. Whenever you're ready.

That's a 100% increase! Glad to hear it!

It's good to know that people like this are still around.

Historical Revisionism Update: Yes, Germany (Mostly) Started World War I The new year has barely begun, and already there has been an upsurge in World War I-related punditry. Among those itching for a fight over the origins of the First World War is Slate’s Matt Yglesias. On New Year’s Eve, Yglesias offered his own somewhat Slatepitchy take on World War I, claiming that the Great War was “primarily about Russo-Serbian desire to destroy Austria and France’s desire to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine.” This is, to say the least, a rather curious way to describe the outbreak of the First World War. Sure, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by pro-Serb Bosnians may have set the spark for the Great War. But the actual outbreak of hostilities began with an Austrian declaration of war on Serbia, German declarations of war on France and Russia, and a German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. So what gives? Yglesias’ main source in support of his view here is The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, a recent revisionist history of the outbreak of the Great War by historian Christopher Clark. Clark’s book attempts to shift blame for the Great War from Germany and Austria onto France, Russia, and Serbia. The gist of Clark’s argument was aptly summarized by Yglesias in another post (written on the 99th anniversary of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination): Serbia and its Russian superpower sponsor were genuinely trying to destroy the Habsburg empire. Franz Ferdinand’s assassins really did have ties to the Serbian state… The authorities in Vienna and Berlin had a legitimate interest in pushing back against the attempted dismemberment of the Habsburg state. And then things got nasty in no small part thanks to French politicians having persuaded themselves that a Balkan crisis would be the best possible shot at teaming up with Russia to wage a war against Germany and take back Alsace and Lorraine. I’ve read "The Sleepwalkers", and can attest that it is a gripping read. And as someone who is both a fan of the Habsburgs and a bit of a Francophobe, I should be sympathetic to Yglesias and Clark’s view here. But I’m afraid the case just isn’t persuasive. It’s true, for example, that Archduke Ferdinand’s assassins had links with the Serbian terrorist organization the Black Hand, and that members of the Black Hand had infiltrated the highest levels of the Serbian government. In the abstract, that sounds pretty ominous. But what that leaves out is that the Black Hand opposed the pre-WWI government of Nikola Pasic on the grounds that it was not sufficiently belligerent against Austria. Just one month before the assassination, Russia intervened to stop an attempt by the Black Hand to oust Pasic in favor of more a militant faction of the government. While Serbia definitely wanted to dismember the Austrian empire, the same was true in reverse. Austria wanted to dismember Serbia, and was devising plans to do so long before the assassination. Within a week of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, Germany had agreed to back Austrian military action against Serbia, even if this resulted in war with Russia. After some characteristic dithering, Austria then decided to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, making demands the denial of which would provide the pretext for war. The German ambassador to Austria reported to his government on July 14 that the Austria ultimatum “is being composed so that the possibility of its being accepted is practically excluded.” As Britain’s Foreign Secretary Edward Grey said after receiving news of the ultimatum’s text, “Any nation that accepted conditions like that would really cease to count as an independent nation.” So given Austrian and German actions, war was unavoidable. The best one can say is that, had Russia abandoned Serbia, the war might have been a limited one. But that’s a far cry from saying the war was about a “Russo-Serbian desire to destroy Austria.” As Max Hastings puts matters in his recent study of the outbreak of the Great War, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, “Those who today attribute to Russia principal responsibility for war are obliged to rely on the [argument] that the Tsar should have preserved wider European peace by allowing Austria to conduct a limited war to crush Serbia. Such a case can be made; but it seems essential to acknowledge its terms, rather than attempt to construct a spurious indictment that the Russians were guilty of duplicity.” What about the other half of Yglesias’ explanation, that the Great War was caused by “France’s desire to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine”? To begin with, any attempt to shift blame for World War I from Germany onto the French-Russian alliance has to deal with Germany’s responsibility for creating that alliance in the first place. If France wanted Alsace and Lorraine back, it was only because it had lost the territories in a war engineered by Germany. Karl Marx, in a moment of rare foresight, predicted that Germany’s decision to annex Alsace and Lorraine would end “by forcing France into the arms of Russia.” Similarly, it was Germany’s decision not to renew its alliance with Russia that led to increasing enmity between Russia and Austria, and to the creation of an anti-German alliance between Russia and France. And the German decision to rebuff British overtures in favor of a naval arms race (not to mention provoking the Agadir Crisis) pushed yet another potential ally into the enemy camp. Germany’s ability to lose friends and alienate people would continue during World War I itself, with such brilliant diplomatic maneuvers as the Zimmerman telegraph, unrestricted submarine warfare, and the decision to let Lenin back into Russia. But leave all that aside. It’s certainly true that France wanted to get Alsace and Lorraine back from Germany, and that France knew the only hope it had of beating Germany in a war was with Russia as an ally. But this had been true for decades prior to 1914. Had France and Russian really wanted to start a war with the central powers, they had plenty of opportunities. But they didn’t. Clark himself concedes this, noting that “at no point did the French or the Russian strategists involved plan to launch a war of aggression against the central powers.” What’s more, far from being an instigator, France was disengaged during much of the July Crisis. Attention in France during July 1914 was focused on a particularly lurid murder trial involving the wife of a prominent politician. During the key period of the Austrian ultimatum, both the French president and prime minister were stuck on a boat returning from St. Petersburg. And when leaders did finally arrive in Paris, their moves were not aggressive. The French prime minister cabled Russia on July 30 that it “should not immediately proceed to any measure which might offer Germany a pretext for a total or partial mobilization of her forces” and the French army itself was pulled back six miles from the German frontier. By contrast, as the July Crisis dragged on Germany became increasingly insistent on using the Austro-Serbian conflict to spark a general European war. According to the dominant view among the German army at the time, war with Russia was inevitable, and delay would only allow Russia to grow stronger militarily. Admittedly, as you get into the final days of July of 1914, things get incredibly complicated. Within each of Great Powers there were those arguing for a wider war, others trying to maintain peace, and still others attempting to hedge their bets, or who vacillated between one extreme and another. But while there may have been those in Germany trying to step back from the brink of war, they were effectively outmaneuvered by those such as Moltke who wanted war. Functionally, Germany spent the final days squelching peace initiatives, encouraging the Austrians to proceed with the invasion, and ultimately launching an attack on France through Belgium that brought the wavering British firmly into the war on the Allied side. Ultimately, then, while France, Russia, and Britain may have been willing to accept war rather than abandon an ally, it was Germany that actually acted to bring a general European conflagration into being. In his book Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, historian David Fromkin puts it succinctly: “Germany deliberately started a European war to keep from being overtaken by Russia.” Fromkin’s assessment of French and Russian involvement in the war is equally succinct: “What drove France and Russia to join in the fray can be covered in a sentence: Germany declared war on them, and they defended themselves.” Disagreements over the causes of World War I lack the policy relevance of arguments over Obamacare or NSA surveillance. Still, over the next few years countless pundits will try to analogize current events to 1914, and it would be a shame if they did so based on the mistaken belief that the Great War was really a French plot. Revisionist history can be fun, but in this case it is just wrong. The First World War, like its sequel, was Germany’s fault.

Ol' Peter knew a thing or two.