Capitaine Vengeur

Actually, I'm rather working from time to time on a Medals Pack for these three nations. Very attractive! But still some time to its completion...

Rebelling soul, Freedom warrior, terrorist, convict, wounded father, contender, peacemaker, reformer, founder of a new nation, an icon when dying, and a legend as dead now... Old Madiba has been all of that, and even more. His 27 years in jail did not make his long life a wasted existence. Maybe the 5 December shall become a commemorative day in South Africa?

Another factor that had the Japs lose many excellent pilots that may have survived longer otherwise, was the place where they had to fight. Malaria and other tropical diseases ravaged the Jap ranks in Burma and New Guinea, and the pilots were too proud to only "fly when fit". Several aces may have been lost in circumstances when they were too weakened to evaluate the danger. The Allied pilots suffered as well from tropical diseases; but they had quinine, and were ordered to rest. The Japanese only had Bushido readings, and were ordered to fly to their death.

The lack of preparedness in strategic air warfare was only a part of the German underestimation of what would be needed to knock down Britain. In diplomacy, British resolution was underestimated, as the Germans thought that Britain would not keep on fighting alone if not having any more Continental allies to sacrify (the Germans had thought the same when launching their offensives in 1918). More dramatically, the Germans had underestimated the impact of the strategic submarine warfare when the War broke, probably disillusionned after the heavy losses in subs and failure of the sub warfare in 1917-18. Yet, during the second half of 1940, the available three or four dozens of German oceanic subs almost strangled the overpopulated Kingdom heavily relying on its importations, to very slight own losses due to inefficient escort system. With 200 subs instead, the British merchant Navy may have been durably bled, and the Islands starved and put on their knees. By the time the Germans produced several hundreds of subs per year, this weapon had become inefficient and strategically anecdotical.

Oh well, sure, and I am not that arrogant either, actually.

Right?

There are definetely too many countries in Europe! France, Germany and the USSR tried in turn to remedy the problem, but it's getting worse and worse decade after decade. And how the hell could you place a name as long as 'Luxemburg' on a country smaller than the dandruff the spotty pupil could let fall on his paper!? Ah, and there is even a mistake in the school test about Europe, as Turkey should have been included and its border fully materialized, still owning its scrap of the continent.

Never get drunk by the Nile or the crocodiles will kill you... Never get drunk in Afghanistan or the Fundamentalists will kill you... Never get drunk in Russia or the adulterated vodka will kill you... It's almost enough to get sick of getting drunk! Anyway here, a snakeskin coffin is the ultimate luxury! Top-class, man!! er, corpse...

No wonder, I feel like most of democracies are run already by alcoholics. And we pay them much higer fees.

Priceless ! I'd like to watch that adapted for the screen with Robin Williams' contorted face ...

Priviets. Sorry not to ask in Russian, but I would need help from Russian-speaking Net surfers. I'm building a couple of campaigns for Wings over Russia, including genuine aces within their units. But unlike the Axis or Allied aces, I can find but very few data for the Soviet aces: their final score, and the units where they served. I can't find precisely, at the date of a campaign start, in what unit a given ace was, and how big his score was, provided he had scored already. So I would gratefully welcome links to any site in Russian that could help for that matter, (Bless the automatic translators!)

Thank you Comrad. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough to discover these links already, and some very useful others, which by cross-referencing can give me the exact number of air kills and good estimations about the number of air missions flown by each ace within its regiment at the day when my campaigns begin (8 May 1942 and 8 April 1944 for my two Crimean campaigns). But it is still a long hard work for the 1944 campaign, as many of the best Soviet air regiments fought over Crimea that month to liberate Sevastopol. There were especially the 6 elite regiments of famous General 'Ye Ya' Savitskiy's 3 IAK VVS: thus, I have found already at least 18 aces or future aces present in the 402 IAP on 8 April 1944 (the highest-scoring Soviet air regiment of WW2!), and about 21 in the 43 IAP ! - which means I had to void (yet name in notes) some of them.

Agree with point #1. How could have old dinosaurs like Joffre or Hindenburg understood that flying machines and tracked armored self-propelled guns would not be simple gadgets, but would change the face of warfare for ever? How could have a yokel like Harry Truman understood what the A-bomb implied for the World to come, besides the short-term satisfaction of Victory in the Pacific? Now, how could a technological marvel like modern UAVs be fully understood by a President able to kill himself by simply swallowing a pretzel ?!

The British professional rifleman of 1914 was trained to barrage-shoot his 10 rounds in 10 seconds, or to hit the target 15 times in one minute. In August-September 1914, some attacking German units suffering heavy casualties reported they faced positions heavily defended by MG fire, while there were riflemen only. Try the challenge?

It sucks!

Well, how many thought that Barack Hussein would impose the turban as the new American military hat?

Both of my father's parents died from brain cancer before my birth. My father taled me what long, terrible years that were each time. He would know what you and Sheila are living, me I can just imagine. Prayers I don't know, but compassion I can feel and wishes I can send.

Mazel tov!

On 16 October 1813, began in the Eastern outskirts of the Saxon city of Leipzig what was to be rightfully called the Battle of Nations. The Grande Armée of the French Empire (including Belgium, Netherlands, Northern Germany, with addition of allied troops from various states of Western Gernany, Northern and Southern Italy, Poland, Switzerland...) faced four converging armies gathering Prussians, Swedes, and all of the nations of the Austrian and Russian multiethnic Empires. For four days, over 200,000 of Napoleon's followers desperately tried to repel over 350,000 greedy Allies seeing the Emperor's fall within range at last; 100,000 men were killed or received wounds, most often a short intermede before a painful death. Such attested numbers make this terrible bloodbath the biggest pitched battle ever before the static operations of WW1 and mobile offensives of WW2. As for many other Napoleonic battles, there were Germans and Poles on both sides; thus, some 15,000 Saxons and Wurttembergers treacherously defected to the winning side in one move in the middle of the boiling melee, immediately fighting their former brothers-in-arms ("Saxon!" remained an insult in France for decades afterwards). On 19 October, Napoleon was forced to order the evacuation of his cornered troops westwards through a single bridge, which was dynamited before the end of the operations with disastrous consequences. This dramatically concluded the Saxon campaign of 1813 on a decisive defeat that sealed the fate of the French Empire. Battle of Leipzig - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Large festivities are planned in Saxony to commemorate the battle the most representative of the European disunity before the EU. The citizens of Leipzig also commemorate the 100th year of their Völkerschlachtdenkmal (bless you!), a 91-meter-tall pagan-style stone monument erected in 1913 over the battlefield, for the centenary the battle.

This forgotten theater reminds me of a few pages from Heinz Knoke's "I flew for the Führer". In February-March 1942, he was part of Jagdgruppe Losigkeit, using Bf-109E from Gadermoen, then an auxiliary base close to the Oslofjord, to cover the damaged cruiser Prinz Eugen, on repair in a fjord after the Channel Dash. He participated in tracking down a lone PRU Spitfire that regularly came from the Orkneys and took photos with complete impunity, and after several unsuccesful attempts of interception, he finally participated in shooting it down. And reciprocally, two chapters in Pierre Clostermann's "The Great Show" deal with that theater when his No.602 Sqn was detached in January 1944 at Skeabrae, Orkneys Is., to cover the naval base of the Home Fleet. His lucky A Flight received stratospheric Spitfire Mk.VIII, the unlucky B Flight was sent to the Shetlands with Spit V. Clostermann gives many anecdotes typical of that theater: a HP.504 "Harrow" transport aircraft shot down between Scotland and the Orkneys by a marauding Ju-88 a few weeks before his own transfer, another Ju-88 shot down by Scapa Flow's AAA while two of his frustrated squadron mates attacked it, the bi-weekly "eggs round" in Tiger Moth between the misty islands to get some fresh food... While patrolling over Scapa Flow on February 21, Clostermann was tasked to intercept a lone Bf-109G high-altitude, overpowered reco aircraft. Fortunately, his usual trustful wingman Jacques Remlinger could have the spy disintegrate in mid-air.

Then plan 3 full trains to evacuate all of the asbestos from aboard these big old blocks...

Sad day...

Replace the crucifix with the bottle opener. The altar with rthe bar. The tabernacle with the jar for boiled eggs. The confessional with the men's urinals. The "Amen!" with the "Burps!". The holiest psalms with the crappiest barrack-room songs. The first communion with the first binge drinking. The All Saint's Day with the Oktoberfest. And then you could say you've created a new religion. "Burps!"

The present British contingent quoted here was actually minimal and merely symbolic: 150 men from the Rocket Corps in 1 battery of Congreve rockets attached to the Swedish Corps. Perhaps enough for King George to pretend he participated in this most decisive battle, not enough to completely evacuate Napoleon's accusations that the main British participation in his fall had been to bribe into war the absolute monarchs of the continent, again and again until he was put down for the highest profit of the bankers and traders of London.