Capitaine Vengeur

"No better place to fall" "Aim to kill !" (ATK, sounds like Attack) "Clear the sky !" (Pétain to Cdt de Rose at Verdun)

The worst airline advert came with the late Belgian company SABENA's slogan: "With SABENA, you would already be there!", when an unwise advertiser stuck posters all along a 1km-long wall in Brussels... The outer wall of Laeken Cemetary! Typical Belgian joke...

The choice of planes was largely decided by the availabilities of the movie's partner, the J-B Salis Flying Club at La Ferté Alais. They have at least one Fokker Dr.I, and two, perhaps three Morane AI, which are since long among their main stars. Their annual meeting has been for decades an important event to many lovers of old planes in Western Europe.

Actually, my grand-father was Henri's first cousin. And as they had been born the same year 1902 in the same village, he was also his classmate and one of closest friends during all of their childhood. The village is Bouy, which is a usable airfield in OFF, ESE of Reims. It's on this field that Henri Guillaumet fell in love with aviation, at 6, seeing many Farman flying birdcages take off from there to break several world records. I have gathered many biographies and articles about Guillaumet and the Aéropostale, but I don't remember of TV documentaries. A fine video document about Henri's journey is Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Wings of Courage", first 3D-Imax fiction movie ever in 1995, with Craig Sheffer as my grand-uncle and Val Kilmer as pretty boy Jean Mermoz. I experience problems to send the link, but the plane displayed on the American teaser really looks like the Potez 25 with which Guillaumet fell in the Andes.

About fanaticism, the movie reminded me of a story about a Soviet ace pilot in WW2. Shot down just after having destroyed a 109, he went down to the ground in parachute just next to his last victim. Once both arrived on the ground, the Soviet ace, lacking a pistol, charged at the German pilot and strangled him to death with bare hands! Mutual hatred was an usual fact on that front, unlike the Channel font. Robert Stanford Tuck stated that he had machine-gunned a German airman fallen in the Channel, but only through mercy, having checked that he wouldn't be rescued before the cold had killed him. About St-Exupéry, his "Little Prince" made him even better known in the USA than in occupied France in 1942; and it happens that he dedicated "Terre des Hommes" ("Wind, sand and stars" in US edition) to my grand-uncle Henri Guillaumet, a former pilot of the Aéropostale like him, and the surviving hero of one of the most moving tales from the book. The wreckage of St-Exupéry's P-38 has been recovered and authentified just a few years ago. His fall was illogical, as he flew at low altitude a reco Lightning designed to be almost unreachable at very high altitudes, thus becoming an easy target. Some said that he wanted to see again his house on the Southern Coast, some others that it was a form of deliberate suicide, as he did not intend to survive that war that had puzzled him so much as a true patriot (Fall of France, British vs French, French vs French...).

Happy half-century, UK. See you in 50 years... Maybe? (oh yes, also today, UK: 70th anniversary for the loss of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse to underestimated Asian pilots... Let the ashes of the Empire cool down...)

The Empire vs the Iranians. Let them destroy each other. Jetpacked bounty hunters vs human bombs, the half-built Death Star vs the hidden-face card "Iranian Nuclear Program" (so, Bomb or not Bomb?), and Palpatine vs Mammadujihad contesting about who wears the cheapest and dullest dark costume...

The remote controlling codes may have been jeopardized. Did you consider an US mole or an Iranian secret super-agent? Ever heard of Jamal Bondhar 007?

I personally feel offended in my freedom of burning worlds and eradicating species! By the way, can someone recommend me a good gladiators game? Now, I feel the need of cutting throats, and being applauded and cheered for that!!!

An authoritative opinion from some contemporary of those days: "The art of war consists in always having, even with an weaker army, more forces than the enemy on the attacking or attacked point. But this art can't be learnt, neither through books, nor even through experience. It's an innate behavior, which properly constitutes the genius of war." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Really colorful, and threatening enough as a pack to damp the seats of Italian rookies! I hope to see later Hanriots that colorful, they're among my very fave planes. The Vogesen map with North -> South rivers is fair enough for Venetia, and Jan Tuma's tilesets are wonderful. But it would ne nice if Jan Tuma could work on a few farm tilesets adding local canals and lightened tree plantations, a replacing set of local trees, and perhaps a set of typical farms and buildings for Venetia, for better immersion. Did you try to contact him already, Quack?

File Name: French Wings over Kuwait - Historical notes File Submitter: Capitaine Vengeur File Submitted: 07 December 2011 File Category: SF/WO* Utilities/Editors I had once planned to add some scrap-built models modified from other designers' works, in order to have the French jets present over Kuwait in 1991 flyable in the Operation Desert Storm mod, where I miss them badly. Having now given up for a while, and not planning to keep on the WIP in a close future, I deposit here some of the documentation I had gathered, and above all the historical booklet I had prepared by synthesizing several articles brightened up by chosen pictures. The main source is my packed translation of a set of "warm" articles, published in March 1991 in a fine French military magazine. I still hope that this work could encourage some modders to keep on the work about the Jaguar A and other concerned aircraft. Click here to download this file

USS Arizona...

70 years ago, this single week saw two of the main turning points of WW2. On 5 December 1941, the frozen exhausted German armies in Russia stopped their advance 12 miles to Moscow. And on this same day, the powerful Soviet reserves (that the Germans thought could not exist) launched a general counter-offensive, skiers brigades in the lead. They missed by few to surround and completely obliterate the immobilized German armies, formerly victorious in Blitzkrieg on the previous seasons in Russia, and on all other places in Europe before. Two days later, on Sunday, December 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy crossed the Rubicon (or climbed Mount Niitaka, the code was), and launched on Oahu the bombs the Americans expected to see fall on the Philippines. North America and East Asia entered what had become an actual global total war. [ MiG-3 model by Capun, skins by Gramps & Charles, terrain by Edward – Wings over Russia is great! ]

I'm not that fond of heroic fantasy, magic and spells, double axes and long swords, elfic fuss... I'm rather about sci-fi, and the best RPG to me remains Stars Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (the first one). The Star Wars universe and atmosphere without the classic characters and ships, a challenge... achieved. Aging graphics by now, still with fine intermediate movies and interesting new designs. And above all, an excellent story worth the whole first Trilogy, with an improbable gathering varied panel of engaging characters using biting exchanges to each other (= Episode IV), an epic initiatory journey throughout the Galaxy until the playing character discovers his true identity (a stunning surprise worth "I am your father!", Episode V), uneasy love affairs with complicated characters, and as a final, a legendary lightsaber duel aboard a giant space station, with narrow escape before it is finally destroyed by a friendly fleet (= Episode VI). With of course the main SW emotional ingredient: Fall and Redemption (not once, but twice in turn!)

Well, a various panel of French trench weapons can actually be seen on the cover: the "crapouillot" bomb-launcher, the periscopic device with mirror for snipers, the VB (Vivan-Bessières) rifle grenade-launcher... Even the pincers carried by the sapper seem to be an accurate model, and the assortment of flasks carried by the homme-soupe with the sheepskin vest gives a fine picture of an everyday trench.

Hey, many people down here still have the Victorian cliché of English women as scrawny flat poles, Kate Moss style. How disappointing! And how annoying too, when travelling on the Tube!

Hopefully, all's well that ends well, Mac. Can you just imagine yourself in the waiting room of Heaven, with your hand still on your broken scissors into a frightening wound, and you still stuck into your soaking red jammed coat? Sitting between the roasted moron who tried to detect a gas leak with a lighter, and the disgusting jerk who gave a laxative to an elephant and stood behind to wait for the result? With The Father & Son & Holy Ghost receiving you all with a triple face palm?

Halleluiah, God Bless your Name !

My grandmother told me a touching story about Thanksgiving 1944. She lived in a village just outside of the military Camp de Mourmelon, Champagne, and hosted a couple of American officers from the division settled there. Before Thanksgiving, they asked the permission to receive four other officers to celebrate there with their own military turkey, and my grandma let them almost all of the house. Some of these guests occasionally came back to visit; one of them really had a crush on my uncle, 1-year-old at that time, who seemingly reminded him his daughter left at home. But three weeks later, all of the officers went away in a hurry; some promised to write, but didn't. What is moving is that several of these officers probably died in the following days. They were the 101st Airborne, sent in emergency to Bastogne. The moment can be seen in "Band of brothers". In memoriam...

My fave porn star lying next to me one morning... whispering "I like it so much when you fart in bed, darling." And more seriously: Elite 4, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 3, and SF2: Korean War (yes, I know the tune: coming out in 2 weeks).

In 1945, the experts told the US generals that almost every Jap would have a bamboo pike if they wanted to invade the Home Islands. You notice that they didn't. So, a very impressive weapon, the bamboo pike. I think I will practise it. In my list just after the crossbow and the halberd...