Capitaine Vengeur

During the Cold War, the Americans tried to impress the Russians about their own manly abilities, by ordering large quantities of condoms designed for 8"-long stuff. When they received their order, the boxes displayed: "Kondoms 20 cms - Small size".

With an illustration displaying the air fight: OFF: Red Fokker, six high ! ( focusing on a two-seater, Brisfit for example) OFF: Circus, Camels and Storks OFF: Spandau vs Vickers OFF: Lonely knights vs wolfpacks OFF: Home before the wings fall With an illustration focusing on a victorious plane: OFF: Killer angels OFF: Lasts of the knights OFF: Aces on the rampage OFF: Victoria Cross, red cross, or wooden cross (featuring a British victorious fighter) OFF: Iron Cross, red cross, or wooden cross (featuring a German victorious fighter) OFF: May the best man survive ! OFF: Audaces Fortuna juvat ! With an illustration focusing on a downing, flaming plane: OFF: Angels falling OFF: Vae victis ! OFF: Sic transit Gloria Mundi (with the recognizable plane of a falling top ace)

Rest in pigs.

The only good bank is a dead bank.

OFF: Between fame and death OFF: Between action and Eternity OFF: Gladiators over the arena OFF: Into the eagles' nest

OFF: Beyond clouds, courage, and duty OFF: Beyond horizon, beyond clouds, beyond glory OFF: Joust over France

I just want to try them and fly through !

The poor lads who flew on the British four-engined night bombers, sent to their death by 'Butcher' Harris, had probably one of the highest rates of losses in the War, just after the German U-Boots, the Soviet disciplinary units, and the Japanese Kamikazes! Just have a look at the decorated tail of Schnaufer, highest-scoring night ace ever: a real graveyard! Respect to all of those men who fell in the night... The last weeks of the War were intense enough for many to die just before the Peace. I had once met a young Russian whose grandfather, an airman he said, was shot down and killed over Austria in May 1945, a handful of days before the end...

It won't matter. Dictatorship is: "Shut up, you bastard!", democracy is: "You are free to shout, cry, bleed, starve... We just don't give a damn!" Actually, I don't feel like we still live in national democracies, but in a big worldwide globalized stockmarketocracy, with first-class citizens above (investors, big stock holders, their political puppets hidden behind bodyguards...), knowing each others across fake borders better than they know their own unpriviledged compatriots - and the rest of us far below (we shabby losers). The main and most expensive political steps are always taken "to reassure the investors", "to keep the markets quiet", and these ones need serious guarantees. We seemingly illiterate mob just deserve some vague hollow promises, social alms like food stamps, and possibly strong-arm police interventions if we don't behave as obediently as 21st Century Uncle Toms. And yet, we are periodically remembered to vote for this or that interchangeable political puppets, all of them working for their rich acquaintances and sponsors rather than for the true people. :angry2:

Diex aie !! I won't complain about the huge number of French words the Norman rule has introduced into the Saxon Germanic language, it makes English a language quite easy to learn down here to a people genetically impervious to learning of foreign languages. Dieu et mon droit, Honi soit qui mal y pense! Also, have you noticed on the famous Tapestry of Bayeux that Harold and many other Saxons can be identified as such through a splendid RAF mustache, thus proving to be fully English?

I've met something worse than fathers: older brothers (Mediterranean culture)

Three auditing firms, four consulting firms, ten law firms, one year of work for the entire NASA Research Department, one industrial complex specially built in India and powered by a devoted nuclear power plant, one ton of adamantium alloys compressed up to 1300 bars, one special blessing by six heads of various churches... ... have been necessary to cast a quite realistic model of Chuck Norris as a Mr Potato Head. Twenty-four lawyers were reported missing during the first groundwork, trying to approach Mr Norris with their iconoclast project (RIP). The toys firm is expected to go bankrupt after having produced one single model. The giant container ship which carried the model mysteriously sank, due to an incorrect docking of the model in some people's view, due to Colonel Braddock's Curse according to some others.

Here is a file I tried to fix, without guarantee it will work. Would you back up your original file, try this one, and let me know? I don't have any SF2 product (waiting for SF2: MiG Alley to make the transition), but comparing your SF2 file with the SF1 I modified, I can see that many icons are now tga rather than bmp files. But you said it doesn't prevent my modified icons to show in the Single Player mode. PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.zip

Down here, we use to call such a critically inverted pyramid of responsibilities (50 generals to 10 corporals) "a Mexican army". Does this expression exist in English, or somewhere else?

During Autumn 911, the King of Franks Charles the Simple signed a treaty with Rollo (Hrolfr), one of the main chiefs of the Viking warbands who had devastated the Western part of the kingdom for more than one century. In exchange for large coastal lands West of Paris (including the mouth of river Seine) where to settle a Viking aristocracy, Rollo accepted to convert himself and his men to Christianity, and to recognize the sovereignty of the king. The Northmen now had a country on the continent: the Duchy of Normandy was born, with Rollo as the first duke. Like the Frank conquerors before them, the Northmen gave up their Germanic language to the Latin language of the local Roman Gauls (nonetheless, many Nordic words still appear in Norman toponyms, like Pointe du Hoc). One century and half later, under the leadership of firm dukes such as William later known as The Conqueror, the Normans were strong enough to challenge the King of France, to venture to Sicily, and even to seize the crown of England in 1066. A Norman aristocracy settled there too, an elaborate system of ruling was instituted (the Exchequer still exists in name). Until John Lackland who lost Normandy to France in 1204, these Norman kings felt themselves Dukes of Normandy before feeling Kings of England, that misty muddy Saxon island being mostly a source of colonial revenues and royal prestige. Richard Lionheart himself is said to have spent only 6 months of his life in England, and was buried in Normandy. The Duchy went back and forth between France and England until 1450: after the destruction of an English army at Formigny, Normandy remained French forever (yet maimed from the Channel Islands, which kept their Norman patois). The last act of this eventful story happened in 1944, when the English troops fought in the ruins of Caen, around the remnants of William The Conqueror's castle. It seems that either or both a TV series and a movie about William The Conqueror are in preparation, perhaps in relation with this 1100th birthday. The series could be relased this year in the US. Let us see what it will be worth. Fier d'être Normand ! Diex aie !

The flat fields of Champagne are my province of birth, but the green pastures of Normandy are my province of choice. Ubi bene, ibi patria: Where you feel good, there is your country. That's my motto.

Yes, France too is an all-dubbing country, Creaghorn. Even on the French-German channel Arte, most of the German movies are in dubbed version, a shame. Comparing to non-dubbing countries like Netherlands for example, it really makes us international idiots. But I must admit that there can be a problem about original versions: accent. Since youth, we've been trained in and used to the International English accent, listening to Shakespearians, BBC extracts, things like that. But most of the audio and visual English-speaking products come from the USA, whose accent our young and open ear has not been used to (there even can be vicious traps, like Hugh Laurie faking the American accent in Dr House!). I have a real problem with the nasal, chewing American accent (not even speaking of local accents like Appalachian or Southern rednecks', or New York City dwellers'). In the "Dogfights" series by The History Channel (chosen as an example for I am browsing it now), lacking subtitles, I can easily understand the commentator's narration (International English accent), but hardly the testimonies of the Yank pilots. I'm probably too old now to remedy. No problem about the written language, on the other hand: daily use of rich Internet forums like Combatace is a perfect regular training.

There have been this theoretical and technological contest between fire and movement during all of the first half of the 20th Century. In 1914, recent technical progresses had fire fully dominating movement: machine guns and quick-firing artillery held the battleground over simple men running the same way they did during the 19th Century. But these technical progresses had still not been integrated in the high-ranking minds, and that's the reason why the French staff kept on launching expensive bayonet charges, the nation losing one third of her heavy overall casualties within the first nine months of the War. This trend confirmed up to 1918, firepower making terrific progress, movement not that much. The tanks of 1918 were crawling tins contributing more through fire than movement, while the air forces were still unable to support large and deep army moves. Everything changed between 1918 and 1939 with the huge technical progresses of moving armor and tridimensional warfare, to few evolutions concerning the firepower. But once again, the French staff missed the connection and sticked to the experience of 1918, favouring static defensive fire. There was still some visionaries, however, and some with impressing fates. Philippe Pétain professed changes in military theories before the War, but for such a heresy to the dogma, was put into quarantine and only a aged colonel about to retire when the war broke. One of the very few junior officers able to resist to the attractive idea of glorious bayonet charges, to listen to this old fool, and even to admire the man and his ideas up to require a transfer in his regiment, was Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, his future enemy 30 years later (writing in his notes: “Pétain professes that fire kills.”, and after the slaughters of 1914: “It appears that all of valour in the world doesn't prevail over fire.”). Extremely cautious, Pétain took great care of his afflicted troops after the mutinies of 1917, never launching an offensive before being sure he had gathered an overwhelming local superiority in firepower and ammunition stocks. He was also confident about the evolving tanks as the new weapon that would make the difference, stating after the mutinies: “I'm waiting for the tanks and Yanks!”. But if in 1914 he was already a man of 1918, in 1939 he was still a man of 1918: he was too aged to admit and integrate the new progresses. On the contrary, de Gaulle was young enough to keep on evolving, and soon became well known among the small circle of the theoreticians of armor and modern warfare (his essays had been read before the War by Guderian and Patton); and for his disturbing imaginings, he knew something of the same quarantine as Pétain before 1914.

I have created my counters mod for SF1:WoV, with adequate PlanningMapScreen file. Not having SF2:V, I don't know how it could work with this game. IceMan, is your attached file the original, untouched file from SF2:V? If so, I can try to fix something there the way I did with the file from SF1:WoV - without any guarantee it will work properly, however.

The medals bitmap files and citation texts go to the Menu folder. The original medals can be extracted from the Menu/MenuData compressed file, the original citations from the Flight/MissionText compressed file. The lists of awards arranged for each nation go to the Flight folder, the original ones can be extracted from the Flight/MissionData compressed file. The strings files working along with these strings can be extracted from the Flight/MissionText compressed file. I damn don't know where they go, having made my mods without using them. That's the way it works for SF1:WoV, I don't know for SF2:V. I hope that I understood your question, and that it will help.

"A soldier does not think. He only obeys. Do you really think that if a soldier thought twice he'd give his life for queen and country? Not bloody likely." (Sean Connery in The Man who would be King)

Sniff sniff ...? Hey, damn! You're right !!!

By the last weeks of the War, the Allied were amazed that the German Army hadn't collapsed already, when they saw the prisoners they captured by thousands: 17 year-old skinny and terrified kids, with too large helmets, shoe sole made of cardboard, bandages made of paper, coffee made of roasted berries, and a few beet marmalade as food rations, as sausages made of sawdust were already faraway memory. But incredibly, the German Army still held.

Indeed, the hatred between Saxons and Jocks has been a long and intense story. I've heard that in an English town, former stronghold near the border (Newcastle perhaps), an anachronistic, ancient unabrogated law still allows to kill any armed Scot within the city walls. But I can mistake about the town. Heard about that, Widowmaker? I have read a French book about Waterloo, where the author felt sad that the Highlanders fought so bravely, here and in the Peninsula before, for the Hannoverian kings who had humiliated them so much, against their former friends of the Auld Alliance who supported them up to Culloden (and hosted Bonnie Prince Charlie and supporters thereafter).