Capitaine Vengeur

The ship infamous floating thing is expected to sail drift close to the Corsican coast, and the Corsicans are not happy at all about this. And you guess how Corsicans are when they are not happy about something. Demonstrations at sea are planned off the coast, let's hope there won't be one on the shore, with another irresponsible tourist captain at the helm: "Hey Luigi, there are lots of people on the shore, they say us hello! Let's get closer to the coast to say them hello too! Andiamo!"

Everyone mature enough remembers where he/she was when this news was released. Thus, a university teacher of mine, specialist of the Middle East, told us that at that time, he was part of a geographic mission in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, far away from the civilization and Hertzian waves-covered areas, and that he could have missed the event. The mission was scheduled to spend that night in a godforsaken village of mountaineers. When arriving at dusk, they found nobody outside, which after the guide was unusual. They soon discovered that each family was at home near its transistor, listening at that incredible news that Yankee astronauts were about to land on the Moon; some believed it a hoax. Down to the last hole in Zagros, this was really a planetary live event.

The indisputable arguments in favor of this ridiculous gadget: Is panic-proof, NBC-proof, small caliber bullets-proof (G.I.s don't want shrapnells in their peanut butter, do they?), thirst & hunger-proof (useful in the barren holes where the U.S. tend to wage war, mules don't drink oil)... Spares the distressing show on Youtube of an agonizing real mule wounded by bullets or IED, it could lower the morale of Western decadent voters at home. Contrary to a real mule, sexually frustrates the Talebans in case of capture. Is a good first-step experiment to be tested on the battlefield: later increase the size tenhold, replace junk with grunts, and you have a fine StarWars-style AT-AT. Allows some Congressmen in the purchasing commision to change their car again and keep a fourth lover.

Netherlands 3, Brazil 0: inconceivable kill ratio of 1/10 against Brazil on the last two matches. Now a third and ultimate humiliation for the poor organizing nation would be the World Cup for Argentina. Always painful to have your fave neighbour use thumb and index fingers to draw an "L" on own's front across the border. Always painful to have your fave neighbour's team wave the coveted trophy in front of disheartened crowd, style: "Hey, you unfortunate over-indebted Brazilian people, guess to whom we dedicate this big golden sextoy?..." Pope Francisco is expected to watch the final. Maybe this time, and this time only, he could allow himself one "¡Hostia!".

Would look nice with yellow smokes?

Well, almost anything could taste spicy to people used to the bland English cuisine...

Karate for Columbia, theatrical play for Argentina... Where the hell was soccer? Best wishes to poor Neymar, and regarding the Dutchmen on Wednesday, they should beware of the Argentinian falling histrions...

Germany 1, France 0. Once again, the Panzerdivision has rolled over the Senegalese tirailleurs. Les Bleus had no will to fight, no fear to lose, Benzema was disappointing. One could have expected a burst of pride and a switch of fortunes for the centenary of the 1st Battle of the Marne. But it's over. Now my best wishes to the sympathetic outsiders of Belgium and Costa Rica.

This carrier inherits the name of a fine warship with a long career, yet having missed many opportunities to prove own valor during both Global Wars. Best wishes for this new Queen to win fame for her name...

France vs Germany: Time to take revenge at last for the unpunished German aggressive game in 1982. Not through ourselves using aggressive game, of course. This is only sport, played by gentlemen (allegedly).

On June 19, 1944, the Imperial Japanese Mobile Fleet challenged in the air the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet besieging the Marianas Islands and invading Saipan. For hours, successive swarms of green warplanes bearing red disks tried to pierce the enemy defenses and to reach the invaluable Yankee carriers. When the countless geysers from downed Japanese planes finally fell back around the undamaged American Fleet, any hope Japan could have had to save his fate on sea had vanished. In the History of the US Navy, that day would remain forever known as: THE GREAT MARIANAS TURKEY SHOOT ! This terrific air battle makes for a great part in the scores of several of the greatest aces ever in the US Navy. On this June 19, Cdr David McCampbell (CO of Air Group 15, USS Essex) shot down five 'Judys', and later two 'Zekes' over Guam, out of his final score of 34, while Lt Alexander Vraciu (VF-16, USS Lexington, still alive to this day) shot down six 'Judys' in 8 minutes out of his final score of 19. Among the few American casualties of this famous day (20 pilots and 7 crewmen), LtCdr Charles Brewer (CO of VF-15 after McCampbell) shot down five Jap aircraft, but could not make it back to the Essex.

As long as Washington will be eager to please Ankara, there will be no Kurdish state allowed in this area...

Is this a 'World' Cup? Somewhat bleached... What about China, India, Kenya, Cuba, Brazil, Polynesia, and all other beautiful colors of the World? About the sound pollution, if vuvuzelas broke your nuts, wait for Qatar 2022 and the reading of 21 verses of Holy Quran before each match...

At the time of Saddam, the Boss was the bastard whose picture was in every place. You could not miss him. That was called dictatorship. Today in Iraq, the Boss is the bastard that is standing before you with a Kalash at the present moment. He cannot miss you. That is called anarchy. Iraq is a hopeless cause.

Yesterday at night, there were synchronized fireworks in several places all along 80 kms of Norman coast. I could observe the whole line of fire from the cliffs of the Northern side of the Seine Estuary. Not much impressive at such a distance, but some moments when the coast took shape at night under a blazing sky, as well as the dull, distant, delayed beat over the sea, could give the short-lived impression that the Invasion had resumed.

Mascott? What about this nice, pleasant, edible animal? Just call him "Hog"! Yet, political correctness could find him unsuited for some religions represented here...

I am not ashame to confess that I am a sycophant of Nolan's creative work. And I just found out that the musics will be composed by Hans Zimmer again: Nolan's usual winning team. Now, I really have to see that film!

At the time of Sarkozy, we French felt we had De Funes for President. And now with Hollande, I feel we have François Pignon for President. And now I find both characters much less funny. And I find the whole joke not funny at all, dammit !!!

No academic work here, but I like the way WW1, for its French part at least, is summarized by crude figures in this element of Jacques Tardi's classic comic book "It was the War of the trenches" (available in English translation, not comic at all, believe it). Here is some raw translation: Deads... Deads... Older ones and warmer ones... That's the interest! The magnificent FIRST WORLD WAR! 35 countries participating closely or remotely! You want figures? Some "historical" accounting for the future? 10,000,000 deads! How many years of life expectancy buried forever in the mud? How many orphans? Disabled men, widows? In France only, 930 hectares of military cemetaries, good farmland for beet, but only crosses growing up! If all of the French deads were marching past in four by four for the Bastille Day, it would need no less than 6 days and 5 nights before the last one could show his pale face... 11 départements, 2,907 districts, 485,600 hectares of woods, 1,923,000 hectares of farmland devastated! 794,040 houses and buildings, 9,332 factories, 58,967 kilometers of roads and 8,333 civil engineering structures destroyed, to wit 71,000,000 cubic meters of rubbles! 330,000,000 cubic meters would be necessary to fill in trenches along 780 kilometers of front... And the cost? Guns, shells, other junk?... 2,500 billion Francs-Or*! For this cost, each European – Russians excluded – could have been offered a little four-rooms house... But figures, you know... * 1 Franc-Or in gold value = 8,7 EUR = 12 USD

Here are some of the links to WW2 Soviet air units and aces I routinely use when designing campaigns (at the moment, 3 works in progress for Wings over Russia). Using a translator or reading Cyrillic characters may be useful. I still miss an accurate database for the bases and dates of transfer for all of these units, which may have been as many and often as for their German counterparts. Units (operational dates, campaigns fought, planes used, parent units...) : http://halconesrojos.com/cantina/index.php?topic=9477.0 http://www.allaces.ru/cgi-bin/s2.cgi/sssr/struct/main.dat http://aviahobby.ru/publ/soviaps/iap_vmf.html Organization : http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Organization/Soviet_AF_Organization.htm http://www.airpages.ru/ru/vvs1.shtml Aces : http://militera.lib.ru/bio/0/pdf/bykov_my01.pdf http://soviet-aces-1936-53.ru/abc/a.htm

No contest, the Soviet Front was unquestionably the place where the fate of War in Europe was sealed. And so overwhelmingly that campaigns fought elsewhere may have appeared, in comparison, as relatively anecdotal. The proportions in German and Axis losses East are telling enough (over 80%, if including PoWs dead in captivity). From Moscow to Berlin, from Leningrad to Königsberg, from Sevastopol to Budapest, this front of gigantic dimensions in width and moving depth, saw hundreds (hundreds, too many of them to be remembered) battles the size of Kasserine or Anzio, and dozens of battles the size of Normandy or Ardennes. One of the reasons why the difficult battleground of Normandy did not get stuck in the quagmire it may have become, was that on the same month of June, the Soviets had launched Operation Bagration, one of the biggest offensives of the War gathering 2.5 millions soldiers, which could seize all of Bielorussia and Eastern Poland in one single impulse (alright, largely due to the large amounts of trucks provided by Lend-Lease). The Soviets also had to face the additional forces of Finland, Hungary, Romania, some other puppets, and enough anti-Communist volunteers from all over Europe to build two dozens of legions or SS divisions - while the Allies before September 1943 only had to face unprepared Italy with very few additional German divisions, and some more significant German help in the air. On the other hand, true, the Soviets had no influence over strategic warfare during this War in Europe (the convoys war in Mediterranea and Atlantic, and the air front over Germany). But once again, this compared to an Eastern ground front that permanently engulfed over 200 Axis divisions, appears anew as anecdotal.

Beware, drinking beer can indurate your meat...

I still own an old (1985) classic boardgame by Avalon Hill, Flight Leader, giving the following Turn values for these planes, ranging from A to E (A= the best): Mig-21BIS - - - - - B Mig-23 MLD- - - - D Mirage IIIC- - - - - B Mirage F1C- - - - B F-15A- - - - - - - - B F-18A- - - - - - - - A F-14A- - - - - - - - B F-4E- - - - - - - - - C F-8C- - - - - - - - - B F-100C- - - - - - - C Lightning- - - - - - B Tornado ADV- - - B SAAB DRAKEN- - B SAAB VIGGEN- - B Kfir C-7- - - - - - - B On A, you would find the F-86, the F-16, the MiG-15 & -17, the MiG-29 (the Su-27 is B)... On E, you would find the F-104, the MiG-25 & -31, the Yak-25, the Tu-28...

On 7 May 1954, General Vo Nguyen Giap's Vietminh troops overran the core and last remnants of the fortified camp the French had dug in the basin of Dien Bien Phu, 200kms away from their supply bases, in an attempt to lure, pin, and exhaust the Vietminh battle force far away from its own bases. The usual duality of the Fox and the Hedgehog. But this time, the old sly fox Giap was the winner. During the past two months, outnumbered legionnaires, French and Vietnamese paratroopers, North African tirailleurs, outperformed artillery and a handful of M24 light tanks, had hotly clashed with 4 infantry and 1 artillery VM divisions for the control of the fortified hills surrounding the camp (referred as Eliane, Dominique, Huguette, and other feminine names). Giap's losses in this direct confrontation had been terrible, before he rather opted for suffocating these strongholds into a thick network of trenches. The French camp's airstrip had been neutralized since the first days of the assault, and the impressive VM Flak all around the basin made very expensive all attempts to drop supplies or reinforcements. Except for some lucky interventions during VM assaults, the scarce air supports from fighter-bombers failed in their CAS missions and in destroying the perfectly dug-in and concealed VM artillery. No white flag was hoisted by the end of the battle: the defenseless camp was simply overrun. The last isolated stronghold, Isabelle, on the Southern end of the airstrip, fell on 8 May, i.e. just in time for the opening of the Conference at Geneva, for which Giap had urged on his attacks on early May, and which sealed the partition of Vietnam. Of the about 11,000 prisoners the Vietminh had taken at Dien Bien Phu, only 3,000 were given back alive. Virtually no wounded or Republican Vietnamese prisoner did survive. This battle was a key moment in the history of decolonization of the World's second-biggest Empire. And it prepared the quagmire in which the United States would get stuck for a decade, believing that money and technology could do better than old-fashioned European colonialists. True, in 1968, the Marines at Khe Sanh could avoid the fate of the French at Dien Bien Phu; and the Peace Accords at Paris were less humiliating than what the French had to sign at Geneva. But finally in 1975, it all ended with one more victory for Giap...

Thrawn is in the Top 3 of my favorite StarWars characters. And actually, the others also come from the SW Expanded Universe, which is a vein of ideas. Yet, if they put Yuuzhan Vongs in these sequels, I'm not going to like them, this is one of the very few eras of SW EU I definetely can't stand. And I am not of those who disliked the prelogy, absolutely not. I even enjoyed Episode III as a sort of space opera Othello (with Palpatine as Iago, one of Shakespeare's strongest characters to me); yet clearly not the SW style, lacking the usual humor and tongue-in-cheek characters.