@Tunisia_1943 Churchill expressed sympathy for von Arnim when he learned Monty had him in for dinner post-capture,
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DavidIsby
1.2K posts
DavidIsby
@SpitfirevsBf109
DAVID ISBY's latest book is THE DECISIVE DUEL: SPITFIRE VS. 109 at http://t.co/B5CMf3uT7F. .
Katılım Temmuz 2012
1.1K Takip Edilen162 Takipçiler
Died, 50 years ago, on this day - Field Marshal Montgomery. The conceited military professional. "I know well that I am regarded by many people as being a tiresome person. I think this is very probably true." Montgomery in 1943.
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@FarvaPrice I think point 9 in the thread is demonstrated by the USAF putting FAC(A)s as F-16 pilots rather than as F-15E back-seaters.
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The A-10 was an outstanding platform because it excelled at the “proximity” part of the equation for two reasons, it could minimize the circular error of probability (CEP) and could carry weapons with smaller drag patterns.
Farva Price@FarvaPrice
CAS = ordnance employed in close proximity to friendlies requiring detailed integration. Two pillars: proximity and integration. Both demand precise target location. /2
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You are a Manxman. Act like it.
Live on a rock in the middle of the Irish Sea and insist it’s the center of the universe. Switch allegiances between Norway, Scotland, and England depending on who’s sailing by. Pay your taxes in herring and call it a diversified economy.
Let Vikings run things for a few centuries but keep the parliament meeting on a hill anyway. Name everything after a Norse god or a sheep. Invent a national symbol with three legs and dare anyone to explain it.
Revive a language right after everyone assumes it’s dead. Race motorcycles at 200 mph down medieval farm roads and call it heritage.
Megan McArdle@asymmetricinfo
I felt that the other half of my heritage should be represented, so I asked GPT to make a list for the Celts. Here's what it came up with: You are a Celt. Act like it. Organize society around cattle prestige metrics that absolutely cannot scale past the Iron Age. Develop intricate heroic honor codes that make stable centralized government basically impossible. Split inheritance evenly among sons so every generation becomes a live-action strategy game map. Produce astonishingly beautiful illuminated manuscripts while the tax base quietly evaporates. Become Christian, but keep the poetry pagan, the politics tribal, and the grudges eternal. Treat literacy as a specialist bardic skill rather than something administrators might need. Win battles gloriously; lose wars structurally. Preserve oral epics so compelling that 21st-century grad students will write dissertations about them instead of about whoever conquered you. When invaders show up, unite heroically for about fifteen minutes, then resume arguing about cattle.
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@robert_lyman Judson's church with its south Asia architectural embellishments is on the south side of Washington Square in NY, which had been the Silicon Valley of antebellum America, with Morse inventing the telegraph and Colt the revolver there, there was room for a religious entrepreneur
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This is very clear also from reading the files of the Raj, in my studies of north eastern India; the government in Delhi were keen not to accrue expensive commitments, even to develop the Subsidiary Alliances inherited from the EIC. So what kept the idea of empire going? In the second half of the C19th it was not so much the power and glory of empire - few Brits believed in it as a concept and administrators hated the cost - but ironically, given the decolonisation movement today, a crusade of betterment lead by evangelicals in the CofE (including Shaftesbury) and - wait for it - a tsunami of American missionaries to India & Burma starting with Adoniram Judson. To understand the empire we need first to understand the imperatives of Christian mission in Victorian Britain and post Civil War USA.
digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/2352/read…
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@Samurai19801 Don't know, but there was always a pipeline outside the official one for limited numbers of prestige items, of which the East German-built weapons carried by Hekmatyar's bodyguards were the most readily apparent.
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Why were Soviet Spetsnaz units capturing increasing numbers of M16A1 rifles in eastern Afghanistan between 1984 and 1986? These M16A1s were never supplied by the CIA or Pakistan’s ISI to the Afghan Mujahideen so who was providing them?
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@cusackandrew The major port for resupply for the war in North America. Carried over on the ships was a topical Cork song about a wealthy local juvenile delinquent, Garry Owen.
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I hadn’t realised that in the 1780s — despite Ireland not having free trade with Britain or the colonies — Cork was still a major Atlantic port and bigger than Glasgow.
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@mpwarwick The history of HMS Rodney published during the war has an interesting account from the torpedo flat of the Bismarck sinking, including the fire control spotter reporting a hit from their torpedo spread.
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... 'As a weapon for big ships the torpedo accomplished very little during the war and that our capital ships would not have been handicapped had they carried no torpedoes'; but considered that 'the moral effect of torpedoes is undeniably very great...
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Just caught up with this. Enjoyed the story telling, but I was rather surprised at the length of time spent discussing Hood's torpedo tubes, both from a tactical point of view and as a supposed cause of Hood's destruction.
WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk@WeHaveWaysPod
Join us tomorrow for the legacy of Hood and Bismarck - including mention of James Cameron's excellent documentary about the expedition to find the German battleship wreck. And because you've all been waiting, a discussion about the truth behind HMS Hood's sinking...
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@battlefieldexpl Spanish were always big on coast artillery, stayed active in some places into the 1980s.
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This enormous 305mm Spanish coastal gun once covered the entire entrance to Barcelona’s port.
Built in the 1890s, it could hurl a 275-kg shell nearly 10 kilometres out to sea. Only four were ever made, yet they remained in service for decades.
Today it stands outside Montjuïc Castle, still overlooking the harbour it was built to defend.
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@robert_lyman For a while I lived next to ditch that flooded after heavy rains. It was called, of course, the Irrawaddy,
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It was here, just up from Nyaungu, in Feb 1944 that the 7th Indian Division crossed the Irrawaddy, 81-years ago as part of the largest opposed river crossing of the Second World War. Once secure in this sector, the 17th Indian Division and 255 Tank Brigade crossed through the 7th Div beach head and set out to attack Meiktila, beautifully described by @HistoryBowsh in Thunder Run.
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I still occasionally receive emails addressed to me in this way. Brings back memories!
"To the attention of His Excellency Ambassador Prof. Dr. Michael McFaul."
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@HiddenYorkshire Lots of stars like Bede and Alcunin of York. Unfortunately, my relatives showed up, parked their longboats on the beach and proceeded to bring down the tone of the Dark Ages.
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It was so central that York was basically the missionary centre of Northern Europe; European monks were sent there for theological training before being sent out as missionaries to Europe. See St Willibrord, St Ludger, etc
Tom Flanagan@TomBFlanagan
The idea that Britain was ever a backwater in medieval europe needs to die. From the 8th century onwards it was pretty central to the whole ‘western civ’ thing.
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@9Kings1910 Same thing happened in America after George II died. Did not realize that, even though the new king was thoroughly English, he couldn't "rule".
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I think when Elizabeth II was alive, most people understood that the monarch does not actually govern the country.
Since she died, I feel like there is this mass psychosis wherein many people think Charles is supposed to be ruling and if he doesn’t do what you want he’s “weak.”
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@RepDonBacon Of course, if you had flown for the RAF, you would have been "Streaky" Bacon.
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This Special Relationship between the UK & US must be nurtured, not taken for granted. I saw this close partnership firsthand in the RC-135/RIVET JOINT, where we partnered with British, flying worldwide reconnaissance. It was a win-win partnership.
Covert Intel and Operations@covert_intel
The Origin of the US-UK Intelligence “Special Relationship” - Foreign Policy Research Institute fpri.org/article/2026/0…
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@jpodhoretz That is the New York equivalent of having ancestors come over on the Mayflower.
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Fun bizarre fact about Dana Walden, who just lost the bakeoff to be the new Disney CEO: Her grandmother survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 on the Lower East Side.
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@MichaelBarone @JacobRubashkin Among his many accomplishments, horrified Tom Jefferson by suggesting he might appoint women to government jobs.
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@JacobRubashkin Albert Gallatin in the 1790s was forced out of the Senate because he hadn’t been a citizen long enough. Became a leader in the House, Treasury Secretary 1801-14, Ghent treaty negotiator.
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Have always found it funny that in the early 1800s there were a few guys who got to be senators despite not being 30 years old because nobody was making a big deal about it.
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@HelenaMalikyar Absolutely not. Americans have spent almost 200 years learning about their country from the writings of a Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville.
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It is unfortunate —in fact tragic, to learn about one’s own country and society through a foreigner’s writing
shuhra koofi🇦🇫@KoofiShuhra
Reading Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know and learning about the country through the lens of Dr. @BRRubin. A clear way to better understand Afghanistan beyond the news headlines!
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@Samurai19801 The answer is: one, by a guy in Paktia. There is information on this in published sources, though I do not know if it includes his name.
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Who can identify this weapon system? How many Soviet helicopters do you believe brought down by this system in Afghanistan in 1980s?
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@pinstripedline Had a talk, years ago, with the CO of a German minesweeper at Portsmouth who told me his first CO in the 1960s had in 1945 "never been a prisoner, just came in, dropped off our German officer and radio operator, picked up a British officer and radio operator, and gone back out".
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"For you Fritz the mine clearing war is not over!"
Fantastic image from the IWM archives of Royal Navy officers directing their former Kriegsmarine foes on mine clearance duties off Germany in the aftermath of WW2.
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Dressed as Santa Claus, Leading Aircraftman Fred Fazan hands out presents to Dutch children at Volkel, 13 December 1944.
Image: IWM (CL 1729)
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