"Show me a commie pilot with some initiative, and I'll show you a Foxbat in Japan."
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"Cordite is safe as long as you remember it is dangerous"
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Duchess: It really depends on how you define "hot".
Boz: It depends on how soused you are -- As BAC goes to .4, W(hot) approaches 1
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This post shall not be carried in aircraft on combat missions or when there is a reasonable chance of its falling into the hands of an unfriendly nation, unless specifically authorized by the "Moderator."
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"Please stop bringing realism into game balancing because game balancing has nothing to do with realism."
-[=SD=]UberrimaFides on Massgate Forums
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A 600 Mercedes hits an old rusty armored car on the crossroads. A new Russian comes out of it, shouting to his bratki to beat up whoever is in the armored car. An old man comes out of the armored car and raises eyebrows: "It seems you, batenka, have ventured into the wrong anecdote. Comrade Dzerzhinsky, would you please shoot this bourgeois on-sight?"
--Russian Joke combining the New/Old Russians Joke and a Lenin Joke in one trifecta.
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"In Japan we dropped 502,000 tons and we won the war.
In Vietnam we dropped 6,162,000 tons of bombs and we lost the war.
The difference was that McNamara chose the targets in Vietnam and I chose the targets in Japan.”
--Curtis E. LeMay
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Anything worth the cost of a missile, which can be located on the battlefield, will be shot at with missiles. If the US military is involved, then things, which are not worth the cost if a missile will also be shot at with missiles.
--Sea Skimmer
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Captain of [the] Enola Gay dead at 92. If it had not been for his efforts, we might all be driving Japanese cars and watching Japanese TVs today.
--FARK.com
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It's not Shep's fault that removing a nation's ability to wage war with strategic bombardment also involves slaughtering a good chunk of the population. It's the population's fault for living in the vicinity of industrial, infrastructural, governmental, and military facilities.
--Adrian Laguna
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"Cordite is safe as long as you remember it is dangerous"
--Royal Navy Manual
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Have you ever thought of writing Grog-Porn for a living?
"Ivan burst out of his T-34's hard metal turret, heady from the adrenaline rush of just laying waste to an entire platoon of young volksturm. His heart pounding, face flush with excitement, he looked deeply into his loader Antonov's eyes. They knew the intense moments they had shared, cramped in that hot tank turret, would last an eternity."
Sorry, couldn't help it.
I cant wait for CMBB.
--Battlefront.com Forum Post
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I agree. For posterity's sake, and to alleviate potential concerns on the part of certain European governments about an excess of historical accuracy, the Hamstergruppen have come to be known worldwide as the icon of evil.
--Battlefront.com Forum Post
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Didn't you know? specially trained SS hamsters were formed into special Rodentsturm battalions to plug the gaps appearing in the overstretched German line. They soon got a reputation for evil. This may be down to the fact that a hamster has trouble understanding the Geneva convention.
--Battlefront.com Forum Post
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The Germans formed Feline Battalions to counter the Soviet Guards Rodentsia divisions trained to chew through the wiring of panzers
--Battlefront.com Forum Post
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AKFC - Col. Kalashnikov's secret recipe.
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"Girls don't exist on the internet. Boys are Boys, Girls are Boys, and Children are the F.B.I."
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"If you really want to know what it was like to fight in the air in the Great War, then go up to someone you have never met before... and pour a two-gallon tin of petrol over them. Then apply a match, and when they are nicely ablaze, push them from a fifteenth-floor window, after perhaps shooting them a few times in the back with a revolver."
--“The Two-Headed Eagle”
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"Vader employed a deception where the planet Alderaan was secretly moved and a cheap inflatable copy was put up in its place so the Death Star, really a secret mining ship, could destroy it. Alderaan, enjoying the fact that the couldn't be taxed if everyone thought they were dead made no moves to correct the misinterpretation of their status."
-- Vader for 2000 website.
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"'The Republicans puff up real big when we talk about' expensive weapons systems, Brown said."
And the Democrats love every weapons system--until it threatens to become real hardware instead of paper studies -- The McNamara Syndrome.
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Question "Where does steel rain come from?"
Answer "Aluminum overcast."
--An old B-17 pilot with 35 missions
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Ban the bomb! Save the world for conventional warfare!
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"He flies on a wing and a prayer, the other wing I took off"
--Starshy Leytenant Molotov
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"Drive defensively -- buy a tank."
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“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”
-- Frank Zappa
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Fire Power Demos are always good for a sea story. About 1961 VP Johnson was to be aboard the next day for a Forrestal Fire Power show. The day before a fully loaded Spad made his deck run and flew smartly into the drink. If not this day , then under similar circumstances the announcer is supposed to have said, " this is the famous AD-6 Skyraider, capable of greater loads than the WWII B-17 Flying Fort, but....," as the Spad ditched,added, " it does not carry the load quite as far." If not true, it should be. The day of the air show I substituted and flew the heavily loaded Spad. I have never seen so many cameras on the flight at one time as everyone who had missed the display wanted to get the replay. I got airborne with no problem by when the show turned to worms I was directed to fly 20 miles from the ship and jettison all that ordnance.
--Joe Shea
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Circa 1961 in WESTPAC, names deleted to protect the innocent A certain LT(jg) Section leader was assigned a shiny nugget to break in On a very dark night nav mission the new guy just would not stay tucked in where his leader wanted him. Giving up on radio instructions the section leader opened his canopy and fired some of his .38 Cal/tracers across the bow and threatened to put the next few rounds in the cockpit if the new guy did not tighten it up.
He did. The squadron usage of tracer ammo went off the charts as we found a new way to entertain ourselves.
--Joe Shea
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On one of my cruises the reports began to come in about from pilots who had been rescued after being downed in SEA. They all seem to report an awful thirst and recommended drinking water be part of our flight survival gear. A search was made for a light plastic container that would fit into the vest pocket. The ultimate solution was baby milk bottles, and the order went out through supply. When our bottles came in, half were a manly blue and half were "wuss" pink. I lucked out, but our junior officers were stuck with the pink survival bottles. One more reason not to be caught by the Cong
--Jim Reid
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"When a Texan decides to take his chances, chances will be taken, that's for sure."
--Jerry Jeff Walker
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"Flamethrowers, when you need to set someone on fire...but they're all the way over there."
--Brian Blackman
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“The device is more than 500 per cent efficient”
Cool. It violates the laws of physics. I thought that only happened on Star Trek.
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While we are on the subject of the effects of shock, I have just finished 'Terror By Night' by Michael Renaut DFC. He witnessed a Halifax crashing on landing and exploding into flames. The only one to escape the inferno was the wireless operator, who managed to use an axe to chop his way out. Amazingly, he was utterly unscathed. To celebrate his miraculous survival, he went to the officers mess and ordered a stiff whisky. Just as he was about to drink it, he collapsed on the floor and died from shock. Made my blood run cold reading that.
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My wifes father was stationed in Alaska in the 1950's. He told her that a number of fighters, their pilots and surveillance AC and crews didn't return in the years he was there. Told not to ask questions and keep his mouth shut.
One funny story was a pilot that didn't return from an intercept scramble. Guy was missing for 2 weeks. He finally gets back to base after spending all this time walking his way thru the wilderness. Following streams as he could. When he got back his pockets were stuffed with Gold Nuggets! When the pilot got back to duty a few weeks later, he would go out and try to find the stream where he found the gold. Never did. Of course all the guys at the base would go out looking too! Too bad they didn't have portable GPS back then!
--Donster
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Riddle: Why are all the roads in France lined with trees?
So the Germans can march in the shade.
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"You can all go to hell. I'm going to Texas"
--Davy Crockett
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Both the B-17 and the B-25 were successfully looped at one point or another by their crazy pilots. The B-17 was done during testing flights after a shallow dive from 29,000 ft to 20,000. She popped a few rivets and made the pilot and his passsengers feel very sick and unhappy at the top but completed the manuever with ease. Jimmy Dolittle did the B-25 during a flight in whic he was demonstrating how powerfull the bomber was. He looped the bomber, performed many BFM with it and the shut off an engine and landed it with one dead engine.
Even the mighty Lancaster was capable of some amazing manuevering. A pilot I met reminisced about how when he was a co-pilot in one over france they managed to force the plane into several hair raising hi-speed corkscrews ending with a sloppy hi yo-yo while trying keep away from a determined 109 pilot. They lost about 18,000 feet during those antics but made it home alive after help came.
Don't forget those bombers are all actually fairly light when the fuel and bombs are gone and have massive amounts of power attached to a hi-strength frame used to pulling tons and tons of weight and huge wings and control surfaces... The only drawbacks really are the amount of force needed to control them and the altitude needed to provide energy for the manuevers!
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John Wilkes Booth was killed by federal troops near Bowling Green, Virginia. The assassin of President Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops in Garrett's Tobacco Farm and killed when he set fire to the barn where he was hiding, the light the fire emitted blew his cover and one of the soldiers, Sgt. Boston Corgett, shot him dead.
Corbett was a religious fanatic who had castrated himself with a bayonet to be free of sin. Years after killing Booth he committed suicide.
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When Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland during World War II, word was immediately sent to Winston Churchill . Although this was obviously an event of great historical importance, Churchill refused to meet with him. He was busy watching a Marx Brothers movie. Churchill chose to watch a Marx Brothers movie while history was made in World War II.
(Paul Stirling Hagerman)
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There was a special arrangement on the P-39's throttle in the form of a wire. When throttle was moved beyond it, wire was broken and it would tell ground crews to pay special attention to the engine. This is listed in P-39 flight manual
There was a little song in among US pilots who learned to fly on the P-39:
" Don't give me a P-39 with an engine that's mounted behind...
It will tumble and roll And dig a big hole...
Don't give me a P-39..."
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I think I can explain Voyager. After the Caretaker blew them into the delta quadrant, a pipe blew leaking a small amount of Stupid gas into the air. It took effect quickly so they were too stupid to fix it. The only people who are immune are the Doctor and most of the time Seven with her Borg tech.
Wraps up everything nicely...
--Chris O'Farrell
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"The Navy is a machine invented by geniuses, to be run by idiots."
-- Herman Wouk, 'The Caine Mutiny'.
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"Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it anyway."
--Robert A. Heinlein.
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"What was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This Atomic Bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath!"
-- Winston Churchill, July, 1945
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When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied, "Shoot twice and go home."
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"When firing a shell from North to South over seven miles, the effect that causes the shell to miss the aimpoint is called:"
a. Corolis effect
b. Damn privates.
c. Damn Orficers.
d. God Bless the NCOs, we didn't miss.
e. What target? We were just doing a functional check. Was that live ammo?
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My favorite government type is the fascist corporate state (I'm serious BTW). It's great if done properly, and it's like a realist's version of communism.
The government gives you a cow. You make milk and calves. The government takes your milk and calves, sells the milk back to you, and gives your calves to others (to make more cows, of course). The government uses its milk money to maintain its Legions of Doom, which are busy burning other nations to the ground.
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I remember several years ago reading or hearing a description by a German officer, after being asked to describe the ideal soldier of WW2.
His reply was as follows:
The soldier would be English for his resilience, supplied by the Americans, hard like a Russian, fanatical like the Japanese and finally led by a German officer.
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CIA: 2 weeks of listening to microphones, undercover ops etc. In the end: we saw nothing, heard nothing, hence the rabbit doesn't exist.
FBI: 1 week of undercover ops, listening to informers etc. After the week has gone, they enter the wood, kill all the animals and burn everything down. In the end: the f**king rabbit crook deserved it, anyway.
KGB: after two hours, they go out of the wood, carrying a well-beaten bear who was crying: OK, OK, I admit, I'm a rabbit, please don't hit me anymore!!!
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On a completely irrelevant point: Did you know that in 1983 when James Cameron was making The Terminator, he considered casting OJ as the Terminator... but decided against it because "it just wouldn't be believable having such a good, upright, popular man as an emotionless brutal killer".
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Sadly, in the 60's Lockheed proposed a separate cabin up front, with toilet, food and drink, and with a separate exterior door such that it was physically impossible to get into the cockpit from the passenger section.
Airlines and FAA nixed the concept.
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When I was in RVN there was a Stars and Stripes front page headline: MARINES BEAT OFF NVA BATTALLION. We got a big laugh out of that one!
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In 1941 Finnish lieutenant Pentti used only his sidearm and a couple handfuls of mud to capture an immobilized KV-1. He smeared the prisms with mud and sat on the top of the turret knocking on the hatches with his pistol, suggesting the crew to surrender. And they did, eventually, after few hours of immense persuation. He got a Mannerheim Cross for that and became later the Finnish secretary of defence in the 60's.
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The plain 3,7cm PaK didn't get very far against the KV (28mm @ 100m @ 30°). After the experiences in the early war the 3,7cm PaK was given the PzGr 40 with tungsten core. On July 1st 1941 ammunition supply of PzGr 40 was 982,300.
Beginning in February 1942 the Stielgranate 41 ammo for the PaK 3,7cm was delivered to the troops. Like a rifle grenade it was loaded into the muzzle and was an over-caliber warhead looking remotely like a Panzerfaust warhead. Armor Penetration 180mm, but the Vo was so low (110m/s) that it could only be used below 200m range with reasonable accuracy.
The 5cm PaK was a better hope and with the tungsten ammo it was a reasonable threat to the KV but at the beginning of barbarossa it still was not very widespread.
The 5cm too received a Stielgranate, the 5cm StGr 42, however it took until March 1943 before development was finished.
What's interesting is that even with the underperforming 3,7cm PaK the units still managed to achieve successes against T-34 et al. I happen to be in possession of the unit history of the Pz.J.-Abt 38 (~AT battalion) of the 2nd PzDiv. They were still equipped with the 3,7cm PaK in late 1941, and only slowly got new 5cm paKs one by one over a long delivery time.
They talk about penetrations into the machine-gun assembly of the enemy tanks from 10 meters distance, but there are also battle reports where german tanks aided by the AT guns fought with Russian T-34 tanks, where the Russian tanks were destroyed and later analysis showed that at least one T-34 had clearly been destroyed by the 37mm AT guns alone.
Generally, however, the crews were very unsatisfied with the performance of the 3,7cm PaK.
And here's an account on what they did against a KV:
"at about midnight a 52-ton tank drives around the village along the eastern route out of range. He keeps turning around on the snowy fields and then drives, coming from the direction of Oserezkoje, on the village road into Gorki. the road was icy and littered with craters, so that the behemoth advances only very slowly. By shouting we communicate with other units, especially Pz-Rgt 3, and plan to destroy the tank with AT mines. When the tank was close to the platoon HQ emplacement, where a 3,7cm PaK is only 10m away, the tank slides once again into the snow-covered road ditch. The tank cannot free itself this time.
The gun commander of the 3,7cm PaK - Uffz. Hantsch - had already equipped himself with a T-mine. Now is the time to employ it. Platoon leader and 2 soldiers give him cover with SMG. With three leaps Hantsch reaches the rear of the 52-ton-tank, climbs it and applies the mine to the turret.
(now this nest part is for Jeff Duquette ) At the same time from the other side of the street the NCO of a tank crew (=TC), Uffz Kern, drags with him a gasoline jerry can, climbs onto the tank, half empties the gasoline can and jumps off. Hantsch pulls the detonator on the TZ-Mine and jumps to safety. A few seconds later the turret is thrown away as if moved by an invisible hand, and at the same time the tank starts burning."
There are other accounts on gun duels between a lone 5cm AT gun and several T-34 and BT-7, about 3.7cm and 5cm PaK working together with soldiers and T-mines to take out two KV-1s.
The diary also talks about how the unit received the first Stielgranaten for their 3.7cm PaK by air in late February 1942. On March 3rd 1942 they improvise a test firing against a T-34 with the new Stielgranate (in Arshaniki). It clearly penetrated the turret.
The entry concludes that although now they had an ammunition that could clearly penetrate even thick enemy armor, the accuracy of the slow-flying ammunition was so poor that they could only engage at hundred meters so that they still remained "Panzer- Nahkämpfer" (tank close combateers).
It seems the AT crews relied on their AT guns just as much as their skills and bravery to fight tanks with close assault means, namely manually attached T-mines.
It will be hard for CMBB to model this kind of combat on a very individual level, and I am, not sure how well the "abstracted" close assault of infantry upon tanks which CMBO has now will work for the early 1941/1942 russian front combat. As it stands now, we have gaggles of full squads assaulting the tanks.
Also not sure how it would model the tactic of waiting for the tanks to come very close and then aim at the many very small weakspots such as MG-mount, vision slits, cannon barrel etc. The current model of weak spots only models the random hit upon shot traps etc., but probably fails to model the fully intentional aiming at such locations from close distance.
We will see.
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PS - I also remember a play, probably on BBC in the 60's - that also fascinated me.
A Second World War aircraft was found by a courting couple in a forest/wood, - much overgrown - where it had remained unfound since it crashed. The skeletal pilot remained at the controls with a single bullet hole through the back of the skull.
It was a murder of course - the unlikely plot being that one of the crew had done away with him and baled out, saying they had been in action.
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There once was a King of Spain, Charles V. I think it was. He spoke four languages:
Spanish when he spoke to God, i.e. when he prayed;
Italian when he spoke to women;
French when he spoke to men;
German when he spoke to his horse.
The petty tyrants who ruled the many German states in the 17th and 18th century spoke French or English rather than German, which was the language of the common folk. Only in the late 18th and 19th century was German gradually elevated to the rank of a cultivated language, mainly by the efforts of writers such as Goethe, Shiller and Heine.
To this day, it seems that many people all over the world consider German to be the ideal language for training and commanding dogs, particularly German shepherds. In my native Colombia, for instance, you see German shepherd dogs born in places as un-Teutonic as Mosquera and Zipaquirá reacting to commands like "Platz", "Pfote", "Toter Hund" and "Bei Fuss", uttered by equally un-Teutonic masters.
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EuroEnglish
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish": --
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil sevants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.
By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaning "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!
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Next time you go in to buy some .22LR ammo and they ask if it's for a rifle or a handgun tell them "Neither. It's for a machinegun." That always goes over pretty well. :D
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Basic there in 85. D 18/4. We were in the old shitty WWII barracks. My Senior Drill Instructor looked just like a damn Bulldog. He used to say as he went out the door at the end of the day, "Now, I'm going home to beat my wife and kids, and kick my dog, You know why? Because they are Goddamn civilians"! We knew he was kidding but I doubt he could get away with that anymore.
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*bangs shoe on table*
Silly Englishmen!
Is SOVIET Spitfire now! We add better guns! We add vodka bottle holder! We take off canopy! We paint white, and put skis on bottom, and add red star! Then we send Spitfire up to cold frozen north where wimpy tea does not make you warm! Is not like nice ready-room with the biscuits and the tea and the radio and the Winston Churchill!
*cue Soviet national anthem*
*red banners wave*
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And the template for every superhero adventure is: Villain shows up, Spider-Man beats him.
No, no. The DC classical template was villain shows up, hero beats him (or, as an alternative, a natural disaster is threatened, hero thwarts it).
Marvel's was something closer to villain shows up, hero is forced to abandon his job interview/hot date/vital medical appointment in order to self-sacrificingly fight the villain, hero beats villain, public blame hero for property destruction, hero angsts.
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What the hell...? Since when is Frank not a hero?
If you want to be technically accurate, Punisher is more effective than Batman. They've both dedicated their lives to stopping crime, but Punisher actually STOPS it. Punisher rarely has enemies from his past come after him (except that wanker Jigsaw), and with every murderer he's killed, he's saved unknown numbers of innocents down the line.
------------------------------
We know the game plan;
Punisher has been hunting a group of wildly violent insane downright nasty mofos.
He gets beaten up tortured and left for dead by them.
He narrowly escapes certain doom and returns to send the bad guys straight to hell with the Uzi.
The End.
Save for the time he actually, um, died, this was the template for almost every Punisher tale.
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Uh, since the first time he ever killed someone in a case where it wasn't immediate self-defense. He became a murderer at that point, and murderers are not heroes.
Superman killed three powerless Kryptonians in the Phantom Zone. He could've left them there, could have imprisoned them, could have anything. He killed them, because he KNEW that it was the ONLY way to forever keep his planet safe from the fate of the PZ Earth. So Supes isn't a hero anymore, huh? Wow, what you learn on Usenet...
Wolverine sliced up three Hellfire Club guards who really didn't pose much of a threat to anyone, much less him. He did it out of revenge, and because he thought it was fun. So I guess Wolvie's no longer a hero?
Cyclops, seething with anger over what happened to his son, "killed" Apocalypse in X-Factor. Before that, he "killed" Mr. Sinister during Inferno. Both times, they had already been defeated. They're both back, but Cyclops thought they were dead. So Cyke is no longer a hero either.
The Joker crippled Barbara Gordon. Batman took him to jail. The Joker got out and killed Robin. Batman tries to capture him (fails). Every subsequent time after that, Joker is taken to jail.
Just recently, Joker killed Commissioner Gordon's wife. He was kneecapped by Gordon and taken to jail.
Now he's out again. Yeah, Batman is more of a hero than Supes, Punisher, or those dirty mutants.
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But I sure would sue the Gotham City judiciary system for allowing such a menace to society any chance at reinstatement to society. It is quite clear that all attempts at healing the joker have failed. Every time he kills he is only doing more damage to his psyche. They have to kill him for the good of Gotham City and for his own good.
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Also, during that brief period in the eighties when Wolverine was fighting those instincts, he was far more heroic than than the kill-anything-that-moves sort of guy he's become. Remember, Wolverine is indestructible and knows every martial art known to man. Rather than incapacitate a villain with an arm-lock or a strike to a nerve cluster, he carves them up with his shiny claws.
Quite heroic.
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This is blatant fascist enemy propaganda. No units of the Glorious Red Army have insufficient supply. All have full rations. Gospodin Jefremovich will be hearing from his Political Officer shortly.
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Actually, hidden PAK knocking out tanks without ever being seen in return was very common in WW II. The AARs are full of reports of it. Especially when the fire was from any significant range, from covered areas (villages, woods), in anything but perfect light conditions, or from any direction but the direct front. Sometimes half a company of tanks was blown away by a PAK battery without even figuring out the direction the shells were coming from, let alone the location, let alone seeing the particular guns.
PAK rounds are supersonic, and the round arrives well before the report. There is a puff at range, then seconds later the round arrives, and seconds later again the sound of firing. With each indicator seperated from the others, it is quite difficult to see each and to connect them. The muzzle flash or puff of smoke or dust is obviously the key item. But it comes before anything else, from a location you already have to be looking directly at. By the time the round hits, the flash is long gone and usually the puff too.
In the AAR, what stands out most is the absence of overwatch from the infantry heavy weapons. With all the artillery used for prep fire, their role becomes critical. Suppression of the enemy AT guns falls to the 82mm mortars and the HMGs. It seems regular infantry stayed in cover instead of any of them scouting through the open, and that may have contributed to the AT guns remaining hidden. Doctrinally, infantry scouts need to get close enough to spot them, with mortars and MGs in overwatch to suppress. Only then should light armor be exposed to likely AT positions.
Instead it sounds like the attacker planned on a mostly infantry attack through the woods, which was nixed by the mines. Then the tanks out in the open fell easily to hidden PAK, and without them the attack faltered. That is realistic enough, since such coordination mistakes are easy to make. But I thought the tactical analysis might be interesting to some, including the AAR writer.
P.S. I assume it goes without saying that it all sounds great. ATRs sniping but only gradually killing, PAK remaining stubbornly hidden, tankers getting scared, infantry getting tired on a long assault, a platoon straying into the open driven to ground by one MG, scattered prep artillery fire leaving hidden and dug in troops unphased - it all sounds very realistic.
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I'll be the US at Savo Island.......I can just see my computer with an 8 inch shell hole in the side, me slumped at the desk in a pool of blood, and the study burning and leaning increasingly over to one side....................
The good thing about Savo would be that you wouldn't need an admiral for the US side - any old fool about 30 miles away without a PC and not knowing what day of the week it was would do as Adm Crutchley.
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During annual secret clearance briefings in the early 90s, they stated that Texas would be the worlds 3rd strongest military power if we were our own country.
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We are Dyslexia of Borg. Futility is resistant. Your ass will be laminated.
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If an infinite number of rednecks in the back of an infinite number of pickup trucks shoot an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce a complete version of Hamlet in braille.
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"A mouse is an animal that if killed in sufficiently many and creative ways will generate a PhD."
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"To Conserve Fighting Strength", U.S. Army medical corps slogan. It is not "Help the most seriously wounded first" (That would be in direct contradiction of the real slogan) It sounds cold but conserving fighting strength means what it says. On the other hand, any other objective would contribute to military defeat.
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You seem to be forgetting the combat medicine is no more than a numbers game. The goal is to result with the largest number of surviving wounded. This is why medics are trained to work on the 'high payoff' patients first. It is a cold hard fact that some will have to be sacrificed in order to free up resources so a larger number of wounded can be saved.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" - Ambrose Bierce
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"We have deserts in America. We just don't live in them." - Sam Kinison
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The closest I've come was being on loan to the British Army in 1990, and upon billeting at the Guards Depot in Pirbright, being issued a wool blanket with the "1942" manufacturer's tag still sewn to it.
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When I was in the TA I saw L4 Brens with date-stamps going back to 1943, and they still worked fine...and though it's not quite so old, there's something special about eating a Mars Bar from a ration pack that's dated four years before you were born...
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No offense intended. I just get tired of the common assumption that the Roman Republic was some wonderful utopia until overthrown by the evil Caesars. This exact idea is what the storyline of Star Wars is based on. There's never any explanation of how such a wonderful popular government can be overthrown so easily.
For the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Empire, the disappearance of the Republic resulted in going from hundreds of insatiable thieves plundering them (the Roman Senate) to a single thief with a built-in incentive for keeping the Empire solvent (the Emperor). When they had good Emperors, it worked very well, much better for most than the Republic. They problem, of course, is that the character of the Emperor was pretty much a toss of the dice.
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Lots of people would have disagreed with you. In the Middle Ages, an opponent of the local ruler, or even sometimes a person who had fallen into his disfavor, had only to flee across the nearest border and he could gain freedom and even allies to revenge himself.
Under the Empire, there was nowhere to flee for those who were out of favor of the Emperor. In essence, the Empire was a political monopoly, feudalism had some features in common with free-market economies.
Feudal societies are not usually very progressive, but they are also inherently sloppy in their oppression. This sloppiness allowed for many people to lead a relatively free existence, as compared to a modern totalitarian society.
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All that was human and caring in me died years ago. What we are seeing now is a world in which love is dead. What's coming is merely everything else following right behind it.
And in the end, when the great power plants turn no more, the vast communications networks fall silent, and the TV brainwashing boxes are darkened....
..a hammer falling on a primer will still work just fine.
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What is wrong with some of you guys? This is a wargame. Its about killing. Its about destroying the enemy. This is not Chess, or Risk.
It's a wargame. What do you think happens when a tank fires into a squad? Or a machine gun chatters on men caught in the open.
If you don't want death, why play a wargame?
What is the purpose. Go play Monopoly!
Wild Bill
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The call of the wild Chipotlus Americanus, now endemic to the urban American landscape, is known to be quite hypnotic among youths and tends to encourage the consumption of chicken, beef, pork, or vegetables in various forms.
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I prefer the eloquent blooming of hundreds of bomblets (former MLRS Redleg, here) to the vulgarity of a single, brutish blast.
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Turning back the pages...
I was about your age (within a year) when we decommissioned the Titan 2C ICBM at Davis-Monthan in a valley you are familiar with. I had been on the Missile Combat Crew (4 man crew that launched the missile) for more than 10 years. I was a very good technician and took pride in my ability to almost walk on water when it came to evaluations. I was a homesteader, I only took leave back to Wisconsin 2 times in the 10 years... most of the time I stayed in the Tucson area and I lost leave time almost every year... I was totally SACumsized.
They told us it was 'the most important job we would have in our lives' and I totally believed it... What they should have said was 'This is the most important job you can be doing in this part of your life.'
I was 31 and totally was up, the world had passed me by, there was nothing 'really important' to do any more. I missed being a mass murderer in waiting with my megatons of fun.
Timmers on http://www.glamour.com/news/blogs/captainkj/2007/06/remembering_exp.html
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