Tag Archives: V-1 rockets

Diary Blog, 9 May 2023, including Ukraine news, and something about Oliver Reed

Afternoon music

Tweets seen

Interesting. I wonder what the truth of it is.

Is it just my own subjective perception— or does Charles not look uneasy in that photograph, as if he does not find himself very credible?

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” [Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2]

The Kiev regime killing their own soldiers? An accident? Or what?

I have often wondered over the past year why the Russian side has left most of the rail system in Ukraine intact. Is there some special reason, or is it just slackness and/or lack of capability?

https://twitter.com/Syribelle/status/1655885018177187844?s=20

More music

[Germany 1945— “We are fighting for the future of our children“]
[Dresden 1945]

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…tweets “Dr” Louise Raw, who applauded, inter alia, the prosecutions of Alison Chabloz, and her being barred from entering France for 40 years, merely for singing satirical songs about Jewish frauds…

Another hypocrite.

Oliver Reed— quite a character. Despite the hellraising reputation and lifestyle, he could be quite pleasant and polite. My parents told me that they had met him (would have been in the late 1970s, I think, though maybe early 1980s) when stopping off for a drink at an inn on the Hog’s Back in Surrey, not far from Reed’s large Victorian country house. He was at the bar with a (male) friend, and was interesting and courteous, they said.

The conversation had ended prematurely when the publican whispered to Reed that “she’s outside!“, at which Reed and his friend ran out the back way, behind the bar. A moment later a blazingly-angry woman arrived, and said to the barman “has he been in?“, to which the barman diplomatically said “haven’t seen him“! She then stalked out. This turned out to have been Reed’s then wife, Jacquie.

Yes, Oliver Reed. The sort of character rarely seen then, and never seen now (arguende). Descended from Peter the Great, supposedly, and someone who started a romance with a 16-y-o schoolgirl when he was 42 (they later married, when she was about 21 and he was about 47).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Reed].

The darker side of Reed: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20130706/282724814519990.

…but “Fr Twohig said: ‘‘Oliver Reed was a very nice fellow. He wasn’t such a bad egg as is said.

‘He was quite shy and he used to need a few shots for Dutch courage. Drink set him off but he was a decent chap and very kind.’’

[The Irish Examiner]

The generality of the public want people to be either saints or sinners, but few people are unalloyedly either. “Blame and praise alike befall, when a dauntless man’s spirit is black and white mixed, like the magpie’s plumage” [Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival]

You see that wish of many to perceive people in a very rigid saint/sinner way in almost every political or social (or historical) scenario: the contending forces of the Second World War have to be either “evil” or “good”, despite it being obvious that bad things were done by all major forces contending.

The same is true of contemporary social or political matters in the UK. Those living on State benefits are often seen as either “scroungers” or “fraudsters” (though by some as suffering “victims” of society). Both can be true, even in one individual case, but people only want black and white, not grey.

Likewise, anyone who has served in the Army is now (following the American usage) a “veteran” and, if ever anywhere near a war zone, quite likely a “hero”, a usage that the Sun “newspaper” started in the early 1980s, when anyone who had set foot in the Falklands during the campaign was a “Falklands hero”.

Nurses of course are all seen as good, or even “angels”. Same, more or less, with doctors etc.

There is now no or very little nuance.

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Funny. In 1988, when I first went to Poland, driven by a former schoolfriend who had met a Polish girl in London when I very nearly slipped into the Thames and drowned— long story…), he opined, after we had spent some weeks there (I think about 6 weeks, in the end) that maybe poor Poland, then still under socialist control, might one day overtake the UK and France, in the Biblical “the last shall be first” way. At the time, I thought it highly unlikely, but look now…

In fact, my addiction to Google Earth and its Street View has revealed to me in recent years how much Poland has changed since I was there in 1988 and 1989 (I went several times over a couple of years). The roads look better by far than most of the UK ones now, especially the motorways and main highways that now exist. As for Warsaw, completely different.

The above changes must be interesting to my then friend and driver (I did not drive at the time), who married that Polish girl a year or so later, in the Autumn of 1989 (I was the best man, and the wedding was a lavish affair held in the St. Mary Basilica in Krakov, in the main market square).

[the nave of the Basilica of St. Mary, Krakov, where in 1989 a darkly-besuited Millard played the role of best man at a wedding reminiscent of that of Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren in the epic film, El Cid]

Incidentally, the last I heard, some years ago, the pair were still married, and living in leafy Buckinghamshire with their two teenage children (who by now must be well into their twenties).

Some mainstream and more or less international dishes, such as steak, sea bass with green asparagus, coquille of crabmeat and scallops; salad with duck and tomato; a meringue; a Russian favourite, Solyanka with meat (a traditional Russian soup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyanka); also (for the Central Asian guests?) Sherbet with lime.

…until a nuclear missile lands. Who, or what cabal, is stirring these revanchiste sentiments?

Late tweets seen

The Western msm, especially in the USA and UK, is more or less controlled, in its output, by Jews and those working in the Jewish and Israeli interest.

The same is true of, eg, UK governmental and legal systems.

Madness. Escalation of the conflict. Those missiles are not capable of reaching Moscow or Petersburg from Ukrainian territory, but are still able to reach far inside Russia. How long can it be before at least tactical nuclear weapons are used in Ukraine?

At one time, I wondered why the Palestinians in Gaza did not try to replicate the German V-1 technology of the Second World War era (which is almost all now openly available). My conclusion in the end was that the slow maximum speed of the V-1 (about 400 mph) would make it very vulnerable to Israeli jet fighters as well as to ground-to-air defensive missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb.

Late music

Diary Blog, 26 September 2021

Reading for a lazy Sunday

An old favourite— Raffles [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.J._Raffles(character); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amateur_Cracksman], now available free of charge online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/706/706-h/706-h.htm.

Raffles : The Amateur Cracksman (Paperback) - Walmart.com - Walmart.com

There have been many attempts to adapt the Raffles stories for film and TV; few, if any, have been wholly successful. Perhaps another attempt should be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffles_stories_and_adaptations#Adaptations

Tweets seen

While —for once— I agree with Blairite talking head and scribbler, Dan Hodges, a crisis is usually, in the end, provoked by people and their actions, not by some underlying reality. If 30 million people engage in any behaviour, it changes the whole situation. Regardless of how many millions of gallons of fuel are being shipped, refined, distributed.

Look at 1914. There actually was no “need” for war. There was not even, before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, much desire for it, not even by most of the militaristic German staff officers, nor by any but the most revanchiste politicians and generals in the French capital. However, once that fatal shot had been fired, once the tightly geared mass mobilization machines had started across Europe, the non-crisis was at once a real crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilization#Mobilization_in_World_War_I

Having said that, and as Hodges tweets, there is not much that the Cabinet of clowns can do to resolve, immediately, the crisis (whether there need be a “crisis” or not). In the longer term, training British drivers, and giving them decent terms and conditions, would seem to be the way forward, at least until automation and AI mean that human drivers are superfluous.

Unexpected

Who knows? It may be true…

The last comment reminds me of the story of the Neapolitan who visited London in the 1950s, and saw how newspaper sellers would go for a snack or a beer, leaving their wooden box and newspapers, their chair, and even their tin for coins, in the street. Operating on the honour system, they fully expected purchasers to leave the correct change. The Neapolitan tried it back in Naples, but when he returned, 10 minutes later, he discovered the newspapers, coins, chair and wooden box all gone.

Having said that, London would probably be little more honest than Naples these days.

Other tweets seen

Good to see.

I once wondered why the Palestinians of Gaza had never adapted the (no longer secret, and easily found) technology of the German V-1 rockets of the Second World War (an early “cruise missile”) to attack Israel, but probably their lack of interest was because the V-1, though very fast by 1944 standards, was a rather slow rocket by the standards of the late 20th, and 21st, centuries.

Even in 1944-45, the V-1’s speed (max. 400 mph) was insufficient to outpace the fastest British fighter planes, especially the Spitfire sometimes flying at, and even beyond, 600 mph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire#Speed_and_altitude_records.

The Spitfire pilots became proficient in shooting down V-1 flying bombs.

In other words, a modern Israeli jet would easily be able to destroy such ground-to-ground air weapons.

The other tactic used by Hamas in or from Gaza is the tunnel. The Israelis, and the Hamas operatives, play a deadly cat and mouse game in which the former try to find such tunnels (using high technology) and destroy them.

I imagine that the response of Hamas will be to dig deeper and deeper, far below the surface, where even high explosive and bunker-busting bombs and missiles will have little effect. The moment of maximum danger for such tunnellers would be when they excavate to the surface again (presumably in less-habited parts of Israel).

So far, the Hamas tunnels have not penetrated very far from the Gaza enclave itself, but one could imagine a tunnel going from Gaza, very deep underground, to central Israel, with the idea of infiltrating fighters deep into Israeli territory and then striking a strategic blow or series of blows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_tunnel_warfare_in_the_Gaza_Strip.

The cost of building such tunnels must be enormous. Even the present type of tunnel, limited in range, must be very expensive to create.

I believe that a very obscure directorate of the pre-1991 KGB specialized in tunnelling, but I myself know next to nothing about its work.

Other noted tunnelling groups included the 1960s-1970s Uruguayan urban guerrilla group, the Tupamaros [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupamaros].

Merkel’s legacy

Merkel’s legacy? Germany as a dustbin. Words are superfluous; pictures tell the story better.

Germany is now not Germany at all, just as the UK is now scarcely Britain at all. I recall visiting both the Bundesrepublik (West Germany) and, though only once and briefly, the DDR (East Germany) in the 1980s. The western part of Germany had visibly declined when seen again in 2001. Now? Probably far worse.

Google the “Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan”. That is the basis for much of what has been happening in Germany and across Europe, and even in places such as Australia and New Zealand.

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The Jewish lobby…yet again. It has been exposed, even just looking at the Labour Party, again and again…

and who can forget the Labour MPs who were (many still are) in the pocket of Israeli Intelligence? Here is moneygrubbing expenses blodger, Joan Ryan (now removed from Parliament), meeting Israeli official Shai Masot, and discussing a one million pound slush fund:

Ha ha!

We know what is necessary, or what will be necessary, but by reason of repression on free speech in the UK, cannot say so publicly…

That idiot wants the police to be “representative” of “everyone” in Birmingham. Well, about (?) 5% of Birmingham residents are probably criminals of one sort or another. Should they be in the police? Should they march with pride? Never say never…

Alison Chabloz

Latest word from usually-reliable sources is that the persecuted singer-songwriter and socio-political satirist, Alison Chabloz, should be released from prison this coming Thursday, 30 September 2021, having been incarcerated for mocking or simply criticizing “the Chosen”.

[Alison Chabloz]

Late tweets

Or vice-versa. The fact is that, and leaving rhetoric aside (if stupid Angela Rayner’s yelling can be termed “rhetoric”), both main System parties are, in policy terms, almost indistinguishable in practice.

Most British people are, however, still more interested, sadly, in whatever is happening in the latest braindead “soap”, or Strictly Come Dancing, or whatever the “British” (ha) team are doing in some sport or other.

Charmant

Interesting film

https://odysee.com/@MariaOrsic:2/Beneath-Antarctica:a

Seems doubtful, but worth seeing. About 14 mins.

I recall an old lady I knew telling me that, with some friends from Switzerland, she visited (sometime in the 1990s) another friend, a former Waffen SS sergeant in Bavaria, who talked constantly about Hitler in Antarctica, submarines in 1945 going there, hollow Earth etc. They regarded him as having become very eccentric, though, and certainly did not believe any of it.

Would be good if there really were National Socialist legions in Antarctica ready to go into battle against the evils of the contemporary scene, but I have to doubt their existence.

Late music