Poles Apart

I Have A Smug Smile Upon My Face
 - because I've robbed a bank and burned down the orphanage!
     No, hang on, I'm thinking aloud there, none of that has happened -*
     Because I think I'm being very clever, that's it.  Yeah!  Clever.
     "Is this about Arctic and Antarctic explorers?"  I hear you quibble.  "Because they're boring.  If I want to know about frozen fingers I'd go look in the fridge."
     Pausing only to observe that you surely mean the freezer, I shall continue and elucidate.
     But first!  A portrait of Ambrose Bierce -

Don't mock that moustache
(He has a gun)

     Okay, back to the story.  Once upon a time, there was a thing called the Second Unpleasantness, where Perfidious Albion had to defend herself from hordes of Teutons wearing aircraft - the summer of 1940, in fact.  Help arrived for P.A. in the form of pilots from Poland, who were now in their third campaign of the Unpleasantness and a lot more experienced than the RAF pilots attempting to teach them the rudiments of air combat.

An aerial dogfight.
No - hang on, wait a minute -

     Here an aside.  The Poles, when at war, are prettttty ruthless.  During the Battle of Britain, their preferred tactic was to get up close to the aircraft-wearing Teutons and shoot the aircrew, because you might pepper an aircraft from end to end without bringing it down, but if the crew shuffle off this mortal coil with a bit of help from a handful of .303 bullets, then the earth beckons.  To help illustrate the point - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_4oXe8aNw

     Not for the squeamish.  The RAF ground crewman is hilarious, though.  Oh, and for the uninformed, "Middle Wallop" is not a military codename, merely one of Perfidious Albion's curiously-named towns.

Do you - er - see?

     One of the premier Polish squadrons during the BOB was 303 squadron, which squadron was responsible for shooting down the most Teuton aircraft of any in the BOB, even when handicapped by arriving late for the show.  How glad we are to have had them on our side!

88 machine guns looking for business

     And yet ...
     The name for 303 Squadron was 'Tadeusz Kosciuszko' Squadron, and although you may be thinking "Who?" he is a big cheese in Poland.  Technically he was Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kosciuszko, born 1746, and who gadded about the Continent getting involved in wars for a couple of decades; if you were patient in 18th century Europe, then a war was bound to come along, or even two at once. 

The chap in question

     His specialism was military architecture, and Hay Pesto! in 1776 he moved to North America, where the ungrateful locals were busy throwing off the benefits of British culture, with guns.  Ol' Tad, the utter cad and bounder, took up arms with the rebels, to their considerable benefit and the embarrassment of the British, because he was quick-witted and very talented in designing field fortifications.  His aid notably led to British defeat at the Battle of Saratoga.  Art?

Thanks, Tad.  Thank you so much.

     The rebellious South Canadians promoted him to brigadier-general, so he designed them the defences of a little place called "West Point".  You may have heard of it.
     Then it was back to Europe again - this chap got about a bit - and involvement in the struggle for Polish independence and political reform.  Which eventually failed.
     There's a lot more to this chap's life, but I don't plan on the blog hitting 7,500 words today, so there we shall pause.
     So - one lot of Poles helping old Perfidious Albion, and another one being quite inimical.
     And here's another worrying coincidence - whilst typing this up I was listening to "Skyfall" and catching the excellent credits sequence, which lyrics see -

The end of Line 6

     Did I play this song because of the lyrics or - is the Universe trying to tell me something again?
Well - we're nearly at count, and I had so much to add in here -

Because - Science!
This is one of those amusing, entertaining and educational Youtube channels that you ought to subscribe to.  It is made by Kyle Hill, who varies his hairstyle to confusing effect, and the one I was watching yesterday was "Why Every Space Battle Is Wrong".
     Sounds, for one, I suspect.  Space being a vacuum, you can't hear even the biggest explosions.

Shhhhh!

     Whizz-bang manoeuvring as well, I suspect.  Intertia?  Centripetal force?  Get out of here!  Newton's Third Law of Motion?  Pah!
     Actually Kyle wheels in a particular big gun to back up his assertions, because one sci-fi program that does take the physics seriously is "The Expanse", which is hard sci-fi done intelligently.  Go watch it.
     Anyway, the character Alex Kamal is played by Cas Anvar, and here he is, backing up Kyle's assertions.  Art?

     Very droll.


*  - yet.  Yet.