Nightmare At 30,000 Feet

None Of That Metric Nonsense Here

Also, No! this is nothing to do with that classic episode of "The Twilight Zone", because that was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", and I take pride in being precise about numbers.
     Here an aside.  It is a great episode, featuring an obscure (at the time, anyway) Canadian actor, who, whilst nibbling away on his airline snacks (Doritos), is the only person on a passenger plane able to see a gremlin - and a hideous gremlin at that - which is attempting to sabotage one of the plane's engines.  Art?

Oh, did I not mention it was William Shatner?

     You're not sure if he's having an attack of the Purple Wim-Wams, until the last shot on the ground is of extensive damage to the plane's engine ...
     Also, notice the use of the word "gremlin".  This is lifted from Wiki, which itself lifted it from RAF slang, where it referred to mischievous little imps that caused all the mysterious and inexplicable failures in an aircraft.  Art?

Pilot Officer Prune meets a gremlin.
(Neither is impressed with the other)

     Which is a painless way of segueing into what I really intended to talk about: the Light Night Striking Force, which I introduced yesterday as an offshoot of the RAF's specialist Pathfinder Group during the Second Unpleasantness.  The LNSF was composed of Mosquito bombers, which regularly flew to Berlin to unload a whole lot of horrid on the city.  The Luftwaffe did not like the Mosquito; it flew so fast they had to create specialist interceptor night-fighters with boosted engines and performance, in order to have even the slightest change of scragging them.  Art?

Teuton night-fighter Lichtenstein radar.  Also good for drying your socks on

     Overall, the LNSF lost 200 aircraft, which sounds like a lot, but that is over a period of two years, and not all were shot down; some were classed as "Damaged beyond economical repair", which means there were more holes than aircraft.
     Here another aside.  You don't mind, do you?  After all, you don't have to pay to read this.  The Mossie, as she was known, was made of wood, which the Teutons at first mocked, until they realised this resulted in an extremely robust aircraft that, with two great big engines hanging off it's wings, could go like stink.  Not only that, it could be sub-contracted out to all kinds of enterprises that worked with wood, making it easy to produce in numbers.  

I think I have this lying around somewhere

     Also, those 200 losses were against 27,000 sorties, or one loss per 135 sorties.
     "Yes, but - where does 30,000 feet come in?" I hear you quibble, querulously.
     That, dear reader, is the height they bombed from, or about 5 1/2 miles up.  Using a bit of technical wizardry called "Oboe", they could be guided to target very accurately, to the dismay of Teutons below and the impotent fury of chaps like Goering.     Blimey!  That was a long Intro - about 2/3 of the way to count, in fact.  Quickly - change the subject whilst we drop the motley down a well!

The motley!
(Perhaps)

Damn That Polyquaternium-9!

I know, I know, it sounds like something Marvin the Martian needs in order to blow up Earth, because it obstructs his view of Venus; or, then again, the terrifying McGuffin from a Seventies series of "Doctor Who" (the BBC's premier dramamentary!) which kills everyone who touches it by reversing the neutron flow's polarity.
     Not a bit of it.  It's actually an ingredient in cosmetics, used for it's ability to enhance films.*
Your humble scribe was incautious enough to stand his bottle of cheap green shampoo on the bathroom windowledge, which has been bombarded with deadly solar radiation for the past two weeks, and - Art?

     The stuff on the port side is what the colour ought to be, and the one to starboard has turned blue!  Quite what this will do to your modest artisan when he takes a shower is open to question, but if you hear of a mutant superhero in the Royton area of Oldham in the next few days, then you know it was drastic.

Finally -

Take note of that book I captured in picture form for you just above, and say Hello! to Edward Bishop.  Art?

You know, I suspect they are not the same man

     Also, nothing that mentions gremlins can get away without mentioning one of Joe Dante's most famous works.  Art?

"Gremlins 2"

     For the sharp-eyed, there's also a reference to Quatermass and the British Rocket Group.  Props to Joe for including that!

Oh, go on.  Because you were patient.  A Gremlin

     - and really, truly, finally -

The Kremlin

The Kremlin

     It'll make sense on Facebook, honestly.
     (Also, I lied about the Doritos)

*  Something Hollywood needs in quantity, one feels ...