Tanks For The Memories

No!  NO NO NO!
That is NOT - hang on, how did this font go back to Trebuchet when normally I have to select it, and even then it falls back to Times at the slightest excuse? - is not a spelling mistake, for I do indeed refer to the armoured fighting vehicle, and history, and telling big fat porkies in the supposed service of same - yes, Tsar Putin, I'm looking at you.  
     First of all, however, let us celebrate tinned meat.  Art?

That "Fray" part is going to be so appropriate.

     This is prime Argentinian cow-in-a-can, from way back before that embarrassing thing in the Falklands.* It begins with the letter "F", which is the parent letter of a tank squadron at the Third Battle of Ypres, a.k.a. Passchendaele, one of whose eight members F41 had been dubbed "Fray Bentos".  Because, you know, tinned meat.  British humour at work: it's how we conquered the world.** Art?

A Mark IV with the unditching beam on top

     The terrain at Passchendaele was entirely unsuitable for tanks, being a cratered wasteland composed of bottomless brown bog, so seven of the tanks in F squadron were either hit by Teuton artillery, or got bogged down and then were hit by Teuton artillery.
     A bit of an aside here.  No, the Teutons did not have tanks.  Their infantry in the front lines did not like the tanks that Perfidious Albion put into the field, not at all.  Something big and bulletproof that blammed you to bits was not on their list of Christmas card pals.  They did not like.  We shall come back to this.
     Getting bogged-down?  Not so much for F41.  No, it got into a nice big shell crater before stalling. 
     So, there you are, stuck in No Man's Land, a giant shell magnet unable to move, and the crew are probably thinking "What else can possibly go wrong now?"
     You had to ask.

Hello - I've spotted a mistake here

     This is a pretty spiffy cut-away of a Mark IV tank like Fray Bentos, except that the texter has got "5" entirely wrong.  WRONG!  It's a six-pounder artillery piece, NOT a machine gun, or "Hotchkiss MG" as they would have you believe.  That is, it fires a high-explosive shell about the size of a can of pop, rather than a solid bullet the size of three peas together.  Nor are those "turrets", either; you can call them a 'cabin' or even a 'barbette' if you're feeling frisky, but a 'turret'?  NO!
     Wow.  There you go.  I think I just out-geeked geeks.
     Don't go away, Tsar Putin - I've not forgotten you!


When "Kursk" Was Not Merely A Doomed Submarine
Let us remember those sailors who died aboard said Ruffian submarine for a moment.  There cannot be a submariner across the globe, from whatever nation, who did not feel a pang for those chaps and their terrible end.*** 
     What today's generation, in the West at least, may not be aware of, is that this submarine was named after an especially epic battle of the Second Unpleasantness.

For "Russia" read "Tsar Putin"

     Many libraries-worth of books have been written about this battle, mostly in the Sinister Union, about how the Sinister Union was challenged, and the Sinister Union rose to the challenge, and how the valiant serfs minions soldiers of the Sinister Union poured out oceans of blood in the defence of the Sinister Union, and how the Sinister Union prevailed, and blah blah blah about the Sinister Union.  Tsar Putin has been pushing this line especially hard, trying to pretend that the Sinister Union was a lovey-dovey wonderland, So! When people challenge myths about Kursk, Oooooh the Tsar and his minions get very cross.  Very cross indeed! 
     Enter Ben Wheatley.  Ben, you see, has recently published photographic information about the battlefield at Kursk, where literally hundreds of Sinister tanks can be seen knocked out, against a literal handful of Teuton tanks, at Prokhorovka.  Cue frothing knee-jerk reactions from the Tsar and his cronies.  They're a bit late, military historians here in the West have been on this case for ages.
     I shall get back to you on this one, if for no other reason than it irks Tsar Putin.
                                                      Pouitine                                                   Putin, pouting
More Of Music
Enough of matters martial!  For the minute, anyway, don't think that we won't come back to this topic in future.
     As an offshoot of my noseying into odd electronic instruments, I came across mention of a "Tannerin", which sound like the stuff in tea that stains your teeth brown, but which is the name for a replica electro-theremin, after the real thing.  Art?

Lacking the polish of the Swarmatron

     That's the real thing, invented by musician Paul Tanner and some groovy electronics whiz-kid.  You moved a ring on a string - hello Ondes Martenot! - to create a sound similar to a theremin, if slightly less complex.
     You will have heard this groovy black box being played, believe me, because it's the weird-sounding instrument on "Good Vibrations" that everyone always mistakes for an actual Theremin.  NO!  WRONG!  Get it right.
     Then there is the Tannerin, which is an electronic keyboard that mimics the electro-theremin which mimics the theremin that lived in the house that Jack built.  Art?

Tannerin

     How about a picture of the thing that started it all off?

Conductin' a theremin

     If my memory serves me correctly, you can hear one of these going like stink on that Led Zepplin ditty "Whole Lotta Love" which Conrad disapproves of on instinct, because spelling.
Finally -
How to get into extremely hot water by trying very hard indeed.  And this is History, not Politics, so there.
     Yes, back to Zara Witkin, South Canadian engineer working in the Sinister Union.  A numbers nerd from way back, Ol' Zaz was curious about how the Sinister's really performed in terms of their Five Year Plan, which they loudly boasted had been vastly exceeded, and they'd done probably at least fifteen years work in five, if not forty, and My!  What big teeth you have, Grandma.

All the better to lie with

     Zaz got together all the economic and industrial data he could about the Soviet's actual industrial performance as regards construction, which proved to be singularly underwhelming: in five years they had managed what the South Canadians could manage in one.  Essentially, the Five Year Plan was a big, noisy propaganda-fest that camouflaged utter ineptness.  Zaz had the good sense not to publicise or - heaven forfend! - publish his data, or he would have mysteriously vanished.

     Speaking of vanishing ...




*  From the Eighties, not that other thing in the First Unpleasantness.
**  That, and the Gatling gun.
***  The less said about their incompetent uncaring government's s*****y response the better.