The Tank-Tracks Of My Tears

Fair Warning!
There will be quite a bit of TANK in this post, because nothing gets the visitors buzzing more than a thirty-ton steel box on tracks, am I right?
     Well, okay, some visitors.  Art?

A British Mark IV tank

     If you recall, we left the tank F41 "Fray Bentos" stuck in a muddy great shell crater yesterday, sole survivor of it's squadron and way out in No Man's Land.  One man had already been killed outside when trying to load the unditching beam, and another man inside had been fatally injured when they stalled.  This was a "Male" Mark IV, as seen above, with two short-barrelled 6 pounder guns; thanks to how they were stuck, one such gun pointed at the sky, the other at the ground.
     Being stuck in a shell crater was ironically rather good fortune for the tank and crew: it made spotting it difficult for the Teuton artillery observers, and nothing but a direct hit would have done it in.  As it was, they kept getting hit by shell splinters, mortar shrapnel and bullets, with spalling resulting in further injuries; none fatal, but having little bits of high-velocity metal flying around like knives is a bit of an unsettling experience.

The principle of explosive spalling.  You're welcome.

     Enter the Teutons ...  Their infantry were assembling for a counter-attack, which could only have been observed by British if they were sitting out in the middle of No Man's Land - O!  What a coincidence!  Here's "Fray Bentos" with it's three Lewis machine-guns.  End of counter attack.

"The Teuton's wanted in at that corned beef, very badly"

     And this was only the first day.
     Let us move on to cheerier stuff -

How cheery can we be?  Here's a donkey eating a pineapple.  Good enough?

H.M.S. Lutine
Steve, resident quizmaster at The Pleasant Inn, and a man without a smidgeon of PC in his entire body, mentioned this ship a couple of weeks ago.  You may know it for another reason, which we shall come to.
     It was a French ship, incidentally, which was handed over to Perfidious Albion by French royalists shortly after the Revolution, because they would rather their traditional enemy got them than the totally eeeevil French Revolutionaries, at which point they probably spat on the floor.  Art?

A very nice present, ta very much.

     The British got 6 years service out of her, before she sank in a storm off the Dutch coast in 1799, whilst carrying over £1 million in gold and silver, which had been intended to fend off a stock market crash amongst Perfidious Albion's Continental allies.*
     Over four-fifths of the treasure remains on the sea-bed, never having been recovered.  Before you get £££ in your eyes and pack your trunks and a shovel, the sea-bed around the Friesian Islands is especially treacherous and dangerous.  This is why the biggest thing to be salvaged from the Lutine was her ship's bell.  Art?

One for sorrow, two for joy

     This was hung at Lloyd's of London, the insurance bods, and would be rung once if a ship was known to have been lost at sea, or twice if it had arrived overdue.



Okay, Back To TANK
Yesterday I was pouring scorn on the scorn-pourers in Ruffia, who persist in trotting out Sinister-era myths about the Battle of Kursk, and who get very defensive and abusive if said myths - like total number of tanks knocked out - gets disputed.
     However, as Peter Samsonov on his blog "Tank Archives" has shown, the Teutons were not to be trusted on tank losses, either.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/

     Pete has cross-referenced and checked Soviet versus Teuton sources, and found that some battles reported as defensive epics by their Teuton participants, simply never happened.  Or were minor skirmishes, according to the Ruffians.  Hmmm!  Nazis telling great big porky pies about the racially-inferior Slavs, how very surprising!

Herr Schickelgruber's secret shame: denied a cup of tea!

     I think we will come back to this one, it's got legs.  And tracks.  Your Humble Scribe has always been rather suspicious of those Teuton accounts that boast of knocking out 147 Ruffian tanks by soldiers armed only with a tin of jam and a spoon.  A wooden spoon, at that.

Seven minutes to midnight and twenty minutes until work commences.  Quick, Nurse, my Notebook of Inspiration!  You - you what?  The - the washing machine?  For ninety minutes on full spin cycle?  <sobs uncontrollably> o well onward and upward.

Apropos Of Apollo
Not the Greek god, the South Canadian space mission.  The 50th anniversary of a couple of South Canadians having a stroll on our nearest satellite arrives this week, as has a raft of nostalgia about said event.  Your Humble Scribe may even join in; it was a big thing at the time when I was a much smaller thing.
     Anyway, what I wanted to do was salute the BBC - the font of all that's fit to be writ! - about their attitude to the Apollo Hoaxers.  Art!

I can't copy in the title, so here it is:  "Moon landing conspiracies aren't true - here's how we know"

     They briefly summarise what the principal arguments of the hoax proponents and then trash them. Hoorah!  If you want more detailed rebuttals, Google "Bad Astronomer" and look up his website; Ol' Phil really tears them several new ones.
     Of course it won't end there, because what you're arguing against are beliefs, and the hoax-pushers are thus resistant to minor things like facts, the truth and evidence.  "Pshaw!"  they would scoff.  "The Moon is an artificial spaceship  because I say it is!"
      - and arguments of that calibre and worth.

"Stop NASA from mind-controlling your domestic pets!  Bacofoil - the way to go!"**

Finally -
Because we only need a short article to hit the Composition Ton, I was looking up strange electronic musical instruments, which mostly appear to be the Theremin.  We don't think it's at all strange or exotic, do we, readers, since we've become mightily familiar with it over time?
     I did come across a couple of arresting pictures, however.  Here's the first one.  ART!
(I have to shout, he's off relaxing in the septic sump).

Errrr yes.  No.  Maybe?

     This one looks as if a Klingon could pick it up and decapitate you, then compose a hymn of conquest on it.  You probably need thick gloves to play it, and a neck-guard.  That lady is, frankly, chancing it.
     Then we have one that's a lot safer, if harder to operate.  Art?

You might be able to make it fly like a boomerang.

Or not

*  The British were always doing this sort of thing.  "Breaking windows with guineas" became the phrase.

**  That's one annoyed-looking cat.  I think our befoiled friend is due a good clawing.***
***   But then it risks getting chucked in the oven on Gas Mark 4.