Meanwhile, Back In Normandy -

Sorry, More About TANK!

I've been after this one for a while (See photograph below).
     It's not new, as it got published in 2004, yet the premise intrigued me - perhaps that should be capitalised - The Premise Intrigued Me - as it looks to be one of a relatively new field of revisionist histories that challenge the old shibboleths about how rubbish the British - and Canuckistanian - armour was in Normandy of '44 vintage.  Yes, more about the Second Unpleasantness, but console yourself with the thought that at least I'm not banging on about "Where Eagles Dare" yet again.
    

That's PROFESSOR John Buckley to you

     Here an aside and a confession.  I did have a dodgy, <coughcough>te version of this as a PDF on my old laptop, which I must have started to read at least three times, before giving up.  Books are meant to be held in the hand and have their pages turned, not exist as an electronic ghost*.
     Anyway, John's assertion is that the criticism of British - and Can - look, just take it as read that we include the Canuckistanians and Poles in that title, okay? - of British armour is that it has been badly served by critics who usually concentrate on only 3 armoured divisions in Normandy - the Guards, 7th and 11th.  There are two other armoured divisions that appear to be ignored, the Polish Armoured Division and the 79th Armoured, which is a special case.  Not only that, there were eight independent armoured brigades, each of which had 3 regiments of tanks, which the old carping critics also seem to have a blind spot about: odd, since that's scads of tanks.

79th Armoured Division deploy world's largest toilet-roll

     Doubtless I shall be sharing my insights with you in the near future.  How lucky are you!
     I was going to go on about 79th Armoured Division; however, I think we've had enough TANK for today.

Hello Coincidence Hydra - AGAIN

What On Earth?  I happened to be looking at my Twitter feed (get me I'm so hip and trendy) and I noticed that Professor Gary Sheffield had responded to a dedication in Peter Caddick-Adams' "Sand and Steel", another volume I intend to get at some point in the middle future.

     What was the dedication, I wondered?

     I had to nosey as the Coincidence Hydra suddenly fastened it's teeth in my nethers again.  Look below at the first line -

 

     What are the chances of that happening?

 - And Again.  Again.

Look, there'll be nothing left of my glutes at this rate.  You will recall that yesteryon I was merrily informing you about the MP40, and even began the post with a wittering about magazines?  You had better recall, I don't take kindly to people who ignore my words of wisdom.                                                                                                                       

 

     What popped up on Youtube but an item from "Forgotten Weapons" about the Teuton attempt to compete with the Sinister's PPSH41.
     Here a necessary aside.  The "Pepesha", as the Ruffian soldiers dubbed it, was a pretty nifty sub-machine gun, which if Art -

PPSH41

     As you can see, it has a drum magazine which holds 71 rounds, a lot for a typical SMG, because it had a very high rate of fire, too: 900 rounds per minute, which also led to it being nicknamed the "burp gun" as that's what it sounded like.
     This kind of firepower in the hands of Slavs worried the Nazis terribly, given their worldview, so they tried some expedients such as the double-magazine MP40.
     Hmmm, I squeezed a lot out of a coincidence there, did I not?**

Life Imitating Life
You will recall, I hope, Conrad's recent exploration of criminal enterprises involving pyramid scams, and the usual process by which they come unstuck.
     At the weekend I came across a BBC headline - sorry - That Intrigued Me, asking the question "Where Is Doctor Ruja"?

In hiding, is the answer

    
     I don't know what she claims to be a doctor of, doughnut dunking or sand-stacking, probably, though she was highly successful as a promoter of OneCoin, a virtual currency that was going to totally blow Bitcoin out of the water, be incredibly successful, make everyone rich and stop global warming.  The Doctor toured the world signing people up, and making about £3 billion in the process.  "Wow" said business experts.  "OneCoin sounds too good to be true!" shortly followed by "It is too good to be true!" followed by "It's a total scam!"

She (the Doctor): in hiding  He (her brother): in prison

     The whole thing is an utter fraud, being both a Ponzi scheme and a pyramid scheme.  You ought to know what a pyramid scheme is by now - here the 'members' were paid for bringing in new members, thus broadening the con; a Ponzi scheme is one where the original investors are paid dividends from the investments of later investors.  The good bad Doctor hasn't been seen since vanishing from sight in 2017 and is presumably enjoying her ill-gotten gains on a beach somewhere - whilst still having to keep an eye out.  By a wild coincidence, the OneCoin website stopped operating in January 2017 and anyone who "invested" in OneCoins is stuck with them for good, as there's no way to change them into proper money.


Money the way it ought to be
(See above about books also)

How To Bust A Bunker
Conrad was inspired to look up an artefact as mentioned by James Holland on the podcast "We Have Ways -", said artefact being the Valentin U-Boat Bunker, which he described as being superlatively large, very large indeed, and big with it.  Art?

With puny human houses for scale

     It is indeed extremely roomy, not to mention massive, as it was made out of enormously thick reinforced concrete.  The idea was that it would be a safe haven for U-Boats, which would be transported there in pieces, assembled and then sent to splash about in the Baltic.  However - you knew that was coming, didn't you? - the various subcomponents*** turned out to be shockingly badly made, requiring lots of remedial work, which imposed a considerable delay, had it actually been used.

The interior

     Because who's that waiting in the wings?  Why, none other than the brylcreem boys of  the RAF.  They weren't invited to the house-warming party but decided to put an appearance in anyway.

"Hello!" said the Grand Slam.

     They knocked on the door with a Grand Slam, the biggest bomb every constructed, which, as you can see, did the Valentin bunker no good at all.  In fact it was then abandoned without ever having been used.
     Valentin Bunker: 0  RAF: 1

Of course, this was the thin part of the roof -

 

*  Said the blogger who posts solely in the electronic ether.
**  That's raw creativity at work for you
***  Do you see wh - O you do.