If I Were To Say "Crossroads"

Then You Might Be Stricken By Ambiguity
For there used to be a British soap opera that went by the same name, which was legendarily bad thanks to the stupidity of it's scripts, the cheapness of it's sets, and the fact that it was set in Birmingham.  Birmingham, UK, has none of the cachet of Birmingham, South Canada, and in fact not even the cachet of Lesser Sneddlepool on a wet Sunday afternoon.

The titular motel, looking awfully grim

     It was inexplicably popular, which goes to show that Hom. Sap. are an unpredictable species.
     However, we are not concentrating on horrid British soap operas; no, we are returning to the crossroads of "Operation Crossroads", that atom bomb testing in Bikini Atoll that has preoccupied the blog of late.
     I think there was also a folk belief about crossroads.  To do with witches and suicides?  If I remember correctly, witches were such tremendous ditherers that if they came to a crossroads they could never decide which road to take, and would - I dunno - hang around until they starved to death?  Their potential demise eked out by snaffling food from passing ice-cream vans.

Notably lacking in substance

     And suicides because they were forbidden to be buried in consecrated ground, and - <thinks> if they came back as zombies they would be confused as to which road to take in order to execute bloody vengeance (our ancestors were big on the Being Buried In Consecrated Ground thing), and would stand there dithering until they fell to bits.  Although they might have thought to ask the witch which way.

"You stole my nose and chin, you thieving witch!"

     Anyway, back to Bikini.  You have to remember that the Able and Baker test shots there took place in 1946, which was only two years after the first atomic detonation - the Gadget shot at Trinity.  The South Canadians were making it up as they went along, as there was no previous methodology to study or learn from, and there would inevitably be mistakes; the proviso being that, when you are mucking about with a 26 kiloton warhead, even the slightest mistake can have rather worrying implications.
     Then to the USS Saratoga, a 37,000 ton aircraft carrier that had led a life of mixed accomplishments; never sunk yet often badly damaged, involved in the Pacific Unpleasantness for all her service life and deemed to be just right for a nuclear weapons test.  Art?

In pristine condition

     The Saratoga was moored close to the bomb ketch, this latter being the vessel beneath which the Baker warhead was slung on a cable, dangling 90 yards midway between seabed and surface waters.  As you might expect, when things went POP! all the laws of physics exerted themselves and USS Saratoga did a hop, skip and jump.  Art?

Saratoga to centre of port

     This picture shows the carrier being lifted out of the ocean thanks to the force of the detonation, which shattered her hull and sank her shortly after.  She lies on her side 50 yards down, funnels completely missing and still leaking fuel oil, as the US Navy insisted that ships needed to reflect real-time conditions and had to be at least partially-fuelled.  She is definitely falling apart underwater, which is not surprising as her keel was laid down almost a hundred years ago.  Art?

Note the collapsed stern

     I have to say, all this Operation Crossroads is fascinating stuff.  The test film footage was only recently declassified, so - we may come back to this topic*!
     Motley!  Fancy going for a swim?  The open air lido down the road is having a two-for-one?

Flying The Pennant
Of A White Elephant
For Lo! we are back on the boyish James Holland's television series "Nazi War Machines - Secrets Uncovered" (I think there's a hyphen in there), and in the last one he dealt with U-boats.  First he covered the classic Type VII, then the raft of crude Suicide-boats euphemistically called "Miniature submarines", and lastly the ground-breaking Type XXI.  Art?

The beast in question.  Sorry, no puny humans present for scale

     There is no question this thing was a game-changer and represented a revolution in submarine design, yadda yadda yadda.  However, the Teutons didn't bother to begin building them until 1943 and their manufacturing base was so shoddy that the end product had endless quality problems.  Of 118 built, only 2 (!) actually went out to sea and -
     - they sank nothing.  Even the appallingly dangerous "Seehund" miniature submarine did better than that.
     That's our first white elephant.
     Our second you will have already encountered IF you are a regular reader here: the Valentin Submarine Hanger.  Art?

Under construction with puny humans for scale

     I'm trying to find an image that gives a sense of scale for the whole structure, which isn't easy.  Hang on -

With puny human domiciles for scale

     It took years to build this monstrosity, from early 1943 to early 1945, which was intended to be the final assembly point for Type XXI U-boats, protected against air attack by a reinforced concrete roof 7 yards thick.  Thousands of slave labourers died in the process of pouring all that concrete, and there were usually 12,000 people working on it at any one time.  The U-boats were intended to be floated out of the bunker and out onto the River Weser.
     Enter Perfidious Albion.
     The Spitfires and Mosquitoes of the Brylcreem Boy's Photographic Reconnaissance Unit would fly over Valentin every two or three months, keeping an weather eye on it's construction.  They were happy to let the Teutons plod away building it, as it diverted millions of tons of reinforced concrete away from where it might have been, you know, useful.  Then, in March 1945, the PRU planes were replaced by Lancasters carrying Grand Slam bombs, which were dropped on a roof section only (!) 5 yards thick.  Art?

BOOM

     And that was the end of the Valentin U-boat bunker.  It was promptly abandoned.  An example, if you like, of going out with a whimper after a bang.

     Gosh, we've wittered on at length about matters martial, haven't we?  Time for something light and frothy!  LITHIUM WAFER BA - hmmm, no, I don't think so.  The medical uses of radioactive isotope ingestion?  Aha!  I know -

"Butter-Fingers"
This was one of the answers to the cryptic crossword in today's Metro - which I smashed, of course - and, Conrad being one to naturally ponder on anything within his purview, I wondered where it came from.

No, Art, No.
But reasonable, so no Tazering today

     Apparently it was created by Charles Dickens, who is down as being one of those authors who created a lot of new words.  That's okay.  Your Humble Scribe is down with Chas; I read his novels because I enjoy them, not because I have to for an English qualification (Shakespeare take note).  Art?

An author in search of a haircut

     It first appears in the pages of "The Pickwick Papers", where a running commentary is being expressed about various players ability in cricket, and one unfortunate who cannot manage to hold a ball once caught is derided as "Butter-fingers".
     So there you have it.



*  And if you're bad, we will definitely return to this topic.