Strafe Not Sorry

This Will Take A Bit Of Developing, So Bear With Me
Firstly, you need to know what a "Strafe" is.  In the original Teuton, "Strafe" meant "Punishment".  In the twentieth century it has come to mean a low-level attack by aircraft, with machine guns or cannon.  Imagine Biggles biffing the bacon out of the Bavarians by brassing them with Brownings, that sort of thing.

CAUTION!  Can cause significant property damage

     Thus, one who carried out strafing was a "Strafer".  Got it?  Good, then we can Gott it, for I am  referring to General "Strafer" Gott, more conventionally known as William.  He was a veteran of the desert campaign in North Africa, having been there when the war broke out, and his nickname was a pun on the old Teuton curse, "Gott Strafe England"*.  He fought up and down the desert and in August 1942 was appointed OC of the whole Eighth Army.
     "But surely Mon-" and let me interrupt you right there.  Art?

Strafer

     In August 1942, General Sir Claude Eyre Auchinlek had been essentially sacked, with Gott being promoted to take over 8th Army by Churchill, who had got it wrong in the opinion of many people.  Gott had been promoted to a post beyond his ability, which is something even he agreed with.  Nevertheless -
     Strafer was being flown back from the front lines to the Nile Delta, where Perfidious Albion had founded an enormous base establishment, on an air route so utterly hazard-free that no precautions were taken to protect the transport aircraft he flew in, with a cargo of wounded.
     But hist.  This is on 2nd August, and the flight had been delayed, which allowed the Teutons to both eavesdrop and plan.  They knew who was aboard that plane, and they had a cunning plan.

A Bombay.  Which does not have a bomb bay.

     They sent a flight of 6 Bf109s that intercepted the Bombay and damaged it so badly the pilot, one Jimmy James, had to crash land.  Jimmy and three others managed to escape from the burning aircraft before the 109s came in for a third pass: they really meant to get their man, and they did.  Gott and all the wounded perished in the blazing wreck.  When Herr Clade, leader of the Teuton fighters, landed at his aerodrome, he was greeted by a Luftwaffe intelligence officer, who congratulated him on killing the newly-appointed head of the 8th Army.
     For a good fifty years the consensus on the British side was that this happened to be a ghastly accident, rather than the intelligence-led deliberate targeting it turned out to be.  It took decades of digging by the recovered pilot Jimmy James before the above came to light.  Herr Clade, when finally informed he'd killed a plane full of wounded being flown back to hospital, had the humility to burst into tears.
     Thanks to Jim on the "We Have Ways" podcast for bringing this new information to my attention.

Amen

     Right, motley, is it time to break out the nerve-poison and rapiers, for a bit of Dangerous Fencing!

More Of Them 51 Books
I have to load this up at night in The Mansion, because the work PCs don't recognise BookBub.  We seem to be almost half-way through the list.  I shall be sad when we reach the end because having a theme like this takes some of the creative heavy lifting away as a responsibility.  I think from now on I'd better do two per item as otherwise it'll take months to slog through all those influential tomes you have to put on your bucket list.

No jokes about being ...

     I seem to remember the blurb on the back of these books mentioned Ol' Ise "almost single-handedly" creating the Three Laws Of Robotics, and because we all know how my mind works, I wondered who did the other creative input?  I shall have to check this out at some point or it will niggle.
     From what I recall (I used to borrow the volume from a friend at school) the stories explore the interaction between the Three Laws and situations where potential conflict arises.  I also recall Ol' Ise using a dreadful pun in one story where a robot creates a variety of Doomsday destruction device, something that will herald Armageddon.  At which point the local law enforcement depart at speed, as in "Armageddon out of here!"
     Ouch.

I have heard of it -

     But not read it.  The blurb does actually make this one sound interesting; all about the Galaxy being divided into different "Zones" where different physical laws apply, and the shenanigans that derive thereof.
Conrad Is ANGRY!
Angry angry angry! Angrier than usual, anyway.
     "Why is this?" I hear you question.  "Did someone use butter instead of margarine?  Or put a bag of potatoes on top of the crisp packets?  No - wait - there's a line of bad code in there -"
     Neither and no.  No, I saw a whole-page advert in The Metro for "Pretty Woman - The Musical", as if they'd done something big and clever.
     Really!

Grrrrrrr!

     Conrad saw the original once, which was quite enough, and you ought to already know of my undiluted loathing for musicals.  I mean, Julia Roberts is simply not that attractive - certainly not now that she's getting on and her looks are going - and was always a rubbish actress, whose 'acting' mostly seemed to consist of sweeping her hair about and baring a mouth so enormous you'd expect her head to split when she smiled.
     So why does this forgettable film have to be given a renewed lease of life?
     Bah!

Get ready to catch the rest of her head!

Okay, Conrad Is Now FURIOUS!
I can hear you quibbling about this between yourselves, making snide comments like "Oooh, did someone use a foreign word in the cryptic crossword?"
     CHANCE WOULD BE A FINE THING!  <sound of teeth grating>
     This happened last week, too.  I got the free Manchester Evening News, and went through it cover to cover, and there are NO crosswords there present.

Hot breaking news

     The question is, are there any in the edition you have to pay for?  I don't intend to pay 90 pence for NO CROSSWORDS.
     <sits and seethes>.
     Bah!!*
     And with a small thundercloud sitting over my head, we are done.


*  Scotland, Wales and Ireland seem to have gotten away with it.
**  Yes, TWO exclamation marks, that's how angry I am.