Of Course We Knew That Already
Well, this is a kind of comparative 'mighty and triumphant', which you might also consider less a small earthquake in Chile and closer to a minor earth tremor in Ramsbottom (someone dropped a plate). Art!
The jigsaw is now complete! Previously Your Humble Scribe had asserted that he had not dropped or lost any pieces, so there were two missing.
Ah but! Whilst swivelling in my chair during work what did I espy underneath the paste table? NO! Not a Mongolian Death Worm. The two missing pieces, which had managed to become sentient and shuffled themselves off the table edge to try escaping because that's the only explanation, finally COMPLETED "The Road To Dunkirk". Hooray!
That's today's Intro. Yes, it's short, and unusually so, because we like to mix it up here occasionally. Motley! Time for the Poison Paintball Combat Crunch*!
When You Need A Really, Really BIG Gun
As you should surely know by now, Conrad follows <ahem> 'Gun Jesus' Ian McCollom of Youtube channel "Forgotten Weapons", who gets his hands on innumerable exotic and unusual weapons and films the outcome <Conrad sighs wistfully thinking about all those guns ...>.
Anyway, Ian laid his hot sweaty paws upon a Tankgewehr of the First Unpleasantness, and some ammunition for it. What am I talking about? Art!
Ian is rather petite, yes, but that's still a whacking big gun. It was a Teuton answer to Perfidious Albion's TANK, basically being an up-scaled Mauser 98K, firing an enormous 13 mm bullet. The question was, could this actually penetrate a British tank's armour plate? Not having an entire Mark IV to practice upon, Ian sourced an armour plate that had to stand in for a Mark IV, and his mate who supplied the gun and ammo got first crack. Art!
 |
| "Take aim!" |
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| Recoil is not your friend |
Since they were firing from only 50 yards away, and were upright and thus had a really good view of the target, they hit the target. Art!
The palpable hit goes right through it. As Ian explains, anyone on the receiving end of this inside the tank would be having a rather torrid time of it. He then asks the question "What would happen if the hit was at an angle, rather than square-on?". So they re-orient the armour plate. Art!
The bullet bounced off. It still kicked off a lot of spalling on the inside, so AGAIN if you were on the inside of this, you'd be having a horrid time of it.
HOWEVER.
You knew that was coming, didn't you? In order to get a good view of the target and hit it, both shooters were, as mentioned above, standing upright, and were only 50 yards from the 'tank'. This is a big no-no. Firstly, the recoil on this is so immense that it ought to be fired lying down. Secondly, if you shoot it lying down, the muzzle blast immediately gives your position away. Thirdly, standing upright on a First Unpleasantness battlefield ONLY FIFTY YARDS FROM A TANK is a quick way of seeing if you're shortly going to be greeting Saint Michael or venturing into the Hot Place. Art!
They tended to have stubble-hoppers in close attendance, who would probably not be very happy at errant Teutons trying to colander their escorting tank.
The Teutons did have a small number of specifically-designed anti-tank artillery guns, which were scattered so widely that I don't recall ever reading about any taking on a tank, as there was usually a mismatch about where they were deployed versus where the tanks were. The real menace for a tank was the Teuton field artillery, since a 77 mm 'whiz-bang' could easily knock out a Mark IV. Art!
I see our second item has made up for the shortness of the Intro. Go me.
The anti-tank artillery I mentioned
Battlescar Galactigarbage
Cool your jets, this has nothing to do with the awesome re-boot series which I am slowly re-watching, nor is it anything to do with the appalling original offshoot which I am not going to sully my lips with by saying, nor my fingers by typing. No! For I am referring, of course - obviously! - to Project Icarus and Project Daedalus, those scientifically plausible and almost realistic designs for an interstellar probe. Art!
Not small at all
As you recall, the first stage was to boost up to 7% of lightspeed, before the second stage separated and continued boosting from that initial velocity up to 12% of lightspeed.
The thing is, that leaves the first stage as a 1,700 ton missile heading off into the wild black yonder at 13,000 miles per second. To give you an impression of how fast that is, it means the discarded interstellar remnant First Stage could cross cis-lunar space from Earth to the Moon in all of 18 seconds. "Cross fingers and hope" is not really sufficient to prevent this unguided missile from impacting and destroying an entire planet. Conrad would suggest a self-destruct mechanism, possibly a small fission warhead that would vapourise the whole thing on detonation.
That still leaves us with the second stage, which is going to be travelling at 12% of lightspeed, or 22,000 miles per second. It doesn't stop or even slow down in the target solar system, just keeps on going, all 1,000 tons of it. Art!
Oooops.
Of course, I could be overthinking this ...
A Malicious Wallow In Other People's Battiness
Yes, this is about "Batwoman", that amazingly cheap and shoddy show on the CW, which Your Humble Has never yet had to endure, thanks to the efforts of people like Az and his "Heels Versus Babyface" Youtube channel. We the people salute you, Az, as you get driven ever-closer to the sanity cliff. Originally this series was going to halt at 13 episodes, yet for some reason - definitely NOT viewer demand! - they have added another 5, meaning our suffering reviewers now have to down two bottles of Jack Daniels before watching. Art!
Let me interpret those numbers for you. "0.11" is the audience in the <shudders at the horrid Americanism> Target Demographic of viewers aged 18 to 49. The lower the worse. 0.11 is bad. "0.399" is viewers in numbers of millions, so this snoozefest is now at 399,00 viewers and - a chorus we like to repeat - the lowest viewing figures of both seasons. It has lost nearly half it's viewers from the premiere episode of Season 2, and the shrink keeps happening. Once again - who are they making this for?
Baroness Rachel Heyhoe Flint in action!
Finally -
We are well over the Compositional Ton by now. What can I tie up loose ends with? Actually there was an hilarious photo from the BBC about Czechs who are currently protesting about Tsar Putin's unwanted meddling in their country, up to and including explosive sabotage. They don't like him at all, and because the Czechs are long given to satire - well, let me find the picture - Art!
To add insult to injury, and a little lemon juice to the salted wound, this effigy is parked outside the Ruffian embassy in Prague. Chaps, Jaroslav Hacek would be proud of you!
* It's only hydrocyanic acid, barely even toxic.
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