What Did I Tell You?

WHAT DID I TELL YOU!

I realise this is rather vague as a question, especially since I tell you all sorts of things, some of which are either blatantly untrue or very, very questionable.  Conrad: unreliable narrator.

     To what do I refer?  <pauses to enjoy the anxiety of readers>  Why, that old chestnut, Research and Development.  As I have already remarked, when you come up with a prototype, it needs extensive testing to iron out any problems inherent in the design, all the more so if you're dealing with a radical new design.  Art!

     This awesome steel fortress on tracks is the Crusader tank, of Second Unpleasantness vintage.  It was rushed into production post-Dunkirk because the British army needed workable tanks now, not a perfected version in six months.  This inevitably led to severe problems in the wild, as reliability became a serious issue that was only corrected after months of suffering and losses.  By 1943 they were reliable enough to have travelled all the way from El Alamein to Tunisia.

     So.  We now come to the Teutons and their V-weapons program, or at least the ones that saw the light of day rather than being a gleam in the eye of a wildly over-optimistic engineer.  Behold the V3!  Art?

V3 with puny human for scale

The general idea

     The idea was that a shell would be fired from a conventional breech, which would be accelerated up the barrel by extra propellant chambers mounted in pairs along the enormous 150 yard barrel.  Thus you could hit a target 60 miles away, in theory.  A scale model of 20 mm <sorry for the metric> bore was constructed and proved viable, at which point Herr Schickelgruber got involved (always a bad thing) and ordered the full-scale thing to be built WITHOUT TESTING.

     The prototype built as Misdroy blew up after firing a few shells, which did not bode especially well for the ones built in France at Mimoyeques.  The Teutons went to a lot of trouble to excavate tunnels for these weapons, along with underground railways and ammunition storage.  Art!

Cheery and welcoming

     They put an awful lot of resources into this project, which would have been far better employed in creating conventional artillery, because SURPRISE! here's 617 Squadron paying a visit with 5-ton Tallboy bombs, and that was the end of that.

     I should point out that the V3 was a fixed weapon, unable to traverse, or elevate, and the only way to change where the rounds would hit would have been to vary the charge.  It was aimed 'at London' and who knows where the shells would have landed.  As they say, if you want something over-engineered, give it to the Teutons.  If you want it under-engineered, give it to the Ruffians.  If you want it done right, give it to the South Canadians.

     This has caused Conrad to recall a Biggles novel, set in the Caribbean, where our hero is tasked with recovering a chest full of Teuton documents of V-weapon design, which Air Commodore Raymond says go up to the V-20.

     HAH!  Got it - Art?

The edition I had

     That's not all, I've also found a FREE complete text of the novel.  O boy I can see the next six hours being spent reading.  O just to set your mind at rest, the novel was published in 1969, so only 24 years after the Second Unpleasantness had ended, so secret Teuton documents not stretching credibility too much.

     That was a bit of a wild ride, was it not?  Going from the Crusader tank to Biggles in Jamaica.  All part of our solid service.  

I Mentioned "Judge Crater"

In yesteryon's blog, without an explanation.  Since Conrad also mentioned Lord Lucan and Jimmy Hoffa, both people who infamously disappeared, you might have gotten the gist of things. To enlighten you, Judge Crater was a very prominent South Canadian citizen, being a Supreme Court Judge who hob-nobbed with the rich, famous and controversial.  Art!

     The judge vanished on August 6th 1930 and was never seen again.  Despite enormous publicity and interest from the South Canadian public, that was that.  His body has never been found and no motive for his murder - for that it surely was - has ever been explained.  His vanishing was hot stuff for ten years, but it's almost forgotten today.  You never know - building renovation work on concrete foundations may yet uncover a skeleton in a suit ...

Colin Wilson

No!  Not the British author.  Duh.  No, I refer to the New Zealand comic artist, whose work I came across in a "2000AD Sci-Fi Special".  Ol' Col used to do work for the Galaxy's Finest back in their early years, and his artwork was a wonder to behold, definitely up there with Cam Kennedy, Brian Bolland and Ron Smith.  I took the effort to take a couple of photos - Art!

     The story is, frankly, rather silly - what I call "Century TV21 Syndrome" where the artwork is far better than the plot - but Col's artwork is terrific.  Art!

     For your information, in that panel at top, you see a Centurion in the foreground taking on a Merkava in the background - no nonsense about generic All Purpose Tank Designs for Colin.  The 2000AD editors all thought very highly of him, as do I.

Whilst On The Subject Of Conflict -

You don't know which is coming, do you - "The Sea Of Sand" or "The War Illustrated".

     I think I'll eke out the tension by putting in a picture that could apply to either.  Art!

A13 Cruiser

     O go on then, it's TSOS.

Taking the pint mug gingerly, Sarah sniffed and detected a faint odour of chlorine. 

          No!  Not for her.  She would gratefully decline when the Doctor refused his mug, too.  She turned to look and saw – treachery! – that her companion was eagerly gulping down the witch's brew.  With considerable misgiving, she sipped delicately at the muddy concoction, which in fact tasted more like hot ice cream than tea.  Losing her disdain, she latched onto the mug and emptied it in minutes, much to the amusement of the Doctor.

          ‘A valuable source of energy, thanks to the sugar, not to mention various proteins and vitamins, thanks to the condensed milk, and in a form that renders highly-chlorinated water potable, when water is at a premium,’ he lectured her.

          ‘It’s not long-leaf hand-picked Oolong, Miss Smith,’ apologised Llewellyn.

          ‘Never you mind!’ boomed the Doctor.  ‘The tea harvest of India guarantees high morale in the Eighth Army!’

          Sarah and Roger looked at each other with mutual embarassment at this over-the-top performance, and hence began a process of mutual bonding, which would enhance interaction, fact-finding and general exploration, all of which the Doctor had calculated for in mere seconds.  What he wanted to discover was the reason those interfering buffoons on Gallifrey had sent him here.  “Here” seemed to be the middle of a desert wilderness, with nothing particularly threatening in terms of malachronism or temporal toxicity.  True, large forces of armed homo sapiens were doing their level best to kill each other; which was nothing new and it couldn’t be the reason he and Sarah were diverted here.

     Actually The Doc got it wrong here, at this point in time it was still the Western Desert Force, but it's simpler for contemporary readers to understand.

Finally -

Cracking on well with the jigsaw, only about another 100 pieces left to put together and we have advanced significantly since yesteryon.  I may even post a picture, just to do a little gloasting.

     And with that we are well and truly done!