BOOJUM! Hits Home With A Denominator You Didn't Know Existed
And yet missed without knowing it was there in the first place. Or at least we like to think so. Perhaps, if you have a long memory, you will recall that the blog has covered 'Barbette' before, probably when we were pontificating about battleships. Art!
Ah - no.
Excuse me for a moment as I Tazer a bit of sense into Art -
<sounds of sizzlings and screams>
Can we try again? BARBETTE?
The word itself is so obscure that it's not even in my Collins Concise. Never mind, I shall enlighten you, for a 'Barbette' is the cylindrical column or trunk that a gun turret sits upon, containing hoists, pulleys and other handling devices to deliver shells and charges to the guns themselves.
"But Conrad, you sage of age, surely that complicates things tremendously?" I hear you quibble. "All that extra machinery. Won't the Treasury complain?"
They might. Won't do any good, they'd be arguing with the Senior Service, whom have over a century of experience in these matters, ever since the 'Dreadnought' slid down the slipway.
Now, allow me to divert somewhat into the current Unpleasantness taking place in Ukraine, and that ghastly phenomenon known as the "Ruffian tank turret toss". Art!
This occurs because Ruffian tank designs have their ammunition in a carousel inside the turret, which delivers shells to the gun breech via an autoloader. Crew safety or survivability is a completely foreign concept to the Ruffians; Western equivalents have the ammo stored in separate bins to increase the odds of the tankies exiting their chariot alive if it gets hit.
Now, do you see what happens when perhaps a ton of explosive ammunition detonates inside an enclosed space? Well, fifteen inch shells as used in large naval vessels weigh in at almost one ton each. A capital ship might carry several hundred of these shells and it would be foolish in the extreme to carry any more in a turret than are strictly needed. Art!
That should read 'CRADLE'
There are serious consequences afoot for those who design these things poorly, as the Royal Navy found out to it's cost at the Battle Of Jutland. Three of it's battlecruisers, the Indefatigable, Invincible and the Queen Mary, all blew up and sank within half an hour of hostilities commencing. Art!
NO! I am not going to flatten the creases out to satisfy your disordered minds. This map and the book it is attached to are 100 years old, you Dog Buns! vandals.
The battlecruiser was a kind of hybrid warship, being as fast as a cruiser - thirty-one knots being a quoted speed (twenty-seven miles per hour for the landlubbers out there) - yet with the armament of a battleship. However, they had a serious flaw in their turret design, being liable to suffer a catastrophic 'daisy-chain' if an explosion took place in the turret. The battlecruiser Lion was hit in 'Q' turret, the explosion killing nearly all the gun crew and mortally wounding the officer in charge of the turret, Major Harvey of the Royal Marine Light Infantry*. Despite having both legs traumatically amputated by shrapnel, he retained enough presence of mind to order all magazine doors shut and the magazine itself be flooded - the Lion thus survived. He got a well-deserved posthumous Vicky. Art!
 |
| 'Q' Turret |
Everyone from turret to magazine was killed in the subsequent explosion and if the magazine had not been flooded, that would have been the end of the Lion and 1,000 crew.
So there you have it, how design flaws lead to loss of life. In this case not so much tossing a turret as blasting a battlecruiser.
N.B. For those unaware, Jutland was a bit of a draw. The Royal Navy lost 14 ships, the Teuton High Seas Fleet 11, but whereas the RN was back the next morning, champing for action, the THSF cowered in port, probably aware that they'd have lost more ships if they'd been a bit further from home.
A Violin-Shaped Train
Hmmmmm perhaps 'Fiddle' would be more accurate. I am grateful to the very sardonic Konstantin, of 'INSIDE RUSSIA', who now lives in Uzbekistan but still provides a citric analysis of Ruffian life, for this anecdote. Art!
I know, I know - he looks scary and hairy but he's really a big soft bear-y. K looks a lot more presentable when clean shaven, as do I.
K was relating a tale about the Ruffian Ministry Of Industry And Trade, who were approached in 2018 by a bunch of entrepreneurs who pitched a tale of techno to them: a super-advanced Ruffian train the technological equivalent of the Japanese or Teuton bullet trains.
"Great!" mimicked K of the Ministry. "Now we can do something productive!"
Which he promptly amended to "Now we can do - something!"
(Surely a satirical shot at Ruffian bureaucracy). Not only did Eftronics FLC (I think that's the name) have a killer pitch, they also had a scale model of their proposed new train. Art!
The MIT then showered Eftronics FLC with tens of millions of rubles, to the tune of some ₽150 million in total, until one day there was radio silence from Eftronics. They vanished, completely.
Ooops. It had all been a swindle. The 'scale-model' was in fact from a toyshop next door to the MIT, with the original labels peeled off and new ones in Cyrillic added on. Art!
And the final insult, as delivered deadpan by K?
It was made in China.
<drum roll cymbal crash>
More Of Those "Star Wars" Characters
As done in baroque style. Which, according to my Collins Concise, is:"A style of architecture and decorative art from the late 16th to the early 18th century, characterised by extensive ornamentation." So now you know. Art!
Hmmmm Han looks appropriately brooding, but I rather think Ol' Chewie greatly resembles Edna. Or perhaps that's just me.
"The Sea Of Sand"
Sarah, upon re-entering the TARDIS, has discovered a set of papers that mysteriously appeared on the control console. They seem to be of an official nature.
“ elements
of the 276th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, the 47th Infantry
Division and the 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Brigade counter-attacked the
bridgehead under cover of heavy artillery and Nebelwerfer fire. Faced with this attack, and unable to
reinforce the bridgehead, Brigadier McKenzie decided to withdraw his lead
battalion back across the River Corso.
‘Capitane Dominione of the
Co-Belligerent Forces volunteered to stay behind with a rearguard and hold off
the enemy until the remainder of the battalion could retreat and be taken off
the north bank by boat.
‘Under Capitane Dominione’s guidance,
the Vickers platoon set up on the ridgeline and threw back three enemy attacks,
inflicting heavy losses on the German attackers. Capitaine Dominione was badly wounded, twice,
but refused to be evacuated and insisted on manning the last working Vickers
gun himself. Sergente Doretti also insisted
on staying. Under their covering fire
the last of the rearguard were able to be brought off, completing the
evacuation of the battalion.
‘When the battalion was able to
recross the river and pursue the retreating German forces several days later,
the graves of Capitaine Dominione and Sergente Doretti were found, presumably
interred by the Germans.
‘German prisoners subsequently
taken informed Brigadier McKenzie that the two Italians had fought on,
surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, refusing to surrender and thus holding
up the German advance, which reached the river over half an hour too late to
intercept the retreating battalion.
‘It is my contention that,
without the splendid efforts of Capitain Dominione in leading the rearguard,
and finally holding off the Germans himself, several hundred members of the
battalion would have been killed or captured.
I have no hesitation in recommending him for the Silver Cross of Valour,
and in recommending Sergente Doretti for the Bronze Cross of Valour.”
In
pencil an unknown hand had scribbled in the margin: “Bloody unusual for the Hun
to bury Eyeties fighting for us! Must
have impressed them no end. See if you can add this to Rgt
dispatches. Pass on to Alex for info.”
I suspect Sarah is not going to like this ending. Courage, girl!
I Suspect Dimya's Not Going To Like This Ending
That prescient chap Jake Broe, months ago, pointed out that the South Canadians had rolled back restrictions on supplying Main Battle Tanks to Ukraine, when previously they'd been dead set against doing any such thing, fearing that the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler would, O I dunno, roll around frothing at the mouth and chewing the carpet? Jake also said that the ban on supplying F-16 jets was also going to lapse, and - he's right. Art!
Conrad is by no means an expert on aviation matters, but he does know that the F-16 is a quantum level beyond anything either the Ukes or the Ruffians currently have in their arsenal.
They won't arrive any time soon, which is about the only consolation Dimya has as he weeps salty tears into his vodka. Yes yes yes, he used to drink only occasionally; now his breakfast is a bowl of kasha and a mug of Standard.
* At this point in time all Royal Navy guns were manned by Royal Marines.
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