Oil Tell 'E A Tale

Excuse The Cod West Country Accent

It had to be done to work the hilarious pun in there.  Yes it IS hilarious I tell you!

     Okay, let us begin this Intro with a mantra that has emerged into the daylight since Bloaty Gas Tout began his Special Idiotic Operation: amateurs deal with tactics, professionals deal with logistics.  This is especially true of warfare in the modern age, when engines matter quite as much as guns or bombs.  It was especially applicable to the Second Unpleasantness in North Africa, where running out of fuel could be ruinous.

     There's another variety of 'desert' where a shortage of fuel would be disastrous - Art!

     Yes, the open ocean.  Whether your warship is a corvette or an aircraft carrier, running dry out in the briny deeps is bad news in peacetime, and a potential disaster when there are enemies out there looking to do you mischief.  

     Enter the Oiler.  This unlovely beast is essentially a giant floating fuel dump and will never be sung about in shanties, thanks to being as glamourous as a well-worn wellington boot.  Art!

     Yes, this is a shot from "The War Illustrated" and shows the venerable battleship HMS 'Warspite' undergoing what is now called 'Replenishment At Sea'.

     Oilers in home waters tend to be located in out-of-the-way sites, in order to avoid interference with other marine traffic, civilian or naval, and to also avoid the prying eyes of Mister Enemy.  A single 250lb bomb would turn an oiler into A Very Large Explosion; TWI mentions a payload of 12,000 tons of fuel.  Art!

     This rather scruffy madam is 'Gold Ranger', an especially-designed oiler in use with the Royal Navy - not 'in' because it was classed as a Royal Fleet Auxiliary - from 1941 onwards, only being scrapped in 1976.  She saw action in convoys to the (markedly ungrateful) Sinister Union, where weather was as big a threat as the bally Hun; on the extremely dangerous convoy runs to Malta; in raids on the Norwegian coast and also saw service with the British Pacific Fleet.
     Why would one take along a plodding tanker amidst a set of sleek destroyers or island-sized aircraft carriers?  Because it would ill behove the fleet to have to turn back to home waters thanks to a shortage of fuel.  The oilers would carry not merely diesel for ship's engines, but also high-octane petrol for aircraft, too.  Art!

     Because the oiler was a ship, not a shore establishment, it could rendezvous with other ships at sea, enabling them to remain on station instead of having to travel thousands of miles to refuel.  Nor was oil the only resource they carried; they also carried mail, food and the larger ones had an infirmary aboard, well beyond the auspices of even the largest warships.

     Conrad remembers the tale told on Quora of a South Canadian naval rating, whose first posting was to an oiler.  Her tanks had been emptied for cleaning, which you might expect to be done with steam hoses or rinsing with caustic chemicals.  Not so.  Cleaning was done by naval ratings, especially the new ones, with handfuls of rags.  After a few days of this our narrator pleaded for a reassignment, to anything else that floated, even ships off the coast of Vietnam (for this was that era), rather than the oiler.  Art!

     You can tell the oiler because their funnels are always at the stern, not amidships.  Note, too, the helipad behind the bow - stop me if I get too technical, won't you? - and also note that the oiler is resupplying two ships at once, which is pretty tricky going and a definite test of seamanship.  Probably why the Ruffian navy stays close to home.  If we imagine this action is in the Persian Gulf, it means neither warship needs to sail hundreds of miles and spend days refuelling.

     There, I think that's enough guff about the oily stuff.

Car Trouble/Cart Rouble

Ha!  How clever is that!  I see the ruble is now at 96.80 to the dollar, so much for hitting 100 last weekend <sad face> Art!

     There's always next weekend <happy smiling face>.

     One thing about the price of Ruffian oil; it's now more profitable to sell it abroad rather than inside Ruffia, leading to shortages or complete absence in some border oblasts.

     Talking of 'Inside Russia', I should point out that Big K has explained about an economic crisis in the offing that nobody else seems to have noticed, namely unsecured loans.  Art!

The Ruffian economy: it's all going according to plan.

     Konstantin said that it took a year for Ruffian citizens to comprehend that Western cars were gone, and they weren't ever coming back.  So, in desperation, as of earlier this year, they started buying Chinese cars, and to do that they took out loans.  In fact Ruffian banks are falling over themselves to give out loans, so much so that a very angry Ruffian Central Bank is threatening them with fines as punishment.  Why so?  Because a loan has to be repaid, and the economic future of Ruffia is such that there's no certainty about people being able to repay.  Art!

Traktorfabrik make good car!

"City In The Sky"

Whilst Ace has been off nosying and scoffing, the Doctor has been Up To Things.  Which she's now going to get to see.

     ‘Eh!  What?  Of course, of course.  You wouldn’t know.  Eden.  Put together in a hurry, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been full of people who bought their way aboard.’

     He motioned her to walk alongside him.

     ‘Here, stay in view, I keep forgetting you’re not crew; we get so few visitors from anywhere else.  Where was I?  Oh yes, the UN sphere – “Eden”.  They had a revolt – incredible as it may seem, they brought weapons aboard their sphere.  Guns.  Can you believe it?  After a year they had another revolt, after which the sphere wasn’t fit for habitation beyond a few weeks.  The rest of the Arc-ipelago conferred and agreed to accept the survivors aboard, split up between us.  Except for the Chinese, of course.  The Americans shuttled the surivors about in the Martian Excursion Vehicle, and -’ he stopped and looked at Ace.  ‘Rumour has it that some idiots tried to bring weapons aboard the MEV.  It’s only a rumour, but the story goes that the Americans put them out the airlock without suits.’

     Ace shuddered at the very thought.  Douglas carried on walking.

     ‘The Martian Excursion Vehicle?’ she asked, making the big man shake his head.

     ‘Do you ever stop asking questions!  Yes, the MEV.  M3 came back from Mars ahead of schedule after taking a vote to return.’

     ‘Manned Mars Mission!’ declared Ace proudly.  ‘See, I do know a few facts!’

     Despite himself, the chief mechanic chuckled.

     No, mate, she doesn't ever stop asking questions.

Apropos Of Mister MacBeth

Ryan Macbeth, that is, not the Shakespeary character.  On one of his latest question and answer vlogs on Youtube, someone asked him why Ukraine doesn't just tunnel underneath the Ruffian minefields.

     This is one reason.  Art!

     This is a tunnel-boring machine.  As you can see, it's enormous, very very expensive and it moves very slowly.  You could probably scale it down somewhat but not by much because you'll need ingress and egress traffic, ergo two lanes.  Not only that, the tunnel entrance above has been specially constructed; what do you do at the other end of your tunnel?

     No, it's a non-starter, I'm afraid.  Nice try, no  cigar.

Found It!

They tried hiding it away, unannounced, but Your Humble Scribe discovered it nonetheless.  

     To what am I referring?  Why, none other than the BBC's Astronomy photography competition.  I've Bookmarked it, which won't save the page if the ruthless power struggle going on between Publicity and Text-Only continues.  Art!

Courtesy Dreschsler, Strottner & Sainty

     That there is the Androme.da Galaxy, our next-door galactic neighbour only 2 million light years distant.  That large arc of plasma had gone undetected before this photograph was taken, so astronomers around the globe are cooing in delight.  A tad unsurprisingly, this it the Competition's winner.

Finally -

Better get my shoes on, for a constitutional to Lesser Sodom beckons.  Plus I've only done 540 steps to date, I need to up that by a couple of thousand.

Tally ho!