The Scorpion

Conrad Chortled At His Arachnophobic Readers

(Even though he's a massive coward scared of the smallest spider himself) because this is not what you think it is.  Or - maybe it is, as you ought to know by now how much I like TANK.  

     You see, someone on Twitter posted a picture of a bizarre Ruffian mine-roller arrangement.  Mine-rollers are devices fitted to vehicles that venture into minefields, the better to explode the mines yet not get the vehicle destroyed.  Art!

     This is that military workhorse, a Sherman tank, pushing a gigantic pair of mine rollers ahead of it.  These are operating on the principle of mass, being so enormously heavy that even an anti-tank mine won't disable them.  They hope.  Note the chain working them off the front drive wheel.  That odd vertical plate at the back?  There so another Sherman can help push the first one along.  Like I said, those wheels are heavy.

     "But the dreaded 'Scorpion'?  Where is it?" I hear you quibble.

     PATIENCE!

     First, the bizarre Ruffian mine-roller.  Art!

     Look at those frankly pathetic mine-rollers.  Now look at a Ukrainian T-63 anti-tank mine, that can destroy a 30-ton tank.  Who is going to win?

     And, what's with those dangling chains?  Don't tell me, the spirit of Jacob Marley had a hand in this design.

     At this point in the proceedings Conrad, and his seven snifters of gin, felt compelled to enter the thread.  Art!

See attached. This is a Matilda "Scorpion" flail tank intended to sweep for mines. The flails are on a ROTATING DRUM; they are not coyly dangled in front of the tank. This is from 80 years ago. Dear Designer, cut down on the vodka.

     I guarantee you there's an Osprey all about Matilda variants.  Art!

Close enough

     This was an innovation brought into service in 1942, at a time in the desert war when the Axis and Rommel, supposedly a master of armoured manoeuvre, were sitting behind huge minefields.  The drum at front was powered by a separate engine, which rotated the flails, sweeping the ground ahead of the tank.  Note that the flails covered the whole 'footprint', not merely the width of the tracks.  Art!

     They scared the living pee out of the Italian defenders who first encountered them in action, because the flails threw up so much dust nothing could be seen but a gradually advancing roiling cloud, and the external engine and chains made an ear-splitting howl.  Art!

     

     I can't find a proper photograph so these two will have to do.  Yes, an operator had to sit in that little armoured box to control the flails, in what must be one of the more unpleasant jobs of the Second Unpleasantness.

     But wait!  For we are not done here with Scorpions.  Art!

     THIS IS NOT A TANK!  It is the South Canadian M56 Self-Propelled Anti-Tank gun.  It was designed to be capable of being air-dropped with parachute troops, so it was verrrrry light, only 7 tons in fact, which had two results.  One, it was an incredibly nippy little beast on the battlefield, and could zoom in and out of contact.  Two, because it had a beast of a gun, recoil was enormous.  Art!

     The crew had to be very careful not to get decapitated by the 90 m.m. gun at full recoil.  Also, as you have doubtless noticed, to cut down on weight the M56 was a fresh-air experience, with no protection for the crew.  O well.

     Then, of course - obviously! -  we have the British Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance, Tracked, better known as - Art!

The Scorpion

     This steel steed is the equivalent of the old horsed cavalry.  It is lightweight, being only 8 tons, and can whistle along at over 50 miles per hour, which is extremely fast for a tin terror can.  It's not intended to stand up and slug it out with other tanks, instead being tasked to get sneaky-peeky and obtain information.

     Nor can we escape the awesome special effects from that film we've milked to exhaustion by now, "Damnation Alley".  Art!

Giant scorpions!  Scorpions giant!

     Hmmmm it's almost as if they were superimposed onto the film, isn't it?  

     Word has it that they were supposed to use animatronic scorpies, which turned out to be a - what's the word? - O yes, a complete failure. Hence the rather transparent ones above.

     That's enough about scorpions for today.

The Green Stuff

Conrad almost fell out of his chair when watching a vlog by Konstantin of "Inside Russia", because our favourite Uzbekistan exile mentioned that the Spar grocery chain operated inside Ruffia.  Conrad remembers using these waaaaay back in the Eighties.  What are they doing in Ruffia?  Well, a little digging proves that they are a Dutch multinational franchise.  Art!

     Big K was ironically celebrating the most expensive cucumbers in Ruffia, as sold in Spar, which retail at ₽700 per kilo, which translates as $8 or £6 in proper money.  Art!

Shortly to have security tags added

     Conrad, rather maliciously, decided to look at how costly these luxury foodstuffs are in Morrisons, and - Art!

     
     At a guess it would need a brace of these to make a kilo.  So, all of £1.70.

     Big K pointed out that his retired mum's disposable income per month is about ₽4,000.  Enough to purchase six kilos of cucumbers.  

     "It's not looking good."*

Lego Dreams

More wildly ambitious projects from the 20 greatest as assembled by SpitBrix.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     This particular model of the Millenium Falcon is the bigggggest in the world, and as you can see has been built using a rather odd 'modular' system, giving it a pixellated look.  Before you ask, over 200,000 bricks.  Double millennium?  It measure 16 PROUD IMPERIAL FEET long and 12 wide, also tilting the scales at half a ton.  More a roc than a falcon, to pursue the avian theme.

"City In The Sky"

We are still observing Ace's side-jaunt, as Arcology One's Lunar Land, the 'Pangolin', heads for the Trojan asteroids at a Lagrange Point.

     A violent and shuddering bang! assaulted their popping ears, followed by a thin, high-pitched shriek.  Condensation on the windows vanished, their breath became visible, loose fittings began to rattle.

     ‘Helmets!  Suit up!’ barked Kurt.  A rank of tell-tales were blinking red on an overhead panel.  Ace heard the nasty whistling sound stop as she buckled her helmet on again before activating the radio link.

     ‘Were we hit?’ gasped Mona.  ‘A meteor?’

     ‘No,’ drawled Barclay slowly, scanning a set of figures and text scrolling across a ticker-tape screen.  His stomach sank.  ‘A fuel pipe to a manouevering vernier blew out.’  He hammered on a big red emergency button to stop the fuel pump.

     Overhead the rank of tell-tales went to orange.

     ‘Self-sealing is working, anyway, muttered Kurt.  ‘What have we lost?’

     ‘Tanked oxygen.  Manouevring fuel reserve.  All the cabin air.’

     The cabin air came back, slowly, and stayed very cold.  Barclay hit his thighs with his gauntlets and set to calculating what percentage of resources remained, arriving at some uncomfortable numbers.

     ‘Cabin is sealed again,’ buzzed Kurt into the radio link and looking at green tell-tales.

     The chief pilot looked at the figures on his Tab.  They were sealed again, good.  Less good was the shortage of air.  Briefly put, they only had four hours of air left in the cabin and in the tanked oxygen for a journey that would last nine hours and an undetermined time at their destination in the Trojans.  

     There, I knew it would go wrong at some point.  This author is so predictable!

"Space 1999": "Voyager's Return"
 Conrad remembers this one first time around.  Moonbase Alpha is threatened by the returning 'Voyager Probe', an elderly bit of space kit that got sent out 15 years previously to scour the near galaxy.  Art!

     The unpleasant thing about this homecoming is that the probe is powered by the 'Quiller Drive', which seems to have an exhaust by-product consisting of incredibly dangerous Fast Neutrons.  At an indeterminate point in the past one of these probes malfunctioned in Earth orbit and scads of Hom. Sap. died as a result.  We see the unfortunate effects of the Quiller Drive on a pair of intercepting Eagles, as one is blown to atoms well away from the  probe.

     Er - 'well away from the probe'.  Not only that, the exhaust was pointing away from the Moonbase craft.  To Conrad, the Quiller Drive seems to create a lethal zone around the whole probe, which will disintegrate anything approaching.  Art!

     I know, I know - why don't they just blow it up?

     The Prof comes up with a rationale for this; for fifteen years this probe has been bimbling around the Galaxy, espying worlds galore, which the Alphans need as data for a potential planetary settlement.

     That's not all.  Commander Koenig muses about how the Quiller Drive accelerates the probe up to incredible velocities, the better to cross interstellar space.  However - we don't see any relatavistic effects whilst the probe approaches.  Art!

     Plus, bringing this doomsday device to dock on the Moonbase seems wildly careless.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this .....

*  It's actually worse.