You'll Have To Forgive Me For Breaking Into Romanian
You see, I've used the English version of this title twice this year, and some of you might remember it, which would shame me into retirement.
Well, actually no it wouldn't, that was poetic licence. Also known as 'lying'.
What does "Chipsuri De Fisiune!" mean? "Fission Chips", which only works as a pun if you say it out loud. For Lo! we are going to be wittering on about games, including computer ones, that involve atom bombs. Atomic warheads, as you should surely know by now, use the fission of a critical mass of uranium or plutonium to create an almighty explosion. Art!
Atomic bomber wave 2632 master play
Here you see the atomic bomber in question, swooping over the countryside and nuking the ever-loving snot out of it. The bomb is that small dark object, and at a mere 7 seconds in not much damage has been caused. By the end of this particular game, things have a different cast to them. Art!
The tortured earth has been blasted into new and exciting shapes, landscaping carried out without charge. Art!
From the late Forties, the land that taste forgot. Thanks to "Paul C" on Twitter <Elong Tusk winces> for bringing this particular toy to my attention. The toy or game was made by Thomas Toys, featuring a plastic replica of a B-29 Superfortress, which carried a solid metal bomb. You could nuke various ground targets on the inverted box. Art!
Notice how they promote this bomber as being an atomic one, none of those namby-pamby milquetoast conventional high-explosive ones! A salient fact they omit in the blurb is that the bomb is made out of lead, which is the final decay product of uranium₂₃₅, perhaps made from war-surplus bullets? in what is swords being turned into even bigger swords. Art!
As related by Jeremy Saucier, the Vice President of the 'Strong Museum', this game is from 1946, only a year after the actual nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's one of the electro-mechanical games that were mainstays of arcade games until 'Space Invaders' arrived. Ol' Jez opens it up to display the interior. Art!
The 'Target Environment' is painted on a drum that rotates, giving the illusion of a landscape being flown over by your atomic bomber. As Ol' Jez mentions, this game was utterly uncontroversial at the time it came out, when bright shiny nuclear weapons were all the rage and South Canada had a monopoly on them. Art!
What's this? No idea. Answers in the Comments.
Ol' Jez shows how it worked: you looked into a viewfinder and scrolled the crosshairs left and right, and clicked the 'Bomb Release' when you spotted (a suspiciously civilian-looking) target, and a bright red light would flash to stand in for a nuclear detonation. Definitely no chips in this one, and I didn't even see any valves, either. O for the PC-free days of the early atomic era! Art!
Your Humble Scribe has heard of this game, yet never played it, and doubt I ever will, because computer or arcade games are the worst thieves of time ever to infest the earth. I remember when playing "St
ANYWAY I had no idea what it was, nor what Mister A. Bomberman did, nor how he did it, so we need a screenshot or two. Art!
This is the initial start position, where you, Mr A. Bomberman, have to nuke your way into a larger space and nuke the opposing players, if you can manage it. Art!
18 seconds in, and you can see the other players are attempting to best you by opening up more squares and potentially atom bomb you.
For atom bomb afficionados the nuking seems a little tame. Conrad would expect half the screen to go up in a fireball when you detonate your Special Atomic Demolition Munition. None of the players seems concerned about Radiation Absorbed Dose and how many milli-sieverts they've been exposed to. A case of chips but no fission.
But who am I to quibble!
Not In My Backyard
The acronym 'NIMBY' is normally used for entitled folks, the kind who are all for a nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant or a pig-breeding super-farm, as long as they don['t have to put up with it. Not in this context, because we here at the blog just have to be different. Art!
Not in my back yard nor any others in This Sceptred Isle, I suspect, as the rainclouds rolled in and we had ten-tenths cloud cover during the hours of darkness.
British weather - the curse of British astronomy <sad face>.
"The War Illustrated Edition 195 8th December 1944"
We're being completist here, as I have one final image from the central montage left to pontificate upon. It's not very dramatic or exciting I'm afraid, but you can't have blood and thunder on every page. Art!
Just a bit of close-in manoeuvring in harbour, either after the fighting has finished or in friendly territory, as you don't have casual onlookers strolling around with hands in pockets in a warzone. Those matelots would be considerably more crouched, too. Also, and you'll just have to take Honest Conrad's word for it as this picture is quite low-res, a lot of the tommies in that landing craft are smiling, which is not behaviour if you were about to disembark on a hostile shore.
This is such a nothingburger of a picture I'm certain that the editor was merely filling in the gaps.
More Of The Italian Front
Apropos my playing the 1914 Italian Front scenario in "The Great War In Europe", I've been reading the "Official History of the War Military Operations Italy 1915 - 1919". This is one of the Battery Press reprints, which reproduce the original four colour maps in monochrome, which is a bit bobbins. However - Art!
BUT EGAD THE PRICE!
I bet I didn't pay more than £40 for my edition. This is still pretty pricey, agreed, because the Battery Press reprints sold out the minute they were published and are now as hard to get as the now century-old originals.
More Of More Of The Italian Front
Don't complain, it's not as if I'm whanging on about Donold Judas Trump or Bloaty Gas Tout, is it? Art!
The British army were invited to go nosy and poke around Italy to see what was what and how and where, further to having British reinforcements turn up in the peninsula. That chap above you see is Brigadier Delmé-Radcliffe, who had the job of liaising with the Romans. He and the British Military Mission went to a lot of trouble to suss out the lay of the land, to wit: "The state, grades, obstacles and telegraph communications of the roads; detraining stations; billeting facilities; camping and bivouac grounds; water supply; sanitation requirements; sign posts and notice boards."
Bear in mind that Italy was a novel campaigning ground for the British army, unlike the cockpit of Flanders and northern France, so all this information was built from scratch. Art!
Obviously a photograph from when the tommies turned up in numbers, mucking about with what looks to be a baboon mascot. That black smudge might be the censor obscuring relevant info.
Hark! for that was but a pictorial interlude to break up a solid block of text. There were medical aspects to marching in Italy, to wit: " the effect on marching powers of hill climbing, reduced atmosphere pressure, the lower temperature at night in the mountains, prevailing diseases, the provision of sanitary apparatus and the disposal of sick."
'Disposal of sick' sounds forbiddingly harsh, as if they're going to be chucked over the nearest precipice.
Finally -
I'm typing this up Friday afternoon, because thanks to working 4 long days, I get the afternoon off. This job will do until I find one that pays £50,000 per annum for drinking tea and doing crosswords.
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