Artillery Trains

SIT BACK DOWN!

No, this Intro is not about the railway artillery we have been whanging on about of late, even if a casual glance might not agree.  You see, back through recorded history, the siege engines used to wage warfare against enemy fortifications were known as a 'siege train', because there were a lot of them and they occupied a lot of ground.  Art!

     There you go, eye-witness evidence of Romans and their siege trains yomping around the countryside in search of an enemy.

     When you arrive at the twentieth century, modern weaponry and defensive science means that the artillery pieces needed to reduce fortifications become immense.  This makes them very difficult to move around, as one hundred horses dead of exhaustion trying to haul a 50-ton piece of ordnance is not conducive to promotion or success.  These equipments are so large they have their own gravity and weather systems.

     ANYWAY I think we've introduced the idea of artillery trains sufficiently, because are now going to shift gear and subject.  Art!

     Yes, we are back to Operation BATTLEAXE, as previously threatened.  The tanks you see above are British Matilda IIs, which had proved a horrible noveily to the Italian army of 1940, which found that it's tank and anti-tank guns bounced off the Matilda's armour with a monotonous langour, which wounded their heart.  It says here.

     ANYWAY AGAIN the Matilda was a redoubtable duck that bore watching, because it's two-pounder gun would turn any Teuton or Roman tank into an expensive colander, whilst shrugging off MOST anti-tank rounds. 

     Not all.  Art!

     This cropped up in my Facebook feed so I am utilising serendipity.  

     ANYWAY ANYWAY let us get back to Operation BATTLEAXE, which was a British offensive timed for June 1941, not long after the arrival of the Teutons in North Africa.  The overall intention was to lift the siege that the Axis were mounting of Tobruk, which, I may tell you, was not proceeding very well as they lacked a proper siege train.  Horses for courses.  Art!

     Wavell was a commander after Conrad's heart; he would never use ten words when one would do, or speak if an acute glare would serve instead.  Which of his eyes in the above picture is artificial?  He did succumb to extreme prodding from Whitehall about BATTLEAXE, which he would have done well to ignore.  Art!

     There's the artillery train that gives this blog it's title.  These are the Teuton's 88 mm anti-aircraft gun that they deployed in a ground role to devastating effect.  Fair play to Fact Bytes, they mention all the things that made it less than ideal in such a role: designed as an anti-aircraft gun, it had a verrrry high profile that stood out in flat terrain; it was not intended to fire horizontally with any frequency, so the recuperating gear suffered; the loader had a very awkward job loading if it was firing horizontally; it needed a good deal of time to set up properly to have a stable firing position.  Art!

     That's a couple of sweating minions knocking in the pegs to stabilise the outrigger legs.

     Against all this, the 88 Flak worked.  It could destroy the Matilda (and anything else) at up to 2,000 yards distance, and did so during BATTLEAXE.  This was partly due to technology; British tanks of that era fired solid anti-tank rounds with a limited effective range, when what they needed to deal with Teuton anti-tank guns was a gun firing a high explosive shell, effective at any distance.  This took a woefully long time to arrive.

     Overall, BATTLEAXE was a defeat for the British - not the 'Allies' as Fact Byte would have it, as it was just Perfidious Albion alone at this point in time - and the reasons are more nuanced than just 'Big German Guns Kick Bottom'.  Art!

     Here you see an example of how the Teutons dug in their flak artillery in the desert.  Those at Halfaya Pass were dug in so far as to have their barrels barely above ground, which meant excavating perhaps 50 tons of rock per gun.  Not really a train at this point, more a terrain.

     There is a riposte from the British Official History that I want to post, except it would take up the whole of this blog, so it will have to wait.  I bet you can hardly restrain yourselves.
      Go and read 'The Sands Of Valour*'!

Whomever did this cover illo did their research

Legends Of The Fail

Yes!  We are back on "The Seventy Great Mysteries Of The Ancient World", hereafter '70', and their title "Maya Myth: Will The World End In 2012"

     You might be ahead of me here, but - no, the world did not end 13 years ago.  I think we would have noticed.  Art!

     That's the AI Art Generator getting on the case, and I think we can grant it a a pass in this case.  '70', you see, was published in 2001 and thus didn't have the advantage we in the present do, which is hindsight.  Conrad remembers some doomsayers quoting this apocalyptic drivel before 2012, and Mayan experts scoffing at their utter lack of knowledge.  For one thing, looking at '70', the Mayas were predicting events that would occur long after 2012 and the supposed end of everything, including a royal anniversary in 4772 AD.

     I don't recall anyone explaining why we needed to believe the Mayan predictions about the end of the world, above and beyond all others.  There is a long and ignoble tradition of apocalypses being predicted -

     - and not happening.

"The War Illustrated Edition 213 17th August 1945"

I have no idea what photograph I selected, so let us discover together.  Art!

     I may have used this illo in one of my Intros about 'Ark's, but I don't care and Conrad is going to use it again.  For reasons obscure to me they talk about the Ark being used in Burma, yet have an illustration from Germany.  Perhaps it was still on the Secret List whilst the war was being waged in Europe, and they weren't allowed to publish at the time?  Hmmm and a quick Google says that they were never used in Burma.  Someone is telling porkies!

     ANYWAY you can see that the 'Armoured Ramp Carrier' concept was a success, as that's a self-propelled gun traversing the pair deployed here, weighing at least twenty tons.  No flimsy improvisation here.

Kirk Gets Killed!

Every word true.  It did happen a while back, in 1994's "Star Trek Generations", in case you mistake our especially tasteless gag for anything more contemporary.  Apparently the film's producers wanted a method of tying in the 'Star Trek The Next Generation' television series with the original series, and a crossover film with Captain Kirk was the desired vehicle.  Art!

     His final words were 'It was fun - Oh my!' with the last two words being Shatner's addition.

     Conrad has seen the film and doesn't think much of it, although Malcolm McDowell makes a splendidly amoral villain.  Trust them to wheel in a British actor to be the Black Hat, hmmm?

Whilst On The Subject Of 'Starry Trex' (sp?)

I came across this thumbnail on Youtube and couldn't resist copying it to my Word document for later utilisation.  Art!

     Komissar Spok looks very very angry at - something.  Jeri Ryan** looks remarkably dowdy and unappealing, and Data looks more akin to Demented.  I haven't watched it yet but will do so and report back.  I bet you can hardly wait.

And with that we are done!  DONE I tell you!

*  NOTE PROPER SPELLING

**  Can't remember the character's name