Sorry, But We Are Back To TANK And How History Repeats Itself
There's a quote, isn't there? History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, as spoken by Karl Marx, the great-grandfather of Groucho, Harpo and Chico*.
What am I blathering on about? Why, how tender and delicate a tank can be, two adjectives that you wouldn't readily associate with a thirty-ton metal beast. Art!
This is one of the later models of the Sherman tank, with improved suspension and a bigger gun, known as the 'Easy 8'. I can assure you that, in action, there would be an awful lot of clutter hanging from said tank and they rarely looked as 'clean' as this one here.
One of the not-unfounded convictions of Allied tank crews was that their tanks were consistently under-armoured when facing Teuton anti-tank guns. The problem was that it would have required a Tortoise - NOT FORESHADOWING AT ALL - to withstand the extremely high-velocity shells fired by such weapons. Art!
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| A 78-ton monster with 9" amour and a 32-pounder gun |
What do you do if you feel the need to enhance your protection against high-velocity anti-tank shells? O I thought you'd never ask! You add on improvised armour substitutes, such as anything you can lay your sweaty mitts on. Art!
British Shermans with lengths of track added to the front hull, all the better to (hopefully) protect. Spare wheels, sandbags and discarded armour plate were also added at a pinch. Art!
A Churchill, the most heavily-armoured British tank, whose crew have added a bit more protection, just in case. The most famous example of a South Canadian tank with add-on wooden walls is another Easy 8, which you may recognise. Art!
On parade at Bovvie, you can tell by the observation tower to rear
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| 'Fury' with added Al Murray front hull protection |
This is a bit feeble, and thank you to 'Trent Telenko' on Twitter for providing illos of South Canadian tank crews who have really put their back into it. Art!
Egadzooks!
The amount of time and sweat they must have expended filling and placing all those sandbags. Art!
This one is covered with a concrete carapace. They may have mixed steel balls into the cement before it cured. Conrad unsure how they got concrete on the sloped hull front. Art!
An extra sheet of steel plate, which may or may not be from another tank, no questions asked about where it came from.
Onto the 'tender and delicate' part of our earlier Intro. I tracked down the relevant notes in Professor John Buckley's 'British Armour In The Normandy Campaign' because I ama very sad man/prone to digging/thorough <delete where applicable>. He had looked at the reports from the British Operational Research Section, whose job it was to trawl the battlefields of 1944 and discover exactly what weapons and tactics and equipment were effective. They had looked at all this improvised armour and concluded:
" - whatever morale-boosting effect this practice may have had, it had no actual physical value. Moreover, the extra weight created excessive strain on the engines, increasing demands on maintenance procedures and shortening mechanical life expectancy."
From 'WO 219/600 21st Army Group ORS' if you feel the need to check it out.
Yes, a tank has a design weight and if you exceed that it will not only put added strain on the engine, it will also goose the transmission and the suspension, causing breakdowns.
Why bring this up now? O I thought you'd never ask!
This Damien Hirst mobile installation is in fact one of the orcses 'Turtle Tanks', with everything including the kitchen sink and the bathroom toilet added on. The idea behind all this appliqué - not sure if 'armour' or 'hairbrush' is more appropriate - is that it protects against drone strikes.
Swings and roundabouts. One anonymous orc tank driver complained that the additional weight affects the tank's performance, because see above for design specs. He said that the running gear - that is, the suspension and tracks - can cope with the weight, although those steel bristles above seem likely to foul the tracks. The issue is the transmission, which breaks down under the excess load, in this case within 10 kilometres of setting out. Art!
Inside a luxuriously-appointed T-80
Art!
What's wrong with this picture?
Well, sticking improvised drone-protection on the turret adds so much weight that it cannot traverse, for, strewth, the motor to turn the turret burns out. Or, as in both instances here, the added armour prevents the turret from being rotated through more than 30º which sorta defeats the object of being a tank.
I think that's enough of Tortoises, Turtles and transmissions.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The 'Museum Of Failure' Or 'MOX'
Conrad came across this site yesteryon. They claim to have a high-concept attitude to documenting failure, in that failures can eventually lead to successes, although Conrad thinks it would be more efficient to just be successful in the first place. From what their publicity blurb puts out, they have a mobile exhibition that is shortly to be in Paris, so Your Humble Scribe will check their schedule to see if they ever turn up in the Allotment Of Eden. Art!
I've already checked out their entry for the Quaker Oats Snapple debacle, and can see that they have others we've covered in the past. Art!
There's a LOT of topics covered there, so rest assured we will be coming back to this one. I bet you can hardly wait.
I will leave you with a puzzle. What is this?
Eagle-Eyed Conrad
Back in the early Sixties, there were no such media as DVDs, nor even video cassette recorders, and a program broadcast on television was a one-and-done event. The BBC held stocks of taped recordings of it's broadcasts, usually so they could be sold abroad, which the grubby public were never, ever to get their hands upon - which is another story for a different day.
Well, Conrad stumbled across a still picture from the BBC's premier dramamentary, yes 'twas thus even 60 years ago: "The Dalek Invasion Of Earth". Art!
Hmmmmm what's going on here then? A bit of ventilation for the TARDIS?
Back in the day this scene would have been on-screen for seconds and only once, so no wonder it's not been hair-splittingly pedanted.
The serial has an excellent and eerie beginning, incidentally, and I expect you to go away to do your homework and watch it.
Here's One Conrad Can Get Behind
I was looking over my news feed, which, as usual, has a positive plethora of the Big Orange Oaf Himself displaying signs of advanced bottomholery, yet amidst all that I noticed this item. Art!
Erm - that's all of them, isn't it?
Somewhat horrified to see that 'Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels' came out in 1998 and that The Stathe is 58 himself.
Formosacrilege
I am using the old name for Taiwan, just to be able to make a pun out of it. Lest ye be unaware, Japan and China have long been at loggerheads, and I mean since the late nineteenth century. Art!
You had the First Sino-Japanese War, then the Second Sino-Japanese War, which transmuted into the Second Unpleasantness, all of which involved ghastly atrocities by the Japs against the Chinese.
Yesteryon we mentioned Chiang Kai-Shek, the nationalist leader whose National Resistance Army lost the Chinese Civil Unpleasantness, and whom retreated to Formosa, as it was in 1949. The island has been independent of Populous Dictatorship control ever since, which has galled the Communists, who keep casting avaricious eyes upon it.
Now -
Over the past week, China and Japan have been locked in an escalating war of words.
It all started when Japan's new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, suggested that if China attacked Taiwan then Japan could respond with its own self-defence force.
Spot the South Canadian
This is stretching the term 'self-defence' to the elastic limit, I have to say, and guess who has been frothing with rage about this suggestion? Yes, Pandaman and his minions, who detest anyone else potentially getting in the way of invading Taiwan. A bit like those criminals in 'Trapped In Paradise' who fly into a frothing rage because the Firpo brothers robbed 'their' bank.
Well, that's Thursday's blog done. Farewell!
* This is utterly untrue but I had you going, didn't I?
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