I See I Am Going To Have To Do A Bit Of Explicating
When you read 'Landships' you may be mis-interpreting a concept that is <sucks teeth> well over a century old. No, it is nothing to do with cruisers or aircraft carriers getting mobile on dry land. The very idea! Art?
No, what Conrad refers to is the 'Admiralty Landships Committee' of the First Unpleasantness, formed under the impulse of Winston Churchill. You can bet that, under his hawkish and piercing eye, there would be no prevarications or postponements or defaults to non-quora, just a quest to create a 'landship' that could traverse No Mans Land, shrug off machine gun bullets and crush both barbed wire and Teutons not speedy enough to get out of the way. Art!
Behold a 'Female' tank, so-called because it was armed exclusively with machine guns, rather than 6-pounder ex-naval guns. For Lo! yes were are back onto the pages of 'Charley's War', dateline September 1916, when the first 'landships' went into action. Art!
Joe Colquhoun nails it with his representation of the Mark I. The soldier to port is 'Smith 70', an old platoon member of Charley's, who had transferred to tanks - not the Royal Tank Corps at this point, but the 'Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps'. Fittingly enough as he had been the Number One on their attached Vickers machine gun section. Art!
Is this a model? Note the camo scheme, which wasn't used in September as far as I ken, and I ken quite far. It sports the chicken-wire frame atop intended to keep out Teuton hand grenades. Art!
I rather doubt the tanks would have been lined up like that in broad daylight, without being camouflaged or hidden, as Teuton reconnaissance aircraft would have immediately spotted them, and Teuton artillery observers might also. Art!
I can't help but feel Ol' Joe was partly-inspired by this well-known photo of a captured Teuton trench with tommies on watch or lying about. No, they're not dead, just catching a nap whilst their mate does 'stag'. An attempt has been made to dig a firing-step on the opposite side of the trench to that facing British lines, which will get progressively upgraded over time. Art!
Ah, there you go, it's dawn, so the tanks were concealed by darkness. Yes, British tank crews did wear chain-mail masks, to protect from 'bullet-splash', which was a mass of fragments created when a bullet hit the tank's armour plate. Note that Ol' Joe has drawn him with his watch just visible, as the officer would have been keeping a close eye on the time. Art!
Again, I think Ol' Joe has been inspired by a real life photograph of a scragged British tank, except from a year later during the awful Passchendaele campaign, rather than the Somme. Art!
Here the track has broken but the engine still moved it around the wheels, until it jammed solid. Art!
Spot on research from Ol' Pat and rendered by Ol' Joe. The interior of a Mk I tank, and all the Marks that followed, was a terrible place to be. They had an unshielded engine working away in the middle of the floor, producing heat, exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide, with the ever-present risk of getting burnt or bloodied if you fell against it. Then there was the noise - to which you can add that of the ordnance it was equipped with letting off. All with very little visibility. Note the special leather-coated 'tank helmets' the crew are wearing, a very sensible precaution against head injuries caused by being thrown about, and which mimic (but whisper who dares!) the Teuton 'Stahlhelm' Art!
Charley has helped one of the crew to remove the jammed steering wheels, foreshadowing their wholesale removal as they were completely useless. With a longer program of research and development this might have been discovered, but those tanks were needed as soon as possible. Art!
As usual Ol' Joe nails this Teuton 77 mm field gun, which was just light enough for the crew to haul it round by main strength; you can feel those gunners wrestling it into a firing position. I think Ol' Pat has gone overboard with the purple prose that the officer is spouting, and his other ranks would probably turning the air blue with swearing - which you couldn't have in a boy's comic of the era. Art!
The real thing. Your average Teuton field gun made a very effective anti-tank gun, because it fired a 15 pound shell at sufficient velocity to cover a quarter-mile in one second. The British landships were proof against bullets and shrapnel, but not high explosive shells, considering they carried 50 gallons of petrol in their 'horns', making them a tad vulnerable. Art!
Fill Cool
No! Not the rubber-faced comic from the Eighties and Nineties, but rather a - what's that? You want an illo? O go on. Art!
I won't make it any larger in case there are any small children watching.
What I actually intended to cover was a 'cooler', which seems to be one of those insulated big boxes with a handle, that you tote around beer and sandwiches in, at the seaside or at picnics, or in the back yard if you're on a budget. Art!
With puny human for scale
This is the Coolest 'Cooler', which was the subject of a Kickstarter that raised €13 million back in 2014. It had cool storage, Bluetooth speakers, bottle-openers, a battery-powered blender, USB ports and crockery and utensils. 60,000 backers put their money in and -
Waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Delivery dates were constantly being pushed back, and back, with a total of 56 updates being posted on Kickstarter. Conrad suspects they put a lot of time, effort and money into creating a brilliant prototype that they simply couldn't manage to scale in production. By 2019 20,000 backers still hadn't received their Cooler, and then -
The company went bust and closed down. They blamed 'Chinese tariffs' for this, instead of, you know, their own incompetence.
A lesson learned. One hopes.
Loud Atlas
There has been a lot of internet chatter on various media websites about the astronomical object 31/ATLAS, with a whole lot of specious drivel being posted about it. Art!
None of the items popping up on my news feed have been from any scientific or, especially, an astronomical source.
Until then, consider all the wibble to be Shakespearian, in the sense of 'a tale told by an idiot'. If it ever gets promoted by NASA or ESA or JPL, then you can pay attention.
Cause To Worry About The Human Race
Another montage from 'Discovery Tech: Shocking Machine Disasters', and this time I have previewed it and tried to match a business or report to the hideously dangerous activities displayed, just for more verisimilitude and a better background. Nothing available on the first clip. Art!
There are no logos, marques, signage or registrations visible to identify where this takes place. I hope you can see the two safety issues present: matey is using a drum to give him height, instead of a ladder, and he's stretching far too much to keep control over a welding torch.
What can possibly go wrong? Art!
You can see white-hot metal sparks falling from the weld spot and hitting the drum he's perched upon. Art!
The contents are either flammable liquids or an air-fuel aerosol, which explode under the rain of white-hot metal. Who could possibly have guessed! Art!
Both barrel and berk become airborne objects, briefly. Thankfully there was nobody else nearby to get hit by flying debris, because that drum ends up atop the second cargo-bed, giving an indication of how much force propelled it.
There is some movement from matey on the floor after he lands but no indication how badly he was injured or whether he survived.
A lesson learned. One hopes.
Finally -
I've been dry for November, and two days of December, as I very naughtily sipped a snifter or two of gin on Nov 1 and 2, it being the weekend, but as of Wednesday 3rd Dec, the drinks are back. Just so you know.
I have analysed my posts on Twitter and they are just as nasty and tasteless sober as not. Just so we're clear.
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