If You're Not Interested In Conrad Doing Another Comparative Blather
CAUTION! SINGLE SUBJECT BLOG!
Because I'm going to be doing more comparisons between the First and Second Unpleasantnesses and what's going on in Ukraine now and for the past four years plus. SIT BACK DOWN! No, Conrad isn't going to be going over the changes in land warfare from mechanised <Mister Hand redacts a thousand-word screed out of mercy> Very Angry Birds. We may cover what has cropped up on individual blogs, which is code for me saying I cannot be bothered checking. Art!
Here in This Sceptred Isle the civilian population has never had to fear the kind of indiscriminate slaughter so frequently found on the continent of Europe, thanks to our jolly decent nature, and also living on an island. Hence the 'First Blitz' as it came to be called in retrospect, came as an hideous surprise, as Zeppelins dropped bombs galore across the land from 1914 onwards. They were able to deliver a payload of many tons of bombs individually, which was impressive for the time. Less impressive was their accuracy, or lack of it, which meant indiscriminate slaughter on the ground below, when they actually hit a town or city rather than scaring sheep in an empty field. Art!
Their effect was more psychological than anything else, generating an atmosphere of fear and loathing, requiring the recall of scout squadrons from the Western Front, the deployment of guns and searchlights, telephone networks and barrages. On average, it took 10 tons of bombs to kill a single civilian, whilst losing a single zep put the Teutons in the red to the tune of £300,000, one reason they gave up this practice. In their place came Gotha and Giant biplane bombers, which were more numerous and cheaper, yet unable to deliver as much ordnance. Art!
Sorry for lack of puny humans for scale
In total, 103 raids by zeppelins and bombers killed about 2,000 people in Britain over the course of the war, and had a miniscule effect. Well, this was the birth of strategic bombing. Art!
The second Blitz was of much shorter duration but was correspondingly far, far more intense. It began on the 7th of September 1940, when Herr Schickelgruber had given up on winning the air war and invading Great Britain. Teuton bombers targeted ports, cities - especially London - and manufacturing centres, bombing by night as it was too dangerous by day. No part of the nation was safe or unattended by bombing, once again especially London. It was hit successively for 57 nights. Unlike their fathers and grandfathers, the Teuton bomber crews had all sorts of electronic gadgetry to help guide them to target, leading to what was called 'the battle of the beams' as the British tried to counter this technology. Art!
From very little in the way of defence, Perfidious Albion developed a sophisticated network of radars, both ground and airborne, and night fighters such as the brutish Beaufighter seen above, backed up by balloons, searchlights and anti-aircraft guns.. These latter were practically useless to begin with until they got radar-directors added, whereupon their hit rate went from 32,000 shells to bring down a bomber to 7,000.
The Blitz inflicted 40,000 dead upon the British population, with at least as many injured. It did not bring Britain to the negotiating table, cause the population to revolt, result in an armistice or surrender, and we were still able to sustain an army in the Middle East on active operations. By the time Herr Schickelgruber called the whole thing off (11th May 1941) in preparation for an assault on the Sinister Union the loss rate for Teuton aircraft and aircrew was reaching unsustainable levels. The British did not simply sit around wringing their hands and bleating, they got on with it and took the war to the enemy, bombing Berlin in August 1940 in retaliation for London being hit. Art!
Ha! Take that, Nazi tarmac!
There you go, a potted background comparison of earlier events.
What brought this on? O I thought you'd never ask! You see, Jake Broe of the Youtube channel 'Jake Broe' hasn't update said channel for a few days, because he's been in Kyiv delivering trucks raised by his subscribers, members and the NAFO 69th Sniffing Brigade*. He teamed up with the Kyiv resident Caolan Robertson, of the Youtube channel 'Caolan Robertson' to take a look around the city, after a massive Ruffian missile attack the night before. Art!
Target: an apartment block. Ho ho ho, that'll cripple the khokhol war effort and no mistake, the citizens of Kyiv will be - will be - Art!
Going for a McDonalds, 'twould seem. The lower glass windows are the armoured variety, as this establishment has been hit before. The upper storey windows were blown out but have been quickly and neatly covered with plywood. Gosh, what does this remind me of? Art!
O yes I remember. The poster child for 'Keep Calm And Carry On'.
The broken windows in McDonalds are one of the end results of the Ruffians expending 40 ballistic missiles, at a cost of at least $120 million, to hit civilian infrastructure that has no effect on the actual war itself. The Ruffians do occasionally hit a military target; I remember back in 2022 the Ukrainians cordoned off and blocked access to a military depot the orcs had hit, and they hit a locomotive once, but these are the exceptions. Art!
The Kozaky are protesting!
Except it's about the sacking of their Defence Minister, Federov, and not about Ruffian missile and drone attacks on them. Some orcs are gloating about this, displaying a spectacular lack of self-awareness, since they can be arrested for having an 'illegal rally' if there are five of them present. No I'm not joking, it just happened in Mordorvia.
ANYWAY getting back on our grisly theme. To date, there have been a little over 16,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties since the Special Idiotic Operation began, which we can say thus runs at about 4,000 per year. Which is about 1/1,000th of the total population. Heck, traffic accidents see off 3,000 Kozaky per annum. Art!
Caolan points out Kyiv - I keep using the native spelling as it annoys the orcs so, so much - is the size of Paris, to put the scale of events into perspective.
So far Mordorvia has spent at least an estimated $190 billion on it's missile and drone attacks on Ukraine since February 2022, repeating exactly the same tactics and strategy in that time. In the earlier mentions in this Intro I explained how the British adapted to and challenged the Teuton threats, reducing their effectiveness over time. This is what the Kozaky have done, too, creating their STING interceptor drone and deploying it en masse. Art!
The waspish collection
The Sting costs $2,000 a pop, or 1/10th the price of the cheapest Geran drone, which are now being downed at rates of at least 85%. The Ruffians are completely ignoring this adaptation and thus blow $20 or $50 thousand per Geran intercepted, each of which uses up at least 20 gallons of fuel. Which means the orcs whining about queuing for petrol are playing second fiddle to an 85% wastage rate. I'm not sure if Perfidious Albion exported the 'Dowding System' of air defence as perfected in 1940 and 1941, but the Ukrainians are busy selling expertise to the Gulf states along with Stings by the crateload - excess capacity coming with scaled-up production. Art!
'Stuffy' approves
One can only foresee the Ruffians continuing their drone and missile barrages, expending tens of billions of dollars to inflict what are, in strategic terms, pinpricks on Ukraine, killing enough people to harden Kozaky hearts yet nothing near the amount needed to cause a collapse. I shall end with a picture of Jake and Caolan in the Luyanivskaya marketplace and pay attention to what's going on in the background. Art!
Ordinary Ukrainians going about their business. Once again we are minded of a previous response to being relentlessly bombed. Art!
Conrad is unsure if the Ukrainians drink quite as much tea as we British, but this is clearly the way to go.
* I have no idea.
