SIIVET!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - The Finnish For 'Wings'

Because we're back on a slideshow from IWM Duxford, the home to hundreds of planes and other large vehicles.  If I had to tramp around the enormous site for seven hours and take photographs then you are most certainly get the benefit of my actions.  Art!

     This is the rear port side of the Victor, seen in the background in an earlier blog.  Can't have you seeing the whole thing, you'd get too excited.  Your Humble Scribe is unsure if this is the bomber or tanker variant; I suspect the bomber as I think the tankers just had a single monochrome paint scheme.  What you see in the foreground is a Thunderbird, with transparent panels so you can see all the goodies inside.  This is a stripped-down version.  Art!

     It's a big beast when fully assembled, intended to destroy Sinister bombers up to 30 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES slant range.  It also featured briefly in an episode of 'Doctor Who', where The Master described it as being nuclear-powered with a nerve-gas warhead.  Rather egging the pudding, one feels.  Art!

     A study in opposites.  What you see in the foreground is a Northrop MQM reconnaissance drone, made in the Fifties to supply eyes in the sky for the South Canadian army.  It was their first unmanned drone, seventy years ago, and would not recognise it's own grandchildren of today.

     The big white missile in the background is the 'Blue Steel', a British nuclear stand-off missile, built to be carried and launched by the 'V' bomber fleet.  It toted the 'Red Snow' fusion warhead of 1.1 megatons yield, meaning more like Red Vapour than snowflakes.  Art!

     You can tell these things are ordnance, BUT there were no explanatory plaques, so all I can tell you is that the one nearest the camera is a bomb, 200 PROUD IMPERIAL POUNDS at a guess.  No idea why the others aren't streamlined or have tail units.  Art!

     A torpedo!  Shiny and black.  Behind and above it is one of the only surviving TSR2s. a name that makes plane geeks weep in anguish.  It was an extremely advanced supersonic strike and reconnaissance jet, but it was also a money-pit of black hole proportions and was scrapped before entering service.  Conrad also believes that Lord Mountbatten The Mountebank had something to do with the cancellation, because it threatened the Royal Navy's carrier budget.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  The missile nearest the camera has the look of an anti-ship item (it's not a Harpoon as I checked), and Conrad has a sneaking suspicion that the hefty green guy in the background is a nuclear bomb.  I seem to remember seeing a similar item at IWM Salford.  Art!

     Three young chaps in suits.  Very suspicious.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  That yellow one strikes me as being First Unpleasantness dateline.  Aha!  A modicum of digging reveals that it's the British 1,650 pound bomb.  Art!

Puny human for scale

     This whopper was constructed to be carried by the enormous Handley Page bomber, which craft is sadly absent from Duxford.  I think the bomb with the orange nose might be an aerial mine, which was dropped by parachute and hung nose-down.  But don't quote me on that.  Art!

     I can't find any photos of aerial mines in colour, nor did Googling provide any more clues, so my hunch must remain just that.  Art!

     An helichopter!  This is the Westland Wessex, one of the ugliest aircraft to ever wobble into the skies.  That's as much as I know about it and go Google if you want more.  Art!

     Here is the only surviving Concorde in the world, and it looks fast standing still.  I have cheated here and used teh Interwebz for a photo as I may have taken one myself but not in sequence and I don't fancy trawling through 200 photographs to track it down. As you may have guessed from the stairs, you can take a stroll through the interior, which is a museum in it's own right.  I'm not going to inflict that on you today, it will drop tomorrow or maybe later.  I bet you can hardly wait.

 

Let's Be Literary

Allow me to buff up my reputation as a shallow pseud <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> whom has a keen WHAT? That traitorous appendage!  No, I mean another entry from that list of books dealing with the classical world.  Art!

18. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903)

by Jane Harrison

     That human-animal hybrid on the cover looks rather like the winged bulls of Assyria, about as far from ancient Greece as one can get.

     The blurb explains that Jane's magnum opus, well over a century old, is very readable and witty, but that's not enough to tempt me <wallet sighs in relief> and also it's over 700 pages long.  Conrad is still ploughing through Volume 5 of 'The Expanse'.


Whilst On The Subject Of Books -

Nothing as high-brow as Jane's work, just a nod to the list of sci-fi novels that are similar to 'Greybeard' in being post-apocalyptic.  Art!

IGNORE THE FILM!  IGNORE THE FILM! which is only slightly based on the book.  Hell Tanner, the protagonist, for starters, is a Hell's Angel, not a clean-cut Air Force officer.  The mission is to cross Damnation Alley and get plague serum to Boston.  I forget why they can't use aircraft; Roger wanted his characters to sweat a bit.  The mission also starts out with three 'cars', since the author believed in redundancy.  Hawkwind also do a pretty rocking version of it on 'Quark Strangeness And Charm', condensed as it's not a triple concept album.

     I think that the DNA of Rog's story is also clearly visible in the '2000 AD' Judge Dredd serial 'The Cursed Earth', where atmosphere conditions don't permit cross-continental flight, so Old Stony Face has to transport plague vaccine overland.  Art!

The Clock Is Ticking, Donold

I am typing this on October 1st, meaning there are now 34 days until the South Canadian mid-term elections and, as predicted, Cankles Von Yamteats is not bothering to go 'on the stump' and campaign in contested districts.  Mostly because he is as welcome as plutonium soap in a jacuzzi and candidates want to boost local issues, not 'They Stole My Election' for the 1,423rd time.

     People with special circumstances are already sending in postal ballots, which process King Piggy was unable to stop.  Cynics - or realists - are now pondering if he's going to fake an emergency and use that to 'postpone' the elections, which will then never happen.  I doubt it.  Even Don Snoreleone understands the South Canadians won't take that sitting down as they aren't supine sheep.  Unlike another electorate I can think of.  Art!

Awww.  Doesn't he look sad?

FLIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!

      That bottom one is proof Fat Caligula's hair is a sentient symbiotic organism and has taken on it's winter plumage.

Back To Brucie

Mister Pennington, the man who wields a paintbrush not a pen.  We have skipped over some of his paintings, especially the earlier "Dune" variant covers.  We are now some 5 minutes 37 seconds into a 7 minute slideshow.  Art!

     Verrrry symbolic, Bruce.  I believe the sinister horned chap is modelled very closely on Brucie himself.  Nice to see the coral architecture back.  Not sure if that's a comet, meteor or asteroid about to cause grief in the background.  the city to starboard looks as if it's already been hit.  Art!

     I like this one - very evocative.  It has a look of the Oriental to it, nicht wahr?  I wonder if it was a book cover - not quite a Title Gap at the top but close to it.  Allow me to dig a little.  Nope, not coming up with anything.

AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!