Bolsheviks

Can you imagine the stresses on the air frame where those two wings join the body of that B-36?

I'm sure an engineer could show me the numbers. But it's hard to believe. Not only do those wings have to carry the weight of the engines and fuel, but the whole aircraft itself when aloft.

You can see some old WWII footage of B-17s in a battle. I've never seen a wing bend. But they will give way if shot up a bit.

I think the Flying Fortress could limp home on two engines if the Me 109 didn't get to them first. This overview document mentions that the FF could continue a mission on only three engines.

I think there are one or two movies – Memphis Belle (movie and documentary), Twelve O'Clock High -- that give you an idea of just how difficult these missions were for the crew. Cold. Loud. Cramped. Vibrating. And extremely dangerous. Who would volunteer for such service?

I saw a bit of some chick comedian's act the other day on YouTube. I don’t know who it was. But she said something like, "I could conquer this entire generation with just a jar of peanut butter." How true. Lucky we're moving to drones because they'd probably find few people who would go on these high-risk missions.

I'm into my second episode of RAF Bomber Command. (Click on the link and you can watch this right in your browser.) You access this via Amazon Prime but is watched via the integrated Freevee channel. The advertising breaks are slightly on the side of annoying, but not excessive.

This is a fairly fine-grained series. You start with Germany overrunning Norway and then France. Bomber Command did not yet have the planes nor the doctrine in place to combat this onslaught effectively, to put it mildly. They were losing planes in yuge numbers, especially with misguided attempts at bombing in daylight without fighter escort. They fairly quickly moved to nighttime only bombing where loses went from about one-in-two planes per sortie to one in two hundred.

Soon, as you all know, England had to pull out and leave France to its fate while it prepared for the battle to come. They were losing too many planes, both fighters and bombers. And they barely had enough left for a modicum of cover for the Dunkirk evacuation.

It really is amazing the effort that Bomber Command put into offensive operations, basically from day-one. They may have been short of planes, but they went on the attack. This is a six-part series that progresses you through the operations. It's not really an overview in terms of, say, taking looks back or to the side at the construction of new (or old) bombers. This is sort of a seat-of-the-pants look at the unfolding battle in chronological order. There are other documentaries that will cover in depth the development and history of any single bomber. And those are good. But I like the overall unfolding view this gives you.

There certainly ought to be some kind of reckoning. But although Kunstler's vision is suitably apocalyptic, I don't think the Woke Apocalypse is coming anytime soon.

It reminds me of a video I watched just yesterday. Some yute was going on about how pirating music was really no big thing and even the fault of the music companies for making it so easy. You see, he said (with the anti-piracy campaigns of the music companies as an example), people just don't like to be told what to do. (The video below starts at this point.) Yours truly commented (which I can't find now...it may have been deleted): "Given the easy and complete acquiescence to all the insane COVID restrictions, it's clear that the idea that today's yutes – or any other group – are "rebels" is purely an affectation."



We might suppose that people are "mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore." But there are few signs that this is so and abundant signs of the contrary.

Mr. Kung, you don't hand out gold stars often. But that is a whopper. Or perhaps it's more along the line of the Fickle Finger of Fate award. A back-handed compliment as potent as that of Jimmy Conners.

Now that you mention it, that voice does sound a bit computer-generated. But I think most yutes are fairly RG&A. (Robotic, Glib, and Obnoxious.) Something tells me that A.I. might have at least some semblance of artificial dignity whereby they would not stoop so low as to mimic this yute.

Yep. People believe a lot of nonsense. But if they want to believe that religion causes war, they need to point out Islam and India. They need to read some history. Islam is a murderous religion just as Nazism and Communism are murderous secular philosophies.