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Irrationally suicidal fighter pilot behavior? One particular German Ace ended his career with the words:quote:
I think you can figure out what he did next.
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Jul 23, 2016 16:38
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A White Guy posted:Irrationally suicidal fighter pilot behavior? One particular German Ace ended his career with the words: Scream Witness Me! while chomping down on crystal meth pills?
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Jul 23, 2016 16:59
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Snapchat A Titty posted:I kinda doubt German fighters followed British bombers back across the channel... One almost did, but not in the way you'd think.
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Jul 23, 2016 17:59
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A White Guy posted:Irrationally suicidal fighter pilot behavior? One particular German Ace ended his career with the words: He fixes her cable?
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Jul 23, 2016 18:11
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Khazar-khum posted:Some WWI pilots claimed you could do this. The speed of the planes make it right on the edge of possible, but unlikely. It really isn't something you want to try, even as a desperation move. With no parachute, you'd be committing suicide. Well you don't unless you're Germany in April 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe Sonderkommando Elbe was a Luftwaffe unit created for the sole task of ramming Allied heavy bombers. The stated plan was for pilots to actually use their propellers to slice control forces, destroying both planes in the process but allowing the pilot to bail out. However that's pretty hard to do and IIRC only one plane managed to do the slicing attack. All the other kills of the unit's sole mission were ram kills.
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Jul 23, 2016 18:17
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Arcsquad12 posted:Scream Witness Me! while chomping down on crystal meth pills? Ironically enough, fighter pilots on both sides were tweaking throughout the war, the Allies favoring benzedrine as their flavor of stimulant, the Nazis favoring actual methamphetamine. I imagine that at the end of war, with the Luftwaffe running out of skilled pilots, that the experienced fighter pilots started flying way more than they should have. Nth Doctor posted:He fixes her cable? Go back to fark, thx.
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Jul 23, 2016 19:59
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A White Guy posted:Ironically enough, fighter pilots on both sides were tweaking throughout the war, the Allies favoring benzedrine as their flavor of stimulant, the Nazis favoring actual methamphetamine. I imagine that at the end of war, with the Luftwaffe running out of skilled pilots, that the experienced fighter pilots started flying way more than they should have. Even better, you'd get to tweak after bailing out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DykpMcrVtR0 Dude buys and tries military food, some of it ridiculously old and spoiled. Here's a 1943 WW2 British RAF Emergency Flying Ration, which includes sugar cubes, chewing gum, malted milk candy, and Benzedrine.
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Jul 23, 2016 22:14
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Since we're sort of on the subject, some British bomber weirdness. The Avro Lancaster. A good bomber. But of course it was, it was their second try! Before the Lancaster, there was the disastrous Avro Manchester, which was basically the same aircraft with only two engines, markedly inferior to the ones eventually used on the Lancaster.  Avro Manchester. Fun fact, Avro was bought out in 1963, but the Avro football club is still around. Short Brothers Stirling:  Len Deighton was inspired to write his novel Bomber after an RAF friend told him about the cheers that went through the squadron briefing room when the crews learned that the Stirlings were going to accompany them on a raid, flying lower and slower and thus attracting all the attention of the anti-aircraft gunners and the German night fighters. The cause of this handicap was the specs it was built to - it was limited to a 99ft wingspan to fit through the doors of pre-war RAF hangars. (Though Wikipedia debates the subject) Anyway, Shorts shortened the wings of one of their flying boats and converted it to a landplane and it unexpectedly won the tender when the favourite candidate's factory was destroyed by Geman air raids. It also used two small bomb bays where the Lancaster used one, preventing the use of the larger bombs the Lanc eventually carried. Handley Page Halifax:  A boringly competent bomber that did a mediocre-to-fair job until the Lancaster came along. Armstrong Whitworth Whitley:  The Whitley was designed with the wing tilted up at 8.5° to improve take-off performance. Of course, once you level off, you level off the wings, not the body. The one above is not diving, that's how they flew. Handley Page Hampden:  It's just a weird aircraft. Look at it! It couldn't carry enough bombs and it had no toilet. Retired halfway through the war. (Only half of them were left) Vickers Wellington:  A good bomber used in the early part of the war. It used the old style of doped canvas skin, but it had a clever frame system, essentially being built out of a diamond shaped mesh. My favourite VC winner, Sergeant James Ward, used this to good effect one night, using a fire axe to punch hand and footholds in the wing one night in order to beat out a fire in the engine with a canvas cover. 
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Jul 23, 2016 23:12
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The guy partly responsible for those engines was wellwiki posted:Charles Stewart Rolls (27 August 1877 – 12 July 1910) was an English motoring and aviation pioneer. Together with Henry Royce he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in the Southbourne district of Bournemouth. He was aged 32.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:20
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Imagine surviving two years of war in a crappy Hampden, struggling to keep above the night fighters and the AA, and getting a shiny new Manchester delivered. Five months later you're back in the Hampden because the Manchesters keep throwing conrods  syscall girl posted:The guy partly responsible for those engines was well That reminds me of some Rolls-Royce Trivia - Early Rolls-Royce jet engines were named after english rivers to promote the idea of the smooth flow of air through the turbines.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:42
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Jaguars! posted:Armstrong Whitworth Whitley: 
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Jul 24, 2016 01:15
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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A White Guy posted:Ironically enough, fighter pilots on both sides were tweaking throughout the war, the Allies favoring benzedrine as their flavor of stimulant, the Nazis favoring actual methamphetamine. I imagine that at the end of war, with the Luftwaffe running out of skilled pilots, that the experienced fighter pilots started flying way more than they should have. German soldiers were given testosterone during WWII ( it was first synthesized in 1935) to try and increase aggressiveness and performance. They were ahead of their time in the use of performance enhancing drugs. https://books.google.co.nz/books?id...sterone&f=false
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Jul 24, 2016 01:45
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Jaguars! posted:Imagine surviving two years of war in a crappy Hampden, struggling to keep above the night fighters and the AA, and getting a shiny new Manchester delivered. Five months later you're back in the Hampden because the Manchesters keep throwing conrods Not just early models, the practice continues today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent
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Jul 24, 2016 01:55
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Say Nothing posted:German soldiers were given testosterone during WWII ( it was first synthesized in 1935) to try and increase aggressiveness and performance. They were ahead of their time in the use of performance enhancing drugs. Did anyone post about the early Tour de France winner who fell off his bike, was given a shot of amphetamines and a glass of brandy, then finished the race, won, & died? Thirty years old or some poo poo. Someone should post that story, not me though.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:12
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Snapchat A Titty posted:Did anyone post about the early Tour de France winner who fell off his bike, was given a shot of amphetamines and a glass of brandy, then finished the race, won, & died? Thirty years old or some poo poo. Sounds like a good time
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Jul 24, 2016 02:13
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Suspect Bucket posted:Sounds like a good time 
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Jul 24, 2016 02:45
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Maybe the real reason why time intervals records have progressed so much in the past thirty years is because athletes stopped smoking a pack of cigs before,after, and during every event.
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Jul 24, 2016 08:06
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Arcsquad12 posted:The Massacre of Glencoe in 1692's effects can still be felt to this day. In a lot of rural places, Campbells and MacDonalds still hold grudges against each other for the Campbell's part in the murder of 38 MacDonald clansmen who did not swear allegiance to William and Mary quick enough after the failure of the first Jacobite uprising a few years before. I'm speaking from experience here. As a kid visiting my grandparents, we were told not to go over to the Campbell line, and stay on the MacDonald line because that is where our ancestors were from, and you should never trust a Campbell. where on earth is this happening
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Jul 24, 2016 10:14
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Polish-Muscovite War. I know this is alleged, but I learned of this in the Military History thread and thought it was metal as gently caress. "False" Dmitriy I was the Tsar of Russia in 1605 during the Time of Troubles. He claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible, and was made Tsar are a result of Polish intrigue in Russian courts. During the Polish-Muscovite War, the poor guy met a hilarious end:quote:On the morning of 17 May 1606, ten days after Dmitriy's marriage to Tsarina Marina, a massive number of boyars and commoners stormed the Kremlin. Tsar Dmitriy tried to flee, jumping out a window, but fractured his leg in the fall. He fled to a bathhouse and attempted to disappear within, but was recognized and dragged out before the populace by the boyars, who killed the tsar lest he successfully muster an appeal to the crowd. His body was put on display and then cremated, with the ashes allegedly shot from a cannon towards Poland.
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Jul 24, 2016 14:02
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duckmaster posted:where on earth is this happening Rural Ontario. The 1% of the province that doesn't live in the GTA is ignored for a reason.
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Jul 24, 2016 15:54
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A White Guy posted:Maybe the real reason why time intervals records have progressed so much in the past thirty years is because athletes stopped smoking a pack of cigs before,after, and during every event. Then again, they also rode cars and trains.
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Jul 25, 2016 22:21
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 CHILD DEATH WARNING Natural gas doesn't naturally smell bad. The skunk-ish odorant was added after a school blew up and killed a fuckton of kids during the East Texas oil boom. They'd tapped off the oil company's waste gas line to run their furnace (back then natural gas/propane was a waste product when drilling for oil for gasoline), there was a leak in the basement, and the shop teacher turned on a circular saw, providing a spark that lit the odorless gas filling the school. The entire building leapt into the air, and killed over 295 people -- the 295 were identifiable as bodies, but it was during a PTA meeting, so there were plenty of unclaimed little bodies with the parents also killed, and entire migrant-worker families just vaporized. Here's the new school, with the memorial cenotaph inset, circa 1940:  Everything on that postcard still stands to this day, the school is a bit cramped, the halls are narrow and tiled like a shower stall. But it's a small town, and they spent their money rebuilding, then the oil ran out. Also, Reich Chancellor Adolph Hitler sent a telegram expressing his condolences. You know it's bad when fuckin' HITLER sends a "sorry for your loss" note.
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Jul 26, 2016 05:00
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Tsarina Marina
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Jul 26, 2016 08:58
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From a collection of letters by written in the 17th to19th century by Dutch sailors that were confiscated by the British High Court of Admiralty. I added some punctuation for readability but kept most of the stream-of-consciousness intact for proto-goon flavour. Pieter Tallenboom, 1781 posted:
*dick PiratePing has a new favorite as of 11:09 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 11:06
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RE: Ramming poo poo with planes Wasn't the F-104 Starfighter designed with sharper than normal wings? The one at the Norwegian air force museum had safety covers in place over the wing edges. It's probably more an aerodynamics thing, but I've heard rumors that they were also intended to be used for ramming the tails of Soviet bombers after having exhausted all armament.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:13
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Free Market Mambo posted:RE: Ramming poo poo with planes This plane could do sustained flight at mach 2 and had a wingspan of under 22 feet. Trying to ram a bomber would be suicide, assuming you could even aim it to within a mile of the plane itself.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:32
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duckmaster posted:This plane could do sustained flight at mach 2 and had a wingspan of under 22 feet. Trying to ram a bomber would be suicide, assuming you could even aim it to within a mile of the plane itself. That's both a shame and a relief.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:45
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F-104s are "flying" lawn darts
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Jul 26, 2016 15:53
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In Germany they were affectionaly known as "coffin nails"
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Jul 26, 2016 15:56
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PiratePing posted:From a collection of letters by written in the 17th to19th century by Dutch sailors that were confiscated by the British High Court of Admiralty. lol post more
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Jul 26, 2016 16:12
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System Metternich posted:In Germany they were affectionaly known as "coffin nails" Or tent pegs. Also, if you want one, just buy land in Germany and wait.
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Jul 26, 2016 16:50
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System Metternich posted:In Germany they were affectionaly known as "coffin nails" They would become so famous for this and the corruption scandals it was involved in that someone made an album about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWipIji35Cg
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Jul 26, 2016 18:51
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PiratePing posted:Pieter Tallenboom I love how this reads like a strange Craigslist ad. It starts out with a kind of weird, but not wholly unreasonably request, and then just fully derails into an anti-social rant about how much he hates everyone he meets. These sorts of first-hand documents always serve as a reminder to me that people have really always been the same throughout history. It's like that archive of collected graffiti from Pompeii that reads like a Youtube comments page. If you have any more good ones like this, I'd love to read them!
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Jul 26, 2016 19:57
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FELD1 posted:I love how this reads like a strange Craigslist ad. It starts out with a kind of weird, but not wholly unreasonably request, and then just fully derails into an anti-social rant about how much he hates everyone he meets. These sorts of first-hand documents always serve as a reminder to me that people have really always been the same throughout history. It's like that archive of collected graffiti from Pompeii that reads like a Youtube comments page. That's a bit nitpicky I'll admit, but that old adage of "people have always been the same" is only partially true - things like, I dunno, fart jokes or an unhealthy fixation on sex are (probably) truly timeless, but in many other points you wouldn't even have to go that far back to find that most people see the world and interact with it through a significantly different lens than you do. The guy writing this would have had seen the world in a way that to our modern sensibilities would be in equal parts horrifying, amusing and utterly absurd (this also goes the other way, of course).
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Jul 26, 2016 20:39
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While reading up on the F-104's effectiveness as pilot-killer/bomber groper I found myself on the RAND Corporation's webpage, which had a fun paper on ramming's special place in the Soviet airforce. Full paper here (pdf, have to download to view): http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7192.html Choice Quote quote:PERFORMING THE TARAN quote:Accounts in which the third attack variant was chosen usually end with the posthumous award of Hero of the Soviet Union.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:43
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PiratePing posted:From a collection of letters by written in the 17th to19th century by Dutch sailors that were confiscated by the British High Court of Admiralty. Reads like a post from E/N. That's the beauty of history, the more things change, the more goons never get laid.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:50
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While commonly thought to be a conspiracy centered around pan arabists with heavy Saudi backing, the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 were actually organized and committed by members of the contemporary American Bush Regime under the orders of the unusually influential vice president (vizer) Dick Cheney. Cheney also assassinated Paul Wellstone, a popular political rival by having his plane shot down.
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Jul 26, 2016 22:04
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Man, history is crazy.
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Jul 26, 2016 22:08
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PiratePing posted:But it's like the saying goes: you'll never get run over by a cleaning wagon but by a poo poo cart. Adopting this saying into my everyday life.
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Jul 26, 2016 22:42
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I noticed something about that 115 gripes about Frenchmen book 10 pages back that I had to share. #31) The French are insincere; it is an inborn trait with them. "There are no 'inborn traits' which account for the social characteristics of customs of a people. The entire body of scientific anthropology prove this." Which is really ironic when you consider the time period this was written in. It's hard to believe the writer didn't realize the social implications of this when you apply it to American social politics. He goes on to say that a French child raised in an American home will be indistinguishable from an American child, and how it's stupid to say, for example, that Bostonians have an inborn trait for baked beans.
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Jul 27, 2016 00:10
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