|
Red Crown posted:No, I've read that somewhere reliable, I forget exactly where, though. The plan was actually very Cold War style probably-technically-legal: The entire crew of the Iwo Jima would be "retired" and then immediately re-hired as "contractors", I forget if they would be U.S. government employees or work for a shell company. Basically, it would have been the flimsiest of pretenses to deploy the Iwo Jima under command of whoever was in charge of the British task force. As I recall, we had the paperwork ready and everything. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...klands-War.html
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 18:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 17:31 |
|
|
  Edit: Sorry for the cell phone pictures, that was the best I could get of that giant drat plane.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 18:43
|
|
|
Limp Wristed Limey posted:Its also worth noting that the Belgrano was sailing out of a warzone with its water tight doors open. And also that it was sunk with pre-WWII-era torpedoes.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 18:47
|
|
|
Red Crown posted:No, I've read that somewhere reliable, I forget exactly where, though. The plan was actually very Cold War style probably-technically-legal: The entire crew of the Iwo Jima would be "retired" and then immediately re-hired as "contractors", I forget if they would be U.S. government employees or work for a shell company. Basically, it would have been the flimsiest of pretenses to deploy the Iwo Jima under command of whoever was in charge of the British task force. As I recall, we had the paperwork ready and everything. This reminds me of these fellows. The wiki article is pretty skimpy so I'll expand on the details: The Allies were losing a lot of merchant ships to U-boats in the Indian Ocean. Since that was a long way from Germany the British were certain there were German agents transmitting shipping schedules and departure information. Intelligence work narrowed the possible locations down to a German freighter interned in Goa, a neutral Portuguese colonial port in Western India. This is of course a flagrant violation of neutrality, but when the Portuguese investigate they find nothing suspicious aboard any of the three or four German ships interned at Goa. Or possibly they never investigated them in the first place, I don't remember this part very well. So Special Operations Executive sends a couple of guys in to abduct a German official in Goa (who's also a spy) for interrogation. The plan goes wrong and the German is killed. A diplomatic incident is narrowly averted because SOE manages to cover the entire thing up. Back to square one. The only thing left is a covert attack on the German ships. Meanwhile there's this bunch of colonial tea planters and assorted businessmen in a reserve British Indian Army cavalry regiment called the Calcutta Light Horse. It's about the most "reserve" reserve unit possible, and hasn't been called up to duty since the Boer War, which is still a shorter time than most of the members of this regiment have been alive. It's more of a social club than an actual military unit. They make your average "motley squad of rejects" from any military comedy you care to name look like a force trained for service since the womb and led by a combination of George Patton and Alexander the Great (or, since they're British, Henry V and the Duke of Wellington). Anyway, the SOE types decide, with some prompting from the ostensible commander of the Calcutta Light Horse, Colonel Grice (who really, really, really desperately wants to do his part in the war) that these middle-aged reservists would be the perfect boarding party. Yes, really. Reason being that if things go tits up, the Light Horse members can claim to be a bunch of drunken British colonial middle management types acting very very stupid on vacation (this sounds like a much more plausible cover legend if you've ever seen Brits on vacation), because nobody remembers or cares that the Calcutta Light Horse even exists outside of a few colonial administrative types in Delhi and Calcutta (and the SOE, of course). So with a couple SOE professionals to train them in sabotage and such, a bunch of these reservists sail around India on a clapped-out barge and enter Goa harbor by night. They board the German freighter, smash up the transmitter being used to signal the U-boats, and escape with something crazy like only a single minor injury. The other German merchantmen in the harbor think that the British are invading and scuttle themselves. Extraction goes perfectly and nobody finds out anything about the mission for thirty years when a book gets published about it in 1978. Two years later the book is turned into a sadly-overlooked movie starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Roger Moore. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 19:40 on May 14, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 19:36
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 19:48
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:And also that it was sunk with pre-WWII-era torpedoes. It managed to survive Pearl Harbour and WW2 as well.  
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2013 20:11
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 01:56
|
|
|
I desperately want to see that photoshopped onto the window of a short bus.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 02:20
|
|
|
I don't think I could grow a unibrow that glorious if I tried
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 02:51
|
|
|
I've read that we have killed all the few smart people Afganistan had to begin with already. How true is that?
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 02:53
|
|
|
Derek Dominoe posted:I desperately want to see that photoshopped onto the window of a short bus. 
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 02:54
|
|
|
 Click for big.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:02
|
|
|
That was a pretty depressing movie. I felt pretty loving bad for that Major.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:02
|
|
|
^ what are you referring to?
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:08
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:
Orthodox Jew? I thought they were exempted from military service.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:11
|
|
|
DoktorLoken posted:^ what are you referring to? I'm guessing the Vincent Van referenced movie about the Goa infiltration.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:13
|
|
|
Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI But seriously, that's basically John Lehman saying what I said before, that him and Caspar Weinberger had it all figured out how they were going to deploy an entire US carrier (okay, amphibious assault vessel) under the command of a foreign government fighting in a foreign war, and do so without Al Haig, the rest of the Cabinet, and Congress finding out. Right. Sending small groups of "contractors" to Laos to wage a secret war is one thing, but thinking they could pull that off without anyone finding out is loving ludicrous.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:14
|
|
|
EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:Orthodox Jew? I thought they were exempted from military service. I -think- they got rid of the draft exemption last year, and even before that they could volunteer. At a glance I'm also going to bet that guy's Hasid and not just Orthodox.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:20
|
|
|
TheUnhorse posted:That was a pretty depressing movie. I felt pretty loving bad for that Major. The worst part is the fact that you know he got hosed over by all of the poo poo-grinning assholes that were in that briefing with the ambassador. "WELL MAJOR, MAYBE YOU SHOULD ADJUST THAT ATTITUDE AND BE MORE OF A TEAM PLAYER, OOHRAH?"
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:31
|
|
|
 I love it! Is the guy next to him with the beard also 'shopped? He looks like he's ready to hump whatever he's staring at out there.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 03:56
|
|
|
A few months ago, I was in Copenhagen and checked out their Resistance Museum. The French insurgency against the Nazis gets all the attention, but the Danes had their own underground. At first, it was your standard socialist/communist anti fascist resistance, but eventually turned into somewhat of a popular uprising. The Nazis took pains to make it seem like their occupation of Denmark was a benign one (they were using something like 10% of Denmark's food for their army, otherwise it would have gone to the British) but eventually, people started getting sick of the Nazis and it turned into a full-on underground movement in 1944 or so. Additionally, the majority of the country's Jews survived the war as well. This right here is a DIY armored vehicle. It saw combat on a few occasions- there were bullet holes all over the place.  One way of showing resistance to the Nazi occupiers was to wear clothing in the red, white and blue colors of the Allies. Violators were subject to arrest, a lot of people just got tickets and had the offending article confiscated. The picture above the hat is a Danish Nazi collaborator citing a woman for wearing pro-Allies garb.  A gift from the city of Stalingrad- rubble from a factory with some human bone thrown in for good measure. Way to rub in the "Our Nazi Occupation Was 1,000x Worse than Yours," guys.  A pamphlet circulated by the Resistance urging people to sabotage Nazi materiel.  A bunch of guns used by the Resistance. If the one in the middle on the left looks strange to you, it's because it's a fake gun made in prison and later used in a Resistance jailbreak. Otherwise, the rest are a bunch of German and Russian guns- apparently more than a few German MPs brought Mosin revolvers back from the Eastern Front.  An English translation of a final letter sent home by a captured Resistance member shortly before his execution. I somehow must have deleted the photo, but there's also a DIY torpedo that was welded together with like 250 lbs of HE and a small car engine (IIRC) to power it. It was never used to sabotage German ships, but after the war, tests revealed that the torpedo would have actually worked.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 04:51
|
|
|
EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:Orthodox Jew? I thought they were exempted from military service. While Chareidim and Chasidim (alternately rendered Haredim, Hassidim) are more or less exempt from military service, a great deal of both join the netzach yehuda battalion, an all male unit pretty much specifically designed for orthodox jewish guys to join up. you get an interesting mix up of the like modern orthodox zionist settler types (dati leumi) and then the more run of the mill orthodox guys. Also, orthodox jews have a very large representation in many of israel's special units. benem posted:The worst part is the fact that you know he got hosed over by all of the poo poo-grinning assholes that were in that briefing with the ambassador. "WELL MAJOR, MAYBE YOU SHOULD ADJUST THAT ATTITUDE AND BE MORE OF A TEAM PLAYER, OOHRAH?" Yeah that poo poo was depressing. "Everything's great sir! It's all great!" and  at the British guy who said "Well I don't think that is representative of what's going on here" re: the reporter's question. That expert analysis was based on what exactly? gently caress.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 05:38
|
|
|
suboptimal posted:A few months ago, I was in Copenhagen and checked out their Resistance Museum. The French insurgency against the Nazis gets all the attention, but the Danes had their own underground. At first, it was your standard socialist/communist anti fascist resistance, but eventually turned into somewhat of a popular uprising. The Nazis took pains to make it seem like their occupation of Denmark was a benign one (they were using something like 10% of Denmark's food for their army, otherwise it would have gone to the British) but eventually, people started getting sick of the Nazis and it turned into a full-on underground movement in 1944 or so. Additionally, the majority of the country's Jews survived the war as well. The museum was destroyed by arson three weeks ago, but fortunately most of the items stored or displayed there were saved from damage before the building burnt down completely, and I think even the few items that were damaged weren't beyond repair. http://cphpost.dk/news/local/resistance-museum-fire-set-investigators-say
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 09:57
|
|
|
A typical scene in Syria
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 10:09
|
|
|
Half expecting a couple of headcrabs to crawl out.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 12:32
|
|
|
Brown Moses posted:A typical scene in Syria Whats the odds they try to repurpose unexploded retardant chutes and make the first Airborne Allah Ackbar Brigade?
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 15:35
|
|
|
Chances are it'll end up loaded on a back of a truck with a bunch of other unexploded bombs and artillery rounds and driven into a checkpoint.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 15:39
|
|
|
Brown Moses posted:Chances are it'll end up loaded on a back of a truck with a bunch of other unexploded bombs and artillery rounds and driven into a checkpoint. Well then they're just being wasteful with their newly acquired parachutes.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:03
|
|
|
Booblord Zagats posted:Well then they're just being wasteful with their newly acquired parachutes. Judging by the number of videos I've collected of them in use they've probably got enough for a whole battalion.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:30
|
|
|
Brown Moses posted:Judging by the number of videos I've collected of them in use they've probably got enough for a whole battalion. Please tell me the rebs will use their slingshots to launch their new airborne battalion. Armed with the flame tosser.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:34
|
|
|
Wasabi the J posted:Please tell me the rebs will use their slingshots to launch their new airborne battalion. Armed with the flame tosser. Unfortunately the rebels are moving from the "amusing DIY weapons" stage to the "cut out a liver and heart and eat it" and "execute prisoners in the middle of public squares in the name of al-Qaeda" stage.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:45
|
|
|
Brown Moses posted:Unfortunately the rebels are moving from the "amusing DIY weapons" stage to the "cut out a liver and heart and eat it" and "execute prisoners in the middle of public squares in the name of al-Qaeda" stage. Aw man. Is this because of all the foreign jihadists that are pouring into the country? Or is FSA starting to become religiously motivated? EDIT: I followed the conflict zealously during the first 6 months or so, hoping for a quick solution in favour of the FSA, but as the conflict just dragged on and on I had to stop. It just got too depressing. Do you think NATO intervention would be able to do any good at this stage? VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV GyverMac fucked around with this message at 17:01 on May 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:55
|
|
|
GyverMac posted:Aw man. Is this because of all the foreign jihadists that are pouring into the country? Or is FSA starting to become religiously motivated? Increasing sectarian violence, foreign fighters, war driving people to extremes, really symptoms resulting from the length of the conflict.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 16:57
|
|
|
Brown Moses posted:Unfortunately the rebels are moving from the "amusing DIY weapons" stage to the "cut out a liver and heart and eat it" and "execute prisoners in the middle of public squares in the name of al-Qaeda" stage. This is especially surprising given how strict Islam is about the treatment of dead bodies, even those of the enemy. The Quran has stories about how God punishes Muhammed's army for mutilating the enemy dead. Given that these guys are "mujahideen" I wonder how they justify it.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 18:37
|
|
|
Looks like the Chinese have a new LO UAV (although LO may be a stretch with those turkey feathers sticking out the back) (via Avationist, TFR) I'm betting they had more than a little access to that RQ-170 that crashed in Iran. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 18:57 on May 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 18:47
|
|
|
Scratch Monkey posted:This is especially surprising given how strict Islam is about the treatment of dead bodies, even those of the enemy. The Quran has stories about how God punishes Muhammed's army for mutilating the enemy dead. Given that these guys are "mujahideen" I wonder how they justify it. Selective interpretation. Same way they get around a lot of the other stuff that would contradict a life of dedicated to killing or terrorizing anyone that angers them or happens to have something in common with someone who did.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 19:07
|
|
|
TheUnhorse posted:That was a pretty depressing movie. I felt pretty loving bad for that Major. He looked pretty haunted by the whole thing and i hope he's in a good place mentally after that because i sure as hell wouldn't be. Anniversary of the battle of jutland is coming up at the end of this month 
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 19:15
|
|
|
Dead Reckoning posted:(although LO may be a stretch with those turkey feathers sticking out the back) I think those are just extended elevons.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 21:49
|
|
|
Loving Africa Chaps posted:
And yet Ben Kingsley's Jutland movie is still nowhere to be seen.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 22:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 17:31 |
|
|
Slashrat posted:Selective interpretation. Same way they get around a lot of the other stuff that would contradict a life of dedicated to killing or terrorizing anyone that angers them or happens to have something in common with someone who did. Yeah, I guess the same thing that allows someone of christian persuasion to kill other humans, just a more potent version. Anything goes!
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2013 22:46
|
|
