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Cyrano4747 posted:When my wife and I finally get around to having kids I plan on making a case for Ansel. Such an awesome name. although, since i hang out with reenactors, they probably wouldn't be able to tell that anything's wrong: I have met a child named after Maurice of Nassau, and one named Tilly.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:36
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You can use names from things other than the bible, now. There are kids in my son's play group named Eowyn and Peyton, after a Lord of the Rings character and Peyton Manning, respectively.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:53
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HEY GAL posted:i should probably not name children. "Now, Julius Caesar von Breitenbach-GAL, you may believe that you were named after a Roman emperor, and in a fashion you were..." "Why yes I named my son Adolf I don't see why...huh...well obviously I meant Gustav Adolf....what do you mean 'it makes no difference in Germany'?"
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Dec 31, 2015 00:56
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Now try that in Iceland.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:08
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The Icelandic rules are interesting. If it were a country where immigration was at all a concern I could see there being name riots, with mobs of angry immigrants wanting to name their kids something relevant to their parent cultures. Unlikely to ever happen with the combination of geographic isolation and weirdly protectionist culture combo they've got going though.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:36
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Arquinsiel posted:^^^^ Not really. Everything I've read on the subject (which, is admittedly limited and mostly by people explaining the changes in national identity that you see in the 19th century) points to the fact that nationality was explicitly tied to a long connection with that particular plot of land was a more modern thing. Think of it this way: a Visigoth didn't think his kids weren't Visigoths just because they were born in Italy instead of east of the Rhine. It's not so much claiming the land as it is asserting that the only way to be French is to be born in France of people who have lived in France long enough to be a natural part of it. Basically exclusionary nation-race based nationalism.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:37
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With dragoons in battle, what happened to their horses when they dismounted? I would guess that having to tie your horse down in the middle of a battle so you can find it again would take too much time and leave you vulnerable, but having your horse run free during a battle would be a right bitch to deal with once you want to mount it again to gtfo. So how was it done?
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Dec 31, 2015 01:46
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Molentik posted:With dragoons in battle, what happened to their horses when they dismounted? I would guess that having to tie your horse down in the middle of a battle so you can find it again would take too much time and leave you vulnerable, but having your horse run free during a battle would be a right bitch to deal with once you want to mount it again to gtfo.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:47
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HEY GAL posted:dragoons are ordered in groups of four and one dude out of every four holds the horses Thanks, makes sense. Would that always be the same guy or would they switch roles every now and again?
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Dec 31, 2015 01:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not really. Everything I've read on the subject (which, is admittedly limited and mostly by people explaining the changes in national identity that you see in the 19th century) points to the fact that nationality was explicitly tied to a long connection with that particular plot of land was a more modern thing. Think of it this way: a Visigoth didn't think his kids weren't Visigoths just because they were born in Italy instead of east of the Rhine. It's not so much claiming the land as it is asserting that the only way to be French is to be born in France of people who have lived in France long enough to be a natural part of it. Basically exclusionary nation-race based nationalism.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is true, but what I'm talking about go beyond doctrine and into the wider society. Stuff like the consolidation of noble titles, the rise of urban centres, the illegitimation of rebellion as a form of political opposition, etc. There's also big technological shifts like the expansion of the iron industry, enhancements in steel production and tempering processes, and of course gunpowder. These changes are so vast that to pin it on tactics and weapons is clownish. I was meaning it in the context of the society and especially industry. Things like the prevalence of engines and willingness to make a new engine specifically for tanks or just wanting to gather whatever odds and ends can be found on the industrial end can make a huge difference to a design. So can something like the Japanese system where volunteers stay in the service for longer and conscripts provide the bulk of the manpower but stay a relatively short time (which was informed by the society it dealt with and had huge ramifications for their fleet). The USSR hiring Albert Kahn, the preeminent American industrial architect, and his firm to train Soviet architects and engineers and design over 500 plants and factories had massive ramifications, probably much larger than the qualities of any weapon on the Eastern Front.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:40
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Molentik posted:Thanks, makes sense. Would that always be the same guy or would they switch roles every now and again? 3 wannabe-horsemen and a rodeo clown.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:28
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:There was a ton of baronial violence at the time, and exporting it was a definite motive for preaching the crusade, but it doesn't explain the motive of the vast majority of crusaders, and doesn't make much economic sense either. The crusade leaders were extremely powerful princes in realms where the king's power was extremely weak (or there was no king, as in the case of the Italo-Normans). They were at the top of the economic ladder, in other words, and it doesn't make sense for them to take the risk of extremely distant travel and war in a completely unfamiliar land if you're just trying to get rid of some particularly rambunctious warriors. The Marxian theme of base and superstructure in historical is one of the more useful contributions the old man ever made to the study of history, but people look so hard for "the real reason" and too readily discount overt justifications. Contemporary or nearly contemporary primary sources suggest that people in Western Europe were aware of the potential of forcing ambitious barons and hungry soldiers to look outward towards the Holy Land instead of inward at one another, but that doesn't mean it was their main purpose. It isn't hard to put it together that they were very religious, they believed the time was ripe to claim the Holy Land for Christianity, and that a lot of people wanted to be involved because they felt it was in service to God and good for their souls and their well-being after death. I mean, Urban II kicked off the Crusading project in part by announcing that going on crusade counted as penance in full for confessed sins. It's as if we forget that these people really sincerely believed in heaven and hell, so somehow "I can steal some Muslim land for my rowdy surplus sons" sounds more real than than doing something that pleases God.
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Dec 31, 2015 04:09
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EvanSchenck posted:The Marxian theme of base and superstructure in historical is one of the more useful contributions the old man ever made to the study of history, but people look so hard for "the real reason" and too readily discount overt justifications. Contemporary or nearly contemporary primary sources suggest that people in Western Europe were aware of the potential of forcing ambitious barons and hungry soldiers to look outward towards the Holy Land instead of inward at one another, but that doesn't mean it was their main purpose. I mean, they don't suggest it, they say it outright. This part of crusading is an outgrowth of the Peace and Truce of God movements. quote:It isn't hard to put it together that they were very religious, they believed the time was ripe to claim the Holy Land for Christianity, and that a lot of people wanted to be involved because they felt it was in service to God and good for their souls and their well-being after death. I mean, Urban II kicked off the Crusading project in part by announcing that going on crusade counted as penance in full for confessed sins. It's as if we forget that these people really sincerely believed in heaven and hell, so somehow "I can steal some Muslim land for my rowdy surplus sons" sounds more real than than doing something that pleases God. You mean reclaim the Holy Land  Jerusalem was not even explicitly the target, the Crusaders were basically just supposed to help Alexios get his land back initially. Anyway, your point generally brings up another myth that comes up more in modern depictions especially in pseudo-historical trash piles like Game of Thrones which is that Great Men (or the nobility generally) were agnostic or downright atheist. This is more confined to "gritty" stuff but that seems to be the flavor of the decade so
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Dec 31, 2015 06:40
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Kingdom of Heaven, the movie: all the good guy crusaders are agnostic at best, Saladin is suspicious too, and both camps have a holy man that's less than holy, historical evidence of the lives of people the movies is based on be damned
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Dec 31, 2015 06:56
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would you prefer 1632, where the author just loving decided that protestants were basically 21st century american progressives avant la lettre? would you
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Dec 31, 2015 06:58
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HEY GAL posted:would you prefer 1632, where the author just loving decided that protestants were basically 21st century american progressives avant la lettre? I mean, no, but that's because it's in the 17th century.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:02
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I mean, no, but that's because it's in the 17th century.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:05
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A guy I know uploaded a bunch of docs about the M4: http://www.theshermantank.com/downloads-page-the-place-for-things-to-big-to-post-like-manuals/
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Dec 31, 2015 07:21
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LostCosmonaut posted:A guy I know uploaded a bunch of docs about the M4: http://www.theshermantank.com/downloads-page-the-place-for-things-to-big-to-post-like-manuals/ I found some great quotes. quote:One thing to note about all the high horse power Sherman tanks, none of their other drive train components saw major modification, because they did not fail. So a transmission and final drive designed for a 400 horsepower 30 ton tank, had no trouble taking 650 horsepower from the monster motors above, or any trouble handling the 42 tons of the M4A3E2 Jumbo. To me that says, well designed, in that it was very overbuilt, and lasted a very long time. The Transmissions and final drives just kept on working, and all the post war Sherman modifications used the same old tranny and final drive. That’s the kind of engineering that people should consider to be great. Not some German, garbage tank, named after a cat, which broke down every 150 kilometers. Does this guy post in this thread?
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Dec 31, 2015 07:39
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quote:To me that says, well designed, in that it was very overbuilt, and lasted a very long time. Isn't that then a waste of resources in building way more transmission than is needed?
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Dec 31, 2015 07:47
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It depends. If you decide on the overbuilding solution early, it can be cheaper than designing one thing for what you need now, then having to go back and design and possibly retrofit for future upgrades.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:50
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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HEY GAL posted:would you prefer 1632, where the author just loving decided that protestants were basically 21st century american progressives avant la lettre?
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Dec 31, 2015 08:12
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T___A posted:Did you read the one where the Russian town gets transported and forms a new International with the Diggers? that guy wrote the same person up to eight times a day, if he could communicate with his subordinates in real time they'd assassinate him again and this time make sure it stuck edit: i also read the one about weed
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Dec 31, 2015 08:16
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So my mom dug up an "interview" I did with my grandpa back in high school and sent it to me, which I will transcribe. I think this was...1996 or so? Forgive the stupidity of the questions as I was 15 or 16, but his answers were pretty awesome. I'm doing this word for word as best I can; I had to edit out the profanity for my high school project so I'm speculating what words were actually said in the places with (expletive). Some background: he was born in Oklahoma in 1920, went to a local "flight school" (detailed below) in his teens. He flew crop dusters and then mail planes before the war and was snapped up literally days after Pearl Harbor due to his being an actual real live trained pilot of which there were very few in the States at the time. Most of his time in service was spent flying The Hump, but late in the war he was transferred to the ETO and flew a handful of bombing missions just before the end of the war. He was then sent back to the PTO and got there just in time for the surrender; his last missions were in support of the B-29 attacks on mainland Japan. After the war he flew as an airline pilot for 35 years; he retired in 1980 as United Airlines' chief 747 instructor. This "interview" was for a high school class. As my grandpa he was an extremely quiet, polite, soft spoken guy but if you got him talking planes he turned into what I assume he was like as a pilot/soldier: a rude bastard who swore a lot and didn't like you very much. This made the....interview more than a little strange for me, as I saw a completely different guy from the one I knew. He was never much of a drinker but he insisted on having a bourbon in hand for this, which was also pretty surprising to me. Anyway, here 'tis. Describe what happened between Pearl Harbor and you joining the military. What was enlisting like? Well, you know we were all mad as hell about that. Louise (my grandma, they'd married a few months earlier) was madder than anybody, she still is, really. She told me "Noel (his middle name) you get your rear end down to that Army man TODAY or I'm gonna drag you there myself". So, I went. They didn't have one in Ponca City, so I caught a ride on a truck to Oklahoma City. The trucker was a black guy, when I told him I was going to go sign up he insisted on buying me lunch, even though he was probably poor as hell. He got me a ham sandwich and a coffee in some diner and told EVERYONE in the place "THIS HERE YOUNG MAN GONNA GO KILL HIM SOME JAPS". I didn't think I was gonna actually do that but I stood up anyway. The waitress gave me a kiss and our meal was free. I think the black guy maybe had a plan in place there to get a free lunch. Anyway, I got to the recruiting station and this fat sergeant took one look at me and laughed (he was about 5'4", and probably weighed 120 pounds at the time) but I said "I'm a pilot" and I was taken right away to the recruiting officer. He asked about my flying and I said I flew for the mail service and I had for two years. He filled out some papers and maybe a half hour later I was standing at the station with a ticket out to California and some papers that all looked very official. Once I got to California they swore me in as a "flight cadet". I had to do a couple of weeks of basic training out there and then my flight training started. What was your flight training like? They hardly had any real instructors, most of them were Army guys who didn't even fly. All the actual pilots had been already sent out to Hawaii and the Philippines so we got a handful of civilians and then a bunch of guys who didn't know poo poo. Me and a handful of other guys were qualified pilots already so we wound up teaching as much as the instructors did, maybe more. We didn't know what we were doing and neither did they so I'll be goddamned they actually threw these guys in trainers after a week or two of ground school. They had us in Fairchilds which was the worst goddamn plane I ever flew (he says this a lot). Wings would literally fall off of them for no drat reason. I think we lost three guys to crashes while I was there, and another couple washed out because they were too stupid. Our training was just flying these things around in circles hoping the wings stayed attached and then going drinking in town afterwards. We were the first class there after Pearl so we were a big deal of course but I bet those people got pretty drat sick of pilots after four years of those assholes. Anyway we got some hours in the Fairchild, I already had a bunch but the rest of the guys needed a certain amount so they'd fly twice a day. No one actually got as many as the Army said they should though, the instructors just signed and said they did and after a few weeks off we got our plane assignments and off we went. I thought for sure I'd get fighters since I was so small but they decided I should go be a guinea pig for the new "Liberator" training program and that sounded alright to me so they sent me to goddamn Kansas. After all that I was a couple hours from home! After that goddamn Fairchild I was really excited to get my hands on a real military plane, I'd never flown one before. That B-24 was the biggest thing I'd ever seen. Think about it, I'd only seen trucks and cars and little planes, and here's this giant green thing the size of a football field and I'm supposed to fly this bastard. Well they threw me right up in there, but these were actual pilots and they knew what they were doing so I knew I'd be ok. My instructor was a major who was a West Pointer, smartest guy I'd ever met but the fella smoked all the drat time (my grandpa never smoked). Even in the cockpit he'd smoke and you weren't supposed to do that. He'd throw his butts out the window and smile at me. Anyway when he first saw me he smiled and said "you're gonna have a tough time with this thing" and I knew he was telling the truth. The B-24 was the biggest plane I'd ever flown so I just assumed all of them were that bad but it turns out those idiots who designed the thing made it the hardest plane to fly in the world. I just about broke my back trying to get the stick back on my first takeoff. If you wanted to turn I'd pray a little bit beforehand and then I'd pretty much have to stand up and push the stick left or right with my legs because I wasn't strong enough to move the thing sitting down. After an hour of flying it you felt like you'd been in a fight with a boxer! The cockpit was terrible too, it was like some guy decided he was going to win a contest of how many dials and knobs you could fit in one cockpit and still have room for the pilot. I assume he won and that disaster was what we had to deal with. Training was a couple of months and we all assumed we were going to Europe to bomb the Germans. It was strange, we didn't really have anything in particular against the Germans at that point except we knew Hitler was a bastard, we were more mad at the Japs. So, we wanted to bomb the Japs. Plus the Germans had the best air force around, none of us wanted to fly against those guys. So we graduated, most of my class got taken off to Europe to bomb the Germans and most of them got shot down, but my instructors asked me to stay around Kansas and fly a new kind of B-24, a transport. I wanted to fly a bomber but my commander said this was really important, and that he'd promote me, so I stayed. When I found out what were flying I almost quit. It was a goddamn flying fuel tank. Just a B-24 with a giant gas tank in the bomb bay. Who in the hell wants to fly around a goddamn giant fuel tank? I know that's what Mike (my uncle, a KC-10 pilot at the time) does. He must be as stupid as I was. We flew the thing around doing tests, how fast it could climb, how much fuel it could carry, all that. One crashed, never saw a bigger boom than that. Thing couldn't climb on three engines, scary as hell. I remember thinking: "hope I don't ever have to fly this thing over a mountain". Guess what the loving Army made me do? Is that when you went over to India? What was that like? They sent me to a squadron and we were the first ones to get the new transport B-24s. Half were for fuel, half were for cargo. We flew them to California, then Hawaii. We got a few days leave in Hawaii and I spent them all on the beach! I wish your grandmother had been there, Hawaii was the first place I took her after the war. Then we flew to Australia and then to India. We got there in the winter but it was still hot as hell and I thought right then I was in big trouble, if it is that hot in the winter then I'm gonna die in the summer. The runway was brand new but there was nothing next to it. They gave us hammocks and told us to find somewhere to sleep. We were the first twelve planes to get there and they told us that the only way to get supplies into China was to fly it over the mountains that were right there. They didn't look that bad from where we were, not as bad as the mountains here (Denver) but turns out they were way worse. After a couple of days our planes were loaded and we got our briefs on the flight plan, they thought we could go right over the top of the mountains. They called it "the hump" and they still do. We did the math on our time to climb and there was no wiggle room at all, we had to go all out, we could get maybe 900 feet a minute out of that B-24 when it was loaded and we had to get above 16,000 feet, so you do the math. It was ridiculous. We didn't have enough fuel on board to circle around and gain altitude though, it was just a straight shot or nothing. All I could picture was my entire flight just flying right into the side of a mountain and Granny getting a letter saying her husband crashed his plane into a drat mountain like an idiot. I don't think you get any medals for that. So we took off and ran the mission and it was the worst hour of my life trying to get altitude. That plane was awful to fly in the first place and then you had the updrafts coming off of the foothills blowing you all over, and then the mountains ahead of you that just kept getting bigger and bigger while you didn't get any higher. It was cold as hell but I've never sweated so much. In the end we cleared it by a couple thousand feet and came down the other side, flying over the mountains was actually alright. I'd never seen mountains from the air before so I was paying closer attention to them than my dials. So we came flying down like rocks into China and my navigator put us right on the field which looked like it had been cut out of the woods the day before. We landed and one of the planes lost a landing gear and they were stuck in China for a couple of weeks while they fixed it but the rest of us were fine. They offloaded all of the planes and we were off pretty fast and that plane felt like a loving hot rod without all that crap in the bomb bay. We cleared the mountains no problem. That was our first mission. I think it was 6 hours or so each way, took two days. The Air Force commander was there to greet us when we landed and he said the boys fighting in China needed every bit of what we just flew them and that this new route was gonna be the thing that finally helped them beat the Japs. I was more tired than I'd ever been though so I just went to sleep right afterwards. So how long were you there for? Was it dangerous? How many times did you fly? I was there for about a year. We flew once or twice a week and hell yes it was dangerous. If you lost an engine you were either dead or almost dead. We'd lose planes into the mountains every week it seemed. It got to be routine but it was never really routine, I never got used to seeing those mountains get bigger and bigger and praying for that drat plane to climb. Of the guys I went over there with I think four crashed and if you crashed you were done for, they didn't send anyone after you up in those mountains. So we knew if you went down you were on your own. Not that any of us expected to live through a crash. I will tell you though that if anyone over there was a hero it was our mechanics. They knew that we were dead if we lost an engine so they bent heaven and earth to make sure our birds were as good as they could be. They'd stay up all night and all day to fix things. Sometimes they'd have to rig poo poo up with blowtorches and pot metal but they'd make it work. And those guys took it so hard when their plane went down. They felt like it was their fault. We pilots, we knew that poo poo just happened and you went on about it and were glad you made it, but the mechanics didn't think like that. I never saw men cry like the mechanics did when they lost their planes and I never saw anyone happier when they saw their planes land. Those were some great Americans and nobody gives a poo poo about them anymore but they were my heroes. Did you ever see any Japanese fighters? We were way too far north for any Jap fighters to get to us and they'd have been too smart to fly up that high anyway. I did have a British pilot fire at us once, I don't know if was confused or lost or what but we didn't have any gun turrets or anything so we just had to wave and yell at him and hope he saw the stars on the wings. I guess he did eventually and he flew off, never found out who he was. How did you like the B-24? I loving hated that thing. It handled like a boat when someone forgot to pull up the anchor. Nothing made sense, turning on the engines, the checks, the procedures, all of it was stupid. We only had five man crews so we didn't have much help, our engineer was always busy unscrewing this or that, or pumping this or that. I had the same copilot most of the time I was there and he was a lazy bastard too, so that made things worse. He was a drat congressman's kid and he thought his poo poo didn't stink. That plane was worst over the mountains, you'd get a hundred mile an hour crosswind out of nowhere and the plane would just go off on its own like it had its own plan for where it was going that afternoon. Nothing you could do until the wind cut out. It was a good plane to land though, we made some rough landings and it always held together. What else did you do in India? I sweated a lot and swatted a lot of skeeters. Not much else to do. We were in a jungle, you've seen my mosquito hammock (he kept it after the war and we played in it as kids), that was where I lived. Wrote Granny, we had a record player but only two records and they were both ruined. The locals were very nice and they'd bring us food, I loved that. We'd get packages from home every so often and that was a big deal. Guys would get candy or cookies or cakes that were always rotten. I never got used to the smell or the heat or the skeeters. They put me in a C-46 just before I left, now that was a great plane. After that B-24 it was like driving a sports car. It couldn't go as high so we had to fly through passes which was tough, but even with a load it was so much better. The engines would overheat sometimes but you could manage that if you were smart. The bad part about those missions is we had to fly wounded fellas out of China on our way back, the B-24's didn't do that. These guys would be almost dead, days out in the jungle with no medical care. Medics would fly with us sometimes to try and take care of them but we always lost a few on the plane. The loadmaster would tell me about it and I'd always say I don't care I don't want to know. Those were the worst flights. They were usually British boys, or Indian boys, and they were so polite. They'd say "thank you" to me after we landed like I'd done them a favor. After a couple of those flights I started carrying a bottle of whiskey with me so that I could give it to a medic and tell him to give all those boys in the back a drink on me. We always had a lot of whiskey around, the military did a great job with that sort of thing. What did you do after India? They brought me back to the states and sent me right back to loving Kansas to be an instructor. That was great, Granny was still in Ponca then so we were able to see each other a few times a month. I was a captain then with a thousand combat hours so I was the big man around the base. That was for about a week. They had too many instructors then so our commander asked for volunteers to go to Europe. It came with a promotion and a bonus so I said sign me up without really thinking things through. I got sent right away to Italy. I was made the XO of a bombing squadron, and I'll be goddamned if I knew a single drat thing about being an XO. I'd been in the Army almost two years at that point and at no point had I actually learned how to be in the Army. Now I had to do paperwork and briefings and all that poo poo. I made an idiot of myself, let me tell you. The only thing I had going for me was I was a veteran pilot and almost no one else there was so I had some credibility there but otherwise I was the worst officer on the base. I think I did about twenty missions altogether. Probably half of them were to Munich. We'd drop our bombs and fly home. The Alps were like little hills to me, everyone else was scared of the mountains but I just laughed. What was it like fighting over Germany? Did you see many German planes? Or flak? There was always flak, the black puffs all over. It didn't ever do much, we didn't mind it except it shook the plane around and sometimes you'd get hit with shrapnel from it. The German planes were scary as hell but we didn't see them very often. Maybe four or five times? We had fighter escorts too so they kept the German planes off of us pretty good, they were pretty well beat up by that point and couldn't do much to stop us. But if a German plane hit you, you were in trouble, they had big guns that shot explosive shells and you didn't want to get hit by those. I never got used to having gunners even after twenty missions, my copilot would always tell those guys what to do while I flew the plane. He was a good man, he was from Iowa. I'd just fly the plane and hand it off to the bombardier when we got to the target and he'd do the rest. I saw an 262 once, that's the jet fighter. That was the only thing that ever scared me worse than the Himalayas. It doesn't make much sense to you now probably, you've seen F-16s and all that poo poo, but those things were so fast it didn't even look like a plane to us. It looked like a space ship. We had been told about them of course but that didn't even prepare us for actually seeing the thing. He flew through us like it was nothing, and our fighters were following him like kittens after a momma cat. They just couldn't keep up. And those jets had giant cannons in the nose, if they hit you, you were a goner. I saw him take a shot at another bomber but he missed and then he just zoomed away, never saw him again. When did you leave Italy? What happened after that? Well we were pretty well done with things by the end of 1944. We couldn't do much over the winter, the weather was too bad, so we sat around a lot. The Italians didn't like us being there but we were allowed to go into town to eat and goof off. It wasn't a very good unit, not like the one in India. We had a mission in India, an important one. In Italy it was just a lot of sitting around. But the Germans were beaten and we all knew that we were going to have to go to the Pacific again to finish off the Japs, so that was on everyone's mind. I was the only man in the squadron who had been over there so they asked me a lot of questions, but I'd never actually seen a Jap so I didn't have much of answer to any of them. We were scared as hell about the invasion, you know everyone thought we were gonna have to invade Japan just like we did France and Italy, so we were all thinking we'd be flying in support of the invasion. That sounded way worse that Germany. The Germans seemed more reasonable to us, they quit after getting their butts kicked. The Japs seemed like they'd keep at it until they didn't have any more butt to kick and that was scary. I got a new order back to the states again, back to loving Kansas again. I asked my CO if I could get some time off and he said he'd be glad to, so I got 30 days of leave that I got to spend at home with Granny. Those were probably the best 30 days of my life. We went to Oklahoma City the whole time and lived out of a hotel. We ate out every day and danced every night. Leaving wasn't that bad either, I was just going back to Kansas so I wasn't that far away. I was in Kansas for a few months then just doing office work and messing around when they decided they needed a new XO for one of the squadrons of B-24s that were running out in front of the B-29s. So I shipped out and it took me a couple of weeks to get there. Let me tell you when I saw a B-29 for the first time it looked as big as that B-24 had looked when I'd first gotten to flight training, it was that big. They were all silver and it looked like a giant silver bullet with wings. Then we had to get in these old rickety B-24s and go take weather reports and pictures for the B-29s. It was a little embarrassing. I only did a handful of missions there. We all knew about the "super bomb" when it got to the island and I watched that plane take off with it. We were all praying that it would work like they said, when the Japs didn't surrender I don't think I've ever heard more cussing. They surrendered after the next one though, I'm sure you know that. I got to fly on B-29s a couple of times and that was like flying in a Cadillac. Warm and nice inside, plenty of room. Those missions were long as hell though, longest flights I ever did I think even on a 747. I was pretty impressed by those planes but the pilots hated them because the engines would catch fire if you worked the throttle too much, they said they wanted to fly B-24s instead. What happened after the war? Well I was moved back to a muster station in California and they interviewed me, said I could stay as a pilot if I wanted and that the air corps was going to be its own branch just like the navy. I thought about it a long time and talked it over with your granny and she said "hell no charlie, get your butt back here". So, I resigned my commission right then and there, and the colonel in charge shook my hand and said thank you, which was really nice of him. I got a big wad of cash and some paperwork and I got on a train back to Oklahoma. Sold houses for a few years and then got the job with United, you probably know the rest of that story. So, that's it. My god, if only I could ask him these sorts of questions now...he died last year  Here's a few pictures. I can't verify the authenticity of the plane pic, but it is his, according to my cousin: The B-24/C-87 he flew on the field in China:  War pic, he's the one on the far left, looking grumpy (also, note the black guy...I'm not sure what the deal is there but  ). Another war pic, on the far right, looking grumpy: 
bewbies fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 08:16
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How many A's did you get for that report? Because that is some beautiful stuff right here! Grandpa was both a badass and a wordsmith, so it seems. The part about 262, considering you just stopped reading how terrifying the Himalayas had been. drat. EDIT: Grandpa's grumpy pictures illustrate his opinion on B-24  Which Fairchild was it that lost wings all the time?
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Dec 31, 2015 09:12
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HEY GAL posted:would you prefer 1632, where the author just loving decided that protestants were basically 21st century american progressives avant la lettre? be the change you wish to see in the world. write for their ezine.
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Dec 31, 2015 09:47
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Arquinsiel posted:The Icelandic rules are interesting. If it were a country where immigration was at all a concern I could see there being name riots, with mobs of angry immigrants wanting to name their kids something relevant to their parent cultures. Unlikely to ever happen with the combination of geographic isolation and weirdly protectionist culture combo they've got going though. Lots of people just desperate to live on Craggy Island writ slightly larger
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Dec 31, 2015 09:48
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Mycroft Holmes posted:be the change you wish to see in the world. write for their ezine. Echoing this. Yes the 1632 series isn't great in terms of accuracy; that's in part because massive chunks of the research have been done by total amateurs. Because those were who was available.
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Dec 31, 2015 15:14
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Are we seriously discussing the relative accuracy of a book about a time traveling appalachian town?
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Dec 31, 2015 15:49
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reading Peter Wilson's 30 Years War and it's difficult without the maps in the endpapers. My school's library never seems to preserve these in their library bindings. I'm assuming this is an expense thing. Why do so many history books use the endpapers for maps? I'm assuming the majority of them are headed for libraries where something like this will happen?
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Dec 31, 2015 15:51
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shallowj posted:reading Peter Wilson's 30 Years War and it's difficult without the maps in the endpapers. My school's library never seems to preserve these in their library bindings. I'm assuming this is an expense thing. Why do so many history books use the endpapers for maps? I'm assuming the majority of them are headed for libraries where something like this will happen? Did they re-bind the book? A lot of libraries do that. Also I really don't run across many history books with the maps there. Most of the ones I know that are map dependent put them inside the book proper, frequently multiple maps specific to the chapters that they are discussing. Maybe it's something that is more common in fancy hardbacks designed for wider publication? I don't think I've ever seen that in a more narrowly published hardback or in a paperback.
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Dec 31, 2015 15:54
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i've come across it mostly in wide scope narrative history books, that's probably it. the endpapers are used for maps of the entire region being discussed, so in this case the HRE, while the more specific maps are included in the relevant chapters, yeah. with the HRE polities it would be nice to have. I've read some stuff on the Silk Road where this happened too, and it got very confusing.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:30
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Maybe download some maps and stick them in the books to reference as you read?
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Dec 31, 2015 16:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:Are we seriously discussing the relative accuracy of a book about a time traveling appalachian town? That book would be great comedy if it weren't about loving up my home in the past.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Are we seriously discussing the relative accuracy of a book about a time traveling appalachian town? If Heygal ever finds someone writing about The Angel of Death we'll know that she was almost good enough for the Olympics.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:38
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JcDent posted:Which Fairchild was it that lost wings all the time? Only Fairchild trainer I know about was the PT-19 and its derivative PT-23. Apparently they did have problems with plywood wings suffering low durability in high heat and humidity, to the point where the wings needed replacing after only 2 or 3 months from wood rot and ply separation.
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Dec 31, 2015 16:48
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This was really cool to read, thanks for writing it up!
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Dec 31, 2015 17:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:Are we seriously discussing the relative accuracy of a book about a time traveling appalachian town?
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Dec 31, 2015 17:55
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HEY GAL posted:They should have gotten the historical part right though You're talking about pulp fiction. Be glad that they got even the broadest aspects correct. I don't think it was ever something with pretentions of historical accuracy. Bagging on Ken Follett for his fuckups is fair, targeting Eric Flint is like complaining that John Wayne westerns don't accurately portray the lives and cultures of Native Americans. edit: I'm also a firm believer that even flawed popular depictions of events and time periods can be useful for getting people generally aware that they were a thing. I will guarantee you that there are a fair number of people in the US who wouldn't know that the 30YW was even a thing if it wasn't for those books, mistakes and all. With any luck it gets them interested enough to learn more about it and fill in the gaps and fix the errors. Popular misconceptions of history is a big problem, but a bigger problem is popular indifference and utter ignorance of it. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 17:58
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