Bullet Points:
** As the Russo-Ukrainian War approaches the 18-month mark, you would think the adults in Germany would throw away the bad habits of the last 60 years or so since they joined NATO in the dustbin and turn in to the wind … but no. CDRSAL throws his cracker in the soup again.
So, right now, Germany has enough artillery for 1.67 days in the most likely scenario she would face ashore. She is so motivated to address that issue that in eight years she hopes to have enough artillery to last – not 30 days Minister Pistorius – but 19.17 days.
** If you’re lost in the woods, find a possum. Follow it. You’ll be in the middle of a road in no time.
** June 20/21 is the Solstice, the longest day of the year. Pagans celebrate it by dropping acid and running around in the forest naked.
** The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone – the ground zero of California’s solar energy boom – stretches for 150,000 acres, making it 10 times the size of Manhattan. More from The Guardian.
SPQR
Did you know that the ancient Roman soldiers were divided into two main types, legionaries and auxiliaries?
The former were citizens of Rome while the latter were not.
Besides being a Roman citizen, a legionary had to be fighting fit and he had to sign up for (at least) 25 years of service. Those who survived were rewarded with land that they could farm and often retired together in military towns (colonia).
On the other hand, an auxiliary was only paid a third of a legionary’s wage. Auxiliaries guarded forts and frontiers but also fought in battles, often on the front lines where it was the most dangerous. For these men, serving in the Roman army meant an escape from poverty.
At the peak of Roman power in the second century AD, over half of the Roman army was comprised of auxiliary units.
B-17
Here we see the evolution of an aviation legend, the Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress,” from the early ‘shark fin tail’ models YB-17, B-17B, and B-17C through to “the Big Ass Bird” models B-17E, B-17F and B-17G. The B-17D (not shown here) was visually similar to the B-17C but had changes made to engines, electrical systems, crew positions, armament, armor plating.
From the Days of Fighting–Oars
Victualing
Ship’s biscuits
An entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1773 reads: Sea biscuit is a sort of bread much dried by passing the oven twice to make it keep for sea service. For long voyages they bake it four times and prepare it six months before embarkation, It will hold good for a whole year. Generally, these hardy forms of carbohydrates were produced using just flour and water and were about 1/3 heavier than the flour from which they were made. The ship’s biscuit (hard tack) has a long association with seafarers, going back to the ancient Egyptian sailors. They were also favoured by the Greeks and Romans Large quantities of biscuits were stored at the Deptford Naval Yard as early as 1513. Basic, durable and almost indestructible, they provided a reliable source of energy for seamen doing hard physical labour in all weathers. The ration per sailor was 450g per day.
Very hard and very durable, as this example from 1784 proves
A perennial problem with the biscuits was infestation with weevils. A number of variations of the recipe were tried to remedy this, including adding caraway seed, but the pesky merely ignored the additional ingredient. Admiral Muir suggested the polite way to deal with weevils was to split the biscuit open with a stout knife and scrape the insects off the cut surface. The more usual way to deal with them was with a brisk tap on the table so the weevils came out of their own accord. Allegedly sailors liked to crack the biscuits by breaking them open in the crook of their elbows.
If the biscuit was poorly baked the outside would crumble away, leaving a hard, rigid centre. These were called reef nuts and were not discarded. Hungry midshipmen collected them and nibbled them during the day- hence the nickname of reefer for the gentlemen.
Towards the 18th century naval ships of the line stored biscuits in a special bread room. The steward’s assistant collected the daily ship’s ration from there. Because of the flour dust, he was called Jack in the Dust or Jack Dusty. At the height of their production, the large bakehouses at Portsmouth and Gosport and other facilities were manufacturing thousands of them a day.
The pantry beside the stove was where the food and biscuits were prepared, HMS Victory
Bakeries began to be fitted in ships in the mid-1850s, enabling fresh bread to be made available for the duration of the voyage. There were still large stocks of biscuits in the naval victualling stores, however, which were not going to be allowed to go to waste, and they continued to be supplied for a number of years. For the Merchant marine, ship’s biscuits were an essential part of the sea diet. In the port city of Liverpool, they were known as Liverpool Pantiles, after a type of roofing tile, because of their shape and texture. In many merchant vessels biscuits along with salt meat, remained standard provisions until the late 1950s.
LL, now that you are back, is there a method to ask an off topic question without hijacking your blog?
Sure, just ask. I don’t care if a question is off-topic. If it’s something that you want to e-mail me about that you’d like me to blog about specifically, e-mail me at larrydotlambertatmacdotcom.
Thank you.
The model G B17 with the cheek guns; that’s what my friend flew back in the WWII.
Interesting evolution of the B-17. It strikes me as a good balance between increased lethality/survivability and decreased construction difficulty.
Solar power, 150,000 acres just for this one solar farm. Just think of all the land wasted with nonsense like this. Millions of acres in total. Should have just put up a bunch of small nuclear power plants. Don’t get me wrong, solar power has a place but as far as large scale power production is concerned solar power is best utilized beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
Ed+C…You do know as an industrial solar/wind denier you’re a heretic, punishment requires such deniers to start driving a Prius to bring up your ESG score.
How will I ever recover my social credit? Gone forever?
Sorry, the FJ has got to go.
Never!
You’re killing Gaia…[me getting into my 2500 Cummins pick-em-up as I offset a couple of Chevy Leaf’s]
While CDR Salamander is correct that Germany does not carry their fair share of defense spending, it works for the Germans. The US has and will continue to carry the extra weight. Germany can spend the money on other (social) priorities and claim the US government and people are violent idiots. Double plus for the Karens in Germany. The Ukraine war is a vindication of that policy; the war and prior peace has cost Germany comparatively nothing.
I am apprehensive of what follows the Ukraine war howsoever it may end. Russia will be spent militarily and economically; what if Russia has nothing left to lose?
That’s a worthwhile concern. Will Russia just be absorbed by China in a “greater co-prosperity sphere?”
‘Bear and the Dragon’ 🤔
Keep hoping that the US will carry the Western World’s military load.
We are destroying our own military capability as fast as we can.
Being a paper tiger and counting on Daddy to save you is less effective when Daddy’s a paper tiger, too.
-Kle.
There are historical precedents for these situations and they always end badly.
Back around 2017 I took a ride in the B-17 “Aluminum Overcast” at an airshow. It was one of the best things I ever did. Top two-thirds of my head nearly fell off, the grin was so wide as we took off.
Same thing different aircraft. It was a B-25. Pilots world world war II combat bubba’s. By the time it was all said and done hey the biggest s*** eating grin on my face and the rest of the passengers for blowing chunks.
My first solo in an Миль Ми-24
Nice… Very nice. 🤙
I got to fly from Alliance Airport in Fort Worth to Shreveport Regional Airport back in 1994 in “Aluminum Overcast”. That included 10 minutes seat time which I dutifully logged. My dad was big in the EAA and coordinated some FAA approval work on that airplane. He got me the ride gratis.
On first thought, the Riverside East SEZ is not a bad use for that desert land. But…, the problem is that it would disrupt the ecology of the area, which I am sure is delicate despite the aridness of the land. It is similar to the question of do we build offshore wind farms or protect the whales. Oh what a dilemma for the Econazis.
That 230+ year old biscuit is about as ‘soft’ as the current ones are… you had to soak them in water/something, otherwise you broke teeth. Re the RESEZ, they are killing birds and foxes (and who knows what else), in addition to having Native American ‘artifacts’ showing up at the site that apparently get ‘collected’ (probably thrown in boxes) and apparently given to certain tribes. I wonder ‘who’ passed that environmental assessment???
You could definitely chip a tooth on a ship’s biscuit. Dipping them drowned weevils, and I wonder if that would be some sort of environmental crime today? Save the weevil, or something like that.
I’m confident that somebody “deemed” the assessment as having passed in the name of keeping humanity from dying off completely next year.
What a beautiful pantry on HMS Victory. People are paying a fortune for this style of rustic kitchen nowadays.
I would have thought a seaman grateful of the extra protein a weevil might bring. I might have suggested soaking those biccy’s in some grog. Perhaps that’s how trifle started!
You could have an HMS Victory pantry in Marmalade Cottage.
But no gas stove.
Heh