Lindybeige
Published on 31 May 2018Bovington Tank Museum, and The Chieftain again – ten minutes on the topic of air-portable tanks of World War Two.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeIt is possible that (some?) Tetrarchs had holes in the sides of the turret for a drawstring that could pull the trigger of the smoke projector from inside the turret. However, you really wouldn’t want the rifle cocked and ready to fire unless you were just about to use it. White phosphorous is dangerous stuff and you would make no friends by setting it off by snagging your belt on the string as you climbed in the tank.
Hannibal graphic novel (in production): http://www.InSearchofHannibal.com
Many thanks to The Chieftain, my co-presenter, and to The Tank Museum at Bovington.
Two ideas have been posted in the comments for the name ‘Tetrarch’. One is that it has four equally-sized wheels on each side (which guide the tank, a bit like four rulers guide an empire). The other is that there was a very famous racehorse called ‘The Tetrarch’ that died in 1935. The tank was not designed originally for air-drops, but was presumably meant to be fast, so that makes sense.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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August 7, 2018
Flying Tanks! Tetrarchs and Locusts
QotD: Sailing past Byzantium
To those who know nothing about the mediaeval, “byzantine” East of Christendom (and what do I know about anything?) a book by the respectable Oxford scholar, Averil Cameron, is worth mentioning. It is a short survey of developments in her academic field, entitled, Byzantine Matters (2014). It poses five basic questions on which our common assumptions are mostly wrong, and provides succinct directions for thinking again.
Mediaeval Greece, the Byzantine dynasties, and Orthodox Christianity: these are far from interchangeable concepts. Moreover, “Byzantine art” — the focus of enthusiasm in the anglosphere through the last century or so — is misunderstood. The term “Byzantine” itself — conceived from late antiquity as a deprecation — persists in the academy as an intelligence neutralizer. The vanity of “the West” gets in the way of appreciating a parallel Christian realm, which flourished for more than a thousand years, and never succumbed to the Arabs. (It finally succumbed to the Turks.) We disdain what amounts to an alternative universe of Christian witness and high culture, of great variety and depth, even more obtusely than we disdain our own Middle Ages.
We are narrowed and prejudiced by the attitudinizing of Edward Gibbon, and the inheritance (or disinheritance) of our Western “Enlightenment,” to view as backward a civilization in most ways superior to our “modern” own, from pride in the tinsel of technology. From AD 330 (the founding of Constantine’s capital) to 1453 (when it fell into Ottoman hands), we see only a continuous story of “decline.” But there were many declines over this vast period, and in the intervals between them, many recoveries.
David Warren, “Sailing past Byzantium”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-11-07.
August 6, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Leviathan – Extra History – #5
Extra Credits
Published on 4 Aug 2018This is a global pandemic. The flu jumps ship, literally, onto the docks of American Samoa, of South Africa, of Alaska, of India. The 1918 flu infects every human continent.
The Battle of Amiens
At Samizdata, Patrick Crozier explains why the Battle of Amiens should be far better known than it is:
On 8 August 1918 in Northern France, a mainly British force attacked on a 15 mile front and advanced to a depth of 7 miles.
In so doing it inflicted 70,000 casualties on the Germans capturing 500 guns while suffering 44,000 casualties of its own. The Battle of Amiens as it became known, was the first clearly-successful, large-scale, Allied offensive operation on the Western Front. Ludendorff, the German commander, famously called it the “Black day of the German army”. But then again he was always a bit of a flibbertygibbet.
Although no one knew it at the time the Battle of Amiens heralded the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive in which Allied success followed Allied success. By November the Germans realised that the game was up and sued for peace.
Amiens did not take place in a vacuum. At the Second Battle of the Marne which took place a few weeks earlier the Germans had attacked and the French and Americans had successfully counter-attacked. This brought to an end German hopes of a quick victory.
[…]
So why have so few heard of Amiens? Why doesn’t it occupy a similar position to Agincourt, Waterloo and El Alamein? Quite simply because it doesn’t fit the narrative. The lazy story we’ve all heard a million times tells us that the Western Front was all about incompetent generals and stalemate. Amiens and the Hundred Days Offensive show this to be nonsense.
A more accurate narrative might be that winning on the Western Front was never going to be easy but they got there in the end.
The battle also saw the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps reprising their roles as “shock troops” of the British army (including an elaborate scheme to hide the presence of the Canadians from the German commanders):
Purists will be offended by Terraine’s failure to explain the role of the French army at Amiens (which extended the attack to the south), but more intriguing is the sidelining of Sir Arthur Currie’s Canadian Corps. Indeed, Terraine’s focus on generals Rawlinson and Monash (although not incorrect in itself) seems to miss how important the Canadians were to the battle; it would be true to say that they made the Battle of Amiens. Their four divisions in line, deployed in the centre along the Amiens-Roye Road, formed the spearhead of the assault. At the end of the day they had driven eight miles into the position of the German Second Army.
Notwithstanding these quibbles, Terraine’s article, with its focus on training and planning and the coordination of firepower and manoeuvre, prefigures much of the debates that would take place in the 1990s and beyond about the nature of change and development in the British Expeditionary Force (the ‘learning curve’). While the military effort of the ‘white dominions’ – Australia, New Zealand and Canada – has been widely praised (with Canadians being justifiably proud of their tag as the ‘shock army of the British Empire’), the humble British Tommy has often been left behind. Since Terraine wrote his article, however, much work has been done to rectify this imbalance.
OSS “Stinger” Covert Cigarette Guns
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 16 Jul 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
During World War Two, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) was the primary US clandestine operations organization. It was responsible for making all sorts of unique weapons, including these “Stinger” cigarette guns. They were single shot disposable .22 Short pistols.
The first pattern was contracted and manufactured entirely by the OSS, and 25,000 of them were manufactured early in the war. They proved to have a myriad of minor to moderate problems, though, including failures to fire and burst barrels. A second version was produced by the Ordnance Department in 1944, with a strengthened and improved design, and 25,500 of those were made.
I have not found any documentation of these being actually used, but then again not much documentation exists on the use of any OSS weapons. These sorts of things were often provided to infiltration agents who might never be heard from again, or dropped to partisan or resistance groups who weren’t exactly writing field reports on their gear.
Many thanks to the collector who provided me access to these!
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
QotD: Voting
Most people vote in elections for the candidate they dislike the least, and perhaps this is as it should be: positive enthusiasm for candidates and politicians in general is likely to give them an inflated idea of their own importance and thereby promote the politicization of life.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Self-Anointed v. Resentful: A view from across the Atlantic”, City Journal, 2016-11-08.
August 5, 2018
Zim Tzu returns
I’m only just getting caught up on reports from Minnesota Vikings training camp (now in Eagan, MN rather than Mankato as it had been for half a century). This is why I didn’t catch the first meditation from Zim Tzu until just now. Take it away, Ted:
The Vikings Warrior Poet Coach dispenses his words of wisdom
ED NOTE: This has bad words. None of the other things we write on here do, but this one does. It seems to be a popular bit, so until the law catches up with me, I’m going to keep doing it. Thanks for understanding, and thanks for not reading and not letting your kids read it if bad language isn’t your thing. Hope you enjoy the rest of our articles — Ted
Every great warrior poet has his comeuppance. Napoleon had his Waterloo, Patton slapped a guy in Sicily, Rommel got routed in North Africa. Even Robert E. Lee had his Appomattox.
When you are handed a humbling humiliation, you can do one of two things. You can either slink back in to the corner and become a footnote in history, or you can reflect, rebuild, and try to re-conquer. Because reflection is for the weak, and rebuilding your Army and starting a new campaign is what warrior poets do. Because fuck those horse shit eating douchebags, that’s why.
Because you are Zim Tzu, The King In The North, High Septon Of Eagan, Lord Commander Of The Iron Range And Twin Cities, Master Of Fortress TCO, Honorary Elder Of Mankato and Protector Of The Realm.
When you re-assemble your Army after such a humbling defeat, you must grab their attention, and let them know you mean business. How do you do that? With language that hits home, right between the eyes. Only, when you speak so publicly, you gotta go through Mexico to get to Canada when you’re making your point. Because although you need to set everyone straight, The Great Unwashed can’t handle such auditory brutality at point blank range.
So that’s where we come in here at The Daily Norseman.* We take Mike Zimmer’s verbal artillery, water it down to some something a little less powerful than snakes and sparklers (because what the hell with fireworks being illegal in Minnesota and shit),** and it comes out on the other side fresh and clearly understood.***
*By ‘we’ I mean ‘me’. I tried to talk the new guys into taking the fall for this, and even they weren’t dumb enough to sign on for this.
**Like seriously, not even fucking bottle rockets? Lame. As. Shit. Homeland.
***It’s all utter bullshit. I make everything up, kind of like Jameis Winston explaining his side of the story.
For those of you that are new to the ways of Zim Tzu, we take his official press conference transcript, look at what Mike Zimmer actually said, and then translate what he said into the real meaning right below.*
*Seriously, I make it all up, if you can’t tell five minutes into this.
Rockets – Blinded Soldiers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 4 Aug 2018Chair of Wisdom Time! Indy talks about rocket usage in WW1 and how blinded soldiers were rehabilitated.
On The Far Side
Today I Found Out
Published on 9 Jul 2018Check out my other channel TopTenz! https://www.youtube.com/user/toptenznet
Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week!
More from TodayIFoundOut
What Ever Happened to the Creator of Calvin and Hobbes?
In this video:
For 15 years, Gary Larson took millions of readers over to the Far Side. Using anamorphic animals, chubby teenagers, universal emotions, a simple drawing style and a really bizarre, morbid sense of humor, The Far Side became one of the most successful – and praised – comic strips of all time.
Want the text version?: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…
QotD: Risk aversion
… let’s step back and ask ourselves what insurance is for. Classical economics has an answer: people are risk-averse, which means that they will pay good money to reduce the variability of outcomes they face. If home insurance guards against the loss of a million pounds when my house burns down, I’m happy to buy the insurance even though the insurance company expects to make a profit from it.
But this risk aversion emerges from the fact that money is worth more to poor people than to rich people. Gaining a million pounds would make me rich but losing a million pounds would make me poor. I should not gamble a million pounds on the toss of a coin, because the million pounds I might lose is more precious to me than the million pounds I might gain.
As so often with classical economics, this is an excellent description of how we should behave. It is not such an excellent description of how we actually do behave. Risk aversion can only explain why we insure large risks. It cannot explain why we insure small ones. This is because risk aversion turns on the idea that an extra pound is worth more if you are poor than if you are rich. But having to replace a phone is not going to make the difference between poverty and wealth.
In one of my favourite economics articles, written in 2001, the behavioural economists Richard Thaler and Matthew Rabin point out that anyone who rejects a 50/50 gamble to win £10.10 or lose £10 — apparently a reasonable enough taste for caution — cannot possibly be doing so because of risk aversion. (The degree of risk aversion necessary would mean that the same individual wouldn’t risk £1,000 on the toss of a coin for all the money in the world.) Risk aversion simply cannot explain why anyone would turn down that fractionally favourable gamble. And it cannot explain why anyone would insure a mobile phone.
A better explanation is that we tend to view risks in isolation. Rather than telling ourselves “a lost mobile phone would lower my lifetime wealth by 0.005 per cent”, we tell ourselves “it would be so annoying to have to pay for a new mobile phone”. Isolating and obsessing about risks in this way is arbitrary and illogical. But that does not mean we don’t do it.
Tim Harford, “How insurers keep the money-pump flowing”, TimHarford.com, 2016-09-21.
August 4, 2018
Forgotten History: Vercors – the Climactic Battle of the French Resistance
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 31 Jul 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
The imposing heights of the Vercors Massif form a very impressive natural defensive position in the southeastern corner of France. It was here that the French Resistance had its largest set piece battle against German occupation forces, in the summer of 1944.
Plan Montagnards originally called for several thousand Allied paratroops to be dropped into Vercors when the landings in Normandy and Provence took place. The Provence landings were pushed back many weeks, however, and the Resistance forces streaming onto the plateau were left almost entirely on their own. One large airdrop of supplies and a single American OSS combat team were all the reinforcement they received.
French Maquisards repelled German probing attacks for about 6 weeks until in late July the final German offensive against the plateau came. It would see nearly 20,000 troops, units of tanks, glider-borne paratroops, and reserve mountain troops in a well coordinated assault that soundly defeated the lightly-armed resistance fighters.
Today we are on the plateau itself, and we will follow the battle across several specific sites, including the glider landings at Vassieux, the last stand of Section Chavant, the destroyed village of Valchevrière, and the hospital at Le Grotte de la Luire.
Want to see some original footage of these fighters taken in the weeks before the battle? It actually exists, and you can see it here: https://youtu.be/zoq7QREIgB8
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
Violence against women
Joanna Williams on the problem that well-established, well-paid, financially secure women — at least the professional feminists fitting those criteria — are having to work very hard to maintain their air of victimhood:
Being a feminist must be hard work. Perhaps you’ve got a newspaper column to fill with your hot take on the latest sexist outrage. Or perhaps you have a university sexual-harassment policy to write. Or a government minister to consult about a proposed new law. Or a hefty budget to administer. You’ve got the salary, a platform for your views, and the capacity to influence what happens in almost every institution in the country. And yet the entire basis for you being in this fortunate position, for walking the corridors of power, is your powerlessness. The bind for today’s professional feminist is the more power and influence she gains, the harder she needs to work to show that women are still oppressed.
[…]
As feminists increasingly take positions of power, tackling violence against women drives their agenda. The World Health Organisation tells us that violence against women ‘is a major public-health problem’. The United Nations tells us it is ‘a grave violation of human rights’. The British government describes violence ‘against women and girls’ as a serious crime that has ‘a huge impact on our economy, health services, and the criminal-justice system’.
Of course, violence against women and girls deserves to be taken seriously and perpetrators should be severely punished. But the lives of women in poverty-stricken and wartorn countries are very different to those of women in England. Likewise, adult women have far more agency and control over their lives than girls. Conflating the experiences of women all around the world, and of adult women with children, allows professional feminists to claim suffering by proxy.
At the same time, the definition of violence seems to broaden by the day. The internationally agreed definition of violence against women and girls is: ‘Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women [or girls], including threats of such acts.’ In the UK and the US, violence encompasses sexual harassment – which includes winking, whistling and looking at someone for too long. Amnesty International describes women’s experiences of ‘violence and abuse on Twitter’. In 2017, the organisers of a women’s strike against President Trump described ‘the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women’.
This is not violence as a physical act, but violence as metaphor. No wonder it is experienced everywhere. The World Health Organisation describes violence against women as an ‘epidemic’. We are told that over a third of girls have been sexually harassed at school and that more than a third of women have experienced sexual harassment at work. But then we also learn that two women are killed each week by a current or former partner. And here, immediately, is the problem with violence as metaphor. Real violence becomes relativised. When winking and nasty tweets are described as acts of violence, the word is no longer enough to describe acts of physical brutality and murder. Violence has become nothing more than a badge permitting membership of an inclusive feminist club, and this does little to support women who really are in need of help.
Rhodesia Made Their FALs Great With This One Weird Halbek Device!
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 14 Jul 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
The Halbek Device was a clamp-on muzzle brake designed by two Rhodesians, Douglas Hall and Marthinus Bekker. It was patented in Rhodesia in 1977 and in the US in 1980, and manufactured in small numbers for the Rhodesian military. I have seen these occasionally, and doubt they are actually very effective. But during a filming trip to South Africa I had a chance to actually try one on a select-fire R1 FAL, complete with high speed camera to find out for sure. So, let’s see what they really do…
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
QotD: Supply and demand
… that terribly simplistic stuff about supply and demand in those econ 101 classes is actually true. Prices are not some arbitrary numbers thrown at something by the capitalist neoliberals in order to do down the proletariat. They’re vital and essential information about who wants what and who is willing to produce what. Where the supply and demand curves meet is where the market will clear and the market price will be the market clearing price. The meaning of this is that when you decide to arbitrarily throw a price at something you’re going to up set that balance. And if you tell producers that the price will be lower than the market one then they will produce less. And as demand curves slope downwards so will consumers desire more at that lower price. Thus price fixing below the market price produces a shortage, a dearth.
This is not some optional feature, it’s an essential fact about our universe. It is the explanation for those food shortages that Venezuela has been having. More than that it’s the only explanation we need or desire. Fix prices below the market price and you will have shortages. Stop fixing prices and you will stop having shortages.
So, well done to Venezuela for giving in to reality there. And this is something that we need to take on board too. Rent controls which fix the price of housing below the market price will lead to a shortage of housing. And the opposite applies too – fix the price of labour above that market price with a minimum wage and you’ll have an excess supply of labour. Or, as we usually call that, an excess of unemployment.
The price of something simply is the price of something and don’t ever forget it.
Tim Worstall, “Congratulations To Bolivarian Socialism – Finally A Sensible Economic Policy In Venezuela”, Forbes, 2016-10-15.
