Navy Lookout
Published 31 Dec 2022The Type 26 frigates being built for the Royal Navy [and Royal Canadian and Royal Australian navies] are specialist submarine hunters but with a range of other capabilities. This video provides a primer on the overall warship design, its weapons, sensors and decoys.
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January 2, 2023
An in-depth look at the Type 26 frigate design
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January 1, 2023
Canadians Take Little Stalingrad – WW2 – 227 – December 31, 1943
World War Two
Published 31 Dec 20221943 reaches its end with no end in sight for the war. In Italy, the Canadians take Ortona after bloody close fighting, the US Marines advance on New Britain, and a new Soviet offensive makes huge gains in the USSR. This isn’t enough for the Allies, though, who have a big shake up in their European Command to help prepare for future attacks.
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November 27, 2022
The Costliest Day in US Marine History – WW2 – 222 – November 26, 1943
World War Two
Published 26 Nov 2022The Americans attack the Gilbert Islands this week, and though they successfully take Tarawa and Makin Atolls, it is VERY costly in lives, and show that the Japanese are not going to be defeated easily. They also have a naval battle in the Solomons. Fighting continues in the Soviet Union and Italy, and an Allied conference takes place in Cairo, a prelude for a major one in Teheran next week.
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October 31, 2022
Executed for Telling a Joke – October 30, 1943 – WAH 084
World War Two
Published 30 Oct 2022From a conference in Moscow the United Nations Alliance issues a warning to Nazi Germany about their atrocities, while those atrocities continue unabated.
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October 9, 2022
Could the Soviets Cut Off Crimea? – WW2 – 215 – October 8, 1943
World War Two
Published 8 Oct 2022The Germans booby-trapped Naples when they evacuated last week and local civilians now pay the price. In the Mediterranean, Kos falls to the Germans while Corsica is liberated by the French. There is action all along the Dnieper in the USSR, and the Australians advance in New Guinea, and the Japanese evacuate Vella Lavella in the Solomons.
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October 2, 2022
Smolensk and Naples Liberated! Both in ruins – WW2 – 214 – October 1, 1943
World War Two
Published 1 Oct 2022Major prizes are taken by the Allies this week on two fronts — Naples in Italy and Smolensk in the USSR, but they are advancing all over the Eastern Front, across the Italian peninsula, and in the South Seas, but the enemy is leaving a trail of destruction as he pulls back.
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September 25, 2022
Red Army Reaches the Dnieper – WW2 – 213 – September 24, 1943
World War Two
Published 24 Sep 2022Benito Mussolini proclaims a new fascist republic in Italy, but this time it is a full puppet state to Germany. There is scattered fighting around Italy and the Dodecanese — including a massacre of Italian POWs, but the big Allied advances this week are the Australians in New Guinea and the Soviets retaking their own territory. They take ground, in fact, from near Smolensk all the way south to the Sea of Azov.
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September 18, 2022
Jailbreak! Mussolini on the Loose Again! – WW2 – 212 – September 17, 1943
World War Two
Published 17 Sep 2022
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September 14, 2022
Marmite Dynamite Limited Edition — Tasting (Also Re-Tasting The Others, With A Spoon)
Atomic Shrimp
Published 20 Mar 2021More Marmite – I couldn’t get hold of a jar of this for the group tasting last week, but here it is now!
Here’s the previous video: https://youtu.be/MjrBTcnnK6c
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September 11, 2022
The Allies’ Latest Victory – WW2 – 211 – September 10, 1943
World War Two
Published 10 Sep 2022Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the secret armistice signed last week, and Italy is now officially out of the war. The Italian fleet sails for Malta and Allied captivity. The Allies have landed in force in Southern Italy and they do face some heavy opposition from German forces — who have no intention of giving up Italy. In the USSR, though, the Soviets continue liberating territory all over Ukraine as they force the Germans back to the Dnieper River.
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September 10, 2022
The Land Rover Defender Story
Big Car
Published 27 Dec 2019The Land Rover is Britain’s bullet-proof off-roader born out of Rover’s post-war desperation and became the indispensable go-anywhere vehicle. Like its famed bullet-proof ruggedness, Land Rover production kept going, and going, and going. But with a brief gap of 4 years, the Land Rover is still with us and looks like it’s not going away any time soon.
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August 6, 2022
Canada’s New Warship
Frontline Pros
Published 12 Feb 2022The Type 26 Frigate will become the first dedicated warship Canada has built in decades. Soon the Royal Canadian Navy will take ownership of 15 of these vessels, making them the largest owner of the Type 26 in the world.
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April 23, 2022
Spring 1917: Why the Allies Failed (WW1 Documentary)
The Great War
Published 22 Apr 2022Sign up for Curiosity Stream and get Nebula bundled in and SAVE 26%: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
The Allied 1917 Spring Offensive masterminded by French general Robert Nivelle was supposed to end the stalemate on the Western Front and bring a decisive breakthrough. But the German Army also knew they couldn’t win the war on the offensive and thus prepared a new type of defensive system: The Hindenburg Line.
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John Ozment, James Darcangelo, Jacob Carter Landt, Thomas Brendan, Kurt Gillies, Scott Deederly, John Belland, Adam Smith, Taylor Allen, Rustem Sharipov, Christoph Wolf, Simen Røste, Marcus Bondura, Ramon Rijkhoek, Theodore Patrick Shannon, Philip Schoffman, Avi Woolf,» SOURCES
Cook, Tim, “Storm Troops: Combat Effectiveness and the Canadian Corps in 1917” in Dennis, Jeffrey & Grey, Peter (eds), 1917: Tactics, Training and Technology: the 2007 Chief of Army’s Military History Conference, (Canberra: Australian History Military Publications, 2007)Coombes, David, Bloody Bullecourt, (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016)
Doughty, Robert T, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)
Doughty, Robert A, “How did France Weather the Troubles of 1917?” in Dennis, Jeffrey & Grey, Peter (eds), 1917: Tactics, Training and Technology: the 2007 Chief of Army’s Military History Conference, (Canberra: Australian History Military Publications, 2007)
Farr, Don, A Battle Too Far: Arras 1917, (Warwick: Helion & Company, 2018)
Foley, Robert T, “The Other Side of the Wire: The German Army in 1917” in Dennis, Jeffrey & Grey, Peter (eds), 1917: Tactics, Training and Technology: the 2007 Chief of Army’s Military History Conference, (Canberra: Australian History Military Publications, 2007)
Lupfer, Timothy T, “The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War” Leavenworth Papers, No. 4, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 1981)
Nicholls, Jonathan, Cheerful Sacrifice: The Battle of Arras 1917, (London: Leo Cooper, 1990)
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March 31, 2022
Canada’s F-35 procurement process — “Dysfunctional, but, like, a masterpiece of dysfunction.”
In The Line, Matt Gurney reveals the embarrassing secret of his life: he has “a favourite Canadian military procurement fiasco”. He’s quite right that there’s a distressingly wide variety of procurement cock-ups to choose from since the 1960s, but in his opinion the F-35 saga is the best:
“F-35 Lightning II completes Edwards testing” by MultiplyLeadership is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Having a favourite Canadian military procurement fiasco feels perverse, in a way. It’s like having a favourite gruesome sports injury. Procurement fiascos are bad. We want fewer of them. There’s nothing to be celebrated when yet another one barfs all over the national rug. And yet I find myself indulging a bizarre fondness for a mostly overlooked low point in our long, embarrassing journey to this week’s re-decision to buy a fleet of F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force. As bad as the low point was — and it was really bad — it also so perfectly summed up our utterly manifest dysfunction that I’ve come to almost admire it. It’s awful, but it’s a pure form of awful. Dysfunctional, but, like, a masterpiece of dysfunction. You couldn’t ask for a better example of what’s wrong with us.
[…]
That wasn’t the original plan; the Liberals first proposed buying 18 new F-18 SuperHornets, the more advanced American successor to the original F-18. That idea fell through due to a trade spat between Canadian darling Bombardier and Boeing, the SuperHornet manufacturer. This was the point of no return: the Boeing dispute was another opportunity for the Liberals to sigh, pop a few Tums and then just do the right thing and proceed with the full replacement as quickly as possible.
They did not. And this, dear readers, is where this embarrassing chapter of our already pathetic history of military procurement reached maximum absurdity.
With our CF-18 fleet at a state of exhaustion, and Boeing in Trudeau’s dog house, instead of actually replacing our old, exhausted jets with new jets, we just gave the air force enough old, exhausted Australian jets so that the RCAF could cobble enough workable jets and spare parts together to allow the Liberals to further delay any decision on a real replacement program.
When you write a lot about military procurement, as I certainly have, you can’t help but grow a bit (!) jaded and cynical. Even by the standards of my appallingly lowered expectations, though, this was an outrageous decision. As I said above, it’s so bad, so cynical, so crassly political, that it has perversely become something I almost admire, in a twisted way. It’s an almost too-brutal-to-be-believed example of politicians dodging accountability and leadership like Keanu bobbing and weaving out of the path of CGI bullets. Every dollar and hour of time we put into scooping up Australia’s leftover jets — they were unneeded because Australia was competent enough to procure more advanced SuperHornets and, ahem, F-35s — was money and time spent not to improve the readiness and capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces, but to permit the Liberals to avoid acknowledging they’d made a dumb campaign promise.
Stephen Harper failed the Canadian Armed Forces and Canada generally by not getting the ball rolling on a replacement during his majority term. This was a major failure by the Conservatives that they get all awkward and squirmy about when you bring up, but we should bring it up. The CPC botched this, badly, and should feel shame. Justin Trudeau then repeated that failure, and then took it up a level. In this race to the bottom, where no one looks good, Trudeau “wins” by simple virtue of snapping up used jets — the last of which only arrived last spring! — to buy his government time to do absolutely nothing.
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March 6, 2022
Another Naval Disaster for Japan – WW2 – 184 – March 5, 1943
World War Two
Published 5 Mar 2022The Japanese again fail to reinforce New Guinea, losing many transport ships, and their forces there are ever more isolated. In Tunisia the Axis lose a bunch of new Tiger tanks, but in the Soviet Union it is the Axis forces that are on the offensive as Erich von Manstein’s offensive continues.
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