Quotulatiousness

July 22, 2021

Type 1 Russian AK: The First Production Stamped AK (Updated)

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Jul 2018

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Updated to fix errors of nomenclature and production dates.

The AK was formally adopted in 1947, and went into production in 1948. In this very first form, it used a stamped receiver with front and rear trunnions riveted in place. Unfortunately, while the hand-fitted preproduction guns were quite excellent, the manufacturing processes and quality control left a lot to be desired. The stamped receiver was relatively thin (especially compared to previous stamped Russian small arms like the PPS-43), and was very susceptible to warping during heat treating and other parts of the manufacturing process. The guns that met QC requirements were every bit as good as expected, but the high number of rejects nullified much of the point of having those stamped parts in the first place.

For this reason, Type 1 AK production ended in 1951, and a milled receiver was developed to allow rifles to continue being made while the engineering and production team worked to improve the receiver design and the manufacturing processes around it.

It should be noted that the “AK-47” was the final prototype version of the gun, and the Type 1 was designated simply “AK” in official Soviet documentation.

Today, the first pattern AK47 is an extremely rare weapon, and I am grateful to the private collector who allowed me to video this one for you!

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QotD: Nelson

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Humour, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Napoleon ought never to be confused with Nelson, in spite of their hats being so alike; they can most easily be distinguished from one another by the fact that Nelson always stood with his arm like this, while Napoleon always stood with his arms like that.

Nelson was one of England’s most naval officers, and despised weak commands. At one battle when he was told that his Admiral-in-Chief had ordered him to cease fire, he put the telephone under his blind arm and exclaimed in disgust: “Kiss me, Hardy!”

By this and other intrepid manoeuvres the French were utterly driven from the seas.

W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.

July 21, 2021

The Abwehr: The Trojan Horse in Nazi Germany – WW2 – Spies & Ties 06

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 20 Jul 2021

The Abwehr was the German military intelligence agency during World War Two. At the same time, it was the home of some high-ranking anti-Nazi resistance members.
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Tank Chats #116 | Churchill III | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 15 Jan 2021

The Tank Museum’s Historian David Fletcher discusses the Second World War British Churchill Mark III. The Mark III was the first Churchill to receive the upgraded and more powerful 6 pounder gun. The Museum’s Mark III* also mentioned, is now an incredibly rare variant, and was converted from an AVRE and given the even more powerful 75mm gun.
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QotD: The expansion of the English vocabulary (through plundering French)

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Because French was at that time the international language of trade, it acted as a conduit, sometimes via Latin, for words from the markets of the East. Arabic words that it then gave to English include: “saffron” (safran), “mattress” (materas), “hazard” (hasard), “camphor” (camphre), “alchemy” (alquimie), “lute” (lut), “amber” (ambre), “syrup” (sirop). The word “checkmate” comes through the French “eschec mat” from the Arabic “Sh h m t“, meaning the king is dead. Again, as with virtue and as with hundreds of the words already mentioned, a word, at its simplest, is a window. In that case, English was perhaps as much threatened by light as by darkness, as much in danger of being blinded by these new revelations as buried under their weight.

Yet the best of English somehow managed to avoid both these fates. It retained its grammar, it held on to its basic words, it kept its nerve, but what it did most remarkably was to accept and absorb French as a layering, not as a replacement but as an enricher. It had begun to do that when Old English met Old Norse: hide/skin; craft/skill. Now it exercised all its powers before a far mightier opponent. The acceptance of the Norse had been limited in terms of vocabulary. Here English was Tom Thumb. But it worked in the same way.

So, a young English hare came to be named by the French word “leveret“, but “hare” was not displaced. Similarly with English “swan”, French “cygnet“. A small English “axe” is a French “hatchet“. “Axe” remained. There are hundreds of examples of this, of English as it were taking a punch but not giving ground.

More subtle distinctions were set in train. “Ask” – English – and “demand” – from French – were initially used for the same purpose but even in the Middle Ages their finer meanings might have differed and now, though close, we use them for markedly different purposes. “I ask you for ten pounds”; “I demand ten pounds”: two wholly different stories. But both words remained. So do “bit” and “morsel”, “wish” and “desire”, “room” and “chamber”. At the time the French might have expected to displace the English. It did not and perhaps the chief reason for that is that people saw the possibilities of increasing clarity of thought, accuracy of expression by refining meaning between two words supposed to be the same. On the surface some of these appear to be interchangeable and sometimes they are. But much more interesting are these fine differences, whose subtleties increase as time carries them first a hair’s breadth apart and then widens the gap, multiplies the distinctions: just as “ask” has evolved far away from “demand”.

Not only did they drift apart but something else happened which demonstrates how deeply not only history but class is buried in language. You can take an (English) “bit” of cheese and most people do. If you want to use a more elegant word you take a (French) “morsel” of cheese. It is undoubtedly thought to be a better class of word and yet “bit”, I think, might prove to have more stamina. You can “start” a meeting or you can “commence” a meeting. Again, “commence” carries a touch more cultural clout though “start” has the better sound and meaning to it for my ear. But it was the embrace which was the triumph, the coupling which was never quite one.

That’s the beauty of it. That was the sweet revenge which English took on French: it not only anglicised it, it used the invasion to increase its own strength; it looted the looters, plundered those who had plundered, out of weakness brought forth strength. For “answer” is not quite “respond”; now they have almost independent lives. “Liberty” isn’t always “freedom”. Shades of meaning, representing shades of thought, were massively absorbed into our language and our imagination at that time. It was new lamps and old; both. The extensive range of what I would call “almost synonyms” became one of the glories of the English language, giving it astonishing precision and flexibility, allowing its speakers and writers over the centuries to discover what seemed to be exactly the right word.

Rather than replace English, French was being brought into service to help enrich and equip it for the role it was on its way to reassuming.

Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English, as quoted by Brian Micklethwait, “Melvyn Bragg on England’s verbal twins”, Samizdata, 2018-12-23.

July 20, 2021

Kurt Westergaard, RIP

Filed under: Europe, Liberty, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Mark Steyn on the life and work of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard:

Kurt Westergaard and I were successive winners of the Danish Free Press Society’s Sappho Award. I was very flattered to find myself in his company, but couldn’t honestly say I deserved to be. Kurt was one of the bravest men of our time – not because he was inclined to bravery, but simply because, when it was required, he met the challenge and never backed down.

Sixteen years ago Flemming Rose of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided to conduct a thought experiment in public after an author casually revealed that he couldn’t find any Danish artist willing to illustrate his book about “the Prophet Mohammed” (as the BBC now routinely styles him). So Flemming called twelve cartoonists and invited them to depict the late Prophet. Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon was the memorable one, and the one you recall as the years roll by. It was a pithy visual jest: Mohammed’s turban as a bomb with a lit fuse. See picture at top right.

“I attempted to show that terrorists get their spiritual ammunition from parts of Islam, and with this spiritual ammunition, and with dynamite and other explosives, they kill people,” Kurt told my old newspaper The National Post a few years back. “I showed this in a cartoon and what happened? They want to kill me, so I think I was right.”

An otherwise courtly, cultured Dane, Kurt Westergaard had a somewhat arresting dress code, preferring le rouge et le noir, the colors of anarchists, although, as a practical matter, it’s hard for a man of advanced years to carry off red trousers, whatever his motivation. He would qualify his pantaloons by explaining that he was not a political anarchist but a cultural one. Still, one can gather from the garb alone that Westergaard was no “right-winger”. Like most of the men and women I have shared a stage with in Europe this century, he was an old Sixties radical sufficiently principled to think the same kind of jokes he’d applied to church, monarchy, parliament and every other societal institution should also be applied to Islam. He never wanted to be a “free speech hero”, but gamely bore the burthen once it had been dropped on him. He certainly never wanted to be world-famous, albeit more so in Mogadishu than Manhattan and Lahore than Los Angeles. It cost him a comfortable retirement, weakened his health, and an ever more craven culture denied him the consolations of monetary exploitation. When I expressed sympathy, he laughed and said he’d do the same cartoon all over again even knowing what he was in for.

The blood lust began with a trio of imams on the make shopping the twelve cartoons (plus three cruder fakes) round the Muslim world, and leaving it to the usual Islamonutters to take it from there: In nothing flat, over two hundred people were dead – which meant that CNN & Co were obliged to cover the story. They did so by modifying Westergaard’s cartoon, with Mohammed’s face pixilated, as if he’d entered the witness protection programme. If only. In reality, it was that dwindling band of people who believe in free speech – and, indeed, free speech itself – that found itself in the witness protection programme.

An unlikely survivor in India, His Highness the Prince of Arcot

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, India — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ned Donovan explains why there is still a Prince of Arcot, despite the Indian government having abolished all the titles and privileges of the nearly 600 “Maharajas, Maharanas, Rajas, Nawabs, Khans and so on” of the Princely states that were incorporated into modern India after Partition in 1947:

A significant amount of effort was taken during the process of independence to integrate these princely states into the newly independent countries. Almost all of the rulers acceded quickly and peacefully in return for recognition of their symbolic status and titles by the new republics who also promised perpetual large annual payments to sweeten the deal. A handful of princely states were stubborn and were integrated by force, with issues as a result to this day, such as Jammu and Kashmir.

As a result, for the first few decades of independent India, there existed a class of royals recognised within the republic, with privileges and financial support not that different to what they received during the period of British rule. But in 1971 this came tumbling down.

The then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi amended the Indian Constitution to abolish all privileges and titles, along with any financial subsidies. She believed the whole system to be at odds with the secular socialist republic she was attempting to perfect. The move also had financial benefits: the large princely subsidies stopped being a drain on the Indian treasury while much of the royals’ gold and property were seized by the Government in the process. In 1972, Pakistan followed suit and similarly abolished its remaining princes’ titles.

But the title “Prince of Arcot” somehow escaped to carry on to the modern day … thanks to an unusual historical situation and the presentation of letters patent from Queen Victoria:

In 1855, the 13th Nawab of Arcot died without children. The British, influenced by the East India Company, declared the kingdom had lapsed as a result and annexed it entirely. As a token compensation, Queen Victoria in 1870 gave the last Nawab’s uncle a pension and the title of “His Highness the Prince of Arcot” for him and his descendants in perpetuity. This was granted in a type of royal charter, known as letters patent.

As there was no land still to rule, the Princes of Arcot existed in a strange realm of being kings without a kingdom but with significant influence and prestige. The title continued to pass down through the original holder’s family and they built a large palace, Amir Mahal, in Madras that became a centre of culture instead of one of government.

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

QotD: Lenin’s “Hanging Order”

Filed under: History, Quotations, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Lenin is the same cold-blooded thug who famously wrote, “We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth[.] … We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”

Elsewhere, Lenin declared that “The proletariat needs state power, the centralized organization of force, the organization of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance … and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population … in the work of organizing a socialist economy.”

In August 1918, Lenin sent his now famous “Hanging Order” telegram. It instructed local Bolsheviks in the Penza region to deal harshly with the farmers (kulaks) who owned land there and were standing in the way of its nationalization. The British historian Robert Service discovered it in Soviet archives in the 1990s. It read as follows:

    Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because ‘the last decisive battle’ with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be made.

    1. Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, fatcats, bloodsuckers.
    2. Publish their names.
    3. Seize all grain from them.
    4. Designate hostages, in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.

    Do it in such a fashion, that for hundreds of miles around the people see, tremble, know, shout: “The bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled and will be strangled.”

    Telegraph receipt and implementation.

    Yours, Lenin.

    P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

That chilling telegram ushered in the “Red Terror” which murdered Russians by the tens of thousands over the next two years.

Lawrence W. Reed, “How Germany’s ‘Deal With the Devil’ Backfired and Changed History”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2021-04-16.

July 19, 2021

George Orwell: The Uncompromising Visionary

Filed under: Asia, Books, Britain, History, India, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Biographics
Published 29 Nov 2019

This video is #sponsored by NordVPN.

Credits:
Host – Simon Whistler
Author – Morris M
Producer – Jennifer Da Silva
Executive Producer – Shell Harris

Business inquiries to biographics.email@gmail.com

Source/Further reading:

Britannica’s Orwell Bio: https://www.britannica.com/biography/…
Excellent, very informative ONDB biography (paywall for non-UK users. UK users need only enter library card number to access): https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.109…
Spanish civil war: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten…
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h…
Orwell’s mistakes on the Spanish Civil War: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201…
Orwell at the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainmen…

Luxembourg FN49 Semiauto Sniper Rifle

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Jan 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons​

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After World War Two, Luxembourg was one of the nations which opted to purchase new FN-49 rifles. It bought a total of 6,203 of them for the military — an initial purchase of 4,000 semiauto SAFN rifles and a followup purchase of 2,000 AFN select-fire rifles and 203 semiauto rifles fitted with Belgian OIP telescopic sights. The scope mounts were commercial Echo mounts, designed and manufactured by an American engineer named Herkner, in Boise Idaho.

When Luxembourg replaced its FN49 rifles with the newer FN FAL type, the snipers were either scrapped or sold as surplus, but the scopes were kept and reused on FALs. However, the Luxembourg rifles used the same pattern OIP scopes as the Belgian military, and these are often found mounted to surviving Luxembourg rifles.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

July 18, 2021

Stalingrad Now a Primary Objective?! – Hitler’s Chaotic Directives – WW2 – 151 – July 17, 1942

Filed under: Africa, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 17 Jul 2021

The second phase of Fall Blau begins with second guessing by the Axis Powers and constant changes in directive. The Soviet Union’s response to the successes of the first phase of Fall Blau is equally chaotic. Over in North Africa there is the question of it maybe ending in stalemate.
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QotD: Rules of wars in the Eighteenth Century

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Although the Succession of Wars went on nearly the whole time in the eighteenth century, the countries kept on making a treaty called the Treaty of Paris (or Utrecht).

This Treaty was a Good Thing and laid down the Rules for fighting the wars; these were:

(1) that there should be a mutual restitution of conquests except that England should keep Gibraltar, Malta, Minorca, Canada, India, etc.;

(2) that France should hand over to England the West Indian islands of San Flamingo, Tapioca, Sago, Dago, Bezique and Contango, while the Dutch were always to have Lumbago and the Laxative Islands;

(3) that everyone, however Infantile or even insane, should renounce all claim to the Spanish throne;

(4) that the King (or Queen) of France should admit that the King (or Queen) of England was King (or Queen) of England and should not harbour the Young Pretender, but that the fortifications of Dunkirk should be disgruntled and raised to the ground.

Thus, as soon as the fortifications of Dunkirk had been gruntled again, or the Young Pretender was found in a harbour in France, or it was discovered that the Dutch had not got Lumbago, etc., the countries knew that it was time for the treaty to be signed again, so that the War could continue in an orderly manner.

W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.

July 17, 2021

Mers-el-Kebir – Tragedy on a Grand Scale

Filed under: Africa, Britain, France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Drachinifel
Published 30 Oct 2019

Today we look at the facts and thinking behind the attack on Mers-el-Kebir, with my own take on roles and responsibilities.

Comments and Discussion welcome.

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The Great Western Railway before nationalization (and back again)

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Jonathan Glancey sings the praises of the steam locomotive designs and liveries of the pre-nationalization Great Western Railway:

The greatest of all Great Western Railway locomotives were the King Class 4-6-0s. From 1927, and for more than 30 years, they headed principal express trains from Paddington to Bristol, Plymouth, South Wales and the West Midlands with power, precision and truly regal style.

In a livery of lined dark green with copper-capped chimneys, brass safety valve covers, and names emblazoned above their driving wheels, the Kings led long chocolate and cream-coloured trains through landscapes they enhanced in days of both private and public ownership. Together with their less powerful shed-mates — Castles, Halls, Granges and Manors — these puissant machines breathed “Great Western” with every beat of their crisp exhausts.

In the beginning, the Kings were to have been Cathedrals, an appropriate name for locomotives representing a concern that, incorporated in 1835 and engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was revered by many employees, passengers and most enthusiasts as something more akin to a religion than a mere railway. Its engineering was progressive, and yet its corporate identity (what today’s marketing jargoneers would call its “brand”) retained a gloriously ecclesiastical and slightly old-fashioned air throughout the railway’s life.

Sir William Stanier, a Great Western engineer who moved from Swindon to the LMS at Crewe and then to the chairmanship of Power Jets in the Second World War, was asked by Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis, a writer on railways, “whether there was some nameless cabal at Swindon which ruled the styling of a Great Western locomotive” from the latest 1940s designs back through the Edwardian Saints and Stars to engines of the 1880s designed by William Dean. Stanier smiled and exclaimed: “Dean? Gooch! [the GWR’s first locomotive engineer]. It was traditional.”

The tradition lives on. In 2015, today’s Great Western Railway — an operation owned by the multi-national FirstGroup — adopted a handsome dark green livery, created by the design agency Pentagram, that reaches back to the Kings and, by association, all the way to Gooch and Brunel.

The new look was sung as if from the Great Western’s “Ancient and Modern” hymn book of design. In a privatised railway world of largely gimcrack style and branding, with all too many trains looking as if their design inspiration has been that of sports shoes or the packaging of sweets such as Refreshers, the Great Western re-introduced gravitas, continuity and regional sensibility to the way its trains looked.

This is something those in charge of the newly announced Great British Railways (GBR) should think about carefully as this new public body takes over the national railway infrastructure in 2023, its remit including corporate identity. While its name is, perhaps, rather too close to Little Britain’s Great British Air, the possibility of it exercising a civilising influence over the design of our trains is there. A national design standard and identity could yet be created that speak of the unity of the British railway network and its diversity in the same breath.

Look at Life – The Last Battleship – HMS Vanguard (1962)

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

capspread
Published 29 Nov 2020

#LookatLife​ #HMSVanguard​ #RoyalNavy​ #Shipping​ #Battleship​

The life and death of HMS Vanguard, and the uses to which her steel will be put.

Another Look at Life Documentary from Volume 2 – Military – The Last Battleship – HMS Vanguard made in 1962.

HMS Vanguard was a British fast battleship built during the Second World War & commissioned afterwards. She was the biggest and fastest of the Royal Navy’s battleships, the only ship of her class, and the last battleship to be built. Work on Vanguard was started and stopped several times during the war and her design was revised several times during her construction to reflect war experience. These stoppages and changes prevented her from being completed before the end of the war.

Vanguard‘s first task after completing her sea trial at the end of 1946 was, early the next year, to convey King George VI & his family on the first Royal Tour of South Africa by a reigning monarch. While refitting after her return, she was selected for another Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1948. This was cancelled due to King George’s declining health & Vanguard briefly became flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet in early 1949. After her return home in mid-1949, she became flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron. Throughout her career, the battleship usually served as the flagship of any unit to which she was assigned. During the early 1950s, Vanguard was involved in a number of training exercises with NATO forces. In 1953 she participated in Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation Review. While she was refitting in 1955, the Admiralty announced that the ship was going to be put into reserve upon completion of the work. Vanguard was sold for scrap and was broken up beginning in 1960.

Vanguard had an overall length of 814 feet 4 inches (248.2 m), a beam of 107 feet 6 inches (32.8 m) & a draught of 36 feet (11 m) at deep load. She displaced 44,500 long tons (45,200 t) at standard load and 51,420 long tons (52,250 t) at deep load. The ship was significantly larger than her predecessors of the class, almost 50 feet (15.2 m) longer & displaced about 6,000 long tons (6,100 t) more than the older ships at deep load. Vanguard was overweight by some 2,200 long tons (2,200 t), which magnified the difference. The ship had a complete double bottom 5 feet (1.5 m) deep & she was divided into 27 main compartments by watertight bulkheads.

The King George V-class ships had been built with almost no sheer to the main deck forwards to allow ‘A’ turret to fire straight forward at zero elevation, resulting in those ships being wet forward. Vanguard was redesigned as a result of this experience, significant sheer & flare being added to the bow. The ship was well regarded as seaworthy, able to keep an even keel in rough seas. At full load, Vanguard had a metacentric height of 8.2 feet (2.5 m).

As a fleet flagship, her complement was 115 officers and 1,860 men in 1947. Air conditioning was provided for many of the ship’s control spaces, & asbestos insulation was provided on exposed areas of the ship’s sides, decks and bulkheads. Steam heating was provided for her armament, instruments, look-out positions & other equipment to make Vanguard suitable for operations in the Arctic. An Action Information Centre was fitted below the main armour deck with facilities to track aircraft & ships around Vanguard.

Vanguard was laid down on 2 October 1941 by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. After the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December, the ship was given an A1 priority in the hope of finishing her by the end of 1944, and construction of the light cruiser HMS Bellerophon, as well as some merchant shipping, was halted to expedite the ship’s completion. This was unsuccessful, however, due to a shortage of skilled labour. As a result, it was not until 30 November 1944 that the ship was launched. Princess Elizabeth presided over this ceremony, the first ship she ever launched, and was presented with a diamond rose brooch to commemorate the event.

The end of hostilities following Japan’s surrender reduced the need for new warships, and consequently the ship was not commissioned until 12 May 1946. By this time, a total of £11,530,503, including £3,186,868 for the modernisation of the main armament, had been spent on producing Vanguard.

On 9 October 1959 the Admiralty announced that Vanguard would be scrapped, as she was considered obsolete and too expensive to maintain. She was decommissioned on 7 June 1960 & sold to BISCO for £560,000. On 4 August 1960, the ship was towed from Portsmouth to the breaker’s yard at Faslane, Scotland. As Vanguard was being towed towards the harbour entrance, she slewed across the harbour and ran aground near the Still & West pub. She was pulled off by five tugboats an hour later, and made her final exit from Portsmouth. Five days later she arrived at Faslane, and by mid-1962 the demolition process was complete.

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