TimeGhost History
Published 23 Apr 2025In 1948, Stalin blockades West Berlin, isolating over two million people without food, fuel, or supplies. Refusing to surrender the city, Western powers launch the Berlin Airlift, history’s largest aerial supply mission, to deliver food, coal, and even candy. As tensions soar, planes defy Soviet threats around the clock — can the Allies really sustain a city from the sky?
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April 24, 2025
Berlin Airlift: From Bombs to Candy – W2W 23 – 1948 Q3
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April 7, 2025
Dambusters Part 1 – The Battle of the Ruhr
HardThrasher
Published 5 Apr 2025The background to the Dams raid; how it came into being and how it fitted into the assault on Nazi Germany. In which we discuss Banes Wallis, Arthur Harris and a man called Winterbotham.
THESE LINKS ARE ONLY FOR THE SERIOUSLY SEXY
Merch! – https://hardthrasher-shop.fourthwall.com
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/LordHardThrasherBibliography
James Holland – Dambusters: the Races to Smash the Dams 1943
Max Hastings – Chastise – The Dambusters Story
Alan Cooper – The Battle of the Ruhr
Adam Tooze – The Wages of Destruction
Martin Millbrook and Chris Everett – The Bomber Command War Diaries
Edward Westerman – Flak German Anti Aircraft Defences [sic] 1914-1945
Tami Davis Biddle – Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare
Donald A Miller – Masters of the Air
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April 3, 2025
English Electric Lightning – the F-22 of 1958
HardThrasher
Published 14 Jul 2023In which we explore one of the more bonkers aircraft of the Cold War and all the reasons it made no sense whatsoever whilst being awesome in practically every way.
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March 2, 2025
Which is better – Spitfire or Bf 109? – Battle of Britain Fireside Chat
World War Two
Published 1 Mar 2025Indy and Sparty answer questions about the Battle of Britain! Spitfire vs Bf 109, the Big Wing Debate, and whether Goering had any kind of plan for the battle.
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February 24, 2025
“Camouflage” – and a History of Military Deception – Sabaton History 129 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 22 Oct 2024Today’s episode is about a song that is not a Sabaton original, but a cover they did of Stan Ridgway’s “Camouflage” from 1986. The story itself is easy enough to understand if you follow the lyrics, but it inspired us to do an episode not about the song, but about camouflage itself; its history, how it works, how it’s supposed to work, and even its limitations.
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February 10, 2025
The Swordfish Strike! – The Bismarck Part 3
World War Two
Published 9 Feb 2025Reeling from the loss of HMS Hood, the Royal Navy chases Bismarck across the Atlantic Ocean. Battleships and search planes comb the vast expanses of water. Finally, they spot the German behemoth. It’s time to unleash the Swordfish!
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January 22, 2025
Discover the ‘Lost’ Big Dipper Rum Cocktail Recipe
Glen And Friends Cooking
Published 2 Oct 2024Today on Cocktails After Dark we explore the fascinating history of Gander Airport’s iconic Big Dipper bar, once a bustling stopover for the world’s rich and famous during the 1940s to 1960s. This video dives into the golden age of aviation when propeller planes made Gander, Newfoundland, a key refuelling point for transatlantic flights. Discover how legends like Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, and Frank Sinatra sipped cocktails at the Big Dipper while planes refuelled, and learn how to make the bar’s signature cocktail using the infamous Newfoundland Screech rum. If you’ve ever been curious about Gander’s aviation history, old-time airport bars, or unique cocktails, this video has it all. Plus, find out how “Screech” became a part of Newfoundland’s folklore. Whether you’re a history buff, cocktail enthusiast, or simply curious about this legendary airport, you won’t want to miss this journey back in time. Grab your shaker, some rum, and let’s make history — one drink at a time!
The Big Dipper
1½ ounces Newfoundland Screech
1 ounce Cointreau
¾ ounce lemon juice
1 teaspoon simple syrup
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January 15, 2025
QotD: Innovations hiding in plain sight
This sentence, from the Wall Street Journal, strikes me as being profoundly wrong:
Today, another half-century later, a coast-to-coast flight still takes you as long as it took your father in the 1970s. And with the major exception of computers, nothing in your luggage is likely to be much more useful or valuable than dad’s equivalent.
It may well be the case that aeroplanes fly at the same speeds that they did in the 1970s. I don’t know for sure, but my understanding is that supersonic speeds were banned due to noise factors. No doubt someone in the thread will clear that up. Let’s also concede the point about “major exception of computers” – like wow, let’s ignore the single greatest area of human innovation in the past 20 years.
Okay – the material your luggage is made out of is very strong and very light weight compared to luggage in the 1970s. Your luggage will have wheels on it now. Luggage with wheels would have been a luxury item in the 1970s. The entertainment on the flight will be much better than what it was in the 1970s. Remember the single movie in the cabin? That was a feature of flying until the late 1990s. I reckon the food the would be better too, today. Hard to believe, but yes.
Then what about the computers? Paper tickets? Movies on demand on your own device? Books loaded on your own device?
So while it may be true that the experience of flying is very similar – hurry up and wait, fly through the air, and arrive at a destination faster than all alternatives. But many, many aspects of the experience are very different and much improved. Cheaper too.
When thinking of innovation, it’s not just gadgets and new-fangled things that we should think about – it’s improved business models and improvements in pre-existing gadgets that we should think about too.
Sinclair Davidson, “Has innovation stalled?”, Catallaxy Files, 2019-12-14.
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January 2, 2025
Why Germany Lost the Battle of Britain
Real Time History
Published 2 Aug 2024Summer 1940. The United Kingdom is gripped by the fear of a German invasion. Even if the Luftwaffe secures the sky over Britain, could Germany’s Operation Sea Lion ever really work?
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December 9, 2024
QotD: The downfall of Boeing
There’s a lot to love about an engineer-dominated corporate culture. For starters, it has a tendency to overengineer things, and when those things are metal coffins with hundreds of thousands of interacting components, filled with people and screaming through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, maybe overengineering isn’t so bad. These cultures also tend to be pretty innovative, and sure enough Boeing invented the modern jet airliner and then revolutionized it several times.
But there are also downsides. As any Googler will tell you, these companies usually have a lot of fat to trim. Some of what looks like economic inefficiency is actually vital seed corn for the innovations of the future, but some of it is also just inefficiency, because nobody looks at the books, because it isn’t that kind of company. Likewise, being highly deliberative about everything can lead to some really smart decision making and avoidance of group think, but it can also be a cover for laziness or for an odium theologicum that ensures nothing ever gets done. Smart managers steeped in this sort of culture can usually do a decent job of sorting the good from the bad, but only if they can last, because you see there’s a third problem, which is that almost everybody involved is a quokka.
Engineers, being a subspecies of nerds, are bad at politics. In 1996, Boeing did something very stupid and acquired a company that was good at politics. McDonnell Douglas, another airplane maker, wasn’t the best at making airplanes, but was very good at lobbying congress and at impressing Wall Street analysts. Boeing took over the company, but pretty much everybody agrees that when the dust had settled it was actually McDonnell Douglas that had taken over Boeing. One senior Boeing leader lamented that the McDonnell Douglas executives were like “hunter killer assassins”. No, sorry bro, I don’t think they were actually that scary, you were just a quokka.
Anyway, the hunter killer assassins ran amok: purging rivals, selling off assets, pushing through stock buybacks, and outsourcing or subcontracting everything that wasn’t nailed down. They had a fanaticism for capital efficiency that rose to the level of a monomania,1 which maybe wasn’t the best fit for an airplane manufacturer. And slowly but surely, everything went off the rails. Innovation stopped, the culture withered, and eventually planes started falling out of the sky. And now the big question, the question Robison just can’t figure out. Why?
John Psmith, “REVIEW: Flying Blind by Peter Robison”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-02-06.
1. This is how you know this story took place in an era of high interest rates!
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December 3, 2024
Evolution of Airborne Armour
The Tank Museum
Published Jul 19, 2024Lightly armed airborne troops are at a huge disadvantage when faced with regular troops with heavy weapons and armour. In World War II this led to huge losses for paratroops on Crete and at Arnhem. Since then, many attempts have been made to level the playing field, to give airborne soldiers a fighting chance.
From the Hamilcar gliders of World War II to the C17 Globemaster, we look at how to make a tank fly.
00:00 | Intro
00:47 | The Origins of Airbourne Operations
02:34 | Gliders
07:20 | A Tank Light Enough to Fly?
09:02 | Success & Failure
14:24 | Post-War Solutions
17:41 | Better Aircraft – Better Tanks?
20:15 | Strategic Deployment
21:39 | ConclusionThis video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé. This video features imagery courtesy of http://www.hamilcar.co.uk/
#tankmuseum
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November 26, 2024
The ghost airport of Nicosia: Rare glimpse inside the abandoned 1974 battleground
Forces News
Published Jul 20, 2024Nicosia International Airport was once a busy hub full of holidaymakers but since the Cyprus conflict of 1974, it has been frozen in time.
Today, the disused airport resembles a ghost town as it sits abandoned in the 180km buffer zone dividing the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish-occupied north.
On the 50th anniversary of the conflict, Forces News goes inside the eerie airport and learns how it became the site of a major battle.
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November 10, 2024
WW2 in Numbers
World War Two
Published 9 Nov 2024World War II wasn’t just the deadliest conflict in history — it was a war of unprecedented scale. From staggering casualty numbers to military production and economic costs, this episode breaks down the biggest statistics that defined the global conflict.
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November 2, 2024
The Short SA.4 Sperrin; Britain’s Back-Up, Back-up Nuclear Bomber
Ed Nash’s Military Matters
Published Jul 9, 2024No, I have no idea how you pronounce “Gyron”.
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October 6, 2024
Look at Life – The Big Takeoff (1966)
Classic Vehicle Channel
Published Apr 19, 2020The 1966 airshow. Prince Phillip attends via helicopter.
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