History, Politics And Current Affairs

I was in Leeds over the weekend for the Great War Group conference. We were very graciously hosted by the Royal Armouries Leeds . It's a fantastic museum with some truly amazing exhibits, from the prototype Maxim MG, to what is probably the only complete set of armour for an Indian Elephant. Althou...

Yes. Looking at the photograph more closely, I think we can get considerably nearer to an actual operating procedure. There is one important qualification: I have not found GE’s original instruction sheet for this exact face, so I don’t want to invent a factory-prescribed sequence such as “move tab ...

Yes. I’ve now looked at it as an actual analogue computer rather than just a curiosity, and the layout makes much more sense once you treat the colours as three separate calculation paths. The circular device appears to be GE’s Model 188 Electronic Countermeasures Calculator, made as a Perrygraf sli...

I did. This is what it came up with. Yes. The circular one is a purpose-built analogue radar/ECM slide rule, and the equations printed on its face tell us quite a lot about exactly what it was intended to do. It is not an electronic calculator at all: it is a set of concentric logarithmic scales and...

Throw it into AI and you will probably get a printable template with instructions

I don't think this works very well. Unlike planes, the design compromises are so varied that reducing the ship to one set of numbers is essentially arbitrary. For example, a ship for the Mediterranean will be very different than one for the North Sea, and both will be different than a ship for Paci...

That’s why I suggest some test cases, especially where we know one design was favored over the other by the navy in question. A good example is the standard RN ships of the line: 1706 Establishment 1719 Establishment 1733 revision of 1719 1741 revision of 1719 1745 Establishment The Slade Era The H...

It's a nice read. It'd be better if the tables were actually tables instead of rows of numbers. There are a couple of issues I can see. First, it presupposes that the Royal Navy operational model is best. That is, long voyages in all weather which prioritizes endurance, seamanship, and durability. ...

It's a nice read. It'd be better if the tables were actually tables instead of rows of numbers. There are a couple of issues I can see. First, it presupposes that the Royal Navy operational model is best. That is, long voyages in all weather which prioritizes endurance, seamanship, and durability. ...

You have the factor that RN Captains and commanders often displayed 'Honey Badger' degrees of near-suicidal aggression. Yes, RN famously court-martialled then hung a senior commander who'd failed at an utterly impossible task, as the French guy wryly observed, 'To Encourage The Others', but knowing...

TEN TO ONE: THE ROYAL NAVY’S SYSTEM OF VICTORY Sea power, operational performance, captured French warships, and the material test of rival naval systems, 1793–1815 Between 1793 and 1815 Britain fought a maritime war of unprecedented scale. This study asks how the Royal Navy performed against the ot...

Now Villeneuve’s flagship in the Combined Fleet, the 80 gun Bucentaure: Bucentaure, 1805 * Long-gun firepower: 44.55 * Short-gun firepower: 4.66 * Structural density: 14.17 * Sustainable crew: 25.80 * Combat-core subtotal: 89.18 * Two-deck adjustment: ×1.25 * Adjusted combat core: 111.47 * Sailing p...

Let’s start with the biggest of them all, the First Rate 140, the Spanish Santissima Trinidad. Santísima Trinidad, 1805 * Long-gun firepower: 50.64 * Short-gun firepower: 8.12 * Structural density: 13.82 * Sustainable crew: 32.13 * Combat-core subtotal: 104.71 * Three-deck adjustment: ×1.50 * Adjust...

You may remember that Stuart started this off on the old new board. I have attempted to recreate it. The scoring factors are: Combat power * Long-gun broadside weight, converted into British pounds. * Short-gun broadside weight from carronades, obusiers and similar weapons. * Structural density: est...

I haven’t had this question pop up here yet.

I saw this earlier… https://youtu.be/FFjm6z2PouI?si=1AwbkpsXt432Ni0w And had to come and check. Still no TLS update… Craig, Point taken. ;) And an aside - Marvel's Star Trek went in a different direction than Paramount - Kirk gets away but runs into....Mirror Enterprise , here to do recon before a ...

I saw this earlier…

https://youtu.be/FFjm6z2PouI?si=1AwbkpsXt432Ni0w

And had to come and check. Still no TLS update…

Tuesday saw 32.3 Celsius and then yesterday hit 33.8. Today has been considerably hotter. I've seen utterly nutty figures from a weather station near Kettering of over 39 Celsius! Given the surrounding weather station values I'm skeptical of that figure. Nevertheless I think over 36 Celsius is cert...

Royal Mail Ltd is all about parcel delivery these days. They just don’t care about letter post!