History, Politics And Current Affairs

Borderlands Part 1: The Falklands It was good to be back. Major Mike Norman stepped off the stair of the RAF Belfast. The breeze was bracing, yet warmer than he had become accustomed to in his last deployment to the islands, even considering that spring was still a month away. That wasn't the only ...

US Armaments Production Infrastructure 1975/76 Artillery, Tank and Armoured Fighting Vehicle Shells Shell Manufacturing Plants Scranton AAP: 375,000 x 155mm shells per month Milan TN AAP: 375,000 x 155mm shells per month Mississippi AAP: 250,000 x 155mm shells per month Iowa AAP: 250,000 x 155mm sh...

Looking ahead to March 1976: - French wine riots (zut alors!) and their own nuclear power plans - Nadia Comaneci achieves something pretty big in a U.S. competition - Refurbishment of the Maunsell Forts in the Thames Estuary - The British budget comes out in an election year, with some different spe...

February 1976 Notes - Not only is there no swine flu issue, but the universal influenza vaccine is a gamechanger for winters to come - The French Somaliland bus hijacking has an even swifter end, what with British Somaliland lying next door vs Somalia, and non lethal means of resolving hostage situ...

January 1976 Notes - The Italian Scallion/The Kentucky Fried Idiot triumphs in his first fight against Apollo Creed, partly to avoid stretching out the event chain too far, and partly due to the view that Rocky and Rocky II are in many ways the same big picture, just split into two. Naturally, Cree...

February 1976 February 1: The CDC indicates that the period of concern over the so-called ‘swine flu’ had passed, with the current and projected rates of administration of the the universal influenza vaccine across the USA leading to effective herd immunity by next winter. Subsequent health records...

A little preview of February: February 7: Rutland Water, the largest artificial lake in Britain, is officially declared open, completing a five year process of construction and flooding. It serves as a reservoir for both domestic consumption and industrial purposes for the booming East Midlands, and...

Thank you! It is also a hobby horse of mine as well. For a relatively small part of the overall cost of a new ship, allowing for future growth does make for a very reasonable expense. The newest German DDG designs of the mid 1970s have grown incrementally in that sense to ~ 8600t, and they are being...

BBGN, to be precise. ;) The 1960/61 Deutsches Marine had CV: Kaiser Wilhelm IV, Friedrich der Grosse BB: Deutschland, Preussen, Bayern, Sachsen CA: Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Koln, Leipzig, Munich, Hamburg, Nurnburg, Dusseldorf DDG: Seydlitz, Moltke, Blucher, Yorck DD: Werner von Urslingen, Herma...

All of the Colt 25mm and the GD Mk 25 50mm are unmanned mounts, but there is a continued emphasis on defensive firepower, even as the main defensive weapons of said ships are their missiles.

Precision works well for the strategic and tactical exigencies of our world, but there are others, such as DE.

I see someone picked up on that. The boxy turrets do ‘transform’, but not in a ‘robot toys for little boys’ sense. It does utilise some technology from the Japanese transformer projects, but that will be revealed in due course, apart from first noticeablr fact that the mount comes out of its armoure...

I don’t think so; the size difference is quite marked, without the curious length of ‘840-880ft’, and the reason for continued small gun armament does come from the different world.

Coming up in February: - Sal Mineo fights off a mugger - Domestication of the zebra - Opening of the next fusion power plant in Britain at Springfields, joining Darkmoor, Windscale, Blyth and Brough-on-Humber - An earthquake in Guatemala - The swine flu fizzles and the last known flu deaths in USA o...

One way or another, every month is busy. Some events are more significant than others, and they don't represent the sum total of everything that was going on in the world on an individual day, and I don't think for a second that Test cricket results, ski resorts and He-Man are on a par with possible...

January 1976 January 1: World heavyweight champion Apollo Creed and rank underdog Philadelphia club fighter Robert 'Rocky' Balboa, 'The Italian Stallion', (his new and hastily concocted appellation being the work of the fight's promotion team, after trying and rejecting his previous suggestions of ...

I had to look that up, and can confidently say…that series is well after my time.

Spoiler alert: A grieving mother and father whose son succumbed to football related injuries got in touch with a rather powerful and twisted wizard who had his own axe to grind against everyday American society in general. He had previously been approached by some soccer executives in a different ca...

Susan doesn’t exist; the Moore version of Britain is very, very, very far away from that of DE. The role of Norsefire is to highlight how the less ridiculous part of the far right (comparatively less ridiculous, that is) simply does not exist. No British Movement or other Neo Nazis, no National Fron...

As mentioned in the broader sporting notes directly above, it isn’t just the Cowboys. After this, things are rapidly approaching their last straw.

A wee preview from January 1976: January 1: A Middle Eastern Airways Super Comet flying from Beirut to Muscat is stricken by an explosion after landing in Oman, with a bomb apparently being planted in luggage loaded in the cargo bay. Fortuitously, the passengers and most of the crew had already dise...