Our Wonderful Armed Forces
I've just come back from a very nice weekend away in Dorset, in where the excellence of the walks was enhanced not only by the addition of tea shops and pubs every mile, but also by a decent leavening of second-hand book shops :-)
I suspect that LadyofAstolat and I may not have been taken seriously as Walkers, what with our sandals instead of boots and small carrier-bag-full of books instead of a proper rucksack, but hey ho.
Anyway, I am now the proud possessor of a book called Our Wonderful Armed Forces, which seems to have been published in around March 1940. I've barely started it so far, but I did flick trhough it in the shops. A few spoilers:
- People were worrried before the War that there might be aerial bombardments of cities. It has however become clear that if Hitler were to try it his losses would be extremely heavy, so that's never going to happen.
- The Me109 is OK as a plane, but not nearly as good as a Hurricane, and in fact German pilots don't like taking it into combat. The Me110 is better, but still not as good as a Spitfire
- The Spitfire is about the be supplemented by a plane with a turret-full of guns behind the pilot. This will make the Defiant an amazingly good fighter.
- The Army has super-heavy tanks weighing alsmost *16 tons*, whose 2-pounder guns pack a tremendous punch.
- Germany did very well in Poland, and there are lessons to be learnt from that campaign, but the Germans are clearly never going to manage anything similarly dramatic in the West.
As the young lady in the shop said, it's a snapshot of history :-)
I suspect that LadyofAstolat and I may not have been taken seriously as Walkers, what with our sandals instead of boots and small carrier-bag-full of books instead of a proper rucksack, but hey ho.
Anyway, I am now the proud possessor of a book called Our Wonderful Armed Forces, which seems to have been published in around March 1940. I've barely started it so far, but I did flick trhough it in the shops. A few spoilers:
- People were worrried before the War that there might be aerial bombardments of cities. It has however become clear that if Hitler were to try it his losses would be extremely heavy, so that's never going to happen.
- The Me109 is OK as a plane, but not nearly as good as a Hurricane, and in fact German pilots don't like taking it into combat. The Me110 is better, but still not as good as a Spitfire
- The Spitfire is about the be supplemented by a plane with a turret-full of guns behind the pilot. This will make the Defiant an amazingly good fighter.
- The Army has super-heavy tanks weighing alsmost *16 tons*, whose 2-pounder guns pack a tremendous punch.
- Germany did very well in Poland, and there are lessons to be learnt from that campaign, but the Germans are clearly never going to manage anything similarly dramatic in the West.
As the young lady in the shop said, it's a snapshot of history :-)