On Kalibers 1̊

In my quieter moments, swilling a good Barolo or nursing a belting Talisker say, I dwell on the sabot round. Not because I have any wish to carry out the musing that follow such cogitation but simply to let the noggin wander.

I also from time to time have a good hard stare at the main belt armour on a G3. Now call me old fashioned, I do get the ranging and ballistics, but sloped? Now experience does count. So I assume that the DNC must have had a load of facts about what happened when a few tonnes of the Kaiser’s best high velocity started penetrating Vickers armoured plates.

When pulling on a Bow or an  80/- I might also have a stew on the weirdness of shot hitting hardened surface. The thicker does not necessarily confer better protection from the full smorgasbord of incoming. Geometry is a bitch. Just like stoichiometry in tall burning buildings.

What I am saying here is that when the great big clearing of scum kicked off in Europe the chaps in the RN must have been fully up to speed on the proper properties of an armoured vehicle’s skinning by 1917.

The fact that RMASG were tooling around in Krupp cemented demented cabriolets tells us a great deal about 1945 that no amount of bitched historians will ever dare breath upon.

In my darker Darjeeling sippings the scone muses on Michael Bentine. Or more precisely the dissonance between preening Zeegerman bints on special payscales and rations in big secret country Nissen huts and chaps with huge moustaches on fire screaming through the jazz musik.

So what has all this got to do with the price of overpriced everything on Treasure Island then? I hear you sigh.

Humour me.

Mackinder. He’s like Rhodes. Like Wells. Thatcher and Brown. The rothbosses must have been pissing themselves all during the careening careers of these heroes. And watch they did. Whilst the scum die off after 35-40 years and never got to create a long range perspective from memory, the longlife UHT brigade know the trajectory of weeds.

Let me tease you with longrange planning. Could you fill in blanks between Marco Polo(what’s your real handle china?) and Marx(what’s your real handle china?). Could you attempt to go back from spaghettis boy to Caligula?

What about tracing the breeding mares back to a stable in Memphis? Or a corral in Harran?

Do you have any idea what their common purpose is?