Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Any evidence of this anywhere?
And the submarines that were to attack airships. https://hmse22.wixsite.com/memorial/hms-e22Grant, you forgot the airship that attacked a submarine...
Flying the Skua?That must have been embarrassing.
Utter nonsense, if "The Bengal famine" did anything it hastened the formation of Bangladesh as a separate nation to India, all discussion of "The Bengal famine" ignores the fact that the Japanese were just a few miles away, that India had the food and Churchill was in England. Many regions of India didn't and don't like each other as we can see today, but you can find some activist who will prove Churchill was responsible for that too.
I know, and the partition cost up to 2 million lives in "peacetime" with approximately 12 million displaced. I don't know whether Churchill was to blame for that or if they managed to pin some of it on Thatcher.To be pedantic, Bangladesh didn't become a separate country until it separated from Pakistan after the Bangladesh Liberation War, which ended in 1971. I believe the proximal cause of the Liberation War was the actions of the military junta which had taken over the government of Pakistan and started a mass murder of Bangladesh's independence advocates and massacres such as those at the Dhaka University and with Operation Searchlight. When India gained its independence and Pakistan was separated from the British administrative region called "India," it was divided into West Pakistan, which is now the country of Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971.
It was poorly done for certain, starting with the guy given the responsibility for drawing the new lines having just arrived, with little knowledge or interest in the welfare or interests of the inhabitants. Cyril Radcliffe, 1st Viscount Radcliffe - WikipediaI think anyone who has read anything about the partition of India would agree that it ended up being a horror show.
Opponent yes, but Churchill had no plan or interest in persuading India to stay within the Empire. Sending India's men to die in ill-conceived deployment to Malaya (is this India's ANZ Gallipoli debacle?) doesn't help.Churchill was a known and vocal, even rabid, opponent of Indian independence.
Yes, normal dispersion at maxium range. ATG's usually opened fire at the longest range they could penetrate, which was probably 1500-2000yds (meters) for a gun with the power of the 88. Barrel wear, tiny differences in powder charge volumes, variations in the machining of the shells (no two anything made by man are exactly alike, if you look close enough) were all part of the normal dispersion of all artillery weapons. Since range was the most critical (and most difficult to determine), the higher the MV of the ATG the better, i.e. the "range bracket" for a hit was greater. We could also add that visual bombing by the Americans using the Norden bombsight still resulted in an average of only 32% landing with 1000 feet of the aiming point. This dispersion was due to higher altitudes amplifying any normal angular error plus variable (unpredicable) winds from 25,000-ft down to the ground along with visibility problems.That horse transport still played a large part in most armies until mid-late war years.
The large number of rounds fired without hitting the target, even the 88 anti-tank gun during its best times with Afrika Korp was ~ 7% hit rate.
I read (somewhere) that Popov was the "model" for Ian Fleming's "James Bond" character. He was certainly an interesting character worthy of a Hollywood movie. I read the book he wrote and his report of meeting J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI is both hilarious and frightening.Mr. Spielberg & Mr. Hanks - please make a series about Duško Popov (too bad he was not seen as interesting person in ex-Yu and on, here). He is almost unknown today.
Also - the US and German soldiers, together with French high-ups, defending the Castle Itter.
Or Lord Mountbatten almost killing US Adm King when the bullet he fired at the pykrete block richochets and clips the cuff of King's pants!Oh yeah - and aircraft carriers made of sawdust and ice.
How about the bomber that bombed itself. A Blackburn Skua dropped 2 Anti Submarine bombs on a U Boat at too low an altitude and at too shallow an angle, The bombs richocheted off the sea exploded under the aircraft which then crashed into the sea, luckily the dazed and surprised crew survived and were rescued by the rather puzzled U Boat crew.
A lot of people seem to disbelieve actual facts of WW2, such as, say, the Holocaust, even when confronted by actual physical evidence..