StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Stuart wrote:You mean we missed him twice?

Actually we didn't, we hit him twice. He simply survived.

Perhaps we should recalcuate Trek firepower and shielding strength. I mean come on, if your typical human survives multi-kiloton yields (more that once to boot), I think we may have botched numbers somewhere...

Well, it could be accurate- a good number of Chinese had the misfortune to be in Japan for forced labor, although I think the Japanese prefered Koreans for that role.

Also, Stuart- next you are going to be advocating flying superfortresses over retirement homes in Germany, aren't you?

"Also, Stuart- next you are going to be advocating flying superfortresses over retirement homes in Germany Japan, aren't you"

Fixed your typo.

MKSheppard wrote:"Also, Stuart- next you are going to be advocating flying superfortresses flying fortresses over retirement homes in Germany Japan Germany, aren't you"

Fixed your typo.

Fixed better.

MKSheppard wrote:"Also, Stuart- next you are going to be advocating flying superfortresses over retirement homes in Germany Japan, aren't you" Fixed your typo.

Off-topic but related in a strange, demented way. back in the late 1980s I was at a defense helicopter show at a heliport in southern England. There, I met up with an old friend of mine called Dave (a prominent military author) who had been in Afghanistan with the Mujis. Now, this was the first show in this group that had the Russians exhibiting their helicopters and we walked up and down the line taking close-up pictures of various bits and pieces (in my case mostly the antennas, Dave was more interested in the guns and rockets). A very pleasant morning; in the afternoon we had the flying display. Two things to bear in mind; this heliport is built on top of a hill with the crest in the landing area and Dave is a big guy.

So, all the helo companies started flying their birds past the crowd in the usual sedate manner. Then it was the Russian's turn. The Mi-17 strutted its stuff as did the Mi-26 (impressive). Then, the announcer said "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the M-24 Hind!" And the Mi-24 lifted up from behind the hill crest, directly facing the crowd. The earth shook as Dave hit the ground in a panicked dive for cover. He then sort of got up a bit sheepishly apologizing to the people around him.

Conditioned reflex again.

It's worth noting that the CAF have had complaints about flying their B-29 at air displays from people who think that various groups "might be offended". ironically, none of the complainants were Japanese although the Japanese Embassy did complain when the CAF let off a simulated nuclear initiation during the B-29 fly-past.

I wonder if Yamaguchi-san moved to Kokura after the Nagasaki laydown.

Stuart wrote:It's worth noting that the CAF have had complaints about flying their B-29 at air displays from people who think that various groups "might be offended". ironically, none of the complainants were Japanese although the Japanese Embassy did complain when the CAF let off a simulated nuclear initiation during the B-29 fly-past.

Not to turn this into a discussion about the morality about the bombings and such, but some years ago there was an article in Smithsonian Air & Space, I believe, featuring an article about the restoration and display of the Enola Gay. An elderly Japanese man was looking at the Enola Gay and said something like, "There is the airplane that saved my country." An interesting point of view, I thought.

Stuart wrote:I wonder if Yamaguchi-san moved to Kokura after the Nagasaki laydown.

That would have been VERY bad luck.

FSTargetDrone wrote: Not to turn this into a discussion about the morality about the bombings and such, but some years ago there was an article in Smithsonian Air & Space, I believe, featuring an article about the restoration and display of the Enola Gay. An elderly Japanese man was looking at the Enola Gay and said something like, "There is the airplane that saved my country." An interesting point of view, I thought.

Indeed. It's amazing just how viewpoints can differ once one crosses an international boundary and just how counter-intuitive those changes can be. One of the virtues of the internet is that it's tending to blur those differences in that people are getting to realize that their perceptions are not the only ones that exist. It's the second-order changes that are most interesting (people who think, "Well that group will hold that opinion" without realizing that expectation is the result of their own preconceptions; since the other group has different preconceptions, their extrapolations and expectations are from entirely different bases hence their chain of logic follows different paths). As another off-topic example, I had a girlfriend once who honestly couldn't understand why, in an election, she shouldn't sell her vote to the highest bidder. After all, whoever got into office wasn't going to do anything for her afterwards, so why not get some cash out of him while she had the chance?

Stuart wrote:As another off-topic example, I had a girlfriend once who honestly couldn't understand why, in an election, she shouldn't sell her vote to the highest bidder. After all, whoever got into office wasn't going to do anything for her afterwards, so why not get some cash out of him while she had the chance?

I take it that was your Thai friend you mentioned before.

Are you sure it wasn't someone from Illinois? Ex-governor Blagoevich seemed to have a very similar viewpoint.

Jason L. Miles wrote:

Stuart wrote:I wonder if Yamaguchi-san moved to Kokura after the Nagasaki laydown.

That would have been VERY bad luck.

I'm pretty sure he used up his entire life's worth of bad luck by then. Let's face it, after two nuclear bombs being dropped on you, and surviving, there is really no place to go but up.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote: I take it that was your Thai friend you mentioned before.

Not my Army friend, no. She once marched a company of infantry down to the polling station and voted them as a block for her favored candidate. This was D, a MAW who was my companion out there for a goodly number of years. Married to an Admiral now.

furlong wrote: Let's face it, after two nuclear bombs being dropped on you, and surviving, there is really no place to go but up.

Usually in a ballistic arc At a guess I think he was probably feeling quite persecuted by this time. Having two nuclear devices dropped on one tends to change "They're all out to get me" from "paranoia" to "recognition of reality".

Or give him delusions of grandeur. You'd think it would explode is sense of importance to have the US spend two atomic devices on him I'm sorry, initiate his sense of importance.

Slacker wrote:Emphasis mine.

It's a joke within a joke, methinks. I used to make cracks to my friends about white people not being able tell the difference between East Asian ethnicities, and that sounds like a similar thing.