Armageddon???? - Part Eighty One Up

[NecronLord]

Poor Yuku.

[Sea Skimmer]

If a flight of 80 wyverns all tried to disperse the sulfur in front of a wing of oncoming jets, it might do something. One-to-one bombing would be stinking hard, though.

The Germans, and particularly the Japanese tired using white phosphorous bombs and rockets as air to air weapons in WW2. It made for some spectacular photographs of bomber formations flying through the smoke trails, but not known to have ever brought down a single aircraft. I can't think sulfur vs. jets will work any better.

The best bet for wyverns faced with jets is to dive away, a jet trying to follow them down will quickly over accelerate and fling past them, and the wyvern can then attempt to escape via hugging the ground.

[phongn]

Poor Yuku.

The name may be a coincidence, but Stuart had a lot of problems with the Yuku message board back; I wonder if that's what he was aching to do to their staff

[Adrian Laguna]

Rove's particular problem is that he has random malfunctions of the "edit" button between his brain and his mouth.

I hold that one of the most important differences between nice people and assholes, and between the sane and the mad, is in the ability to know when to keep their thoughts to themselves. That's why mind readers are so scary.

[Stuart]

The name may be a coincidence,

Ya think????

but Stuart had a lot of problems with the Yuku message board back;

Still are having them Yuku is crap. I'm seriously thinking of steting up our own server.

I wonder if that's what he was aching to do to their staff

Only in my more merciful moments

[Bayonet]

BTW, I love the fact that the other dukes fucked Belial by keeping their best naga for themselves. Of course, if Satan finds out that they disobeyed his order, there could be pain.

By the time its over, there may not be enough Nagas left to argue about.

[MKSheppard]

Stuart, is there any chance of a WEARY WILLIE III for use against Hell?

The original WEARY WILLIE II project was to use an ummanned QB-47 drone with a TV camera in nose as a giant guided bomb.

The TV camera was capable of picking up targets at 10 miles; and the plane was controlled by a director B-47 about 15 miles back, but distances between the drone and controller as big as 50 miles were thought possible.

Some thought was put forth to filling some fuel cells with ANFO type slurry, 35,000 lbs of it could be carried without compromising range.

The USAF estimated this method to have an 85% chance of blowing up Thanh Hoa bridge. A conventional attack would require 140 x 2,000 lb bombs and 73 F-105 sorties with loss of 3 x F-105s and their pilots.

A QB-47 led attack would most likely destroy it in a single sortie.

The cost was $9,610,280 for F-105 versus $664,000 for QB-47.

Now imagine an old 747-100 full of ANFO hitting the baldrick fortresses

[bilateralrope]

BTW, I love the fact that the other dukes fucked Belial by keeping their best naga for themselves. Of course, if Satan finds out that they disobeyed his order, there could be pain.

With all the Naga dead, how would Satan find out ?

[fusion]

Now imagine an old 747-100 full of ANFO hitting the baldrick fortresses

Fun.... This is so Sheppard...


Anyways, enjoyed it so far and I wait for another hit!

[Bayonet]

He touched the igniter that set the left hand set of brimstone bags on fire, then hesitated slightly and pulled the drop bar. To his delight he saw his aim was true and the deluge of burning yellow stones swept across the human iron chariots.

It must have been some sort of a compound, like crappy black powder.

Elemental sulfur doesn't burn brightly. IIRC from my chemistry set days, the stuff melts, then eventually ignites with a pale blue flame. Not very spectacular, and not something that would propagate through a sack of sulfur rocks. I'd not feel unsafe playing a blowtorch across a rock of sulfur. The difference between the melting point and the ignition point is enough that you can safely cast with sulfur.

The SO2 would be no issue at all to troops with gas masks. Since chemical warfare is such a big part of Russian doctrine, they would have their gas masks with them.

[Surlethe]

He touched the igniter that set the left hand set of brimstone bags on fire, then hesitated slightly and pulled the drop bar. To his delight he saw his aim was true and the deluge of burning yellow stones swept across the human iron chariots.

It must have been some sort of a compound, like crappy black powder.

Elemental sulfur doesn't burn brightly. IIRC from my chemistry set days, the stuff melts, then eventually ignites with a pale blue flame. Not very spectacular, and not something that would propagate through a sack of sulfur rocks. I'd not feel unsafe playing a blowtorch across a rock of sulfur. The difference between the melting point and the ignition point is enough that you can safely cast with sulfur.

Do bear in mind that it's unlikely they're using pure elemental sulfur. What sort of impurities would exist in naturally-occurring sulfur? Could they account for the bright flame?

[Sidewinder]

Awesome battle!

By the way, does white phosphorus irritate eyes and mucous membranes? When the "white" explosions occured, I thought it was tear gas (riot gas), until it started burning Yuku. Or were tear gas and white phosphorus both used?

[Sidewinder]

Now imagine an old 747-100 full of ANFO hitting the baldrick fortresses

I think the 747s will be needed for transporting troops, rations, munitions, and other equipment. Once we have enough KC-45s, we can use this program to get rid of KC-135s that are in the worst shape. (Yeah, we need tankers, too, but considering the state the KC-135s are in, they're probably more trouble than they're worth.)

[CaptainChewbacca]

He touched the igniter that set the left hand set of brimstone bags on fire, then hesitated slightly and pulled the drop bar. To his delight he saw his aim was true and the deluge of burning yellow stones swept across the human iron chariots.

It must have been some sort of a compound, like crappy black powder.

Elemental sulfur doesn't burn brightly. IIRC from my chemistry set days, the stuff melts, then eventually ignites with a pale blue flame. Not very spectacular, and not something that would propagate through a sack of sulfur rocks. I'd not feel unsafe playing a blowtorch across a rock of sulfur. The difference between the melting point and the ignition point is enough that you can safely cast with sulfur.

Do bear in mind that it's unlikely they're using pure elemental sulfur. What sort of impurities would exist in naturally-occurring sulfur? Could they account for the bright flame?

Naturally-occurring sulfur usually appears with metals or metalloids, like zinc, lead, mercury, antium, and barium. Some of those could give you bright flames.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Awesome battle!

By the way, does white phosphorus irritate eyes and mucous membranes? When the "white" explosions occured, I thought it was tear gas (riot gas), until it started burning Yuku. Or were tear gas and white phosphorus both used?

Willy Pete is toxic in sufficient concentrations, so that's a perfectly correct depiction of how it kills--it is an incendiary, a smoke cover weapon, AND a chemical weapon all at once, more or less. It's just that usually the concentration of lethal chemicals in the air, as here, has to be dense enough to kill that by the time you've been exposed to that much, you're already burned through by the particles of the WP itself. So it's not a chemical weapon because if you're exposed to enough of the chemical effects to kill you, you've already been burned to death too, basically--it's thirty times less potent than Yperite, so it's not particularly effective as a chemical weapon.


By the way, here's a picture of the old Battleship Alabama in 1921 being subjected to Willy Pete bombing:

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Yeah, WP seems epic win against big squishy Baldricks. Wonder if Dis will catch any?

Willy Pete! Motherfucking white phosphorus!

And Mike Wong! TOP GUN ace! Maverick renegade! Getting chicks and scoring subtext with one of his disobedient lads who will no doubt later on challenge him to a game of half-naked oil-soaked beach volleyball by the banks of the Phlegethon!

I swear to God Shroom, you keep this up Hipper will have your ass




Coincidence? I think not.

[FedRebel]

Yeah, WP seems epic win against big squishy Baldricks. Wonder if Dis will catch any?

It seems that Dis is going to be an appetizer for some B-1's while they wait for the "main course" (Tartarus) to be prepared

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, WP seems epic win against big squishy Baldricks. Wonder if Dis will catch any?

It seems that Dis is going to be an appetizer for some B-1's while they wait for the "main course" (Tartarus) to be prepared

Why just the B-1s? Do a mass strike of B-1s and B-52s. Send the B-52s over first with the big cookies to shatter structures and drive the residents into the streets, and then have the B-1s hit them with WP or Napalm and cluster munitions.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I really, really, want Dis to burn like Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, for the record. Let's show them what we can do without nukes. It is the only possible commisurate retaliation to Detroit--how can we not use molotov breadbaskets on the city?

[Sea Skimmer]

I doubt it’s possible to burn them down like that, given the demon predilection for stone construction. Hamburg and Dresden after all are the exception, not the rule to what can be expected from stone/masonry cities, try as hard as we could with far heavier bombing and we never got a firestorm in Berlin for example. The demons don’t have mechanized fire fighting equipment, but they could well clear firebreaks with pure physical strength, so they aren’t totally helpless.

Depending on how big the city it, totally smashing it with conventional bombing, minimally aided by incendiaries might well be possible without an unacceptabul diversion of resources from tactical support. A B-52 is worth about 5-7 Lancaster’s in terms of bombs on target in a realistic mission (12,000-8000lb per Lanc) and a B-1 with external hardpoints is worth about 6-9. That means in terms of bomb weight delivered, a strike by just 30 of each B-1s and B-52s would be equivalent to a strike by 330-480 Lancaster’s. 60 aircraft meanwhile is only about 1/3 of the US heavy bomber force, and the rest of the world should be able to field at least 100 other heavy bombers of mostly lesser capabilities.

[Starglider]

I really, really, want Dis to burn like Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, for the record. Let's show them what we can do without nukes.

Is that necessary to achieve victory? As previously noted, Dis isn't vital to sustaining the demon armies in the field. Demonstrating the capability to destroy it is one thing, that's a motivation to surrender, but actually destroying it just motivates the remaining demons to fight to the death.

[JN1]

Outch, having one's tailfin taken off by a wyvern, that's got to hurt! I would think that the Indian Jaguars are probably not the only Jags operating in Hell. The British Jags (and I'd asume the French ones too) have been taken out of mothballs, and the Ecuadorian and Nigerian Jaguars are still around if we need spare airframes.

It looks like the Russians (I presume its them) are having quite a fight. It can't be that often that the Russian Army has had to fight a larger foe.

Considering what the inhabitants of Hell have done to humans in the past, hitting them with WP is probably the least we can do in return. I'm sure we need to introduce them to FAE.

Yuku is dead, hooray! You've done what a lot of people (me included) have wanted to do for quite a while, nice one.

[JBG]

Yeah, WP seems epic win against big squishy Baldricks. Wonder if Dis will catch any?

It seems that Dis is going to be an appetizer for some B-1's while they wait for the "main course" (Tartarus) to be prepared

Why just the B-1s? Do a mass strike of B-1s and B-52s. Send the B-52s over first with the big cookies to shatter structures and drive the residents into the streets, and then have the B-1s hit them with WP or Napalm and cluster munitions.

It seems we are on the same "page" Your Grace! How about we add to "WP or Napalm and cluster munitions" FAE/thermobaric weapons! Don't want the boys and girls at the pointy end to lack suitable choices, do we, where the mood is to annihilate our opponents

Mr Wong, at this rate you'll need another 'plane for your kill symbols. A tricky problem but one I am sure that most fighter pilots would love to have.

While Hell thinks it is making progress, albeit at the cost of significant casualties, in reality it is getting sucked into a Kursk-like maw of attrition warfare. And that is something the Russians are good at though comparatively speaking here they have turned up "loaded for bear". There will be more Russian, and other, casualties but the exchange rate is more, much more, acceptable in this static phase of the defensive. I get the feeling that a strong armoured counter attack is planned and awaiting the call.

From now on Wyverns will be expected and there are enough front line fighter aircraft in the world to spare to provide a robust high level CAP. Quare, is Hell's atmosphere less dusty at altitude?

Finally, re Yuku, I thought Stuart was quite reserved in his response. His ritual curse on HPCA is far more dramatic.

[Bayonet]

Do bear in mind that it's unlikely they're using pure elemental sulfur. What sort of impurities would exist in naturally-occurring sulfur? Could they account for the bright flame?

My impression is that naturally occurring sulphur is relatively pure in this sense. It may have "dirt" in it, but it would be unlikely to be naturally compounded with an oxidizer, because it would probably have already reacted.

I suspect that Belial has a bit of rudimentary chemistry. Or alchemy iof you prefer.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I really, really, want Dis to burn like Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, for the record. Let's show them what we can do without nukes.

Is that necessary to achieve victory? As previously noted, Dis isn't vital to sustaining the demon armies in the field. Demonstrating the capability to destroy it is one thing, that's a motivation to surrender, but actually destroying it just motivates the remaining demons to fight to the death.

Dis is huge. One firebombing raid won't destroy the largest city ever known to exist. Just a small segment of it, kill a hundred thousand or so. The Demons will however have to realize that we can keep up such raids, they can't stop them, end result, if they continue to fight, Dis WILL be destroyed. I think that knowledge would actually help break their will to resist.