Tuesday - May 31, 2005

Ring Of Misty Fire: 31-MAY-1916

“It was two o’clock in the afternoon watch, May 31, 1916.  A rusty tramp--the N.J. Fjord--with the flag of Denmark painted large upon her sides and splotches of red lead showing on her weather-beaten plates, steamed slowly across the North Sea.  On the far horizon the top hamper of a ship rapidly took shape:  the light cruiser Elbing of the Imperial German Navy.  There came the peremptory orders of the sea, ”Heave to!” The N.J. Fjord stopped.  ‘Her steam blowing off shot skyward in a cotton-white jet which mixed with her funnel smoke to spread into a listless cloud visible for miles against the leaden atmosphere.’ German destroyers nosed alongside--boarding and search, the routine procedure of wartime....”

The rival British and German battle fleets had been watching each other from the outset of World War I, across the narrow confines of the foggy and stormy North Sea.  The British fleet was easily the stronger of the two, having won a pre-war capital ship building race at a ratio of 3 to 2.

Within weeks of war’s outbreak, it became obvious that the German High Seas Fleet had no desire for a head-on clash with the far stronger British Grand Fleet.  The best the Germans could hope for was that a portion of the British fleet might be cut off and annihilated, thus “leveling the playing field.”

---

Aboard HMS Galatea, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Alexander-Sinclair, the white steam of the Fjord was sighted.  The light cruiser, far on the wing of Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet then turning away to the northward, stood on to investigate.  At 2:18 she signaled to the fleet:  “Enemy in sight!” The rusty N.J. Fjord had lifted the curtain on “the greatest drama of modern naval warfare.  Der Tag had come.”

It had been slow in coming.  Taking advantage of her strategic position athwart the exits from the North Sea into the Atlantic, Great Britain had kept the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in the North Sea, and thus away from her vital Atlantic supply lines.  And Britain would have to be defeated at sea if she was to be defeated at all. 

The imprisonment of her High Seas Fleet had forced the Germans to result to U-boat warfare in attempting to interdict the Atlantic sea lanes, but since the Lusitania sinking in 1915, the U-boats had been held on leash, for fear of provoking the United States into entering the war.  President Woodrow Wilson had drawn the line.  Meanwhile, the German High Seas Fleet struggled to pop the cork of its bottle, and cut the British Fleet down to a manageable size.

Both fleets were divided into “battle forces” (built around battleships, or dreadnoughts, as they were then known) and “scouting forces” (built around much faster battle-cruisers).  Both wings of the High Seas Fleet were customarily stationed at Wilhelmshaven (the Jade Bay).  In May 1916, most of the major British battle force (the Grand Fleet) was based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.  Other elements were based at Cromarty, on Moray Firth.

At Rosyth on the Firth of Forth, much nearer the German North Sea naval bases, Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty was stationed with the battle-cruiser squadrons of the scouting force.  At any stir of the High Seas Fleet, Beatty would be “first responder.” Beatty, an outspoken, rakish mastiff of a commander, itched for action, and was often impatient with his senior officer, the prudent and cautious Jellicoe.  The Germans were well aware of Beatty’s hunger for a scrap.  It was likely that he could be baited.  Beatty’s squadrons became the logical choice for entrapment and destruction.



It had been tried before.  German battle-cruisers under Beatty’s opposite number, Admiral Franz von Hipper, had bombarded towns on England’s east coast, hoping to draw their quarry into a trap.  As Beatty’s opposite number, Hipper was well suited for his job.  He had spent much of his career in destroyers, and probably always remained a “Tin Can Sailor” at heart.  From this background, however, he brought dash and daring to his command of the German battle cruisers, and like Beatty, he chafed at being held on any kind of leash.

Thus the raids on the east coast of Britain.  They did not succeed, however, in trapping Beatty’s forces.
One such raid culminated in the Battle of Dogger Bank, 24 Jan 1915, in which the British, due to misunderstood signals, applied themselves to overwhelming a lumbering old armored cruiser, SMS Blücher, while the rest of Hipper’s force escaped.

In May 1916, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, recently risen to command of the High Seas Fleet, planned another entrapment raid, this time on the Sunderland.  Unable, however, to carry out aerial (Zeppelin) reconnaissance of the British Fleet due to bad weather, Scheer abandoned this scheme.  Instead, he substituted a sweep northward toward the Skagerrak, threatening British patrols and merchant shipping in that area.  Scheer thus hoped to lure the British into waters infested by U-boats, which could help him cut off and annihilate portions of the British Fleet. 

By the morning of 30 May, the British knew that something was up.  Reports of increased U-boat activity and intercepted radio signals led them to suppose that Scheer was coming out of the Jade.  By 10:30 p.m. on 30 May, the Grand Fleet was at sea, steaming to intercept.  Beatty was steaming eastward from Rosyth,
and Jellicoe was hurrying down from Scapa Flow.

On the morning of 31 May, Scheer put to sea, sending Hipper’s battle-cruisers well ahead of his main body.
They would be the bait that would lure the British into a trap.  Some U-boats had spotted some of Jellicoe’s ships, and one (U-32) had managed an unsuccessful attack, but the U-boat reports were sketchy, and were not enough to make Scheer believe that he had lured out the entire Grand Fleet.  At worst, he supposed, he would have only Beatty to deal with.

On the other hand, Jellicoe had received faulty intelligence from the Admiralty.  They reported to him that the German flagship (meaning Scheer) was still in port, and if Scheer was still in port, so was the German battle fleet, leaving only Hipper to be dealt with.



Thus, both fleets groped toward each other through the mists and choppy water of the North Sea, each unaware of the other’s presence, and each unaware that they were about to meet in the war’s only collision between the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet.  At stake was strategic control of the North Sea.

The fleets all but missed each other.  On the afternoon on 31 May, Beatty’s forces were on a course that would take them well behind Hipper’s force and well ahead of Scheer’s, causing him to miss both.  But then HMS Galatea sighted the tramp steamer, N.J. Fjord,, stopped and blowing off steam, and investigated.....

“The battle that ensued, fought entirely in the sullen, heaving cockpit of the North Sea, was naturally divided by circumstance and tactics into four principal phases.  Beatty...and Hipper...had been sent ahead of the main fleets, each feeling for the enemy.  The first phase of the battle ensued when Beatty and Hipper made contact and dueled with their battle-cruisers as Hipper led Beatty southward toward the bulk of the German High Seas Fleet, hidden in the mists.”

It was during this “Run to the South” that two British battle-cruisers (HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary paid the price for their indifferent armoring, blowing up under fire, leaving only a handful of survivors between them.  Beatty’s flagship, HMS Lion, came within an ace of joining them.  Hits and a flash fire in one of her turrets nearly reached a magazine.  Only the gallantry of the mortally-wounded turret commander and his men resulted in the magazine doors being shut, and the magazine being flooded, with hardly a second to spare.  Some of the men who carried out the commander’s order were later found dead, with their hands still clutching the door clips.

”A German salvo struck the Princess Royal; a signalman on the Lion’s bridge, seeing the burst of impact and the licking flame, mistakenly reported:  ‘Princess Royal blown up, sir.’ Beatty turned his keen blue eyes and jutting jaw toward his flag captain:  “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.  Turn two points to port’ (toward the enemy).”

Only HMS New Zealand among Beatty’s battle cruisers escaped severe damage during the “Run to the South.” But now Scheer’s battle fleet had been sighted, steaming up from the south, and it was Beatty’s turn; having been lured into Scheer’s jaws, he would lure Scheer into Jellicoe’s.

“When the German main body was encountered, Beatty turned north and steamed toward his own main fleet, with the Germans coming hard after him and the great guns echoing over the waters.  The third phase was the brief encounter of the main bodies, when Scheer with the High Seas Fleet steaming in column met the Grand Fleet ‘crossing them’ or steaming at a right angle across Scheer’s course.”

During this action, a third British battle-cruiser, HMS Invincible, went the way of her two recently departed sisters, under the guns of SMS Derfflinger..  Among the dead was Rear Admiral Sir Horace Hood.  Another British rear admiral, Sir Robert Arbuthnot, went down with armored cruiser HMS Defence..  One of the newest British dreadnoughts, HMS Warspite, suffered steering gear breakdown and grievous damage from 13 heavy-caliber shell hits.  HMS Marlborough took a torpedo, and like HMS Warspite, had to be ordered home.  On the other hand, Hipper’s flagship, SMS Lützow, was pounded into a sinking wreck and was ordered home; on the way, she had to be abandoned and left to sink.  Hipper transferred his flag to battle-cruiser SMS Moltke, least damaged of his heavy ships.

Scheer twice extricated his fleet from the skilful maneuvers of Jellicoe, although he suffered heavy damage to many of his vessels while inflicting minimal damage in return.  To cover his second escape, he ordered Hipper’s scouting forces to charge head-on into the center of the enemy line.  This suicidal charge became known as Hipper’s “death ride,” and the German battle-cruisers, already heavily pounded, took a dreadful beating.  All of them managed to withdraw, however, as their supporting destroyers scampered past and launched torpedoes at the Grand Fleet, causing Jellicoe to turn away.  In the aftermath, however, he positioned himself between Scheer and his bases, with night coming on.

”The final phase, after the Germans turned away back toward port was a sprawling, inchoate night action, chiefly between the light forces.”

Many light forces were lost as Scheer crossed behind Jellicoe and steamed right through the fringe of the Grand Fleet, to reach home and “pop the champagne” on the morning of June 1.  On paper at least, he had won a clear tactical victory.  In addition to SMS Lützow, he had lost one elderly pre-dreadnought battleship (SMS Pommern), four light cruisers, and five destroyers and torpedo boats.  The British losses were much heavier.  In addition to the three battle cruisers blown up, they lost three armored cruisers (forerunners of the heavy cruisers of World War II), and eight destroyers and torpedo boats.

Over 6000 British seamen lost their lives, compared to some 2551 German losses.  Germany was overjoyed, and the legend of the “victory of the Skagerrak” was born (and persists to this day).

But for Germany, Jutland was a strategic defeat.  An American newspaper noted, “The German Fleet has assaulted its jailer, but it is still in jail.” This was a crisp summary of the facts.  British strategic control of the North Sea had been maintained in the face of the most serious German assault of the war.

Scheer knew it, too, and went on to admit to his superiors that success in future fleet actions was highly unlikely.  The High Seas Fleet, still in its bottle, would have to remain there.  Further sorties of the High Seas Fleet did no more than prove that Scheer’s assessment was correct.

The men in the fleet realized this as well.  Disillusionment and disaffection set in, reinforced by memories of a misty horizon studded with the orange flashes of enemy guns, and the fighting spirit of the men was increasingly tainted as the war dragged on and the fleet swung round its anchors month in, month out.

But Britain had to be defeated at sea if she was to be defeated at all.  German High Command attention was turned toward their last remaining card to play at sea, renewal of unrestricted U-boat warfare.

In early 1917, it was renewed, and by the end of April, the United States was in the war.....

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:  Quotations taken from Hanson W. Baldwin, “Sea Fights and Shipwrecks, (New York:  Doubleday, 1955).

Further information about the Battle of Jutland may be found at:

www.firstworldwar.com

www.royal-navy.mod.uk

www.worldwar1.co.uk

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

Posted by Tannenberg     on 05/31/2005 at 05:24 PM   
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   Thursday - May 19, 2005

Ancient ROMAN SHOPPING CHARIOT

Ancient man was more resourceful then we thought. I also didn’t know that Piggly Wiggly invented the shopping cart. I have been to the British Museum. That is where they keep the Rosetta Stone. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a hoax too.

A self-styled art terrorist has caused embarrassment at the British Museum in London by installing his own ‘primative’ painting of a caveman pushing a supermarket trolley.

Posted by Yellow Dog     on 05/19/2005 at 11:30 AM   
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   Wednesday - May 18, 2005

Lest We Forget

he Atlantic, with its extensions such as the North Sea, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, is the most important ocean in the world. The only major populated land mass that the Atlantic does not touch is Australia. For centuries, the Atlantic has been the key trade highway of civilization. Exactly sixty-four years ago today, it became the scene of a tremendous battle.

In September 1939, this highway once again became the theater in which a major war would be won and lost. It had often been such a theater.  World War I and the Napoleonic Wars come immediately to mind.

“September 1939.  The Atlantic becomes the primal chasm, the wild void on whose conquest rests the fate of men...”

For Britain and her allies, victory in the Atlantic war meant keeping the Atlantic sea lanes open to their shipping.  From the outset, Britain was vulnerable.  She could not feed herself.  A vast quantity of her food had to be imported via the Atlantic sea lanes.  Over these sea lanes also came all of Britain’s oil, a vital strategic resource then, as now.  Apart from this, practically every GI who would fight in Europe was convoyed over the Atlantic sea lanes, not to mention fuel, food and supplies for all the Allied armies.

For the Germans, victory in the Atlantic meant denying its use to Britain and her allies.  Britain herself would be isolated, strangled, and knocked out of the war.  Denial of the sea lanes to the Allies meant a war to destroy, or at least immobilize, the Allied merchant marines.

Although magnetic mines, the Luftwaffe, and surface raiders took a certain toll, the burden of the German effort was borne by the U-boats, and this fact shaped the general character of the Atlantic war.

“Everywhere beneath the sea, everywhere the enemy.  Resolute ships struggle to survive...”

Because of its nature, the Atlantic war was possessed of little of the grandeur and drama of the Pacific war, with its monumental carrier battles, its far-flung amphibious operations, and the battles for remote islands, such as Guadalcanal, that became legend.  Only a few legends, such as the pursuit of the battleship Bismarck, came out of the plodding, dreary, monotonous, but vital battle over the key oceanic supply line of the war, the Battle of the
Atlantic.

The Bismarck sortie of 18-27 MAY 1941 represented the supreme effort of the German navy to exploit surface raiders in the Battle of the Atlantic. The most notorious prior effort had been that of the pocket-battleship Graf Spee during the early months of the war.

Graf Spee’s raiding cruise netted nine merchant ship victims in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and had put the Allies to a vast amount of trouble in an attempt to corner her.  And corner her they did, on 13 DEC 1939, in the Battle of the River Plate, with British cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter.  Following the battle, the Graf Spee sought shelter and time to lick her wounds in the neutral port of Montevideo.  On 17 DEC 1939, facing a choice of internment in Uruguay, further battle, or suicide, her captain, Hans Langsdorff, chose suicide, for both the ship and himself.

The regular warships of the German Navy did not return to the Atlantic trade war until October 1940, when the Graf Spee’s sister ship, Admiral Scheer, broke out on a five-month raiding cruise, under the wily Captain Theodor Krancke.  With this effort is associated another of the few legends of the Atlantic war, the epic and fatal struggle of a single convoy escort (the auxiliary cruiser Jervis Bay) against the Scheer’s overwhelming firepower, in an attempt to protect convoy HX-84, or at least give its ships time to scatter and escape.  And in this, Jervis Bay was largely successful.  Thanks to her gallantry, Scheer’s bag was much smaller than it might have been.

Scheer cruised on, however, through the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to run up a total score of destroyed or captured merchant shipping roughly twice that of the Graf Spee.  And unlike Spee, she returned safely home.  Again her pursuers had been put to a vast amount of trouble in trying to corner her, wearing out ships’ hulls and machinery, wearing down the efficiency of their crews, diverting ships that were needed elsewhere, and burning tons upon tons of fuel oil that could only be replaced across the very ocean lifeline the Scheer, like U-boats and other raiders, was threatening. 

While Scheer was still out, heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper darted out on a pair of hit-and-run raids that were modestly successful, and then came Fleet Admiral Gunther Lütjens with battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.  These raiders inaugurated a two-month reign of terror on the North Atlantic convoy routes, accounting for 22 merchant ships before following Hipper into the French port of Brest.  There they were held for maintenance and repairs, in preparation for even bigger things to come.

These took the shape of Operation Rheinübung, the first Atlantic war cruise of the Bismarck. The original plan was for Bismarck to sortie in company with Hipper’s sister cruiser, the Prinz Eugen.  As they broke into the Atlantic, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were to sortie from Brest in support (Hipper had broken back to German waters), and the four ships were to join hands at sea and thus form a battle squadron that could be strong enough to sever Britain’s ocean lifelines.

However, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau could not be made ready in time. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had to break out alone, in the teeth of a Royal Navy that was aroused and smarting from its humiliations of recent months.  And on 18 MAY 1941, under Admiral Lütjens, Bismarck sailed to her destiny.

In the course of breaking out into the Atlantic on 24 MAY 1941, Bismarck sent the pride of the Royal Navy, battle cruiser Hood, to the bottom.  But in turn, the Royal Navy mounted an unprecedented effort to corner and destroy Bismarck.  After being chased across the North Atlantic, Bismarck was crippled by planes of the Fleet Air Arm (flying from carrier Ark Royal), pounded into a wreck by British battleships and cruisers, and sunk, on 27 MAY 1941.  Hood was avenged, and the Atlantic lifelines were reprieved.

No German battleship ever again attempted to cut them.

“There are no tombstones in the sea, only the drifting remnants of disaster.  The ocean floor is littered with the skeletons of ships and sailors who died that freedom might live...”

Acknowledgements:
Quotations: abstracted from introductory narration, “Victory at Sea”, movie version.
Painting: “Breakout,” by artist Alan Randall.

Posted by Tannenberg     on 05/18/2005 at 01:53 AM   
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   Thursday - April 21, 2005

When you buy firearms, only buy the best

If Santa Anna hadn’t been so chintzy when he outfitted his troops, we wouldn’t have an illegal alien problem in Texas today. 

Posted by Yellow Dog     on 04/21/2005 at 02:52 PM   
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   Monday - March 28, 2005

Great Stuff From Vox

I’ll post this excerpt:

If you insist on clinging to the political fiction of a Democratic-Republican dichotomy, you will find the next twenty years as mystifying as the last twenty. If, on the other hand, you understand that beneath the fiction is an orchestrated effort to transform a theoretically decentralized constitutional republic into a fully centralized member of a supranational oligarchy, everything not only makes perfect sense, but becomes quite predictable. Thus, I can confidently predict:

1. uniform state euthanasia laws
2. a ban on home-schooling, probably federal
3. a political union with Canada and Mexico
4. an elimination of the right to trial by jury
5. elimination of the separation of powers doctrine (this is already effective, but not apparent)
6. a ban on all political speech by unapproved parties (already in the works)
7. emigration restrictions
8. legally recognized polyamorous relationships
9. a global tax to fund a UN military

Go read the rest. You’ll see what he means.  And you’ll thank me for it.  It’s coming.  It’s inevitable---unless we get off our asses and make our politicians accountable.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/28/2005 at 06:18 AM   
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   Thursday - March 24, 2005

WW II, Japs, and WMDs

A huge, honking sub has been discovered off th4 coast of Hawaii.

This was their mission:

“to use the aircraft to drop rats and insects infected with bubonic plague, cholera, typhus and other diseases on U.S. cities.”

Dem dirty Nips!  Good thing we nuked ‘em!

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/24/2005 at 07:16 AM   
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   Thursday - March 17, 2005

Irish Legend

The Roman Empire had Julius Caesar, the Spanish had El Cid, the French had Charlemagne and the English had King Arthur. All legends in their own time and they still live down through the ages.

What legendary heros did Ireland have?

Well, Ireland had the best of them all (long before the other imitators named above came along), a mighty warrior named .... Finn MacCool. Finn’s legend dates back to the Third Century BC and there is quite a bit of evidence that the legend is based on the life of a real, early Celtic warrior. And as far as legends go, it doesn’t get any better than this ....

One day, Finn grows angry when he hears that a Scottish giant is mocking his fighting ability. He throws a rock across the Irish Sea to Scotland; the rock includes a challenge to the giant. The Scottish giant quickly throws a message in a rock back to Finn, stating he can’t take up the challenge because he can’t swim to reach Ireland. Finn doesn’t let the Scottish giant off so easily. He tears down great pieces of volcanic rock that lay near the coast and stands the pieces upright, making them into pillars that form a causeway that stretches from Ireland to Scotland. The giant now has to accept the challenge. He comes to Finn’s house. Finn, masquerading as a 18-foot baby, bites the Scottish giant’s hand and then chases him back to Scotland, flinging huge lumps of earth after him. One of the large holes he creates fills with water and becomes Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland. One large lump of earth misses the giant and falls into the Irish Sea; this lump is now known as the Isle of Man.

Now that’s quite a bit of blarney, isn’t it. Fortunately, Morgan Llywelyn, one of the best modern Irish fiction writers has written an excellent account of Finn’s life for those who like hard-charging and hard-loving warriors and their legendary exploits. Get “Finn MacCool” at Amazon.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/17/2005 at 06:34 PM   
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   Thursday - March 10, 2005

In The News:  Morons, Weirdos, Great Stuff

We need go no further to discover why so many kids are so fucked up and incapable of dealing with the harsh realities of life.

Kid has summer school.  Three assignments are part of the requirement for this HONORS class.  Kid’s father SUES the school because it’s not fair to assign homework during vacation!!!

Judge over rules and whacks the father for basically being stupid. 

What the judge should have done was sterilize the father and son and hope no further pro-creation took place.

What do you bet this kid’s parents will stand up for him?  And how the hell did they know it was him?  He sent them anonymously. Cum and get ‘em!!!!  Frozen treats!!!

Star Trek and tank protection.  Israel demonstrated

an invisible “shield” that surrounds an armored vehicle protecting it from anti-tank missiles and neutralizing them before they reach their target.

Fact or science fiction?

FACT. Those wiley Jews are at it again!

Hey, this guy has a sick sense of humor AS WELL AS a sick perversion.  Check out the name of the road where he was caught.  And check out the name of the road he lives on.  He’s “BENT” alright!

Fascinating.  Simply fascinating.  A treasure trove of bronze-age cargo was found off Devon, in England.  Considering the trade that went on it would be extraordinarily interesting to have a re-enactment video or a book describing how life was 3500 years ago in a trading community.  I’ll bet everyone smelled really badly, conditions were horrid, food sucked and the rich lived almost as badly as the poor except they had more food and more furs.  But they still stank!

For our Kiwi pals....isn’t this close to where you are?  Must have been a small boat.  Too bad fishermen aren’t armed.  They’d have a nice trophy to hang off the bowsprit.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/10/2005 at 07:36 AM   
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   Sunday - March 06, 2005

Then And Now

In honor of Steve Fossett’s record, non-stop, 67-hour flight around the world this last week, we feel it is right that we look back at the first men to accomplish a similar feat: the first circumnavigation of the world by air in 1924. They had to stop and refuel repeatedly (something Fossett didn’t have to do) but they were the first to circle the globe by air. Oddly enough, the first men to accomplish this feat were members of the US Army Air Corps in World War I era biplanes (the Douglas World Cruiser - DWC). That took guts and determination, my friends.

“Other men will fly around the world, but never again will anybody fly around it for the first time.” These words greeted the “Magellans of the air” after completing their nearly 6 month journey. A race among aviators of several nations to see who would be the first to fly around the world began in early 1924.

The U.S. Army decided to make the attempt and called upon the Douglas company to build the planes. The Douglas World Cruiser (DWC), powered by a Liberty motor, had a cruising speed of 80 miles per hour and a range of 830 miles. Four 2-man crews were selected for the flight, each christening their plane with the name of a city - the Seattle, the Chicago, the Boston and the New Orleans.

In March the crews left San Francisco for Seattle. Their flight officially began there on April 6, as the four planes headed north to Alaska. Trouble hit early as the flight commander, Major Frederick Martin and his mechanic Sgt. Alva Harvey crashed-landed in the remote Alaskan mountains. After a harrowing week, Harvey led the injured Martin out of the wilderness to a small fishing camp and safety.

The 3-plane flight continued its journey over the Aleutians and North Pacific reaching Japan on May 23. The flight continued along the coast of Asia - Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Bangkok, and Rangoon, reaching Calcutta on June 26. From there it was on to Karachi, Constantinople, and Paris, arriving in London on July 16. Trouble hit again on the flight over the North Atlantic when the Boston went down en route to Iceland. The crew were rescued from the icy water and rejoined the flight in Nova Scotia with a replacement plane.

The flyers made their way across the United States returning to their starting point in Seattle on September 28, 1924. The flight had lasted 175 days with 363 hours of actual flying time.

Find this story and more interesting historical first-hand accounts at EyeWitnessToHistory.com.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/06/2005 at 03:06 PM   
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   Sunday - February 27, 2005

History and Science

It’s taken a long time but soon we may be able to get better insight into the link between early Jamestown settlers and England.

For those of you worried about the Hubble telescope falling to earth soon, it looks like it may get a one year lease on life.

The report comes from Berkley.  The finding took place in China.  I just do not know if I can believe a “bear-dog” existed.

It’s all about credibility, eh?

For the sake of animals we sacrifice humans.  And animal rights assholes like PETA and Audubon society clap thunderously.

Read this for a better insight into the real dangers of NOT using DDT.

Here’s a snippet:

Although some birds declined before DDT, they became much more abundant during the years of greatest DDT-use. But facts have not impeded the endless repetition of Carson’s bird myth.

Or this:

One experimenter, to demonstrate eggshell-thinning, fed quail a diet with DDT but containing only one-fifth of the normal amount of calcium. His experiment succeeded in producing thinner eggshells, but his deception was exposed.

More?  How about this:

THE BROWN PELICAN AND the peregrine falcon did suffer declines in population, but not because of DDT, according to Professor Edwards’s article, “DDT Effects on Bird Abundance and Reproduction.”

Brown pelicans suffered, not from fish they ate but from their catastrophic reproductive failure caused by the great Santa Barbara oil spill surrounding their nesting colonies on the island of Anacapa. Federal and California officials ignored the oil spill and attributed pelican difficulties “solely to DDT in the environment.”

In Texas, peregrine falcons declined from 5,000 in 1918 to 200 in 1941, three years before DDT. Around the Gulf of Mexico, they declined from 1918 to 1934 by 82 percent, but the 1935 survey was done 15 years before any DDT appeared.

Likewise, in the East, peregrine falcons declined long before there was any DDT present there, because of egg-collectors and falconers. Falconers “raided every nest they could find” and shot falcons on sight.

Junk science. pure junk science.  Rachel Carson should be exhumed and her remains fed to bald eagles.  Her followers should be rounded up, sterilized and have a restraining order clapped on their asses to keep them from spreading their lies. 

You’ll excuse me while I go dust the waterway behind my house with some that I bought at a garage sale a couple of years ago.

Imagine yourself frozen for 32,000 and then getting warmed back up again---to discover you still live!!

Now imagine yourself a bacteria.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 02/27/2005 at 07:31 AM   
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   Wednesday - February 23, 2005

Photo Dictionary

Recently, several Barking Moonbats have taken to using words in the English language in a warped and twisted manner. These asshats have referred to: victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns”, the US invasion of Iraq as “aggression”, the Jewish settlement in Israel as “occupation”, and may other distortions of the language that do not bear repeating.

In order to clarify this and set the record straight, the BMEWS Librarian has compiled the following pictorial to help people keep straight in their minds what these words mean. Please pay attention. There will be a test later ....

AGGRESSION: ag·gres·sion (noun) - 1. The act of initiating hostilities or invasion; 2. The practice or habit of launching attacks; 3. Hostile or destructive behavior or actions.

Pearl Harbor - December 7, 1941

New York - September 11, 2001

OCCUPATION: oc·cu·pa·tion (noun) - 1. Invasion, conquest, and control of a nation or territory by foreign armed forces; 2. The military government exercising control over an occupied nation or territory.

German Army in Paris, 1940

Iraqi Army in Kuwait, 1990

TRAITOR: trai·tor (noun) - 1: someone who betrays his country by committing treason; 2: a person who says one thing and does another.

Jane Fonda, Hanoi - 1972

Ward Churchill, University Of Colorado - 2005

GENOCIDE: gen·o·cide (noun) - 1.  The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

Auschwitz, Germany

Kurdistan, Iraq

Print this guide out and keep it with you at all times. The next time some smelly hippy or leftist demonstrator verbally abuses you with “Bush is Hitler!”, or “America deserved what happened on 9/11!”, or “Israel is occupying Palestine!”, or “America is practicing genocide by not sending enough money to Africa!” .... just whip these pictures out and show them to the mental midget and while he (or she) is gazing at the pictures kick the living shit out of him (or her).

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/23/2005 at 02:02 PM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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   Tuesday - February 01, 2005

Kind, Loving, Peaceful?

Kind, Loving, Peaceful?

Surely you all can recall how the leftist, tree-hugging, self-flagellating apologists in this country would moan and cry about how EVIL the white man was, especially Columbus and those NASTY SPANISH guys when they conquered the peace-loving Indians......ooops, “indigenous peoples.”

The Spanish are blamed for robbing, looting, pillaging, raping, enslaving, introducing disease (on purpose--as if they even KNEW what diseases were back then) and otherwise decimating entire populations of Indians............oops, “indigenous peoples.”

They waste no time telling us how the world would be a better place if they were still around to teach us about peace, love, understanding, getting along with mother nature, living off the land instead of pillaging it for resources, etc. 

We are also told how we should be ashamed that we came here and took their lands by force using our guns and cannons against their sticks, stones, bows, arrows and spears.  Well, if they were so great as a civilization, why didn’t THEY have guns and cannons?

The answer to THAT question is easy.........these “indigenous people” were too busy being SAVAGES!!!!! They enslaved their own people.  They warred with one another. 

They engaged in ritual sacrifice.

Often. 

And with a great many victims.  Many of them children.  (GASP!!  OH, NO!  NOT CHILDREN!!) And what happened to these victims?  Glad you asked.  They:

“had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of arrows, clawed, sliced to death, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive or tossed from the tops of temples.”

NICE!!  PEACEFUL!! LOVING!!! IN TUNE WITH GAIA!!!

Oh, did I mention ritual cannibalism?

This is something these apologists do not want to accept.

Spanish diaries revealed these activities but the “intelligentsia” refused to accept it as truth.  Now they are finding out differently.  But still cast doubts as evidenced in this quote:

“It’s now a question of quantity,” said Lopez Lujan, who thinks the Spaniards - and Indian picture-book scribes working under their control - exaggerated the number of victims, claiming in one case that 80,400 people were sacrificed at a temple inauguration in 1487. We’re not finding anywhere near that . . . even if we added some zeroes.”

Deny it all you want, Pedro or Juan or whatever your name is out there in the revisionism land you all live in but a savage is a savage.

As for me, I am glad the Spanish came in and took care of things.  If not, we’d all either still be in Euro-weenie land or living in mud huts killing and skinning buffalo or lizards or chucking spears into fish.

Too bad so many of them settled in Mexico.  Now it looks like it is our turn to go in there and wipe THEM out!

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 02/01/2005 at 06:26 AM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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   Monday - January 31, 2005

The Most Expensive War In History

Did you know that you, the American Taxpayer, are still paying for the Spanish American War? For those who are historically challenged, let me refresh your historical memory ....

15 February 1898
U.S.S. Maine explodes in Havana Harbor.

19 April 1898
The U.S. Congress by vote of 311 to 6 in the House and 42 to 35 in the Senate adopted the Joint Resolution for war with Spain.

20 April 1898
U.S. President William McKinley signed the Joint Resolution for war with Spain and the ultimatum was forwarded to Spain.

25 April 1898
War was formally declared between Spain and the United States.

April - December 1898
US kicks Spanish butt in Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, Phillipines ....

10 December 1898
Representatitves of Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Peace in Paris. Spain renounced all rights to Cuba and allowed an independent Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and the island of Guam to the United States, gave up its possessions in the West Indies, and sold the Philippine Islands, receiving in exchange $20,000,000.

6 February 1899
U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris by a vote of 52 to 27.

So there you have it. A minor little war that the Spanish never really wanted a part of and probably should never have gotten involved in. The whole thing, from start to finish, was over in less than a year and the US came away with lots of new territory.

So, what’s the point? Well, let me tell you about it ....

An influential congressional committee has dropped a political bombshell by suggesting that a tax originally created to pay for the Spanish American War could be extended to all Internet and data connections this year.

The committee, deeply involved in writing U.S. tax laws, unexpectedly said in a report Thursday that the 3 percent telecommunications tax could be revised to cover “all data communications services to end users,” including broadband; dial-up; fiber; cable modems; cellular; and DSL, or digital subscriber line, links.

Congress enacted the so-called “luxury” excise tax at 1 cent a phone call to pay for the Spanish American War back in 1898, when only a few thousand phone lines existed in the country. It was repealed in 1902, but was reimposed at 1 cent a call in 1914 to pay for World War I and eventually became permanent at a rate of 3 percent in 1990.

That 3% telecomm tax you pay each month is what this is all about and now Congress wants to expand the tax to internet access. Go read the article and write your CongressCrook today. Tell him or her how you feel about this blatant bullshit! Do it now!

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/31/2005 at 12:50 PM   
Filed Under: • History • Outrageous • Politics •  
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Re-Writing History

I guess being relegated to the bottom of the pile for earthquake deaths has caused some “historians” in California (natch!!) to want to revise death numbers upwards.

I liken that to the same bullshit that goes on here in Florida during hurricane season.  A hurricane passes by and anyone dying of a heart attack died because of the hurricane.  Never mind that the poor son of a bitch was going to die the next time a dog barked and spooked him anyway.

Part of their justification is found near the end:

“There is evidence to show the number was suppressed for political reasons.”

Yet one paragraph above they claim that the revision:

would make the earthquake among the deadliest natural disasters in the nation’s history.

Political reasons indeed!!

And how much credibility can you give a newspaper that reports this and uses the word, “pour” when they mean “pore.”

Hey, I make mistakes too but I am not a newspaper nor do I have an editorial staff.  So lighten up! 

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 01/31/2005 at 06:23 AM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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