I decided I needed a new wallpaper. Hunted around a bit and eventually came across this one. Shortly thereafter, Mother was more than a bit puzzled.

--G.
Mako Is Watching You
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

WIN!

>WIN!

You say that, but I may have to stop using it. Mako's eyes follow you around the desktop. She knows your darkest secrets. Knows, and enjoys knowing that you know she knows.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Knows, and enjoys knowing that you know she knows.

But if you know that she enjoys knowing that you know she knows, is it really that bad? After all, you knowing would sort of neutralize her knowing that you know. No?

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

LAST EDITED ON Aug-28-15 AT 07:33 PM (EDT)
 
Speaking of tanks, today I learned a Fun History Fact. In WWII, the US Army discovered to its chagrin that the infantry was having serious problems communicating with the crews of Sherman tanks, because tanks make a lot of noise and the infantry's radios couldn't talk to the tanks' radios. The procedure at the time was for the infantry to radio anything they wanted the tanks to know back to base, and then someone back there would tell someone else who would radio it to the tanks.

You can imagine how well that worked in actual practice in, e.g., the bocage country of Normandy. Something like that would take half an hour or more, which is not ideal when you're a tank and the message your infantry support wanted to relay to you was LOOK OUT PANTHER AT 2 O'CLOCK.

The solution? Develop a radio system that the infantry and tanks could use to talk directly to each other? Noooo, of course not, that would have been far too complicated and taken too long, and there's probably some kind of rule about any military communications system interoperating that obviously.

No, what they did was weld a box on the back of the tank (those boxes that belts of machinegun ammo came in were popular because every tank unit had a lot of them lying around, but they'd use anything that was reasonably waterproof) and stick a telephone in it, wired into the tank's intercom system. If an infantryman had something he thought the commander of a tank needed to know, why then he could just walk up to the back of the tank, open the box, take out the phone, and speak to the commander. (Or, knowing the American GI, ask the operator to put him through to the White House.)

This... evidently worked! I like the slightly crocky but completely logical slapdashery of it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

In the modern public safety arena, fire engines have quite frequently similar problems. The vehicles are noisy enough that hearing protection is required for all onboard personnel, and with good reason. Any sort of conventional radio system just can't hang in that acoustic environment.

So they have rather aggressively noise-cancelling headsets that are also hearing protection, tied into the vehicle-to-vehicle intercom (usually using voice activation, and usually working!), and a PTT button that routes audio to the radio..

I'm starting to see "industrial bluetooth" wireless versions of this equipment, which I think is a grand thing, provided it _works_

>The solution? Develop a radio system that the infantry and tanks
>could use to talk directly to each other? Noooo, of course not, that
>would have been far too complicated and taken too long, and there's
>probably some kind of rule about any military communications system
>interoperating that obviously.

Don't forget one other important thing at the time: Radios were not general issue, most of the infantrymen wouldn't even have one.

Adding an external access for the intercom system meant that anyone stuck on foot could talk to the tank crew, not just the one guy in the squad with a radio.

>Don't forget one other important thing at the time: Radios were not
>general issue, most of the infantrymen wouldn't even have one.
>

even as recent as a few years ago, only elite units like the seals would have squad level radio communications.

In WW2, IIRC, maybe your platoon or company commander had a radio link back to your parent unit; it certainly wasn't originally intended to provide links to other units. That was one of the things they learned during ww2, how usefull it could be for the grunts to be able to pass information such as forward spotting of artillery or look out for the panther at 2 o'clock, etc.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-31-15 AT 07:42 PM (EDT)
 
This is not even the weirdest half-arsed pseudosolution cooked up by the Allied military in WWII, though it's probably the most successful one. We all know about B. F. Skinner's pigeon-guided missile, but the immediately-postwar British military took his ideas a step further. See, they needed a means of keeping components warm when they were buried under the ground in Germany in case of Soviet invasion. Ideas of how to do this ranged from the fairly normal (giving the gigantic landmines snuggly blankies, which is also adorable) to... well, see for yourself.

EDIT: Additionally, since we're talking about the Rainbow Codes (Britain's official Department Of Weird Shit What Blows Up Good), I've recently discovered a program from the '50s to make an anti-ship nuke. Its name, randomly generated in accordance with Rainbow Code standards?

Green Cheese.

Make your own jokes about British cooking here. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

Let's just say the original script for Chicken Run had a considerably darker ending and leave it at that.

>This is not even the weirdest half-arsed pseudosolution cooked up by
>the Allied military in WWII, though it's probably the most successful
>one.

Certainly it worked better than the plan to firebomb Japanese cities with swarms of incendiary bats.

No... really.

(Although apart from the bats' poor IFF discrimination, that actually worked fairly well in testing.)

>See, they needed a means of keeping components warm when they were
>buried under the ground in Germany in case of Soviet invasion. Ideas
>of how to do this ranged from the fairly normal (giving the gigantic
>landmines snuggly blankies, which is also adorable) to... well,
>see for yourself.

Money quote: "The Civil Service does not do jokes."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yes, I considered bringing them up but, well, everyone knows about the bat bombs. Or at least I do. And I am secretly everyone. Stare into your mirror and watch me stare back. =]

But yeah, between them and the Soviet dog mines, WWII wasn't a good place to be if you were an animal. It did, however, give us this picture:

Which people who like dogs will presumably find less than objectionable. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i have a phobia this was hard

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Funny you bring that up: here's a diagram from Project Acoustic Kitty, a CIA plan to bug the Russians with, well, I'm sure you can guess.

Let's all be thankful they didn't go for one of the other common nicknames for cats.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>Let's all be thankful they didn't go for one of the other common
>nicknames for cats.

Knowing the CIA, that was a separate project.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>

Someone else remembers H.O.L!

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Just so long as you don't put a teaspoon of Drano in the GM's Yoohoo.

Never even read the book but that story on the back cover stuck with me. =)

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Also, I kind of want one of these, though obviously it doesn't need to be able to explode.

When I was a kid I used to have a radio-controlled Sherman tank. The gun would even make little puffs of smoke on command if you filled a little reservoir in the turret with cooking oil. I wonder what ever happened to that...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>But yeah, between them and the Soviet dog mines,

Isn't that the cunning plan that had the minor operational drawback that the dogs were trained to run at their own side's tanks instead of the German ones? Oops...

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>Isn't that the cunning plan that had the minor operational drawback
>that the dogs were trained to run at their own side's tanks instead of
>the German ones?

Dogs are not generally renowned for their tank recognition skills.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Isn't that the cunning plan that had the minor operational drawback
>that the dogs were trained to run at their own side's tanks instead of
>the German ones? Oops...

It is indeed. Also they trained in relatively calm training fields, which bear little resemblance to the roaring and booming of a pitched tank battle. So if the dogs didn't freak out over the loud noises, they did when their masters tried to shoot at them for running towards their own tanks, leading to the poor creatures seeking out the nearest safe harbor...which tended to be the underside of a T-34.

Tbis is still a thing!

I think I would be less inclined to walk right up to something that's covered in explosive armor tiles and treat it like a phone booth, but hey, that's one of the many, many reasons I'm not an infantryman.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The big problem with issuing radios were their size and how fast the tubes ate batteries. It was a lot cheaper and more efficient back then just to attach a telephone to the tank. Plus, you couldn't get confused over which message you heard was for you or a tank 1/2 mile down the road.

Michael

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".