Episode 09

Mercedes-Benz 540K - Also known as the Type W24, an improved version of the 1934 500K that debuted in 1936. Fitted with a supercharged 5.4-liter straight-8 engine (the K stands for Kompressor, which means... well, about what you think it means), it was one of the most powerful automobiles of the inter-war era. The 540K was available with several different body styles (or as a bare chassis that the customer could send to a custom coachbuilder); Ursula's is a two-seater cabriolet with rumble seat. At around 22,000 late-'30s Reichsmarks (ca. $8,800, at a time when a Cadillac cost less than $2,000), this was a very, very expensive car.

her second star - The Luftwaffe doesn't use stars as indicators of general-officer rank, but the Liberion convention has entered the Allied vernacular as a shorthand for which "level" of general a person is. As the Luftwaffe rank of Generalleutnant, to which Minna has just been promoted, is (a touch confusingly) equivalent to the Liberion Major General, it's considered the "two-star" rank.

Reichsgraf von Katädien - By ennobling Gryphon thus, Friedrich is referencing the precedent of the 18th-century American/Liberion scientist Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), who was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire (retroactively recognized as the First Reich by the Second) for services to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1791. Similarly, his title, "Count Rumford", came from an archaic name for the town of Woburn, Massachusetts, Thompson's hometown.

Order of the Red Eagle - A Prussian order of chivalry, second in precedence to the Order of the Black Eagle (which is reserved for members of the royal family only).

Keine Ruhe für die Bösen - "No rest for the wicked."

Polternacht - Literally "noisy night". A custom also known in some parts of Germany/Karlsland as Elfsnacht ("Elf's Night"). Erich Hartmann's (upon which Erica and Trude's is loosely based) is described in Toliver and Constable's biography of him, The Blond Knight of Germany.

MIYAFUJI! - When G. described the Polternacht tradition to me, this little vignette sprang out of my fingers about 30 seconds later. We've been sitting on it for...geez, almost a month? I'm glad to see it finally out in the light of day. :)

salmiakkikoskenkorva - Exactly what it sounds like - salty licorice infused vodka. Acquired taste, etx etx....and it will knock you on your ass if you aren't VERY careful with it.

Ich bin Fotoninja - "I am a photographic ninja."

Episode 10

a night vision device - Another moderate anachronism, Gryphon's Orussian tank-witch NVGs are visually based on the Soviet PNV-57E, which in reality dates to well after World War II. Looks cool, though.

"Die Wacht am Rhein" - "The Watch on the Rhine", an old German military song containing (as such songs often do) a call to defend the Fatherland, of which the river Rhine is one of the traditional borders. More than a bit wistful in wartime Karlslandic use. Heidemarie can be found humming it to herself on evening patrol in the Strike Witches movie as well.

the big Mercedes - Since I wrote Episode 09, I read a description of the Mercedes-Benz 540K that I think perfectly sums up its "vast size vs. two seats" dichotomy: "Like a 20,000-square-foot mansion with one bedroom."

the peculiar assertiveness of her sleeping style - In Strike Witches: One-Winged Witches, Wilma describes herself as having "a bad case of sleep-hugging," but the artwork itself tells a... slightly more involved story.

the squadron's "liberated" Luftwaffe truck - Oddly enough, the biggest pile of forms generated by Operation Raketendiebstahl didn't have to do with the transfer of the Hochdruckpumpe prototype or the assault on most of a battalion of MPs; the Luftwaffe's Inspector-General's Office was most exercised about the theft of the truck, since, unlike the He 162 and project documentation, Ursula neglected to file a proper transfer request for it.

a previous "discovery" of Lucchini's - An interesting bug that turned out to be a Neuroi infiltration unit, in Strike Witches 2 episode 7, "It's All Creepy Crawly".

it's a Belv - Longtime EPU readers might recognize the Belv from Street Fighter: Warrior's Legacy, where it is the much-loved national automobile of the former-Soviet-Bloc country of Transbelvia (imprecisely located somewhere in the Carpathians).

belly rubs (for him) - In fairness, Minna might also find such treatment stress-relieving, but not in her office. There are proprieties.

Friedrich der Große - One of the H-39 battleships that Germany never actually managed to build. Since Neukarlsland needed to keep building up their navy, it makes sense that the proposed H-39 class of battleships would have been laid down as soon as the evacuation had been completed. (For that matter, the even larger H-44 class was moved towards production, too, but Götz von Berlichingen won't be ready for sea trials until 1947.)

the Sparrow - The real Heinkel He 162 had several names, including Salamander (after the name of the project that spawned it), Volksjäger (its official Luftwaffe name), and Spatz (Sparrow, the internal name the design had at Heinkel).

it'll be a bit of a handful - The He 162 was fairly-well-regarded as an aircraft, both by its original German test pilots and the Allied pilots who tested it after the war, but they all agreed that it was very demanding and required a highly experienced pilot to get the best out of it. This was... inconvenient, since the whole point of it was to be a fighter that could be flown in the defense of the Reich by poorly trained conscripts from the Hitler Youth! Ursula's version doesn't have that disconnect between its designer's expectations and the reality.

"Like any religion, Belv ownership contains deeper and deeper mysteries," - This was my favorite line that we came up with in the piece. In fact it may be my favorite line we've written since I joined the studio.

a surprisingly advanced car - The original Warrior's Legacy incarnation of the Belv, and presumably the mainstream-UF-universe version Gryphon is familiar with, dated from the late 1950s, not the late 1930s. In this context, I'm envisioning it as technologically similar to the original BMC Mini (vintage 1959), which would have been radically futuristic in 1938. This is amusingly at odds with the "classical" interpretation of the Belv: in WL it's a humorously out-of-date, poorly made, primitive car that's been in unchanged production for decades longer than it should've been. Here it may still not be very well-made - the Transbelvian Automobile Works was not known for its access to top-notch tooling or materials - but its design is ahead of its time.

reflexively tugging... her uniform tunic - Mio doesn't have the context to know why Gryphon automatically thinks of this as "the Picard maneuver".

Episode 11

Hazelnussomeletten - Yup. Hazelnut Omelet. It's a real thing.

classified Liberion material - Mwhaha. Though the good thing is between SHAEF and Minna's personal weight behind this, it's basically a matter of "No, really, you will send us a copy of this" compared to having to send someone out to steal it or something.

I think it's important to ask what you want - When I wrote this scene, I thought that was very important to establish. Minna's loss of her magic obviously pained her, as we saw in the earlier flashback to Paris, but we'd really only seen all this through Mio's perspective.

Fieseler Fi 156 - The legendary Storch ("Stork"), one of the finest rough-field short-takeoff-and-landing liaison aircraft of the war. Had such a low stalling speed that, with a skilled enough hand at the controls, it could hover in a brisk headwind. (I saw a replica do that once at an airshow. Pretty impressive.)

Willa Campbell - So glad we finally got to introduce her "on camera"! She's Gryph's creation (or, well, adaptation?), but I have a lot of respect for the Tuskegee Airmen and what they did in the war. Glad to have a little nod to their heroism here.

complex secret handshake - Plus, it meant we got to do that. :)

I thought you were in London - Not really apropos of this line in itself, I just wanted to note that it's not an accident that Lynne and Darjeeling speak with English accents and Wilma does not. Whether this is an indication that the eldest sister was educated mainly in Farawayland (where their mother's from) as opposed to Britannia, or simply that she proved more resistant to the accent, I'm not certain. Canonically, nobody in the English dub has a regional accent, and I'm not qualified to judge whether Lynne's original voice performance has whatever an English accent sounds like in Japanese (one imagines not). Of course, Wilma doesn't have a speaking part at all as she's only a character in the manga, so I could've gone either way with it, but Wilma's dialogue is rendered in a markedly North American style in the translation of One-Winged Witches, so it felt right.

late in the Battle of Britannia - Neuroi-chan appears in the last four episodes of Strike Witches and the first episode of Strike Witches 2, pretty much as described in this episode. So, um, spoilers, I guess. :)

Operation Trajanus - As depicted in the first ep of Strike Witches 2, this was an official attempt to make contact with the witch-like Neuroi Yoshika had encountered at the end of the first series. It looked promising, until a very large force of Neuroi hostile to both parties turned up, vaporized Neuroi-chan, and gave the Allied units involved in the operation an extremely serious drubbing. The 504th Joint Fighter Wing was out of action until the very last scene in the series as a result of the casualties they took that day.

Fortress of Bitche - A real place, in the far north of France near the Belgian border. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Citadel of Bitche was used as a prison for English naval officers, presumably somewhat to those officers' bemusement. Actually pronounced "beach", but, well.

Cherche-Midi - Another military prison, this one in Paris. In this case, used for detaining company-grade officers. Not to be confused with the tony restaurant in modern-day New York City by the same name.

since when are the Neuroi treacherous? - Once again, Eila says what we're all thinking.

I'm the only one who IS listening to me! - "I said speak your mind, Jack, but Jesus."

Lynne's blueberry pie - In Strike Witches episode 6, we saw that Lynne's family's evidently-fairly-extensive holdings include a blueberry farm, from which the 501st receives a generous supply of fruit. (The Bishops seem to be quite well-off; Lynne's been to some pretty high-end schools, and at one point they sent a Rolls-Royce to pick her up from the 501st's base in Britannia. As an aside, it's interesting that Bishop is her mother's surname, which is unusual in 1940s Britannia.)

Yes, ma'am - Many people assume that Mio is 100% all the time the alpha dog in that relationship. It's actually a lot more nuanced than that.

Episode 12

the Rouse - Also known as the "Short Reveille", a bugle call used at the beginning of the day in Commonwealth countries. The British Commonwealth "Long Reveille" is also different from that used by the US forces. In this instance,the Britannian version's use by the 501st dates back to the outfit's founding in that country. (Curiously, the morning bugle call played on the PA in the actual TV series is neither the Rouse nor either version of Reveille; I have no idea what it is.)

Yoshika-chan - Unlike in the original Japanese, not everyone in the 501st uses Fusō honorifics in general conversation. Yoshika does, though, and by extension, Lynne does when she's talking to Yoshika.

Dacia - Ancient Roman name for the area that is now Romania and Moldova. Also the name of a Romanian car company, makers of the Sandero. Any similarity between that august automobile and the Belv is purely conjectural.

Everyone's welcome. - Indeed, that's kind of the whole point of the project...

Bharāta - India. Presumably part of the Britannian Empire.

It rings in the Force like a bell - another line that's been floating around, under a few different configurations, since almost the point we decided to go back to the Strike Witches universe. Actually, come to think of it, it might have come out of some of the first New Tricks bull sessions.

How does that fit into your theory? - I think the answer here is that certain personality types - and perhaps family lines, as Wilma gets at - have an easier time "touching" different aspects of the Force. After all, most Jedi undergo the same basic training, but there are ones who are much more adept at healing, some who find it much easier to receive visions of the future, and those who excel in the arts of battle - and such things seem to travel along bloodlines there, too.

I can practically see my house from here - Erica, like the real-life Erich Hartmann, was born in Weissach and raised in Weil am Schönbuch, both suburbs of Stuttgart, just on the far side of the Schwarzwald from the Rhine.

Whatever Trude's mind had hold of right now - We'll see more on this later, but it does, indeed, have quite a hold on her.

weirdly cute - Neuroi-chan took her modeling of the witch form to a fairly notable extreme, and although Yoshika was the witch she was looking at when she did it, she has certain features that Yoshika's look in that scene didn't have. The "commando sweater" torso configuration is one. (She also seems to have copied Perrine Clostermann's white-panties-under-black-tights look, which is doubly odd when you consider that Neuroi normally don't have white parts.)

As an aside, there seems to be some debate in the fandom as to whether the witch-type Neuroi is a unique individual or a class of Neuroi, given that she seems to be destroyed by the Warlock in season 1 and is definitely destroyed by the new Venezia Hive in season 2 - but either way, the first time we see one assume that configuration, it's after meeting Yoshika. The variations in her design are thus presumably just down to artistic license.

between its bigger compatriot and Erica - From an Evil Author standpoint, it isn't just that Neuroi-chan took action to protect Erica...it's that she took that action where Trude could see her.

albeit about a completely different subject - This is a bit of a bait and switch with the tension that's been building up in this episode, and I will take the credit (or blame?) for the diversion here.

"It's not like she's going to turn back up outside of Minna's office window." - After coming up with this line, we faced a constant urge to do EXACTLY THAT. But that'd spoil the plans we have, and that would be a real shame. So we'll just let you enjoy the mental image.

Zauberschule - Karlslandic: "magic school".

I'll type up the AAR - After-action report. Erica hates writing AARs, so this is a fairly significant favor she's offering here.

You don't think I couldn't tell it was bothering you? - For all that she loves to loaf around and not take much of anything seriously, Erica is, in her own way, just as smart and perceptive as her sister - she just doesn't apply it in the same ways.

you want to keep flying - Trude is, and isn't in the same boat that Mio was. She's a little better prepared to go into civilian life if she had to, but the idea of walking away while the war is still on - while her country is still under enemy control - is abhorrent to her, and having to accept some kind of desk job would be almost as bad.

she's such a child at heart - One of the numerous things I love about Erica is that she can have such a sweetly serious moment as the one she just had with Trude, and then turn around and run down the hall doing an airplane impression, and both moments are absolutely sincere. There's just no artifice in her at all.

Lt. Wegener....Capt. Clevinger - You probably see what we did there. Don't worry, you'll see more about this soon.

This isn't something you can make happen faster by pushing harder - in fact, it's often just the opposite. - Having stared doing some martial arts training of my own recently, I'm learning how true this is - particularly when trying to absorb a philosophy along with the physical skills.

....feel every single thing! - Because we're going a different route this time around, I wanted to make that moment of realization just a little different from the scene in New Tricks, but still try to capture that rush of the dam breaking. As Gryph says to Sanya - it's about to get very interesting.

gently restraining... a griffin - In the Strike Witches anime and related materials, Eila's Tarot cards are drawn in the style of the Rider-Waite deck, but often with slightly altered, parallel-universe imagery. In the original Rider-Waite, the animal on Strength is a lion.

Episode 13

Suomus Misfit Squadron - The Suomus Misfits were the subject of the original Strike Witches light novels. I've read a translation of one of them; it was... not that great, if I'm honest, but then I think it was a pretty stilted translation. On the other hand, the original author does seem to have had a similar attitude to mine toward being coy about character sexuality (that is, don't bother). :)

Top Secret: MAJIC - Depending who you ask, the MAJIC codeword applies to matters of highly advanced technology and the MAJESTIC-12 committee, who may or may not be responsible for investigating and recovering UFOs (among other things). On the other hand, quite a few people will tell you that it's a hoax made up by UFO "experts" trying to get people's attention by inventing a shadowy government conspiracy.

Supermarine Spiteful - One of the advanced piston-engined fighter aircraft developed toward the end of the war, the successor to the Spitfire. Like the Kyūshū Shinden and the Grumman Bearcat, to name just a couple, it never really gained the fame it deserved because the war ended before it could see widespread use, and postwar aircraft technology developed in other directions. Has one of the best names ever fitted to a fighter aircraft.

22,966 feet - Most people would've said "about 23,000," but... not Ursula.

greater than distance or time - A phrase borrowed from the introduction of the original Star Wars novel, in which it is used to describe the Old Republic.

"Paper Moon" - Fully "It's Only a Paper Moon", 1933 jazz standard by Harold Arlen. Widely recorded in the '30s and '40s, although - amazingly - the Ink Spots never seem to have done a version of it! (Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded several songs with the Ink Spots as a backup band, did record it in 1945 with another, similar-sounding group called the Delta Rhythm Boys.)

Say, it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me.

I've done that, actually - Quite a few times if you take it as a metaphor, but even if you take it strictly literally, more than once.

Baltlandic saw steel - The local equivalent of Swedish saw steel, a high-carbon steel used in the making of hand and band saw blades. Makes a reasonable substitute for traditional Japanese/Fusō tamahagane if you're willing to work it a bit, and is quite a lot easier to come by in Gallia.

Blazkowicz - Capt. William J. Blazkowicz, Liberion Army Air Force, often finds himself feeling as if he was meant for greater things. Unfortunately, he lives in a world where there isn't really a lot of call for two-fisted manly superheroics and there aren't any Nazis. He's never going to get the call for that firefight with Chaingun Hitler.

the Majestic XII Committee - President Truman and the 11 other people who are cleared to know that the Liberion government seized all of Nikola Tesla's papers after his death in 1943.

Witolda Urbanowicz and Wojtek - Based on WWII Polish ace Witold Urbanowicz, who flew first with the RAF's No. 303 "Kościuszko" Squadron, then the U.S. 23rd Fighter Group, and Corporal Wojtek of the Polish Second Corps, who was a bear.

Q-model Warhawk - In the real world, the Curtiss XP-40Q would have been the last, fastest, most powerful revision of the venerable P-40, but by the time it was developed, newer and more capable aircraft were in mass production, so the Army didn't order any.

Friend of yours? - Yoshika, an animal lover in general, has a documented track record with bears (see the first episode of Strike Witches 2 and the movie).

Melitta Schiller - The local version of real-life German test pilot Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, whose brother-in-law was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg of Operation Valkyrie fame. (Schiller was her maiden name.)

Princess Elizabeth - The real Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, etc., served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a truck driver and mechanic. She is presently the only head of state to have served in uniform in WWII.

Fusō-style temple = Shizuka Hattori would, if asked, expound for some time about just how difficult it is to get the supplies required to build one of these in Gallia, during wartime, without arousing suspicions. But on the other hand, she still accomplished it.

U-A-L - From what I could find, WWII Russian fliers used letter based "call codes" rather than what we would think of as proper callsigns or registration numbers. Normally the first character is where they were based out of, but for whatever reason the Russians never used "R" as a leading character (meaning that I couldn't just put her as based out of Ribeauville), so I went with "U" for Ulrich, followed by "A" for Aleksandra (Sanya's full first name), and hopefully the L is obvious. :)

slow, almost shy sort of wave - Rather like the very hesitant wave that Erica gave her. Hmmm.

came to glowing life on either side of her head - G. gets the credit for this. A fun little image that we decided to roll with. :)

48 degrees north, 7 degrees east! - I have no particular like or dislike of Offenburg. It just happened to be conveniently near where we'd mentioned the 511th and 501st's patrol areas meet.

the pseudo-witch shifted - After all, she's demonstrated the ability to change from a more traditional Neuroi to this form, so why not get a little more into "battle mode" when needed? Partially inspired by this artist's idea and a few of the "Witch Type Neuroi" garage kits floating around out there.

QSL card - a written confirmation of radio broadcasts being received, either exchanged between HAM operators or to notify an AM radio station that you got their signal. (Often for ridiculous things like a family in Aukland getting a surprisingly good signal from WBGG in Pittsburgh.) The radio code "QSL?" is the "Can you hear me?" and a response of "QSL" means "Yes I can."

Night Witches are often in the habit of collecting and trading QSL cards with each other, and there's an informal record book for longest distance, most frequent connections, etx.

Red Nose Day 2411

I'm half jackrabbit - This scene is based on one in the 1983 motion picture The Right Stuff, featuring Shirley's archetype, Chuck Yeager, and his wife Glennis, making a game of pretending to be flirting strangers at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club. Our version naturally casts G in the role of Mrs. Yeager. And he's fine with that. :)

Qu'est-ce qui vient de se passer? - "What just happened?"

Bastion Broadcasting Corporation - When the British Broadcasting Corporation left Earth in the wake of the Earth Alliance crackdown of 2406, they needed to find something else for the first "B" to stand for. There was a viewer contest, and the winning suggestion was "Bastion", on the premise that the "BBC-in-exile" was meant to be a "bastion of integrity" (in opposition to, e.g., post-crackdown Earthdome's notorious mouthpiece, InterStellar News).

a yellow metal D-handle - You may recognize this as a part from the original version of the He 162 jetpack. The overall effect draws a certain level of inspiration from the modifications to Lupin's Fiat 500 in Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro.

less a buzz than a snarl - Compare the sound modern rally cars make, as in this clip.

Restaurant Bonséjour - This is a real restaurant on the real road between Aubure and Ribeauvillé. You can see it on Google Maps Street View, it's about halfway along the shorter of the two routes between the two towns.

As an aside, we've used Google Maps for most of the geography that's happened in the course of this series - with some artistic license here and there, to be sure. The satellite photos and Street View give the impression that the route between Aubure and Château Saint-Ulrich is much as it is described here. Looks like quite a hoot.

trees flashing by on either side, haring up into the hills - In the original version of this, the Eliminator (and by extension the Stig) would have shown up here, breaking up the game of tag and racing them both back to the hangar. We decided having G. and Shirley unexpectedly finding them both at the Castle worked even better for sheer "Wait, what?"-ness.

I actually did try writing it that way, but couldn't come up with any plausible way that the Stig's interference at that delicate juncture wouldn't cause Shirley to crash, which would've put a bit of a damper on the day.

little "grabby" motions - It's interesting that Shirley's involuntary reaction to the sight of a hot car is more or less the same as Lucchini's to an... enticing frontage.

unfamiliar new car - http://auto.howstuffworks.com/zz-top-eliminator-hot-rod.htm

Some say... - I couldn't help but tweak the trope a little. :)

Well, now he's talking my language! - I mean, we couldn't have the Stig show up and NOT have a race. That's just the law.

hot rubber and hickory - I mean, I don't know for sure that the Eliminator constantly smells of drag racing and barbecue, but it seems like a reasonable assumption.

flaming tire tracks - The signature of a time vehicle fitted with a Brown Industries flux capacitor system. Mainly because an OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER would have required him to be heading for a wall. (We considered the DeLorean itself for the scene, but decided that A) it would be too startlingly out of place in 1946 and B) we'd get tired of explaining that it wasn't Doc Mui's DeLorean, it was some other one. :)

Episode 14

Me 262 V1 - A note about German/Karlslandic aircraft nomenclature: The "V1" in the prototype Me 262's model code doesn't mean "version one", and it has nothing to do with the real-life primitive cruise missile known as Vergeltungswaffe (reprisal weapon) 1. The V stands for Versuch - "research" - and indicates that that particular version is the first test model. If a subsequent test revision is needed, it would be V2, and so on. The final, complete, we-anticipate-no-further-major-changes-before-mass-production test model would be type A0; the first production run, type A1.

From there it gets extremely complicated as different versions with different hardware configurations arise. Being the meticulous people that they are, the Karlsland Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Imperial Aviation Ministry, abbreviated RLM) will often even retroactively assign official type codes to "field expedient" modifications (and always if they then go into production as running revisions or Rüstsätze, field retromodification kits).

a risk most test pilots take - Which is entirely true, but you can understand Ursula's hesitation here, given her history with the Me-262 design.

Whiskey Kilo two eight - Not Wilma's personal callsign, but a code attached to this particular flight test.

Hals und Beinbruch! - Literally "neck and leg break", used in the same context as the English expression, "Break a leg!"

bit... slippery - Not only do you figure the jet propulsion is a lot different to what most Witches were used to, but the real He 162 was pretty notorious for needing a skilled hand at the controls.

coordination tests - The actual name for this type of evaluation maneuver.

Frances Whittle - Our interpretation of the Strike Witches version of Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS. The inventor (or, depending how you look at it, co-inventor) of the jet engine. In fact, in "the real world", Whittle patented the initial design that eventually became a working engine in 1930, but funding, health issues, battles with manufacturers, and the small matter of the war kept him from having a functional aircraft to use it until 1943.

Hans von Ohain - The other man who shares the credit for the creation of the jet. Von Ohain and Whittle were working at the same time, on the same ideas, and created final designs that worked very similarly (though there were several major mechanical differences), and never knew the other man was working along the same lines until after the war - in fact, they didn't meet in person until 1976!

Boscombe Down - Home of the RAF's Empire Test Pilot School and several Flight Test Squadrons, including the 41st Fighter Squadron, which eventually became the Fast Jet Test Squadron.

Meteor - The Gloster Meteor was that 'functional aircraft' I mentioned. Technically the Meteor F.1 was flying by 1944, but things probably worked a little differently with the RAF brass funneling so much money and brainpower into the Warlock project.

Rolls-Royce - Rolls was responsible for manufacturing the "production" versions of Whittle's engines. In this case, the Meteor has a pair of W.2 "Welland" ætherjet engines capable of 1,600 pounds of thrust.

Lutterworth - Home officers of Power Jets, Ltd, the company formed to design (and improve) the jet engine by Whittle and several investors.

Tesladyne Heavy Industries - And now you know what Gryphon wanted the MAJIC documents for. :>

sheer immensity of the thing - If you've never had a chance to see a B-36, the photos don't even come close to doing it justice. Should you ever have a chance to visit the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, please stop by their WWII building, where the B-36 takes up a significant part of the entire hangar. (And give me a call so I can meet you down there!)

I love a good aviation museum, me, and the Air Force's is one of the greats. It's expanded to several buildings since the first time I was there, but what I think of as the core of the collection is still housed in the original (quite enormously vast) hangar. Wherever you are in it, whatever you're looking at, all you have to do is maybe turn your head a little and you'll be looking at part of the B-36. It dominates a room the size of some small towns - a room that also has a B-29 in it!

Jack Ridley - A cohort of Chuck Yeager's, portrayed (somewhat inaccurately, since one of his major scenes is set after the real Ridley died) by the late Levon Helm in The Right Stuff. They met in 1947 when both were assigned to the X-1 supersonic flight project. As you can probably tell from context, this is their first meeting in this setting.

Most Secret - There is a classification level in the Britannian intelligence establishment so secret its actual name is secret. When referring to it to those not cleared for it, those who are cleared for it may refer to it only as "Most Secret Sources". History will later know it by the codename Ultra. More on this later.

the Royal Aircraft Establishment - The Britannian government's aeronautical research and development agency, comparable to the Liberion National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA) and the Forschungsbüro (Research Bureau) of Karlsland's RLM.

a bunch of remote-operated turrets - Early production B-36es did in fact have these, but they (and their operators) were removed in later models because they weren't of any use against real-world jets, either.

still be pretty cramped - In the original B-36 design, there's a small bunk area in the aft section of the plane. What makes it really fun is hauling yourself through a tunnel that ran between the crew area and the cockpit on a little trolly. (The video is in a static display craft - normally the tunnel WAS lighted when the plane was spun up.) In the Witchcraft version, instead of just skipping over the bomb bay, there are hatches leading to the striker launch bays.

Is this reheat? - Reheat was, in fact, the original name for afterburners, which Whittle invented in the process of trying to improve turbojet speeds.

on a point of order - In fairness to Sanya, she may be speaking for someone else there. In fairness to Eila, she may not. It's hard to tell with Orussians.

how many divisions has the Prince of Monaco got? - Echoes a remark attributed to - of all people - Joseph Stalin, who supposedly replied to a remark about currying favor with Russian Catholics, "The pope? How many divisions has he got?"

In fairness, the Prince of Monaco has probably a couple more than the Pope.

Actually, the Monegasque military is the third-smallest in the world, says Wikipedia, with a standing force or 255. Monaco actually has more cops than soldiers (515).

To be fair, that is still more than the pope, whose Swiss Guards only number around 140. :) Still, a division is between 10,000 and 20,000 troops, and there are only about 35,000 people in all of Monaco. And half of them are tax-dodging Formula 1 drivers. :)

tea dress - Not specifically to take tea in, but a dress that is suitable for afternoon and evening occasions, with a hem that falls between the bottom of the calf and the top of the ankle. In Lynne's case, I was thinking of something rather like this, but I thought the solid saffron color would suit her better.

homity pie - A dish that showed up a lot in WWII Britain because it was fairly easy to make even with rationing - the pie has one crust (on the bottom), filled with a mix of mashed potatoes, leeks, garlic, sliced apple (really!) and cheese.

syntymäpäivä - Finnish for Birthday.

Brautlied - "The Bride's Song", a traditional tune played at German weddings. There are a number of such tunes (most everybody in the Western world is familiar with the one from Richard Wagner's Lohengrin) - this particular one is the Intermezzo from Karl Goldmark's Landliche Hochzeit (Rustic Wedding Symphony, 1875).

red-and-blue-edged envelope - The particular configuration of this one, as you'd guess, belongs to the Royal Karlslandic Airmail Service.

Poljot Sturmanskie - Poljot ("Flight") is the international brand of Moscow Watch Factory No. 1; the Sturmanskie ("Navigator") is one of their signature models, issued to Soviet aviators for decades. Yuri Gagarin had one (the one he was issued when he joined the Red Air Force) with him on his space flight. Elsewhere in UF, Gin Shepard also owns one.

That's what Shirley would have done! - In fairness, it's not what Shirley would have done.

She can't have gotten all that far. - One of those phrases that, like "How hard can it be?" is almost ALWAYS followed by trouble.

Perfect is for later. Alive is for now. - This would also make a good Tech Specs motto for an Autobot medic.

tracery of angled light paths - The pattern looks like printed circuitry, but since integrated circuits do not yet exist in this world, Yoshika doesn't know that.

M24 hand grenades - The famous German "potato masher" grenade, formally the Model 1924 Stielhandgranate ("stick hand grenade").

Hölle und Verdammnis - "Hell and damnation!"

broken arrow - In the older sense of "unit in danger of being overrun", not the more modern "nuclear weapons accident that does not entail the risk of nuclear war" one. In this case what it means is that an element of the 501st is in imminent danger and the rest of the wing is scrambling in support. The neighboring units must be aware of this because the 501st's all-hands preoccupation creates a potential gap in the line that the enemy might otherwise exploit, but at this alert level they are not expected to come to the 501st's aid.

That unit is not limited! - The fix for the "production" Me 262 A1 involved installing a governor on their Miyafuji engines that would prevent the Striker from consuming energy beyond a certain output. This meant they had a little less speed (and a lot bigger turn radius), but prevented them from draining a pilot to the point where she could no longer remain in the air.