Re: The Macintosh is a girl's computer!

In message <1hw81q6.8tu1md1ubuze5N%real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Graeme Wall <Graeme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

The Germans kept remarkably good records right up to the end.

That I knew - I was assuming that the rocket launch crews kept records
and all that (well, you need to get new rockets for launching, so it's
all got to be tied up neatly with paperwork, yes?), but I was also
assuming that `things got lost in the chaos'.

Some parts of the Nazi state were obsessive about records and put more effort
into preserving them than they did into prosecuting the war.

[snip]

Worked fine as a launch vehicle, was not actually much use as a weapon.

Correct.

Especially at that stage of the war. It was also fired at the wrong
target.

Was there a target it was suitable for? The poor guidance was always a bit
of a limitation.

Places like Southampton docks, the Mulberry Harbours and Antwerpen would all
have been more logical, being pinch points in the logistic chain supplying
the armies threatening the Reich. By the time the V2s came into service,
bombing London was irrelevant to the war effort. Might have had more
political effect firing them at Moscow but to the best of my knowledge none
were.


Werner von Braun might well have been the amoral *** behind a
slave-labour constructed weapon of war designed to kill innocent
civilians and all that, but I can't help liking him in some ways. He
wanted to build bloody great big rockets to go into space and he did.

Did you see the BBC doco series on the Space Race, about him and
Korolyov?

I have no telly, so `no'.

Get the book.

[snip]

(Mind you, on the subject of the slave labour used to build the V2s -
it strikes me that a lot of the workers owed their lives to the fact
that they had skills the Nazis could use. I expect they'd've been
killed otherwise.)

Many of them died under the pressure anyway.

Well, yes, of course. I'm not trying to *justify* it at all - just
pointing out that it wasn't as bad as it sounds, in a funny sort of way.

If it hadn't been for the V2
project many of them wouldn't have been in Germany at all.

True enough - they'd've been killed, yes?

No, you are thinking of the Jews who would otherwise have gone to the
concentration and extermination camps. They weren't the whole of the slave
labour force. Many were simply nationals of occupied countries, especially
France and the eastern European states.

[snip]

Yes. Do you recall why it was Sandys scrapped so many manned
aeroplanes? It was because the coming guided missiles were going to
make piloted warplanes obsolete. Doesn't seem to have happened, does
it?

Well it did with the strategic bomber.

Which is of course why the US has put all its B52s out of service,
right?

It did in the UK and the US only uses the B52s for tactical, not strategic,
use. Apart from a few B2s, there is no replacenent for the B52s when they
are retired.


The guided missile hasn't put manned aeroplanes out of business, but
that's what `they' said was going to happen. Manned aeroplanes are just
different to what they used to be. I can see the same thing happening
with drones in the future - there'll be drone carrier aircraft much as
we have missile carriers.


The difference is the manned aircraft will remain well outside the combat
zone, the AWACS and GSTARS are the forerunners of that development.


The, erm, D21? hypersonic drone developed for the M21 (IIRC) Blackbird

SR71?

spyplane variant was interesting, but they never got it working
reliably. I bet they could these days.


Possibly but the requirement has gone, replaced by satellite observations.
The need now has gone the other way, drones that can loiter at low speed over
the target area for hours at a tome.

--
Graeme Wall

My genealogy website:
<http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/genealogy/index.html>
.