Humor Random Comments Thread

[Notebook]

Just had a look on the map and Limburg is quite a connection point to various cities.
Radio/Radar stations are more tactical targets. Any info why it was bombed? Or just a miss from the loco depot?

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

Just had a look on the map and Limburg is quite a connection point to various cities.
Radio/Radar stations are more tactical targets. Any info why it was bombed? Or just a miss from the loco depot?

N.

Can't find much except oral history from witnesses of WW2, but there had been two different radio stations that had been bombed in that place.


- A small mobile radio station was setup in the parish garden. That is fairly close to the bomb site.

- A large fixed radio station was in the forest of lower Hadamar. It was also the site of the last small ground combat between US forces and Germans during the liberation of Limburg. But that one is about 10 km away from the bomb today, somewhere west of Hadamar.





I am not sure if it was really a miss - those radio stations had been used to coordinate the air defenses, attacking them shortly before a bombing raid could really make it harder to coordinate fighters.

 

[jedidia]

New fun idea to lighten up my workday:

Write all class and property names in yeOldeEnglishe

 

[Notebook]

Re #25385 above.

I grew up in Blyth, North East England about 10 miles up the coast from Newcastle.
I never head of any UXB activity, I'm guessing all were sorted soon after the raids.

Newcastle was the target of a few raids, but not as heavily bombed as some cities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Blitz

My parents where children then and don't recall any sustained bombing, but the Luftwaffe did seem keen on "Aerial Mines" or parachute bombs as they called them.
These single raiders went on for quite a while till near the end of the war.

When I was growing up the beach still had tank traps on it. 8' cubes of concrete scattered all over the sand-dunes. Of course it was obvious to small boys that you dug under them to make them roll over...Darwinism hadn't reached the North then.

Recently the Naval Gun Battery has been restored. It protected Blyth Harbour and beaches:
https://www.blythbattery.org.uk/

The gun type originally installed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_6-inch_Mk_VII_naval_gun
N.

 

[Artlav]

And the bomb made the news: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48746557

That's a peculiar crater shape.

 

[Urwumpe]

Shows a more common appearance from the surface:

https://www.wiesbaden112.de/vermutliche-250-kilogramm-bombe-reisst-krater-in-getreidefeld/

 

[steph]

The unexploded mine/bomb risk is present in France as well. I hear they have entire areas still sealed off, even now. In the coastal forests of western France you can literally come across the rusty remains of old encampments, and I'm not even talking about the concrete bunkers. The thought that there might still be mines came across my mind, but I figured that at least the trail leading to them should be mine-free

 

[Urwumpe]

The unexploded mine/bomb risk is present in France as well. I hear they have entire areas still sealed off, even now. In the coastal forests of western France you can literally come across the rusty remains of old encampments, and I'm not even talking about the concrete bunkers. The thought that there might still be mines came across my mind, but I figured that at least the trail leading to them should be mine-free

In Belgium, there are still huge mines of about 15 tons TNT waiting to be found after WW1. One exploded after a lightning strike in 1955, creating a 40m wide crater.

 

[steph]

In Belgium, there are still huge mines of about 15 tons TNT waiting to be found after WW1. One exploded after a lightning strike in 1955, creating a 40m wide crater.

That sounds more like underground ordinance depot rigged to a detonator :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

That sounds more like underground ordinance depot rigged to a detonator :lol:

Essentially that is what they created. They simply applied modern chemistry to medieval tactics.

 

[Linguofreak]

That sounds more like underground ordinance depot rigged to a detonator :lol:

Long before there were landmines that blew up when you stepped on them, there was the tactic of digging a tunnel under enemy fortifications, filing it with explosives, and setting them off. That's where the term "mine" for a landmine came, actually.

---------- Post added at 15:56 ---------- Previous post was at 15:41 ----------

New fun idea to lighten up my workday:

Write all class and property names in yeOldeEnglishe

Nitpick:

yeMiddleEnglysshe

þætEaldeEnglisc

 

[Urwumpe]

I think I will write my next C# tool using old saxon identifiers.

sageDagun();

 

[jedidia]

Nitpick:

yeMiddleEnglysshe

þætEaldeEnglisc

Yeah, well, I was more thinking of ye olde butcherde englishe...

 

[Linguofreak]

Yeah, well, I was more thinking of ye olde butcherde englishe...

But the form people butcher in that case is generally no older than Early Modern English. Even ye for þe, which I used for yeMiddleEnglysshe, is an early modern form. The best way to butcher Old English proper is to take Dutch or Frisian or Plattdeutsch and replace all the D's with þ.

 

[jedidia]

But the form people butcher in that case is generally no older than Early Modern English.

Of course it is, otherwise people would have to learn another language :lol:

The best way to butcher Old English proper is to take Dutch or Frisian or Plattdeutsch and replace all the D's with þ.

That sounds like as good an idea as writing swiss german. Which people started to do in texts and emails nowadays. It's horrible...

 

[Urwumpe]

That sounds like as good an idea as writing swiss german. Which people started to do in texts and emails nowadays. It's horrible...

Yeah, especially using latin letters for it and not the correct klingon. :lol:

 

[Notebook]

Berlin Brandenburg: The airport with half a million faults
By Chris Bowlby
BBC News
29 June 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48527308

Is it really that bad?

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48527308

Is it really that bad?

N.

Yes. Though the number is hardly surprising for a project with that complexity and the German accuracy when it comes to inspecting other peoples work for errors. :lol:


But the project had a REALLY REALLY REALLY REEEEAAALLLY bad project management during the first ten years.



Including that the complex fire proofing design of such a large building complex was done by somebody barely qualified for cooking coffee in a office.



That is why there are so many problems in safety-critical equipment. The last thing I heard was using a kind of limestone for important cable channels with cables for the fire fighting equipment, that explodes when heated in a fire (and can cut cables that way). No professional architect for such a system would have done such a beginners error.

 

[Notebook]

Strangely we haven't got anything exactly analogous in the UK.
We have HS2(High Speed 2) a railway, that may or may not get built, not sure if its started yet?

Should have refurbished Tempelhof, better architecture.

 

[tl8]

Strangely we haven't got anything exactly analogous in the UK.
We have HS2(High Speed 2) a railway, that may or may not get built, not sure if its started yet?

Should have refurbished Tempelhof, better architecture.

They have started. Currently doing Premlim site work at Euston. Most of which is looking for bodies in the cemetery they are building on.


Crossrail is starting to look like a good analogy. That was going well, until it wasn't. 2 year delay minimum.