Posts

How the RN Sea Harriers beat the Argentine Mirage fighters

Image
When I was a boy, several years before the Falklands war, I was told about a tactic called "Viffing" which RAF V/STOL fighters could use to get behind their opponents. Every contemporary account on the 1982 Falklands War, and every history, suggests that the "Viffing" manouver was used by Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers to defeat the Argentine Mirage fighters. This film argues that this wasn't the real story at all. The Fleet Air Arm's Sea harriers certainly defeated their Argentine opponents. They won 100% of dogfights - shooting down 20 Mirages without losing a single Sea Harrier to an Argentine air force. However, there were a number of reasons for this. One was the capability of the Sidewinder missile and the skill with which the Sea Harriers used them. The hit rate of that missile was the best ever achieved in by an air-to-air missile in any war up to that date: fully 88% of Sidewinders fired by the Fleet Air Arm in the Falklands war hit an Argentine fighter...

Thrawn on Dooku

Image
In this fan fiction video, Grand Admiral Thrawn discusses with Jedi master Jorus C'baoth and Captain Pellaeon the history of the former Jedi Master turned Sith Lord Count Dooku. This discussion is set in the "Heir to the Empire" timeline, part of the Legends universe, not the Disney Star Wars canon. As Thrawn argues, Imperial officers were taught to see Dooku as a failure because they assumed he was trying to with the Clone Wars. In fact that was not his objective at all ...

"They assumed Britain would obey arithmetic rather than rebuild it."

Image
It is sometimes said of war that " amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics ." This video shows how the British managed to supply a Task force including ships, planes and men at a distance of 8,000 miles, which the Argentine Junta had not believed to be possible. The Argentines were not wrong about the arithmetic of supply making it very difficult for Britain to sustain a fleet in the South Atlantic. The British knew that too. So they changed the arithmetic.

Saturday music spot: "I need a hero" (Mando plus Shrek)

Image
"I need a hero" (the version sung by Jennifer Saunders in Shrek II) with video from Luke Skywalker's hallway scene from the climax of "The Mandalorian" season II   

Thrawn tells Jorus C'baoth and Captain Pellaeon why he stopped Outbound Flight.

Image
In his novel " Outbound Flight ," Timothy Zahn told the story of the expedition known as "Outbound Flight" which was led by Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth - and defeated by Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo of the Chiss navy, who would later become known a Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the follow-up novel " Survivor's Quest, " also by TImothy Zahn and set many years later, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his wife Mara Jade went looking for, and found, the remains of the expedition. All these events take place in the Star Wars "Legends" universe and are not currently part of the Disney Star Wars canon On Outbound flight, fifty thousand colonists sailed beyond the edge of the charts. The Republic spent the rest of its existence pretending they had not.  In the fan fiction video below, the man who stopped them explains why he did so, on the one world in the galaxy where his guest is unable to take vengeance. The conversation takes place on Myrkr, hom...

Thrawn on the fall of the republic

Image
 Fan fiction video in which Grand Admiral Thrawn and Captain Pellaeon discuss why the republic fell. From the legends "Heir to the empire" timeline rather than the Disney canon one, but practically everything in it transfers over.

Music spot: "In the Navy" by the Village People, ("Down Periscope" version with Kelsey Grammer)

Image