Why not get out from behind your computer screens, stop reading all the cr*p and come and look at some real aeroplanes, cars, motorbikes??
The Shuttleworth Collection is open all the year round–always something to see.
In fact, a Winter’s week day is the best time just to look & study.
come on a Tuesday or a Thursday and I might even show you around.
Price for tour = Tea afterwards.
A.

Well you never know, with a bit of luck.
At least it’ll give us something to watch on the telly.
A.

John/Oppama et al.

I firstly didn’t expect the thread to go the way it has.
I’ve expressed my views twice now on the Nazis (once more than I rather expected) and I won’t be taking the thing any further.

As to the Japanese. As a young man growing up in East Anglia there were plenty examples around me of men who had suffered terrible things in the Far East.
As my own Father once said-and his war had by our standards been no free holiday:-” My war was like a paid holiday compared with what they went through.”
And it’s easy to get angry.
However, it didn’t stop me rushing out to buy Japanese motorcycles, cameras, cars, TV’s etc.
In fact, I’m a life-long devotee to the products of Soichiro Honda–and he helped make aeroplane propellers during the war.
I did hear that he once whacked an indolent design engineer with a camshaft–and maybe that says more about the Japanese psyche than much else.
If though I was asked to name my engineering hero, it would be he. Sometimes (like today) when I’ve had my hands deep inside the workings of a Honda engine, I wonder and marvel at the workings of the minds of those who designed them. There was after all a very good reason why the British bike industry died a death.

I did know people once who wouldn’t have a japanese product in the house.
It was never I though.

A.

Gentlemen.
As ever on this little forum things often don’t go as planned.
I see that ever since I posted my initial post the other night, you’ve all been happily arguing away about the subject (and much else besides) without me.
I think I need to clarify a little. When I typed my original post I was both angry and moved. I’d just been watching a gentleman playing his violin at Auschwitz and as I said it was very moving.
I felt a certain amount of anger too, regarding the injustice of it all, and the great inhumanity–Hopefully, you will at least allow me that.
I certainly didn’t think you’d still be chewing the bones of it all this time later.

I suppose if you want my own view on the subject that Al raised, then it’s this. I cannot disagree that the scientific benefits you mention were not accrued. Whether or not they might have been gained by other means at a later date and by less extreme means, remains I suppose a moot point.
As to strong leadership, I might well disagree there. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time trying to get to the bottom of why a people as sophisticated as the Germans somehow allowed Hitler to get hold. I’d suggest you all read the two volume biography of Hitler by Professor Ian Kershaw and his shorter book on the Nazis in general if you can. I think he rather illustrates that Nazism was chaotic at best, Hitler indolent and the rather methodical and method loving German people trying to make sense of the chaos.
I’d still rather take the line that not much good came from the Nazis.

I think almost every staion had a local.
There was one in East Kirkby village (still open) and with I think still with memorbilia and another at Spilsby (again still open).
I don’t know about Lincoln itself.

Andy.

Keep fighting fella.
I rarely read or think about The Great War without considering what you might have to say on the subject.
Andy.

A faraway country of which we know nothing?

Yes Mr Chamberlain.
I have no interst whatsoever in either of them.
A pox on both their houses.

John.
Life isn’t so bad.
Today despite the cold I got a bit further along the road of rebuilding my own Honda 1100.
Apparently every August there’s a hill climb somewhere near High Wycombe. I intend to enter it.

Andy