Hard to see the Germans being shut-out for long if the RAF had been annihilated. With the States not yet in the war I’d see a battle of attrition in the Channel – LW v RN (see HMS Repulse and PoW for how that would go), then landing (seaborne & airborne), beachhead and breakout – pretty much Normandy in reverse. Get as far as the main centres London, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and worry about the rest later on… who’s coming to the rescue??

Even harder to guess what they’d have done with the UK once they had it – nowhere else left to go except over here to drink the Guinness, sack the strategic peat reserves and force de Valera to up the status from ’emergency’ to ‘real mess’.

Then what? Make overtures to the States or try to forcibly control the Atlantic seaboard like the Japanese couldn’t hope to manage in the Pacific.

Either policy would have taken a lot of men and material. And all the while, the Soviet Union, would slowly be gearing up for the war Stalin always felt was inevitable…

What if’s are always interesting but I think the actual outcome of the Second World War was the only one that would not see the USSR being knee-deep in Western Europe sooner or later. That and the fact that the States would probably still have got to the bomb first would have made for really interesting second half of the forties.

the concordski bit was the TU-144 crash at Paris in 1970something, saw a documentary about that, the french would not admit a fighter aircraft of theirs was in vicinity and made the TU-144 turn abrubtly, which caused a framework failure, and break up.

Just a small point on the Tu-144 crash – I seem to remember a documentary (maybe the same one) tentatively concluding that the crash was caused by compressor stall – starving the engines of airflow, as a result of exceeding the flight envelope (due to the mysterious Mirage or hot-dogging – we may never know)… the result of which was loss of control and structural failure.

The Mirage was alleged to be up in order to take photos of the canards in operation.

Was it stupid to send a unit trained in ‘agressive advance towards the enemy’ into a crowd control situation?
Seems so to me.

Was the pre-meditated purpose of the British civilian/military authorities to initiaite an engagement with civilians?
I highly doubt it.

Who fired the first shot? A uncharacteristically nervous para? An IRA sniper on the grassy knoll? A para who fancied ‘slotting a Paddy’ to brighten up his day? a car backfiring? We’ll probably never know

Should the paras have been reigned in faster?
Sure – except, they’re trained to fight hard and if they thought they were under attack…

Once the firing started did any para’s take advantage of it to notch up a few kills? Who knows – try proving it – the proof is probably in a box somewhere – with Martin McGuinness’s tommy gun.

Were all the victims unarmed? Who knows? Can guns be spirited away in a chaotic situation? Are we ever likely to get the truth of the IRA’s activities that day?

Has the IRA ever admitted they had armed members in the area on that day?
No (if there weren’t any it’d probably be the only day in living history given their self-proclaimed mandate to ‘protect’ the citizens of Ireland – a ‘service’ which has been paid for by extracting the money and blood of Irish citizens).

Is anyone calling the soliders murderers paying any attention whatsoever to the activities of the armed IRA members the report says were present on that day?
Pretty sure not

Should British soldiers be prosecuted?
Absolutely not – unless there is clear and irrefutable evidence of premeditated murder by either the individual or organisation responsible and only then if Republican and Loyalist terrorists/politicians are also prosecuted for the blood on their hands.

Does any eyewitness really know ALL of what happened that day?
Eye witness testimony being what it is – subjective, unreliable and limited to their field of vision, pretty sure not.

Does anyone on this thread really know exactly what happened that day? Pretty sure not.

Now, granted these are artistic representations, but there must be something out there on a RED SE-5a??

There was at least one other red (fuselage) SE-5A (named Schweinhund) flown by this guy…

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/grinnell-milne.php

and here is a painting of ‘Schweinhund’ as immortalised in kit form by Roden…

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=91397

Funnily enough I have an old copy of Grinnell-Milnes book in my ‘to-read’ pile at home…

Cheers

Seb

I’ve long wanted to revive the death penalty for whoever designs airline seats. Being fairly tall, whenever the seat in front comes flying back, the metal fitting hits my kneecap dead-centre. If the person in front doesn’t have the decency to at least control their rate of recline they receive a hearty thump to their headrest as I extract what remains of my legs from the back of their seat.

Even so, I’d prefer not to have to pre-reclined seats myself as I sleep better with my head down on my chin. That said these seats do look rather roomy in the leg room area and hats off to Spirit – more airlines should realise that the human race is actually growing rather than shrinking.

I’m a big fan of the Ryanair approach for short-haul – upright, rigid seats made of wipe-clean materials for fast turnarounds (and healthier knees).

Practically speaking, I’m not sure and its likely each airline will make its own decisions. The most oft used model is for pax already booked on a specific date in future to be allowed to travel that date, and for disrupted pax to be reaccommodated when space is available – however, in cases where there’s been huge disruption it hasn’t always worked that way and some airlines have in the past given priority to specific disrupted passengers irrespective of who holds bookings on each flight. As I am also meant to travel on business next Tuesday, I have today booked the flights and there doesn’t seem to be any block, capacity restrictions or hiked prices for travel a week from now. I booked now, rather than leaving it another day or two, because I felt it was important to get my bookings into the system – to get a towel on the beach so to speak – in order to ensure that on the day I want to travel the flights aren’t totally booked out with people who are currently affected by this mess. If anyone must travel in the next week or so and hasn’t yet booked, I’d recommend doing it now because once “normal” service is resumed there’s likely to be a huge tide of re-bookings of disrupted pax onto flights that operate over the following few days.

Andy

Thanks Andy,

I suspected as much (that the bumped passengers get bumped some more. It makes sense I guess – why cheese off customers who have not yet been delayed when you can restrict the damage to those that have and perhaps compensate them somehow – even for natural events).

We use a corporate travel agency and I’ve been reluctant to book as yet because I know they have been working flat out all weekend with priority one being the repatriation of guys we have in the field and who are due home. I’ll throw my ring in the hat tomorrow and see where it lands… busy routes – a day trip to Paris on Thursday and then West Africa next week – really don’t want to be anywhere near an airport as things stand though – I can see the wind changing and ending up in the same boat/ferry/aircraft carrier myself.

Happy Landings!

Seb

I thought there was a previous RB crash in Malta? Two planes collided – one plane crashed into the sea (1 fatality), the other plane landed safely.

The Maltese decided that would be the last RB air race in Malta.