The British equivalent was the Sea Eagle missile which could be carried by some Sea Harriers. It’s not clear if the Sea Eagle was taken south, if it was it wasn’t used in anger:

The Sea Eagle fit was not perfected until after the conflict, AFAIK. It ranks, for me, among the most significant “what if” shortcomings, along with e.g. the absence of a few Gannet AEW aircraft…

Well, if you’re going to have a “General Discussion” forum (not something I’ve contributed to before, IIRC) then perhaps O/T “thread creep” is not strictly applicable… But I think it’s finished creeping now in any case.

I’m not certain about you having the guns at home, simply because of the possibility of a toerag stealing it..

Why would anyone go to the considerable trouble, risk and so on, of doing this, when as you say a few lines further on,

And by the way, Guns are really easy to buy on the street, £100 would get you a decent hand arm.

– ? Yes, I already knew how easily obtainable guns were for criminals – that’s precisely my point! Our growing mountain of anti-gun legislation does NOTHING – nada, zilch – to stop criminals from having whatever guns they want. All these laws simply disarm the public, preventing them from defence of self and property if they are threatened. The number of crimes committed with guns found to have been stolen from licenced gun-owners has always been only a very small percentage of the total.

Do you remember when you could buy a 12-Bore from the catalogues such as Littlewoods?…..But after that period, a lot of armed robbers used them as the weapon of choice.

Yes, and No. Pre-1967 you bought a Shotgun Cert at the Post Office, then went to the gun dealer and bought as many shotguns as you wanted. Only cheapskate robbers carried sawn-offs though: it was actually the case (I’ll provide the figures if you want) that handguns were always the armed robber’s weapon of choice, because they’re far more compact & concealable. The fact that handguns were controlled, and shotguns were not, simply made no difference. With shotguns being more or less freely available, was there a massive social problem with gun violence? No – and from your remarks you clearly remember the period – there was not. Shotguns became controlled after ’67 because Roy Jenkins, Home Sec at the time, saw a sneaky opportunity to do so after some bad guys (you might recall this) shot & killed three London coppers. Did these toerags use shotguns? No – they had criminally-obtained handguns, never licenced… There were calls to re-introduce the death penalty, to which Jenkins was opposed, so to make it seem he was doing something tough (and as a distraction) he severely restricted shotguns. There you go.
We’re not going to agree on this, clearly. I’m glad to hear you hit that toerag with a rake. You know what would happen now, don’t you – the cops would immediately charge you with assault, the toerag would probably get off with a slap-on-wrist, and might sue you into the bargain.

I don’t think we’re getting anywhere, but I feel the need to correct some misapprehensions – and without wishing to be rude, you do tend to make sweeping statements! I know something about the history of firearms legislation (a subject close to my heart, as a keen shooter) and regard it as an essential study for anyone interested in the decline of liberty in this country.

No way can you compare your grandfathers day to today. (a) We had the death penalty, and yes it was a deterrant (b) there was a common sense of decency and respect within society. Also, most men had seen their pals blown to pieces by a war and so knew the consequences of a bullet to a body.

I didn’t compare the times so much as suggest that people, on the whole, are no better or worse now than they were then. I don’t see how they could be: human society would never have been able to function at all had the great majority of people not been fundamentally decent and willing to co-operate with one another. If you have any evidence of social regression, I’d be interested to learn about your sources. Similarly, what is your evidence for suggesting that the death penalty was a deterrent? Even when execution took the most disgusting medieval forms, or one could be transported for minor theft, it never stopped people from murdering one another or stealing… And I’m talking about pre-WW1 Britain BTW: the only “gun control” laws here were puny and had hardly any effect, but during WW1 temporary controls on gun ownership were imposed (logic…? weird!) then in 1920 the first Firearms Act was passed, not because of armed crime, which was very rare, but because the Establishment thought all those chaps returning from the Trenches might emulate the Bolsheviks – i.e official paranoia + distrust of ordinary people.

You seem to believe that todays society is no better or worse than those of yesteryear. This implies that educational standards and parenting responsibility are on a par, which they certainly are not. They are both far lower.

I’ve pointed to the far lower incidence of armed crime pre-1920 but I don’t delude myself that it was a Golden Age, and neither should you: ordinary life was often rough & tough, and like now there were plenty of city areas where it was unwise to venture at night – unless you had a revolver in your pocket, which a great many people did. Yet gun crime was remarkably scarce, far less common proportionally than it is now. I just don’t know where you get your convictions from to do with education, parenting etc – literacy rates are certainly higher now, and despite tabloid headlines about Baby P etc, I doubt extremely that parenting has declined. If you have stats that say otherwise of course, I’d be interested.

Why, even HP Sauce is carp [sic] now compared to the real stuff of the 60’s!

A very fishy claim… I wouldn’t know, hate the stuff, probably haven’t consumed any since the ‘60s!

I’m also sure that the majority of people are decent upright and non-threatening…….but they are not the ones buying guns.

Precisely my point. The toerags have always been free to obtain and use whatever guns they wanted, since laws only affect the law-abiding, and these days guns are being used with hugely greater frequency in crime than ever before. Our succession of Firearms Acts has merely resulted in decent people being disarmed & oppressed. The State cannot defend you: the police certainly cannot. It’s interesting to note that the rate of “hot” burglary (i.e. burglary when the homeowners are in the house) is far lower in the USA than it is here (from memory, around 13% compared to well over 50%) because US burglars know householders are liable to be armed…

… a properly armed Police force, let them take out the scum. Left to society, this society, it would get out of hand. …. I’d like to see the scum and toerags offed at once, I don’t believe in long jail terms for mass murderers and child killers/molesters (Especially at about £2,300 PER WEEK) of taxpayers money to keep the basads warm and fed. Some of these should be killed on live television, with a phone-in to pick the method of death. Profits to the victims.

Please tell me you’re not serious. This is scary stuff! You want an armed police force, and you want them to execute suspected criminals summarily, perhaps on TV…? This is a particularly nasty recipe for a police state – and I don’t think public execution would form any more edifying a spectacle than Big Brother. You’re inconsistent.

But I still wouldn’t trust the majority of UK citizens with a gun.

The only possible assumption, in a free society, is that the great majority of people are perfectly trustworthy, decent and responsible. Nowhere in the civilised world do I know of the sort of anarchic mayhem you seem to associate with an armed populace: it wasn’t the case in pre-WW1 Britain, and it doesn’t apply either to e.g. the much maligned USA where, as I’ve said, the most heavily armed bits (Vermont, New Hampshire, the Dakotas, Arizona etc etc) are the most free from gun crime. I want my handgun (Colt 1911 Series 70, .45ACP…) back, without having to give anyone a damn reason, least of all the government – but one excellent reason could be that I could look after myself and my family in extremis, since nobody else can.

Free to be armed would fail in UK. Unless it was VASTLY scrutinised, which therefore makes it “Not Free” anyway.
Sorry, but the nation holds too much anger to be allowing free range guns. Road rage, pub fights, gangland, revenge etc.
US has this lot, and they have guns. Their murder rate is already too high, so imagine if they didn’t have the death penalty as a deterrant?

You seem to suggest that we have degraded in some way, and are prevented from riot & pillage only by authoritarian government. Yours is a very bleak view of society, and not one I share: the toerags are only a small minority, as ever. The overwhelming majority of people are decent, upright, and represent (armed or not) no threat to others’ rights or peace of mind. In my grandfathers’ day, there was no meaningful impediment to anyone who wished to buy and carry a gun, and the contemporary absence of violent crime on our streets supports this – it was far less frequent then than, regrettably, it is now, while at the same time firearms ownership was extremely common. Renewing our former freedom to be armed as we choose would simply restore the balance, because at present there is nothing to stop the baddies from impinging on your rights at gunpoint: criminals don’t obey laws, and are free as ever to obtain and use guns. There is a compelling argument for all our Firearms Acts since the original one in 1920 having served practically no useful purpose whatsoever.
Switzerland has a rate of armed crime involving firearms very close to our own.
The USA has a rate of violent crime in general (i.e. not directly connected with guns) far higher than ours – it’s a more violent society. But those parts of the USA where gun ownership by ordinary people is most common, are also the parts that have the lowest levels of gun crime, while places that restrict handgun ownership very tightly (e.g. NYC which until our 1997 Act had had tougher handgun laws than the UK since 1911…) are often awash with gun crime. And so on. Me, I trust the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens to own guns, as they always used to, without imperilling public safety, and I reject State claims that gun bans are for my own good as dangerous police-state garbage.
BTW I’m not convinced the death penalty is a deterrent.

Sounds perfect, apart from the weapons at home thing. The average UK intellect is now too far shot to allow this. When 100% brain-dead TV such as Big B or Soaps is constantly top of the ratings, you know the schooling has failed.

I share your contempt for Trash TV (I hardly watch the box at all myself) but I don’t think we’re any more stupid, as a nation, than previously; the forbears of those folk watching Big Brother and getting pissed on Stella were, 200 years ago, watching public hangings and getting pissed on ale… A key mark of a free society is that its citizens are free to be armed, and historically only despots & tyrants forbade this. Switzerland is OK in this respect, while the UK, well, go figure… I dare say the Swiss don’t let just any draftee have an assault rifle – the dodgy and terminally stupid won’t get a look in.
kato writes:

Switzerland is probably the only country in the world that requires its (male) citizens to pay a tax if they can’t serve themselves – both conscript recruits and reservists. And that for about any reason – be it that they are unfit for service, or be it that they are (as reservists) living outside the country.

I wasn’t aware of that – very interesting. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me: if a country is worth being a citizen of, then it’s worth helping to defend, and those who won’t or don’t should acknowledge this with a penalty.

I think you’re being remarkably aggressive.

Not at all, simply trying to extract some kind of referential backup for your very general assertions.

So far you have sited ONE reference (Deighton’s “Fighter”)…

Until now, that’s more than you had done – see above! And since the Deighton book is a historical work, with an intro by no less than AJP Taylor (one of the premier English historians of the 20thC…) it is itself based on a wideranging list of other works – his bibliography extends to forty-plus major works plus documents, periodicals and so on, including e.g. The Rise & Fall of the German Air Force (MoD), The Luftwaffe War Diaries (Becker), Inside the Third Reich (Speer), The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (Webster/HMSO), and “fighter pilot stuff” by e.g. Deere, Galland, Townsend…

..the Spitfire and Hurricane, universally accepted as having a BETTER turning circle than the Bf109..

You’re doing it again! Sorry, but sweeping assertions such as “universally accepted” just don’t cut it – if you’re convinced I’m wrong , and I’m perfectly prepared to be shown as wrong, then you ought to feel obligated to cite respectable, credible evidence that demonstrates Deighton’s sources (technical, historical and pilot-originated) to be incontrovertibly mistaken.

The Most Dangerous Enemy by Stephen Bungay…..is regarded as one of the best volumes on the subject.

I hadn’t heard of it, but will look out for it.

And as for “usually minor” works completed by those actual participants? Umm, that’s pretty casual considering it was they who wrote history in the first place.

Don’t be so defensive! By “minor works” I don’t mean fighter pilot memoirs are duff or bad, just that they don’t count as authoritative works of history. You neglect the fact that gifted combat pilots are rarely good writers (exceptions OTTOMH: Geoff Wellum, Johnnie Johnson, Ed Rasimus [Vietnam Thud/F4 pilot]…) and are practically never academic historians with skills to match. I too read as many personal air-combat accounts as come my way, but do not categorise them as “history”. Historians are people like AJP Taylor – an ARP Warden in WW2, not remotely like a fighter pilot – and to a lesser extent Len Deighton. I recommend a glance at pp106-107 in his book, with a graphic diagram showing the theoretical turning circles of 109, Hurricane and Spitfire; as he says, the short wingspan and high wing-loading of the ME put it ahead, but against this one had to consider its weaker mainplane and tail. The key is perhaps this: “The arguments about which type could out-turn which are usually no more than a reflection of the recklessness of the opponents a man had flown against.”