Amazing, good on you girl, I watched it live and I was in tears, I thought this might happen when I saw her in the heats, she’s the absolute dogs, go and give the other track athletes a good talking too, I’m sure she will, though they might not need it.
I’ve looked up the statistics, we haven’t done this well since 1908 when we had the advantage of hosting the games, though 56 golds is a bit over the top, can’t work that one out, but 16 so far is beyond dreams, I love it, I always get really into the Olympics whether we do well or not, this year is very special, it might go certain birds up, but it’s given us alot of fun neverthess, whatever happens next doesn’t matter really, we’ve done well so far, as as as I’m concerned, it’s been way beyond expectations.

Pete, In 1908 most of the people who did turn up from other countries outside of Europe had been on boats of one type or another for at least 2 weeks (6 weeks in the case of the guys from down under, unless they happened to be living in Europe). In a lot of cases the Brit won, because he was the only good athlete to turn up.

One thing I’ve noted however, almost every medal table on almost every news web site that covers the Olympics from a number of counties shows China first, US second and UK Third….Except the US news sites that show US first, China second and UK fifth (Behind Russia and the Aussies). No…No…No… Number of overall medals don’t count, unless you have the same number of gold and silver medals as another country, then the Bronze ones come into play, Likewise Silvers only come into play when numbers of golds are equal. Gold = Country won the event. Silver & Bronze = well done, but your a Loser.

How the Aussies think the medal table looks Here

How the Russians think the medal table looks Here

How the Germans think the medal table looks here

How the Americans think the medal table looks Here

I’m not usually anti American, but this really grips my poo. Just face it, the Chinese are whopping your backsides USA.

Also Operation Hydra 17/18 Aug 43

Operation Hydra as well (Bomber Command attack on Peenemünde) that night also covered by a very good Martin Middlebrook book.

Conqueror used Mk 8 Torpedoes on the Belgrano attack because the submarine at that time had never successfully fired the Mk 24 in trials. The command staff on board decided that they wouldn’t risk missing the cruiser with a weapon that was considered unreliable. As for the Sir Gallahand, if the torpado failed, plenty of time to find out what went wrong, correct it, and to have another go.

I shall be disappointed if the director of the Red Baron chooses to put Lanoe Hawker in an SE5a rather than his slow and unwieldy DH2.

Slow yes, Unwieldy…Not quite, DH2 was a bit more agile than the Albatross tha MvR was flying in, an advantage that Hawker used to the full, if it hadn’t, the dogfight would have been over quite quickly in MvR’s favour. Disappointed, Yes if Hawker is in an SE5A in the film

It’s just a system of registration. It started with ‘A’ and has worked upwards since. That is why you see alot of five figure usernames on this site.
Ie: XL231, XH668 etc. Since the early ’40’s they have been using a five digit group with two letters followed by three numbers. They are just tail numbers allotted to airframes. As long as the a/c is in service it will retain this number. If it is retained for non-operational use it will be allocated a ‘maintenance’ number. This is also a five digit number consisting of four numbers followed by an M.

Actually started with just 3 numbers at the formation of the RFC (which was originally envisaged as a loosely Joint Army/RN service (original serial numbers were allocated in blocks to each service from 1-10000 (however not all numbers used by a long shot), However with the advent of a much expanded RFC / RNAS (the Navy going their own way in early 1914) during WWI when serial number 10000 was issued (a BE2 in 1916) , it was decided to put a letter followed 4 figures for both the RFC and RNAS aircraft serial numbers RFC had a block starting from A0001 to J9999 (G and I not included). RNAS had two blocks N0001-N9999 and S0001-S9999. When the RAF was formed the system was retained, though the N block was reused, and when the R block ran out, S was missed, and the next batch started with T. A number of letters have not been used, as they could be confused with another letter, plus from the start of the K series, numbers started at 1000, not 0001. When the Z codes ran out in 1940, the current system came into use (starting with AA100, 001-099 not used). Also a number of serial blocks have never been used, as a security measure (to confuse any enemy about how many aircraft of one type we actually have (Avro Manchester production was 200 aircraft, spread over a block of 300 serials, for example).

As for TSR 2, studied in the cold light of day, cancellation was the only option. The country was broke. F-111K was canned as a sweetener to the Left Wing of the Labour party to get prescription charges into the NHS (source of that little gem, Healey at a RAFHS seminar), plus of course, somebody in the RAF woke up to the fact that the Buccaneer could do most of the missions of the TSR2, at a small fraction of the cost of the TSR2 (though an updated Nav Attack system would have been useful).

Was up there last night, the builders are tearing down the old guardroom 🙁

Took a few photos for old times sake, it was the Families Club in my day. Apparently they can’t find the original land owner to pass the site back to.

Humm, don’t go there, Was involved in a massive refurb of that place in late 03 after the fire boss at Coltishall shut it down, due to the main hall being a fire death trap (big voids between the old courtyard wall and the false wall panelling). The team of which I was a member had pretty much had totally refurbished the whole place when Neatishead got drawndown and Coltishall got closed.