Recent content by Al-Buraq

  1. Alternate South African leaders

    1910 - 1919: Louis Botha 1919 - 1924: Jan Smuts 1924 - 1939: Barry Hertzog 1939 - 1948: Jan Smuts 1948 - 1952: JG Strydom 1954 - 1958: Adolph Sailor Malan 1958 - 1964: Harry Oppenheimer 1964 - 1968: Helen Suzman 1968 - 1972: Alan Paton 1972 - 1977: Harry Schwartz 1977 - 1982: "Gatsha" Mangosotho...
  2. WI British radios had worked at Arnhem?

    Be prepared to be nuked by some other board members. Band of Brothers touched v e r y briefly on a very small aspect of the operation. Ryan's book, like his The Longest Day, is very good on detail and anecdote but suffers from his not having access to later released secret reports and documents...
  3. Flight Life of the Arrow...

    I think that you have that cart before the horse, or as this is a Navy matter, arse about face. Like their American cousins the British Armed forces were (and still are) more at war with each other than most foreign enemies. Both wanted to have a nuclear deterrent to prove their value ( and, let...
  4. DBWI: Reform Act 1832 passed

    Note: " We cannot, however, go on thus beyond to-day. " Or "We can't go on like this" Clearly any attempt to present such an outrageous prospect as the enfanchisement of the common people and a reduction of the divine arrangement that has heretofore blessed this Land would contrive a civil war...
  5. WI British radios had worked at Arnhem?

    You are completely right. A few years ago some original radios of the type were put to test in the UK and at the battle site and your stated results were proven. There was also a marked change in performance depending on whether the trees around the town were wet or dry!! The project was filmed...
  6. WI British radios had worked at Arnhem?

    Quite right. It was hardly the fault of the Dutch that SOE cocked up so badly or that the German counter-intelligence had such a good run. Some of which was the fault of the internal SOE-MI6 war. Being Dutch, you will also appreciate that the Gestapo had also managed to compromise and blacken...
  7. WI British radios had worked at Arnhem?

    I thought that that comment was so purile, it didn't deserve a response. Monty-bashing (or British-in-WW2-bashing) is a sport often undertaken by those who don't really know their history and, frankly, it doesn't help to point out the cock-ups and failures of American forces in WW2--there's not...
  8. WI British radios had worked at Arnhem?

    The Dutch resistance had been badly penetrated and compromised during the "England Spiel" and by 1944 there were four different resistance groups operating in the Arnhem and Eindhoven area, together with SOE, OSS and combined Allied JEDBURGH teams. Not all of the groups, nor everyone in them...
  9. Flight Life of the Arrow...

    Something that gets missed in the romance of the Arrow conspiracy is that Avro developed unparalled knowledge of the working of titanium while developing the plane. A knowledge that was lost at cancellation and picked up for a song by the US aircraft industry and later used to good effect in the...
  10. Axis Ireland

    Nothing to do with Chamberlain, but..... The lightest reading of Churchill's role in WW2 will show that he made or ordered to be made TWO approaches to De Valera regarding the bribe of Irish unification. The first was in June 1940, where Britain would re-gain use of the Treaty ports and be...
  11. The British drop the Bomb in 1982?

    Was "Operation Algeceiras", the Argentine plan to sabotage installations and shipping in Gibraltar, penetrated by every Western Intelligence Service and the KGB? Did the sabotage team spend the whole of the Falklands War period in a Madrid hotel because they liked the room service? Did the KGB...
  12. No Smooth ending to Apartheit in SA?

    Being uninformed, or even stupid, is hardly racism. The partition of South African territories was discussed continuously throughout the seventies and eighties and downtown Johannesburg and Hillbrow has declined into a ruin no matter what gloss is put on it. Mr Mann, I thought that you had...
  13. No Smooth ending to Apartheit in SA?

    Mostly the economics, social dynamics, demographics, history and realities of South Africa then and now. Insulting response and explanation to follow in the morning.
  14. Challenge/WI : Motor racing at the Olympics?

    The Modern Pentathlon was introduced into the Olympis in 1912 and featured 3 km run Fencing Show jumping (riding) 200M swimming pistol shooting This seems a pretty good slate of events for a 19th Century army officer, but it is hardly modern now. Someone here mentioned a ban on mechanical...
  15. Challenge/WI : Motor racing at the Olympics?

    Nuvolari died in his bed in in 1953 after a series of strokes. He only joined the Auto Union team in 1938, three years after his win at Nurbergring.
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