One for Des

Wat is an Ethiopian dish, IIRC.

 

Harrier?

Niall Rowan, a mate who's been on several French Runs, did nicely out of
it too, when the MoD asked his lab to find why aluminium ships burned so
nicely.

 

Ok, so how many wars *have* been declared post WW2? Buggered if I can
think of any.

 

Sea Harrier to be exact. The poor thing was found to be badly in
need of a few modifications.[/QUOTE]

Did all right, thobut.

 

Andy Bonwick wrote

Rollocks?

 

My Father (ex-Vulcan aircrew 9 sqdrn) diagnosed the forced landed Vulcan
as having a damaged fuelling probe. With the RAF equivalent of "They all
do that, Sir".

He should know, as he was on Victors at the time and at that moment on a
whirlwind (couple of hours IIRC) visit home before returning to Ascension.

 

Your Dad fettled Vulcans, and you hit MZs wiv an 'ammer.

Something wrong with yer Dad's genes, was there?

 

Wasn't the 6 Day War and the Iran-Iraq war 'proper' wars.

Or don't they count...

 

He was aircrew, Navigator.

I come from a military family, of sorts. The maternal side has a lot of
military types - Army (Engineers), Navy (HMS Hood) and RAF (Hurricanes,
Tangmere IIRC) as well.

Having lived on airbases and seen the RAF life I came to the very rapid
conclusion it wasn't for me.

 

sweller wrote

They don't count as proper because they are started by foreigners. The
thread is about proper wars that we start. Or, more properly, that we
are inevitably and reluctantly drawn into.

and if they weren't proper wars before we get there you can bet your
life they will be soon after.

 

New Whirled Ordure.

 

I had a conversation with my brother at the time of the invasion of the
Falklands. His view was "Send a gunboat!" (verbatim). He was joking, but
that's pretty well what happened.

 

Yeah, international law is for poor weak countries with no nuclear weapons
and ICBM's.

 

I'm talking about wars with a formal declaration. IIRC the Six Day War,
and the Yom Kippur War come to that, were both started with surprise
attacks.

Not sure about Iran-Iraq, mind you.

 

Yeah, in fact it did so well that it was decided to increase its
capability. That's what we were working on.[/QUOTE]

Labour cancelled the supersonic version, along with the TSR2, God Rot
Them.

 

I'm not sure it actually needed to be Supersonic. Improved aircraft avionics
were probably more important.

 

The US govmint certainly knows that the hi-tec arms industry is a key to
industrial success in the world.

 

I have great difficulty imagining anything remotely resembling the Harrier
breaking the sound barrier. And anything carrying enough extra gear to do
VTOL is going to be at a tremendous disadvantage in payload/range terms
compared with conventional supersonic jet fighters.

http://www.vstol.org/wheel/wheel.htm

 

who actually gives a **** whether or not the government did or didn't
build a particular warplane?

 

You're probably right.

Labour *also* cancelled the STOL transport that was intended to supply
the Harrier in its forward bases, which was another daft move.