The Russian/Jew News Whip Around

This blog is getting lots of traffic from Sweden of late, which means Nightingale Russia is dumpster diving us. Why don't you drop us a line, gals?

Hot Air has a piece about China's 'useful idiot' bloggers and vloggers who get paid by Beijing to say nice things about China and the CCP. We smiled. We laughed. Our KGB handler has never asked us to write anything about Russia much less anything nice about Russia. 

Segway...we dropped by Russia Today this morning. They were more bellicose on the Ukraine front yesterday than the day before. This morning we don't see much on the matter. This blog admits to finding RT surprisingly useful. What's our own Inforos got? There's a big headline about a phone call between Vlad and Boris. Another piece about Ukraine....but overall light bellicosity.

Some time ago we submitted an article to a military history magazine about Royal Navy plans for war with the US in 1862. This week we pointed out that the research for that piece was based on our own submission to Those in Peril, The Blue and the Red: Palmerston's Ironclads, which has been nominated for a Sidewise Award. Those awards will be announced this weekend. The article's publication date has been moved up. We are very good at what we do. 

Actually, we'll have a piece coming out in that same magazine next month about the Yom Kippur War and the Battle of the Chinese Farm. A very interesting and exciting battle in which Egypt gets the full Ariel Sharon. He went all biblical on the Egyptians, smashed and army, crossed Suez and surrounded an army.  An 11th plague...

More Jews....The Times of Israel reports, 'Iran’s state-affiliated Tehran Times issued a threat to Israel on Wednesday, publishing a map of the country riddled with markers as a reminder that Iranian forces can ostensibly strike anywhere they want. Alongside a front-page opinion piece headlined “Just one wrong move!” the map showed scores of markers along the length and breadth of the country.' Read the article, study the map, and believe the Mullahs. The coming war will be an existential conflict reminiscent of the London Blitz. Israel will suffer thousands of casualties and billions in damage to buildings and infrastructure. Israeli will also do horrible things. 

Withering On

A lot of decent work yesterday. We smoothed out some of the problems in The Battle of the Sea of Okhotsk. Clarity ensued.

Did some nice editing on Pershing's War and the Battle of the Moselle Heights. That's coming along nicely.

We're getting geared up for the third book in the Phases of Mars series, this one on land warfare. You people want to see Patton's Tanks: 1919 or the return of John Frederick Hart and read his reporting on the Battle of Arlington-Alexandria?

7-26-19 in New Jersey

Over at News12NJ, a tour of New York City's Harbor Defenses.

The tour runs up the Hudson River past Fort Washington, lost in 1776 to a bloody British assault, and Fort Lee, hastily and wisely evacuated by General Washington after the loss of the former. From there the tour goes way up river to West Point.

We grew up half an hour or so away from the academy. Every year our school went on a tour of the place. Our elementary school was Furnace Woods, so named because the chain stretched across the Hudson during the Revolutionary War was smelted in the woods around the school. Furnace Woods Elementary lies on Watch Hill Road, so named....well reader(s) will get the idea. Well into the 20th century, we were told by the district's old bus drivers, people dug up Revolutionary War relics at old Continental redoubts on Charles Point and Indian Point.

Anyway, if reader(s) want to visualize the defenses smashed by the Royal Navy in Palmerston's Ironclads, there they are.

Palmerston's Ironclads, Johnson's Weakness

In which The Blue and the Red: Palmerston's Ironclad, our contribution to Those in Peril  is singled out for awesomeness: 

An example of the good stuff is Palmerston’s Ironclads, by William Stroock, wherein the UK makes common cause with the Confederacy and sends elements of the Royal Navy to the eastern seaboard...In that story, an expeditionary force comprised of the 9th Royal Regiment of Foot and several warships, including HMS Warrior and others of the North American Station under Admiral Milne set out from Halifax to harry the American coast. First, they all but raze Portland, then move on to Boston and thence to New York and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

So sayeth the Breach, Bang Clear, blog.

We like the file photo they added of USS Galena and the caption provided.

Well done, sirs.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Boris Johnson...

[WTF? -Ed]

..,inherits the Iranian oil-tanker crisis. He has no ironclads to dispatched and barely a navy at all. What will he do?

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 5/20/19

For the Those in Peril sequel, we'll be doing a short story about American fliers in the Pershing's War universe.

Rivet Counters

So someone showed up in the future comments section of this blog and nitpicked our use of HMS Warrior in The Blue and the Red: Palmerston's Ironclads.

We provided this:

From Our Iron-Clad Ships: Their Qualities, Performances, and Cost (1869), by Edward James Reed, naval architect: 'Let us take as an illustration the very important quality of power to ram an enemy. The first sea-going iron-clad, the 'Warrior,' possessed this quality to a minor degree. She isn't, it should be understood, wholly unfit to act as a ram. Any strong and well-built iron ship would deliver a formidable blow in striking an enemy at even a moderate speed; but the 'Warrior' is much more than an ordinary ship in this respect, having a massive solid forged ram-stem well supported by bulkheads and frames, worked within her elegant knee-of-the-head, expressly to adapt her for delivering a destructive blow upon an enemy.'

The above quote should have ended it, but noooooo. The nitpicker was unassuaged. 

Unless you can prove that we royally screwed up*, we don't care. It's rivet counting. As Chris Crawford once said about his brilliant game, Patton Strikes Back, 'If you can prove that the 272nd Volksgreandier Division had a battery of 88s, good for you.'

The nitpicker was kind enough to download Arctic Storm as he served in the US Army in the 80s. 

Great, I can't wait to hear how everyone knows the artillery forward observer went by Bethel-9 not Green-9.

We write novels not technical manuals.

In the meantime, if you'd like to enjoy some fun naval alternate history:

*And we have, just check out the Amazon Australia reviews of ANZACS.

Those in Trump

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2-3-19

Those in Peril comes out 15 - Feb. Our story is called The Blue and Red: Palmerston's Ironclads.

We've been asked to contribute to the sequel, an aerial warfare alternate history compilation. 

So far we got nuthin'.

Reader(s) are invited to weigh in.

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!

Battle of the Three Seas; the Battle of the Black Sea is looking pretty good.

Blooms, almost there....

Those in Peril, an alternate naval history short story compilation in which we have a story, will be out 15 February. We have been asked to contribute to the follow on air and ground warfare volumes.

Those in Peril

Coming 15 February, a collection of naval related alternate history short stories including works by the great Sarah Hoyt and your trusted blogger.

Our own story is The Blue and Red: Palmerston's Ironclads.

Thanks to Chris Kennedy and James Young.