private lives?

Hunh?

I'm certainly not a Clinton fan, but even I have to second the above "hunh?"

Some of my favourite recipes are Prussian in origin. Dang fine cooks there, historically.

Too much schmaltz . . . not enough straight hair . . .

Too much schmaltz, perhaps, but hops and barley are in short supply. Look for rising beer prices. Ethanol from corn my bare butt.

The British luxury passenger liner Titanic sank on April 14-15, 1912, en route to New York City from Southampton, Eng., during its maiden voyage. The vessel sank with a loss of about 1,500 lives at a point about 400 miles (640 km) south of Newfoundland.

The great ship, at that time the largest and most luxurious afloat, was designed and built by William Pirrie's Belfast firm Harland and Wolff to service the highly competitive Atlantic Ferry route. It had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into 16 presumably watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Shortly before midnight on April 14, the ship collided with an iceberg; five of its watertight compartments were ruptured, causing the ship to sink at 2:20 AM April 15. Inquiries held in the United States and Great Britain alleged that the Leyland liner Californian, which was less than 20 miles (32 km) away all night, could have aided the stricken vessel had its radio operator been on duty and thereby received the Titanic's distress signals. Only the arrival of the Cunard liner Carpathia 1 hour and 20 minutes after the Titanic went down prevented further loss of life in the icy waters.

And this demonstrates (as if any further demonstration was needed!) that America, beautiful America, is SUNK if Hillary gains the presidency!

Potato dumplings with roast pork.

I knew that already, but thanks for the confirmation.

President Hindenburg had consistently refused to appoint Hitler as Chancellor of Germany- until this meeting between Hitler and Hindenburg's son Oskar. Because or the Hindenburgs' corrupt personal lives they were susceptible to blackmail. In August of 1934 Oskar was promoted from colonel to major general in the German army. The implication has always been that Hitler knew about the Hindenburgs' corruption and blackmailed Oskar into using his influence over his (aged and rapidly declining) father to make Hitler Chancellor and then Hitler paid Oksar for his troubles with a promotion of 2 ranks in the army.

Not that Titanic has anything to do with the corruption that helped make Hitler Chancellor of Germany, but Titanic was an American ship- The White Star Line was owned by the American J. P. Morgan.

Flattery is the sincerest form of imitation . . . or something like that . . . here, let me have a shot at that, Mr. Mountie.

The battle of Jutland was fought on May 31st-June 1st, 1916 between the German Imperial High Seas Fleet and the Royal Navy in the North Sea between Denmark and the United Kingdom. This battle is usually seen as a victory on the part of the Royal Navy, although one has to define victory in an odd manner to come to this conclusion. The German High Seas Fleet lost one battle cruiser (a type of ship which is as heavily armed as a battleship, but as lightly armored and as fast as a cruiser), one "pre-dreadnought" type of battleship (HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906, and was distinguished by a uniform main battery of many large caliber guns and steam turbine power which gave her great speed and range, and the ability to carry much more armor), four light cruisers and five destroyers, for a total loss of just over 61,000 tons of warships. The Royal Navy lost three battle cruisers, three armored cruisers and eight destroyers for a total of just over 115,000 tons of warships. Jellicoe and Beatty, the English commanders alleged a victory because they claimed they were able to repair their damage more quickly than the Germans, and the German fleet did not venture out to offer battle again. However, not only did the Royal Navy suffer heavier losses, they lost more modern ships than those lost by the Germans, and it was widely known at the time that their battle cruisers were lost because their deck armor was too thin to stop the plunging fire of the large caliber shells which both the Germans and English had used since HMS Dreadnought had been launched ten years earlier. Dreadnought's greater power from the steam turbine power plants allowed her not only greater speed and range, but also allowed her to carry more armor, including deck armor, and heavier caliber guns (in the case of Dreadnought, a main battery of ten 12" guns--by 1916, 14" naval rifles were commonly used in both navies). The Kaiser was a fan of the American military theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, and was obsessed with retaining a "fleet in being," and would not allow Scheer and Hipper to go out to challenge the Royal Navy again.

At the time of Jutland, many engineers pointed out that the too light deck armor of the battle cruisers, which were a concept of warship which sacrificed armor plating to attain greater speed and cruising range, had doomed them. Even Jellicoe acknowledged this, writing at the time:

The facts which contributed to the British losses were, first, the indifferent armour protection of our battle-cruisers, particularly as regards turret armour and deck plating, and, second, the disadvantage under which our vessels laboured in regard to the light . . . The German organization at night is very good.

Nevertheless, Jellicoe and Beatty came to the conclusion that they had "won," and would not publicly admit to any deficiencies in Royal Navy warships. HMS Hood, classified as a battle cruiser, had her keel laid down in September, 1916, three months after this battle. The new larger caliber naval rifles had such a range that it was not practical to fire on a flat, line of sight trajectory, and therefore the shells arrived at the target at a high angle, what is known as "plunging fire." To deal with this, Hood was given 5000 tons additional armor plating and scantlings--scantlings are support structures. (To clear up confusions, that 5000 tons refers to gross weight--which is to say, ten million pounds of armor plate and scantlings. When a ship is said to have a certain number of tons of displacement, however, it refers not to weight, but to a measure of cubic space. In that context, a ton is one hundred cubic feet. Hood's displace in 1940 of 48,360 tons means that with the main deck of the hull awash, she would displace 4,836,000 cubic feet of water.)

The battle cruisers lost at Jutland had sunk when German shells had penetrated the deck armor, and set off the cordite magazines, which could occur from simple concussion shock--the shells did not actually have to hit the cordite magazines. The cordite and the shells were kept in separate magazines and were loaded as two pieces when the guns were loaded preparatory to firing. The plan with Hood was to spread the 5000 tons of armor plate and scantlings through the top three decks, on the theory that shells would either not penetrate the armor, or would explode before penetrating all three layers of armor--a truly bad idea. The armor plate could not simply be put on the upper deck, because it would have made the vessel unstable, and she would like have "turned turtle" from rolling in heavy seas. All the other ships of the same class as Hood were scrapped in 1917, before serious construction of the superstructure had begun. Hood, however, was close to completion by then, and was retained. In the climate of post-war poverty, it was decided that Hood could not be scrapped. Even before then, though, it was decided that Hood was "safe," because the Germans would never build the line of battle cruisers which Hood was designed to fight. Ironically, Hood was christened by the widow of an Admiral Hood, distantly related to Sir Samuel Hood for whom the ship was named, and who commanded the battle cruiser squadron which had taken the beating at Jutland, and went down with his flag ship, HMS Invincible, when her cordite magazines exploded from the German plunging fire.

Hood remained in service throughout the inter-war years, and although she received a significant refit in 1929-30, she never got the intended reconstruction which would have restored her full speed, and which would have re-armored her, especially with reference to her deck armor.

Hood's main battery was eight 15" guns, and her armor was designed to withstand direct hits by shells of the same size. However, it was designed before the lessons of Jutland were learned, and even with the additional armor plating, it was not designed to repel plunging fire, nor was any consideration given to delayed fuse shells, even though these had been developed (although not yet used in battle) before her keel was laid down.

In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck put into the North Sea with her consort, Prinz Eugen, with the intent to break out into the North Atlantic and wreak havoc in the shipping lanes which were supplying England, and keeping her alive. Several cruisers were sent to find her, and Norfolk and Suffolk did find Bismarck and her consort in the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland. These ships were outgunned, and it would have been suicide to engage, so they withdrew beyond the range of the German guns, and shadowed them while the task force sent to intercept them was under way. This task force consisted of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Hood and their escort vessels. During the firing at Norfolk and Suffolk, Bismarck's forward radar had been damaged from the shock of her guns firing, so Prinz Eugen steamed ahead to provide radar coverage.

HMS Prince of Wales was brand new battleship, and in fact, 100 civilian workers were still aboard completing final fittings after her sea trials. Although her main battery was actually not as heavy as that of Hood, her armor was far superior--nevertheless, Hood steamed at the head of the line. Although the English initially mistook Prinz Eugen for Bismarck, because of their almost identical silhouettes, they soon became aware that the lead ship was Prinz Eugen, because as a heavy cruiser, her shells, although doing some nasty damage to Hood and Prince of Wales, did not penetrate their main armor belt.

Both English ships then changed their target to Bismarck, and Prince of Wales did manage to land a shell in one of Bismarck's fuel bunkers, which was ultimately to doom her. But realizing their mistake, the English ships turned toward the Germans, to attempt to get "inside" the arc of the German shells, to avoid the danger of plunging fire. The action had been opened at somewhat more than 12 miles, and at a range of about 10-11 miles, the English began to fire again, although they could now only fire eight of their eighteen heavy naval rifles. After remaining silent, Bismarck now opened fire on the lead vessel, which was Hood. Hood had just turned to port to bring her full main battery fire to bear, when she was hit amidships by one of Bismarck's 15" shells. Ironically, it appears that the manoeuvre to avoid the plunging fire doomed Hood. Students of the battle long surmised that a shell penetrated the flimsy deck armor, but due to the low trajectory and with a time delay fuse, it skipped off the second deck armor plate above the magazines, and plowed under the armor plate for the after 4" magazine, the explosion of which spread to the after 15" magazine, which was communicated by the ammunition elevator corridors to the forward 15" magazine. A recent investigation by a deep submersible over the wreck of Hood has seemed to confirm this analysis.

A dramatic explosion, with a pillar of flame shooting into the sky, split Hood in half, and the stern rapidly sank, with the bow following literally within seconds. Hood sank within three minutes of being hit. Of her complement of 1418 officers and men, 1415 were killed outright or went down with her--the three survivors were picked up by a destroyer.

Why was Hood lost, and in such a dramatic fashion with such great loss of life? Even when Bismarck was hunted down and trapped by a huge English task force, she fought to the last, and more than half of her 2,200 officers and men were believed to have gotten into the water. English destroyers picked up 110 of them, but abandoned the rest on a report that a U-boat had been sighted (which didn't happen to have been true).

The reason is simple. The Royal Navy did not listen to its own officers and engineers, did not want to acknowledge that there were any ships which could challenge their battle cruisers, and, in the interwar years, were simply too damned cheap to reconstruct Hood, or, more realistically, simply to scrap her. Even in her final battle, Hood steamed out as the flag ship at the head of the line, even though Prince of Wales was newer and far better armored than Hood. Prince of Wales took tremendous damage, and escaped. Hood had a bad fire from one of Prinz Eugen's 8" shells, but no serious damage, when she turned to attack Bismarck--and was sunk when a single shell from Bismarck penetrated her dismal deck armor.

Pappy Bush clearly outlined why we did not invade and occupy Iraq in 1991. Reliable intelligence gave no reason to believe that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction, and no one other than ditto-head conservative yobs believe that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks. Military experts and the Presidents own advisers told him that he was invading Iraq on the cheap with insufficient force--yet it has taken four years to get him to send in the forces necessary to do the job right.

My conclusion is that we should consider these important issues before we ever again elect a born-again moron to the nation's highest office.

Herr Flaja never fails to demonstrate his ignorance. RMS Titanic was a British ship owned by an American company. She was built at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, having been commissioned by Morgan and his International Mercantile Marine Company.

I've never really liked you.

How ironic. I've always held you in the highest esteem.

Re: private lives?


Prussia was no 'land' but a 'Free State'.
And the biggest agricultural producer in the German Reich - which is surpring when you look at map:

Don't try to confuse Herr Flaja with mere facts, Walter . . . that's very rude.

Well, sometimes I really forget it. (Especially that he studied German and history).

(Psscht: they collected all the fake items about the Titanic and the other British Olympic-class ocean liners in the Liverpool maritime museum)

Well, that's the problem. It's your standards.

Re: private lives?


I wasn't talking about the geopolitical entity of Prussia, but rather the dirt of Prussia. And while Prussia may have the highest production of any Land (i.e., state) in the Federal Republic this is only because of its physical size. Prussia's soil is not very fertile. Acre for acre other Laender are more productive.