Is that marmalade or jam?

The Battle of the Beams is a highly interesting and often overlooked detail of WW2.

Berlin is a, let’s say, troubled city. The infrastructure is even more rotten than in the rest of Germany, meanwhile they’re pouring endless amounts of money into vanity projects that turn out to be international embarrassments, like that airport they recently managed to finally finish building equally late and over budget. Berliners do have a reputation of arrogance and entitlement. Social problems caused by a whole bunch of rich people gentrifying the shit out of the place after the government moved there cause rampant crime, and, of course, there is the government with all its lobbyists and corruption.

Fast forward 35 odd years and everyone finally realises that taking down that wall was a mistake.

I’m flying Arch, btw.

At least not Gentoo. Would be awkward if you had to enter a holding pattern mid sortie because the bombing software is still compiling.

Much better than writing lewd messages to the enemy on the ammunition.

I propose the following as the default message:

…-. …- -.-. -.- / -.-- — …- / … -. / .–. .- .-. - … -.-. …- .-… .- .-.

Average life expectancy (as pretty much any average) is a very misleading measurement, though, because it is highly skewed towards the low end due to extremely high infant mortality.

They were Vikings (or Norsemen, to be precise) who moved to Normandy and started speaking French a generation or so earlier.

Even more so, they moved there on invitation of a French king who gave them the land and their leaders titles in return for them “dissuading” other Vikings from raiding Paris.

The Falklands aren’t uninhabited.

Up until the end of WW2, it was quite common to requisition suitable civilian ships into the navy and outfit them as auxiliary cruisers. (often passenger liners due to their high speeds and long range) It wasn’t uncommon for governments to subsidise suitable ships under the condition they were already built with preparations for such a conversion (mostly mounting points for a number of cruiser calibre guns).

Those auxiliary cruisers were then often put to use as convoy escorts and for commerce raiding, (Converted passenger ships being especially attractive in this capacity due to their capability of carrying extra personnel to use as prize crews to take over enemy shipping with useful cargo rather than sinking it) freeing up real warships for other tasks.