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Scheiss Meister

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Scheiss Meister

  1. My daughter in Eugene was pretty bummed about the clouds, but did get a pretty decent picture before maximum.
  2. Maximum here near Navasota through a colander. It's not as neat as the shadows through the trees, but pretty cool, still. It's not completely focused because my wife is short.
  3. The light going through my wife's hat brim.
  4. I was setting up to try to focus on a book cover with my readers and got this by accident. Blurry, but it is going through my head.
  5. I used my reading glasses to focus the partial eclipse in August 2017 onto the sidewalk. It was pretty cool.
  6. So you're telling me that Taco Bell hasn't shut down in Russia?
  7. It's been many years since I dealt with it, but a quick search shows that there are three smoke rounds available for NATO/US tube artillery: HC, WP smoke, and WP incendiary. These are for use in 155mm guns. I know that the WP rounds for 60mm and 81mm mortars are incendiary rounds that don't produce much smoke. Well, aside from the smoke from the fires they start.
  8. It can be used for smoke in a pinch. We never fired that many of them due their propensity to start grass fires. From my memory, which is getting more sieve-like by the day, WP rounds were the heaviest 60mm rounds, so we most frequently used them as the first rounds fired, to set our base plates firmly in the soil. They also make pretty cool mushroom clouds, like micro nukes.
  9. Oh, sure, NOW you tell him.
  10. 44 years for me, so I'm right there with you. The only way that I remember it is because I was a 60mm mortarman, and we had to study the proper application of each type of round.
  11. That's napalm and hyperbaric munitions. Napalm sucks in oxygen from a surprisingly long distance. Hyperbaric munitions spray fuel out into the atmosphere, then a charge ignites the fuel, using the oxygen in the air to burn the fuel. I served with a Vietnam vet who told us about going into tunnels on a hillside that had been napalmed very thoroughly. The bodies within a few feet of entrances and firing ports were horribly burned, but the bodies further in showed few signs of injury. The napalm had sucked the oxygen out of the tunnels. Napalm is very nasty all the way around.
  12. That's thermite, not willie pete. Thermite is a point use incendiary made with aluminum, iron oxide, an ignition source, and binders. Willie pete is an area incendiary consisting of elemental phosphorous, which ignites on contact with air. As the demonstration in basic (mine was on the engine compartment of an old tank, burning through the armor covering the engine, the engine block, and the bottom armor, then several inches into the ground) illustrates, thermite is used to destroy vehicles, artillery, and equipment to which one has close access. White phosphorus is packed into mortar and artillery rounds to be scattered over a target area to ignite canvas, wood, and other flammable materials used by the enemy. This definition includes uniforms. As has been mentioned, white phosphorus is very difficult to extinguish until it burns itself out. It will burn deep into flesh, drawing oxygen from the organic material around it. It is not supposed to be used against personnel, but if they are too close to the targeted materials (in their uniforms, which are the real target), tough luck. We were trained to use it against forward arming points, motor pools, and supply dumps. It is against the rules to use it indiscriminately to just blanket an area, but Russia doesn't give a shit about rules.
  13. That's so obviously a guy in a bad bigfoot costume that it hurts.
  14. They're shaped like that to decrease their radar signatures to improve their stealth. Doesn't appear to help with mines, though.
  15. Russia is getting better at own goals lately. An SU-35, an SU-25, now a patrol craft. If the trend continues, they'll self destruct a sub or destroyer next.
  16. Scheiss Meister

    Insomnia

    I plan to have a talk with him in a day or two, and that is one of the programmed subjects. He is normally very good with his outdoor safety, so I was surprised that he had allowed that to happen. Scared the shit out of us.
  17. Scheiss Meister

    Insomnia

    Thank you.
  18. Scheiss Meister

    Insomnia

    I got a call from my daughter in Oregon a couple of hours ago that her fiance is missing. He went kayaking on his day off and hasn't returned. She can't find him or his truck at the reservoir that he said he was heading to, and his phone just goes to voice mail. He's not the kind to up and disappear, and he didn't take his stuff from the apartment, so he doesn't appear to have bugged out on her. Now I can't go back to sleep worried about them both. Update: he had a spill, soaked his phone, and ended up spending the night in his truck. He is ok and home. Now I can sleep.
  19. Ok, a little searching seems to show that this is correct. I haven't kept up. In my day (many years ago) every Carrier Air Group included Marine attack squadrons for air strikes as needed. It looks like the aging of the F/A-18 fleet and the delay in getting the F-35 into service has led to no or few Marine squadrons aboard full carriers, at least for now. Still, Navy F/A-18 squadrons still have strike capabilities and can provide close air support.
  20. Every single F/A 18 on those carriers with MARINES painted on the side is flown by a crew well trained and dedicated to putting bombs, rockets, missiles, and hot lead on close air support targets called in by personnel on the ground. Any Marine squadron, and most Navy squadrons, on those carriers can provide an enormous amount of close combat fire support in addition to the roles Felix mentioned.
  21. Eclipses have long elicited fear and panic in the ignorant and superstitious. But, yeah, what Brisket said.
  22. In WW II we bypassed Rabaul, mostly cutting off supplies, and let it wither and die on the vine. The island was much too powerfully defended to make a direct attack on it, so it was just left alone and cut off. It eventually stopped being a threat and tied up thousands of Japanese troops and sailors.
  23. It's 6:58 and OU still sucks.
  24. From outside Nastysota... TEXAS!!!
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