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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 12, 2023 10:47:19 GMT
Steve,
Not a problem. Deep Blue Sea is one of the better post Jaws shark pictures in its own way. You’re not missing much with Austin Powers, with it being a lewd and intentionally campy pastiche of James Bond and ‘Swinging London’ cliches, so it has no place in Dark Earth apart from this quite oblique reference.
Simon
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 24, 2023 2:55:33 GMT
October 1972
October 1: French Minister of Transport, Jacques Chirac, authorises the Directorate-General of Aviation to take all necessary measures to ensure cooperation of the competing 'Grande Enterprises' of the French aviation sector in the expedited development of a French equivalent to the increasingly successful Armstrong-Whitworth Airbus.
October 2: Initiation of the Antyodaya Programme in Rajasthan, India, whereby the poorest five families in each village are provided state assistance for a year, including land for agricultural cultivation, guaranteed development loans and pensions.
October 3: NASA issues a number of very large production contracts for the next stage of the American starship programme, with Northrop-Grumman, North American-Republic, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing each receiving multi-billion dollar assignments for design and development of the command bridge and the scientific and exploration, cargo and habitation and engineering modules, with the engines and propulsion already under development by General Atomics, the United Nuclear Corporation and U.S Fusion.
October 4: First telecast of the 'Afterschool Special' on ABC, a dramatic short film specifically aimed at children and teen-agers on socially important issues, developed in conjunction with the United States Information Agency and sponsored by the Crusade for Freedom.
October 5: The Royal Air Force begins operational testing of a new holographic active camouflage system for tactical and strategic aircraft. It is hoped that this development, in concert with new radar absorbent materials for aircraft skins and specialist arcane repellent paints, will increase the capacity for operation over increasingly complex contested airspaces.
October 6: Six schoolgirls and their teacher are kidnapped by two armed criminals in rural Victoria, who demand a £1 million ransom for their safe release. The teacher and girls escape the kidnapper's van in the night, with the miscreants being cornered and shot by police.
October 7: Collingwood defeat Richmond in the VFL Grand Final 25.14 (164) to 22.18 (150), winning their 12th premiership in front of a crowd of 156,243 at the MCG.
October 8: A special strike team is assembled by Mossad to combat the terrorist threat posed by the International Revolutionary Army and its most infamous terrorist agent, Carlos the Jackal.
October 9: The German federal election sees the Social Democrats win 195 seats, the resurgent German Conservative Party 134 seats and the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union 156 seats, with the German Democratic Party winning 93 and the Centre Party 52, leading to a protracted period of negotiations between the CDU/CSU and DKP regarding the makeup of a grand coalition, with the latter's leader Wulf von Steiner an early favourite to take the Chancellorship.
October 10: The Shah of Persia spends the evening walking in disguise among his people in Tehran, accompanied by a handful of plain clothes bodyguards, listening to their concerns, grievances, hopes and dreams for the future.
October 11: Opening of two heavily guarded border crossings of the Demilitarised Zone between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, providing for the first such direct avenues of intercourse between the opposed states for sixteen years.
October 12: Portuguese troops operating against rebel guerrillas in Portuguese Guinea accidentally cross the border into neighbouring Senegal whilst engaged in hot pursuit of a retreating force.
October 13: Aeroflot Flight 217 crashes upon landing at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, killing all 183 people on board.
October 14: Opening of a new joint RAF/RN/British Army base in Akureyri, Northern Iceland, with the King of Iceland hailing the facility as the latest display of strong Anglo-Icelandic amity.
October 15: A farmer in Trujilio, Venezuela, investigating the aftermath of a strange sonic boom the night before, discovers an apparent meteorite and the pulverised remains of what appears to be a chupacabra in his field, with the monstrous wretch having been dispatched by the rock from the heavens before it was able to molest his poor innocent cows.
October 16: The gold reserves of the United States remain the largest in the world, with over 10,000 tons kept securely at Fort Knox, followed by Britain with 6254 tons, the Soviet Union with 4235 tons, Germany with 4187 tons, France with 3269 tons and Japan with 2457 tons.
October 17: The 32 survivors of a crashed chartered Uruguayan plane are discovered alive and rescued by a Royal Chilean Air Force Fairey Rotodyne scouring the Andes south of Santiago, having been directed towards the potential crash area with information from an RAF airship engaged in exercises with the Chilean military.
October 18: The United States and the Soviet Union reach an agreement for the payment of $960,000,000 over 30 years as settlement for goods and services supplied under Lend Lease during the Second World War.
October 19: The British War Ministry commissions a research paper on the possible applications of an 'air cavalry' type unit in the British Army, following on from the successful American employment of heliborne soldiers in the Vietnam War. It is thought that the use of modern long range assault versions of the Fairey Rotodyne and advanced VSTOL aircraft such as the Sopwith Camel offer particularly useful and intriguing capacities for air assault forces.
October 20: Donald Campbell sets a new world speed record on the waters of Lake Eyre in his Super Bluebird X.
October 21: Governor Reagan performs strongly in the Presidential debate registering a solid win in a discussion that focused upon domestic policy and the economy.
October 22: The Royal Navy frigate HMS Ashanti captures a dhow crewed by Arab slavers with three dozen African slaves in the hold, having intercepted the suspect vessel on a hunch off the coast of Northern Somalia. The slavers are thrown in the brig, pending trial at Aden, with the freed slaves to be repatriated to Africa by air upon their arrival in port.
October 23: Formal reestablishment of United States Army Aviation as a distinct combat arm. The main portion of Army Aviation strength lies in its various helicopters, ranging from the thousands of UH-1 Iroquois transports and utility helicopters to the attack helicopters, such as the AH-1 Super Cobra light attack helicopter, the AH-56 Cheyenne in the medium attack role and the YAH-X heavy attack rotary aircraft still under development. The acquisition of a fixed wing capacity such as the Harrier jump jet under the terms of the 1968 Fort Hood Agreement promise to further enhance their capabilities.
October 24: Establishment of Sanctuary Hills, a new village on the Concord River just beyond the Minute Man National Park in Massachusetts, designed as an exclusive showpiece community of the 'homes of tomorrow', including innovative two storey private residences, a community library, a children's park, a combined general store and restaurant and a church.
October 25: The French Foreign Legion garrison in Dahomey moves to disarm and arrest a number of suspect local military units after intelligence indicated an imminent coup attempt. The French commander was heard to gloomily quip that eventually, they wouldn't be quite so lucky.
October 26: President Kennedy signs the Consumer Product Safety Act at the White House, strengthening legal requirements protecting the public from substandard merchandise.
October 27: The USN begins experimental deployment of several new antiaircraft weapons systems aimed at replacing 1950s era anti-aircraft guns. The Colt 25mm revolver autocannon in twin, quad and octuple mounts has a minimum rate of fire of 1200rpm per gun and an effective firing range of 5000 yards is designed to replace the postwar variants of the Hotchkiss and Oerlikon, whilst the Bofors L/70’s place is taken by the General Defense Mk 25 50mm autocannon, which fires at 480rpm per gun out to an effective range of 12000 yards. Joining the twin 37mm Legion Close Weapons System is the Phalanx, a quad 25mm Gatling autocannon with integrated radar and fire control for direct point defence against the new generation of sea skimming anti-ship missiles.
October 28: Delegations of the Arab Union and Egyptian general staff meet in Baghdad for discussions of potential cooperation on weapons development and modern tactical operations under the auspices of the Baghdad Pact.
October 29: Congolese President Samson Mulumba announces a new agreement with the Soviet Union for the development of new railways in the Congo, creating a potential cause for future difficulty with regard to the British operated network in the border region of Northern Katanga.
October 30: The Canadian federal election sees the Liberal Party win for the first time since 1925, forming a coalition government with the support of Labour Party. The calm and steady approach of Liberal leader and Prime Minister-Elect Sir Robert Macartney did much the allay concerns of any dramatic change to the long standing settlements regarding Canadian industrial, foreign and defence policies, emphasising his support for the Dominion’s global role as a great power and promising to strengthen the Canadian Armed Forces; the latter policy is thought to emulate the successful ‘strong defence’ approaches taken by Stanley Barton in Britain and Bob Hawke in Australia.
October 31: USAFE begins a series of deployments of the new RF-111G reconnaissance bombers across Western and Southern Europe as part of a concerted sales pitch in conjunction with Boeing to allied European states.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Dec 24, 2023 17:05:25 GMT
October 1972October 17: The 32 survivors of a crashed chartered Uruguayan plane are discovered alive and rescued by a Royal Chilean Air Force Fairey Rotodyne scouring the Andes south of Santiago, having been directed towards the potential crash area with information from an RAF airship engaged in exercises with the Chilean military.
This one I think I remember. They were a rugby team and had to take extreme measures to survive, eating the flesh of some of the dead to last until they were located and rescued. Did they get discovered earlier here?
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 25, 2023 5:41:17 GMT
Historically, the Chilean search planes flew over the crash site several times during the search, but didn’t notice it due to the white fuselage blending in with the snow. Here, they are employing some rather more powerful (heat seeking and other more arcane) equipment, in addition to having the search area narrowed down by the aerial radar records of the visiting RAF airship. Thus, the survivors are found fairly soon afterwards, with only those killed in the crash or who had very bad injuries dying soon afterwards. Additionally, the Rotodynes are quite able to get up to the crash site due to their performance and vertical landing capacity.
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 28, 2023 4:13:14 GMT
November
November 1: Beginning of Exercise Trelawny, a large home defence exercise carried out in Cornwall by the British Army's South Western Command, involving over 100,000 regular, reserve, Territorial and Home Guard personnel. One part of the exercise sees the fishing town of Portwenn apparently taken over by Soviet paratroopers disguised as Americans; any resemblance with an incident several years previous where a local policeman mistook visiting American paratroopers of the 13th Airborne Division as being secret VDV personnel was described by Army spokesmen as entirely coincidental.
November 2: Reverend Elvis Presley, acting on a mysterious tip, leads his posse on a drilling expedition breaking through a strange cave in rural Indiana, discovering the six schoolboys missing since June 1971, alive and well, having not aged a day, and returning them to their waiting families. FBI wizards speculate the involvement of some sort of faerie enchantment and seal off the area pending further investigations.
November 3: Kaiser Wilhelm IV of Germany dies at Sansouci Palace at the age of 66 after falling down a garden staircase after being struck by a dead parrot. He is succeeded to the throne by his 44 year old son Crown Prince Wilhelm, with his coronation to take place after a year of official mourning. Wilhelm IV is mourned as a popular monarch both home and abroad who had succeeded in treading the difficult path of a German head of state in the years after the Second World War.
November 4: Launch of the MS Hughes Glomar Explorer, a deep sea drillship designed for exploration and manganese nodule mining from the ocean floor, the brainchild of eccentric billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes. An atomic-powered competitor vessel, NS Burns Delver remains under construction at Burns Shipbuilding in Mobile, Alabama.
November 5: The provision of seat belts is made a requirement for British motor cars built after 1974 under an amendment to the Road Traffic Act 1930.
November 6: A fire on board an express super-train whilst passing through an 8 mile long tunnel in Japan leads to hundreds of people suffering smoke inhalation, before new automatic safety mechanisms ventilate the train cars before tragedy can ensue.
November 7: Governor Ronald Reagan wins the 1972 United States Presidential election in a landslide with 513 electoral votes to 118 of the Democratic candidate Senator Hubert Humphrey and 9 to the Whig Party's Eugene McCarthy. Reagan exceeded predictions by sweeping the South and Midwest in addition to his great Western bastion, appealing to a broad coalition of conservatives, the middle class, traditional Republicans and blue collar workers. He gives a gracious and humble victory speech, thanking God and the American people and invoking the great American spirit that opened up the continent to a manifest destiny of greatness and being a shining city on a hill for all mankind, a bastion of freedom and good against communist tyranny, pledging that he and his Vice President elect George Bush will make America greater yet.
November 8: Release of 1916, the latest epic war film in the planned ‘Great War Sequence’. It portrays the terrible battles of Verdun and the Somme, the Brusilov Offensive, the fall of Gaza, the entry of the United States into the war and the tremendous British victory at the Battle of Jutland. Barry Foster attracts immediate attention for his ongoing excellent portrayal of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but greater praise yet is reserved for Kenneth More as Sir John Jellicoe and John Mills as Sir Douglas Haig.
November 9: Jackie Stewart wins the United States Grand Prix in a thrilling race, just beating Steve McQueen and clinching the World Driver's Championship over the Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi.
November 10: The first moves of the incoming Reagan cabinet become clear, with Donald Rumsfeld to be nominated as National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Jones as Secretary of Defense, Abraham Lincoln III as Secretary of Commerce, Governor John Connally as Secretary of the Interior, James Schlesinger as Director of Central Intelligence and Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of War whilst Dr. Henry Kissinger is considered the frontrunner for Secretary of State and Congressman Gerald Ford is considering an offer for Secretary of Transport and Energy.
November 11: Across the British Empire, France and the United States, Saturday morning business and traffic comes to a solemn halt at 11am for two minutes silence to mark Armistice Day.
November 12: Argentine Premier Rodriguez hails his nation's military as the strongest in the whole of South America, foreseeing a time when their power and quality will again be felt far from their native shores, as occurred famously in the Iberian Campaign of the Second World War. Recent tit for tat border incidents with Prydain look to be dying down, but relations with the Argentine's other major neighbour to the west remain, for want of a better word, chilly.
November 13: Ansett Flight 232 becomes the first passenger aircraft hijacked in Australia, with a disturbed gunman taking over the plane on a flight between the Adelaide, South Australia and the Central Australian capital of Alice Springs. After protracted negotiations come to an impasse, he is successfully shot by a disguised policeman.
November 14: The Dow Jones closed above 1000 for the first definitive time in its history, having previously fluctuated higher before dipping below the mark. The ongoing golden economic epoch shows no clear sign of diminishing at this time, with many economists foreseeing the capacity for strong growth once inflation is fully tamed.
November 15: The Pope states that the evil which exists in the world and besets mankind so sorely is the result and effect of an attack by dark and hostile forces under the Devil in his many guises.
November 16: Signing of the Environmental Protection and World Heritage Convention in Geneva, a global treaty under the auspices of the League of Nations providing for the preservation of sites and locations of cultural and natural significance and wider protection of the natural environment from pollution and other deleterious human activities.
November 17: The Pepsi Cola Company reaches an agreement for its soft drink to be bottled and sold commercially in the Soviet Union, the first major American brand to do so. Their chief American rivals in the global soft drink market, the Coca-Cola Corporation, along with Dr. Pepper and Nuka-Cola, begin to make plans for their own courses of action, lest the Cola Wars be lost with this red dawn.
November 18: Hawker-Siddeley begin active development of a successor to the P.1154 Harrier supersonic VSTOL jet fighter, with the P.1256 design utilising new, powerful engines, a more highly swept and larger wing and innovative new offensive and defensive systems. On the same day, the last Vickers Valiant in service with the Royal Auxiliary Air Force is formally retired at No. 962 Squadron's base at RAF Mona, with the redoubtable strategic bomber having served for 25 years; a total of 1624 saw service the RAF and RNAS alone.
November 19: NBC carries a prime time special on The New Rising Sun?, an extensive profile of modern Japan, its tremendous economic success and its strange cultural contradictions. It includes a rare English language interview with Prime Minister Yukio Mishima, where he states that Japan's security requires a reach well beyond its own shores and pledges his ongoing commitment to the Pacific Treaty Organisation, calling it part of the 'necessary framework for freedom'; his position on Japanese nationalism and some foreign concerns over its ongoing re-militarisation is somewhat more circumspect.
November 20: A larger superheavy Soviet space rocket explodes on launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome, causing substantial damage to several surrounding launch pads and constraining planned launch scheduling for further rockets in December; the ongoing unavailability of Plesetsk after what is still coyly described as the 'Incident of August 30' in 1956 has emphasised the value of Baikonur to the Soviet space programme.
November 21: Election of Sir Solomon Mgube as the first black Speaker of the the South African House of Assembly, a move remarked upon in The Cape Argus as a quiet milestone in the progress of the nation.
November 22: The Royal Israeli Air Force announces that it will acquire 200 Dassault Super Mirage 2000 air superiority fighters in a surprise result, with the McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle having been the more fancied contender in the international air press; speculation follows that the more flexible 'multirole' capacity of the French plane gave it the edge over the American Eagle and British Spitfire.
November 23: Release of a top secret CIA report on the industrial production capacity of the four superpowers, with projections showing that the United States will overtake the Soviet Union in coal production by 1980 and extend its current leads in steel, oil, wheat, copper, lead, silver, silicon, computing engines, automobiles and aircraft.
November 24: An application by McDonald's Corporation to open a chain of American hamburger restaurants in Britain is declined by the Ministry of Trade after consultations with the Ministry of Food, with its two current establishments allowed to continue trade.
November 25: The National Party defies predictions to win a close race in the New Zealand General Election, winning 48 seats to 42 of the Labour Party and returning Prime Minister Sir Jack Marshall to a full term in his own right.
November 26: A Soviet Whiskey class submarine is cornered by Norwegian vessels and aircraft in the Sognefjord and forced to surface, claiming that it had become lost due to faulty navigation equipment. After a brief exchange of opinions, the submarine is escorted out of Norwegian territorial waters by Royal Norwegian Navy frigates and Rotodynes, whereupon it submerges and begins an embarrassing journey back to Polyarny, silently escorted by the USS Sea Devil.
November 27: A B-52G on airborne alert under Operation Chrome Dome crashes over French Algeria, with the crew safely ejecting before the malfunctioning plane fell. The twelve thermonuclear weapons on board are recovered after a joint Franco-American search of the debris strewn stretch of the Sahara Desert.
November 28: Kung Fu master and secret agent Bruce Lee recovers the Heirloom Seal of the Realm from the lair of an ancient lich in the mountainous border region of Burma, delivering it personally to the Governor of Hong Kong. It is intended to present the lost treasure personally to the Emperor of China as a symbol of Anglo-Chinese rapprochement.
November 29: The 23rd Frigate Squadron of the Royal Navy is dispatched from Scapa Flow to the fishing grounds near Jan Mayen, where Soviet trawlers had been aggressively moving to harass British fishing vessels.
November 30: A Californian musician experience a particular yearning for the sunny climes and warm attitudes of home whilst meandering through the streets of New York City, lamenting that, on top of the wintry conditions, all the leaves were brown and the sky was grey to boot.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Dec 28, 2023 13:01:41 GMT
NovemberNovember 3: Kaiser Wilhelm IV of Germany dies at Sansouci Palace at the age of 66 after falling down a garden staircase after being struck by a dead parrot. He is succeeded to the throne by his 44 year old son Crown Prince Wilhelm, with his coronation to take place after a year of official mourning. Wilhelm IV is mourned as a popular monarch both home and abroad who had succeeded in treading the difficult path of a German head of state in the years after the Second World War.
I warned him a Norwegian Blue was the wrong choice for a pet.  |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 28, 2023 15:20:07 GMT
Alas, the lovely plumage was a distractor. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 31, 2023 3:12:45 GMT
September Notes:
- Fisher v Spassky ends up roughly the same as historical, if a bit quicker
- The fate of Sendic (and the Tupamaros in general) is a bit sharper
- Cambodia has a very different decade ahead of it and a different fate in general. Sihanouk not being deposed is the smaller part of this, with the lack of a fall of South Vietnam and no further route of communist egress into the north of the country being the major ones
- Spitz goes one medal further, that being the extra Olympic swimming stroke: the trudgen. This was a late 19th century stroke known as the 'racing stroke' or 'East India stroke' based on the sidestroke; it later developed into the front crawl/freestyle. Insofar as extra swimming strokes went, it was either this or the doggy paddle
- The Montral Fine Arts robbery is resolved, rather than becoming an ongoing mystery, due to a boo boo in the superhero comms system
- Chariot racing as an Olympic sport is tailormade for Constantinople and the Hippodrome
- The Soviet approach to dissidents and phone lines is a little...twisted...Historically, they were cut off entirely; here, they have limited phone use, which can often be constrained by the 1970s Soviet version of impenetrable circular phone systems. It is a little crueler at its worst, whilst also having enough scope for ‘improved treatment’ for those who are broken or toe the line; in both cases, it plays tricks with dissident’s minds
- The Grace Bros incident was intended as a means to refer to Are You Being Served, with Frank Spencer and a velociraptor thrown in for good measure. The Clapham omnibus is a bit of a reference to the legal idiom of the 'man on the Clapham omnibus', a hypothetical reasonable everyday man on the street in respect of civil law cases
- Shou Chang and his peasant rebellion is a call back to an event in 1946 or 1947. There is a story in it somewhere
- The 1972 Olympics end without major incident or issues
- British action in Uganda isn't an equivalent to Entebbe, but a repeat of the approach exercised in Burundi. The utilisation of overkill in planning will eventually get a bit expensive
- No changes to longstanding British licensing laws means that alcohol sales remain in off licences/dedicated liquor shops and not in regular shops. This is markedly different from the @ loosening of sales that occurred in the 1960s, which influenced some rises in wine consumption in the 1970s
- The British Commonwealth Strategic Defence Reserve Plan is another step towards integration and preparation
- A Swedish hijacking resolved with tactical use of surstromming was certainly effective; the Special Attack Force of the Drabant Corps is one of many different special forces
- Not all of Persian society favours the reforms of the young Shah
- September 17 is a combined reference to Deep Blue Sea and Austin Powers
- Elvis, the A Team and the Beatles team up to rescue Mrs Piper and the other kidnapped women from the dastardly folk music gang
- Joe Bugner remains in Austria-Hungary
- The Skyguard laser system progresses
- Moo-La speaks, becoming a local attraction in that respect
- Reagan's victory in the first debate doesn't quite have the same zingers as @, but still has a strong effect
- Forward deployed USAF units in the Middle East are a consequence of the victories in Korea and Vietnam and accompanying confidence
- Virgil Tibbs rises up the ranks
- Egypt starts to grow in military power, but lacks any direction to employ it
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 31, 2023 12:03:38 GMT
October Notes
- The French begin the process of building their own 'Airbus'
- NASA contracts will turn out to be very useful for the main contractors. A number of different corporations are namedropped, including United Nuclear and U.S. Fusion, showing the future
- The salient part of the Afterschool Special mention was that the USIA has a large domestic role as well as the international one of @, being an equivalent to the Ministry of Information as a propaganda department
- Active camouflage for aircraft creates some interesting possibilities
- The Victorian kidnappers historically survived
- Mossad goes after Carlos
- Germany has some different election results and consequences
- The Shah of Persia is a different fellow with a different approach to the issues of the people and by touching base with the grass roots, shows promise
- Opening of the border crossings along the DMZ shows a slight easing of tensions
- Iceland is being coaxed into a closer British orbit
- Historically, the Venezuelan meteorite hit and killed the cow. As Dark Earth is somewhat kinder towards cows, it hits the chupacabra instead
- The survivors of the Uruguayan Airlines crash are rescued earlier
- British Army air cavalry will develop a tad differently than the US equivalent and the @ air assault units
- The RN capturing a slaver is a bit of an example of how slavery continues in the modern world, although most often not in this particular and obvious form
- US Army Aviation not only has the Harrier on its way, but the YAH-X will yield a much beefier Apache equivalent to go alongside the AH-1 and Cheyenne
- The French action in Dahomey shows that the current pattern of intervening every time can't continue ad infinitum and might be having some negative effects on the legitimacy of some governments
- Plenty of CIWS and AAA fun for the whole family
- Mulumba leaning Soviet in the Congo shows there are more twists and turns to come
- The Liberals finally get up in Canada after decades in the wilderness by tacking to the right
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Dec 31, 2023 12:08:15 GMT
November 3: Kaiser Wilhelm IV of Germany dies at Sansouci Palace at the age of 66 after falling down a garden staircase after being struck by a dead parrot. He is succeeded to the throne by his 44 year old son Crown Prince Wilhelm, with his coronation to take place after a year of official mourning. Wilhelm IV is mourned as a popular monarch both home and abroad who had succeeded in treading the difficult path of a German head of state in the years after the Second World War. So no assassination attempt. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 31, 2023 12:49:39 GMT
November Notes
- Exercise Trelawny is both an example of a different approach to home defence and the roots of a future short story set in Cornwall
- Reverend Presley finds the lost boys
- Kaiser Wilhelm IV will be sorely missed, apart from by the Norwegian Blue, obviously
- The Glomar Explorer has a counterpart sponsored by C. Montgomery Burns
- Earlier compulsory seat belts in Britain
- Ronald Reagan wins the 1972 Election in a canter by appealing to a broad based coalition which captures the key industrial states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois and the South; the West is solid Reagan country, as in @. Humphrey wins New York (very narrowly), Delaware, DC, Minnesota, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Wisconsin and McCarthy wins Iowa. His cabinet is different from the @ 1980s one, with Kissinger getting a guernsey as part of the overall Republican grouping
- 1916 is a very wide sweeping war picture with many great roles
- Armistice Day is commemorated with a moment of silence in the USA as well, as a consequence of the longer American involvement in WW1
- The Environmental Protection and World Heritage Convention is a much stronger treaty making a better base for long term environmental protection
- The Cola Wars have a couple of other players, including good old Nuka Cola
- The Harrier successor will be a very effective plane whilst looking a bit less outlandish than some of the @ proposals. The Valiant comes to the end of a long and successful career
- PM Yukio Mishima is a bit more circumspect now he is in power
- Increased Soviet launches finally result in something going bang and rocket scientists getting hurty bad bad
- A black South African speaker is a different development compared to @ apartheid
- The RIAF buys French Mirages for the multirole capacity
- US production and resources are very strong
- McDonald's plans for British expansion are knocked back for the foreseeable future
- The NZ Nationals buck the trend for changes of government across the Commonwealth
- The Sognefjord incident results in a Norwegian 'Whiskey on the Rocks'
- Chrome Dome continues
- Bruce Lee recovering a long lost ancient Imperial treasure
- The Fisheries Protection Squadron usually has OPVs, but up in the Far North, some heavier ships are deployed
- The homesick musician will eventually get over his California dreamin'
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Post by simon darkshade on Dec 31, 2023 12:51:36 GMT
November 3: Kaiser Wilhelm IV of Germany dies at Sansouci Palace at the age of 66 after falling down a garden staircase after being struck by a dead parrot. He is succeeded to the throne by his 44 year old son Crown Prince Wilhelm, with his coronation to take place after a year of official mourning. Wilhelm IV is mourned as a popular monarch both home and abroad who had succeeded in treading the difficult path of a German head of state in the years after the Second World War. So no assassination attempt. Absolutely not. It is an unfortunate accident. |
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Post by simon darkshade on Jan 3, 2024 10:42:59 GMT
December
December 1: The Ministry of Space releases a report on plans for the expansion of British presence in space over the next decade and a half, with increased convoys of colonists to Venus and Vulcan authorised along with expansion of the Deimos Spaceport, several new mining expeditions to the asteroid belt and research into the construction of deep space stations at the L4 and L5 Martian Lagrangian points. Most ambitious, however, is the proposal for the development of a regular nuclear powered spaceship flight between Luna and Mars with a flight time of 80 days.
December 2: The Soviet Union announces that it will conduct a partially atmospheric nuclear test in 1973 as part of their Peaceful Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy programme, with the experimental data to be utilised for the atomic construction of the Pechora-Kama Canal, planned as employing 247 15 kiloton devices. The news is largely overshadowed by the coverage of the launch of Orion 7 from the orbit of Luna on its 5 year voyage to Orcus and Pluto.
December 3: Guatemalan backed rebels attempt to cross the border of British Honduras in force before being engaged by artillery and airstrikes from Phantoms and Buccaneers from HMS Ark Royal, whose carrier group had been deployed to the West Indies along with HMS Victoria and the Royal Marines aboard the new nuclear amphibious battleship HMS King Alfred in response to recent Guatemalan troop deployments. By the end of the day, the ready brigade of the 6th Airborne Division and two battalions of West Indian troops are airlifted to the capital city of St. George, the former by Concord, and a flight of Avro Vulcans lands at Queen Elizabeth II International Airport as a pointed indicator of British intent. The Guatemalan Army begins withdrawal on December 5th.
December 4: A visiting newspaper reporter from New York City researching a story on the Yosemite National Park prevents the kidnapping of a seven year old boy in Merced, California and places the lad’s two would-be assailants under citizen’s arrest.
December 5: The War Office announces that headquarters, support and certain combat elements of two airborne and two infantry divisions will be shifted to a special ‘ready reserve’ status from active duty from 1973, emphasising that they would continue to be considered as Regular Army formations.
December 6: The Nobel Prize dinner and award ceremony takes places in Stockholm, with the Physics prize being shared by American scientists Leon Cooper, John Bardeen and John Schrieffer for development of a microscopic theory of superconductivity, Sir John Maynard Keynes winning the Economics prize, W. H. Auden winning the Literature prize and the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to American statesman and former Vice President Atticus Finch.
December 7: Israel and Syria move troops to their mutual border along the Golan Heights, with a number of units of the Royal Iraqi Army also deploying to Eastern Syria for joint defence exercises. Certain tensions within the Arab Union have been the cause of some disquiet in Jerusalem.
December 8: Britain and Austria-Hungary sign an arms export, defence cooperation and military equipment upgrade agreement in Vienna, with the overall value of the deal thought to be over £4800 million.
December 9: The BBC carries a segment on the ‘Average Briton’ based on data from the Royal Census and further surveys. An average British man is 32, is 6’1” tall, weighs 12 and a half stone and works 42 hours a week for 48 weeks of the year, earning an average annual salary of £2754. A new house costs £4236, a colour television £95 and a new family car will set back Mr. Average £529, whilst feeding a family of five will require him to give his wife £18 10/6, leaving him more than enough for a pint of bitter, which are 6p.
December 10: Extremely heavy snowfalls across Southern and Western Austria lead to communications and road and rail traffic being disrupted and only the dwarven Unterwegs enabling transport of vital supplies to make it through to some stricken towns.
December 11: Soviet and Chinese troops clash along their border across the Amur River in the dead of night, with small arms fire followed by an exchange between tanks, artillery and rockets before a hasty exchange between local commanders leading to an immediate ceasefire. Subsequent investigations indicate that some arcane means of confusion and simulating enemy fire had been employed against both sides to make them believe that a major attack was underway.
December 12: An SR-71 flight over the border between North and South Laos fails to show any signs of a North Vietnamese and Soviet build up, disproving speculation in Saigon to that effect.
December 13: ARPANET is projected as expanding from the current connections between the United States, Britain and Canada to include France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia by 1975, with further intergration of different computerised networks through the application of the 'transmission control programme' outlined by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in their paper of April, which could potentially make Professor Turing's proposed 'internetwork' a working reality.
December 14: The Pope authorises release of an encyclical on certain reforms to the sacrament of extreme unction.
December 15: An end of year supplement of Janes Fighting Ships reverts from the organisational order employed since the mid 1960s whereby submarines were listed between aircraft carriers and cruisers in national ship lists to the previous traditional arrangement. The section on the Royal Navy contains details on the four planned Glorious class nuclear supercarriers intended to replace the Malta class aircraft carriers and the postulated general purpose guided missile cruisers, and concludes with a section noting that the Superb class battleships, when they leave service in the coming two years, will be the last British Empire warships that saw service in the Second World War.
December 16: Rhodesian Army troops operating along the Congolese border near Lake Tanganyika engage and destroy an insurgent force of some hundreds through extremely heavy firepower, employment of tanks and several dozen airstrikes.
December 17: Notorious Ottoman master criminal Keyser Soze is fortuitously caught by Leonard Nimoy in a hotel elevator in Alexandretta, with the quick thinking latter employing a Vulcan nerve pinch to incapacitate the rogue.
December 18: The League of Nations commissions a special scientific study on the theory of ‘global cooling’.
December 19: Supertankers MV Sea Star and Horta Barbosa collide in the Gulf of Oman, spilling over 120,000t of crude oil into the sea. The Royal Navy cruiser HMS Astraeus and the destroyers Rob Roy and Osborne move from the Persian port of Bandar Abbas to provide aid to the survivors and quell the fires.
December 20: The West Indies top world cricket Test standings after an outstanding year, ahead of South Africa, England, Australia, India, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia and newcomers Ceylon. Wisden also announces their ‘Cricketers of the Year’, with West Indian spin bowler Lance Gibbs and champion young batsman Viv Richards joined by Greg Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar, the Honourable Peter Ratcliffe.
December 21: Discovery of the remains of an underground city in Northern Colombia, with much of the architecture and artifacts seeming unlike anything previously found in the Americas. A carved map on the floor of one temple bears a strange resemblance to the geographical arrangement of the continents of Mars.
December 22: The current operational fleet of the Boeing Dyna-Soar is formally reclassified as the SRBL-2, reflecting its role as a spaceplane reconnaissance bomber now equipped with laser rayguns. Research and development on the adaption of current larger NASA and civilian single stage to orbit aerospaceplanes to a military role continues.
December 23: A terrible earthquake levels much of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, killing hundreds, destroying thousands of buildings and leaving much of the populace homeless. President Kennedy authorises the immediate dispatch of USAF skyships loaded with relief supplies, medical air, food and fresh water with further American aid to come by air, sea and land along the Pan-American Superhighway, whilst the Emperor of Mexico offers his own personal craft for the provision of similar support and Britain and Moscow offer support from the Ark Royal carrier group and the battleship Lenin, currently in port in Guayaquil on a world cruise.
December 24: The 125,000t super cruiseliner SS Poseidon is hit by a freak wave on a Christmas cruise off the Canary Islands, but her exceptionally stable design and sensible provision of ballast enable her to withstand the perilous conditions that would have capsized many a smaller vessel.
December 25: Most of Europe experiences an extremely seasonable and peaceful ‘White Christmas’, with Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas message focusing on the responsibility to help the needy, the lonely and the afflicted, at home and around the world.
December 26: Noted British philanthropist and businessman Sir Ebenezer Cratchit announces that he will be setting up a new charitable foundation to help the needy of England, named after his own family’s kindly benefactor of the 1830s.
December 27: Former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos incapacitates a burglar with an avalanche of hundreds of pairs of expensive shoes, with her collection serving her well when trouble was afoot.
December 28: The British Motor Corporation announces that it will unveil a special experimental prototype of a battery powered electrical car in the new year; previous types had been limited by the length of the car’s power cord.
December 29: An American mathematician presents a paper on whether the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas, leading to a heated debate encompassing free will, historical determinism and Operation Sealion; after the brawl is subdued by local police and the broken furniture and unconscious bodies cleared away, it is agreed at least that Sealion would not be realistically possible, regardless of the size of wings involved.
December 30: Panam Spaceways offers civil spaceplane package flights to Luna at markedly reduced prices of $2499.95, aiming to attract increasing numbers of middle class and business travelers for the lucrative Lunar tourism market amid the opening of Walt Disney's new family theme park in the American sector of Luna City.
December 31: An unexpected meteor shower provides a spectacular backdrop to New Year’s Eve celebrations across the Northern Hemisphere.
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Post by simon darkshade on Jan 4, 2024 14:01:04 GMT
British Armament Program 1972
Tanks: 3044
(125 Royalists, 254 Valiants, 96 Super Conquerors, 2569 Crusaders)
IFVs: 3500
(2750 FV-525 Warrior, 750 FV-432 Saxon)
APCs: 4522
(1548 Centaur IMV, 1174 Saladin AMC, 883 Sentinel LAV, 917 MAV)
Artillery: 2460
(82 3.75" Vickers Whirlwind SPAAGs, 138 42mm Marksman SPAAGs, 320 25mm Sharpshooter SPAAGs
290 25pdr GP Guns
100 36pdr SVAT Guns
640 L24 125mm Light Guns (300 Britain, 240 Commonwealth, 100 Scandinavia)
320 L121 6" Gun-Howitzers (160 Britain, 60 Arabs, 60 Persia, 40 Scandinavia)
240 FV236 Archbishops, 120 FV254 Lionhearts, 50 FV287 Excalibur, 12 375mm
140 Catapult MRLS)
Missiles: 268
(24 Black Arrow MRBM, 24 Blue Streak ICBM; 32 White Knight, 32 Gold Crown, 36 Black Prince, 120 Blue Water)
SAMs: 1680
(560 Broadsword, 160 Blue Envoy (240 export), 160 Bloodhound (export); 400 PT.428 Rapier SAMs, 400 EG.324 Sabre SAMs)
MANPADs: 1600
1600 Vickers Skyflash
ATGMs: 6000
1600 Hawker-Siddeley Javelins, 1200 Fairey Swingfires, 3200 Shorts Green Apples
Vehicles: 32,650
(5000 Bedford MK 5t lorry, 2500 Leyland Ranger 5t 6x6 lorry, 3000 Alvis Stalwart 10t 8x8 lorry, 150 Scammell Commander, 12,000 Land Rovers, 2000 Humber Pigs, 8000 Austin Champions)
Mortars: 2245
(957 L13 2.5", 720 L16 3.5", 240 L18 3.75" Automatic, 200 L12 4.5", 96 L35 6.5", 32 L52 10")
Small Arms
(184,532 L1A2 battle rifles, 124,749 L2A4 assault rifles, 60,187 L10 pistols, 109,263 L10A1 submachine guns, 24,555 L4 LMGs, 12,467 L6 GPMGs, 6219 L12 HMGs, 1987 Maxim Guns)
Military Aircraft: 3429
Vickers (685)
140 Vickers Thunderbolts (RAF 80, Spain 20, Greece 40)
64 Supermarine Eagle TSR-2s (32 India, 32 USA)
428 Supermarine Spitfires
64 Westland Tigers
50 Westland Sea Kings
24 Westland Westminsters
de Havilland (603)
400 de Havilland Tornadoes (240 Britain, 80 Commonwealth, 40 Benelux, 40 Germany)
50 de Havilland Vanguards (Australia)
26 de Havilland DH.125 Jet Dragons
18 Handley-Page Vengeances
24 Shorts Valentine (Chile)
25 Shorts Belfast Mark III
60 Percival Lynx
Armstrong-Whitworth (671)
18 Armstrong-Whitworth Warspite
36 Armstrong-Whitworth AW.249 AEW
48 Gloster Lions (48 RCAF)
120 Gloster P.462 Reaper (72 Mexico, 48 Persia)
219 Fairey Fireflies
102 Fairey Rotodynes
64 Fairey Swordfish ASW
64 Hawker-Siddeley Hurricanes
Hawker-Siddeley (780)
176 H-S Harriers/Sea Harriers (48 Germany, 96 Italy, 32 Sweden)
400 Hawker-Siddeley Hurricanes
24 Hawker Siddeley HS.681 Skyblazers
120 Blackburn Buccaneers (80 RN, 20 India, 20 Germany)
24 Avro Vulcans
24 Avro 780 Andover
12 Avro Vindicators
BAC/Bristol (690)
32 Bristol Buckinghams
72 Bristol Bulldogs
170 Bristol Strikemaster (40 RAF, 85 RIAF, 45 Sth Vietnam)
80 English Electric Lightnings (40 RAF, 40 India)
192 English Electric Scimitars
80 Folland-Miles Wasps
64 Hawker-Siddeley Hurricanes
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Post by simon darkshade on Jan 5, 2024 11:24:16 GMT
December Notes: - The Ministry of Space report focuses on the areas somewhat traditional to British imperial interests - colonisation, mining and commercial development - with the Martian Lagrangian stations tacked on as the pure research interest of the Mos Science Department. The direct flight spaceship connection is based on the @ NASA plan for a 125 day round trip to Mars and the earlier experimental American test flight in the 1960s; a shorter voyage between Earth and Mars makes for more trade and more money, but also more general intercourse, which carries with it issues of its own - The Soviets don't come out and say they are renouncing the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty and indeed aren't doing so. However, just as not every car accident is intentional and not every pool of water is potentially malign, doesn't mean that there are other problems in the shadows: (To explain the relevance of the darkly bemusing British advertisement: Under the water there are hidden traps and problems...) On another note, the number of atomic devices may seem an excessive flourish, but comes directly from the @ estimate of ~250 - Guatemalan rumblings around British Honduras occurred around this time historically, being stamped upon with the relatively light touch available to @ Britain; the DE British Empire is a different proposition and the lessons of this episode will be felt throughout Latin America (hint, hint). The Guatemalan regime will seek to project its 'antsy-ness' in a different direction. St. George is the name of @ Belize City - December 4th's event sees a visiting reporter from The Daily Planet interrupting the kidnapping of Steven Stayner, a very tragic case all round for the family en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Stayner- The reduction in the active divisional strength of the British Army is perhaps the only way that it would be politically viable/possible - Auden received the most votes in nomination for the @ Literature Nobel, whilst there was no @ 1972 Peace Prize (on account of the ongoing Vietnam War among other reasons), so Atticus Finch's win isn't at anyone's 'cost' - To us, informed by a history of Middle Eastern wars and one in particular happening in 1973, we are almost conditioned to read more into the likes of December 7th's events than are actually there. Or are they? - Austria-Hungary spending big comes in stages, as their previous generation of MDAP weapons now need to be replaced. This doesn't mean they are buying British alone (they have their joint Leopard tank programme with ze Germans for one) and some interesting other bits will come in 1973 - The Average Briton data is a bit of very small teaser of some more expansive lists of costs, prices and details that will come out eventually. The broad thrust is that wages are quite a bit higher, even accounting for the wealthier country, inflation (and consequently prices) are quite a bit lower and the biggies of houses and cars are well within the grasp of the 'average man on the street' - I slapped in mention of the Unterwegs, a dwarven underground road network in Austria, as a bit of a flavour event, but thinking about it more, it has some interesting consequences during earlier times and wars - Someone is apparently trying to pit the Soviets and Chinese against each other, or so it might seem... - Reading back on December 12th, I must have been in a particularly devious frame of mind the other day, as this is the third or fourth potential fake out/actual tip to a future event that I put in the first fortnight of the bally month! :lol - ARPANET expands faster, with the general pace of computing technology starting to resemble Moore's law in some ways. An earlier PC revolution + an advanced internet (equivalent to the c. late 1980s/early 1990s pre WWW) in the 1970s proper will have a lot of consequences, both technological and social; the latter is the area I look forward to delving into - Jane's Fighting Ships corrects the tendency (from @ also) of the 1960s to classify submarines (and amphibs for some reason) right up at the start of their national sections; this event also allowed me to signpost the ending of the WW2 warship era, which begs for a short, short story - Leonard Nimoy not catching Keyser Soze would be just...illogical - Global cooling seems to be worrying more and more folk at the top; a sign of a different universe - World cricket is much tighter, but some names will always shine through - Pre-pre Columbian underground cities pose some interesting questions - Dyna-Soar has seen a lot of testing and is finally in its pomp, just to see its effective replacement on the horizon - The Managua earthquake is a historic tragedy, unfortunately, but the response does show the different positions of states in a circumstances akin to detente in some ways and where the politics of aid are one of many considerations - Passengers aboard SS Poseidon have a great adventure on Christmas Eve, but honestly, there's no need to go overboard about it - Ebenezer Cratchit carries the Christian name of his family's benefactor - Imelda Marcos and shoe puns are a match made in...Manila... - The electric car running out of power cord is inspired by a fake advertisement in an early episode of The Goodies- Brawling over the butterfly effect is perhaps a bit of an intertextual comment about alternate history discussion over the electric internets. I threw in a Sealion joke for good measure - Pan Am offering family flights to Disney Moon World on Luna is many things - a bit of fun, a story hook if I ever get around to it and a measure of difference - The meteor shower is perfectly natural. Nothing to see here, move along people |
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