I'm A Winner!

There's been quite a few competitions going on recently around the blogosphere, and after having entered a lot of them I've finally won one.  I'm now the proud owner of 'The British airship at war, 1914-1918'.  I've only had a quick flick through so far but it looks really interesting.

I've been interested in airships as long as I can remember, which is probably due to having lived in the shadow of the old Royal Airships Works, near Cardington, Bedford, for most of my life.  These two 'sheds' are absolutely huge and dominate the countryside for miles around.  The famous R101 airship was built there.

Anyway thanks to Edwin at Thoughts of a Depressive Diplomatist and a recommendation that you check put his blog too.

The hangars at Cardington as seen from my village

Diamond Jubilee Thames Flotilla

Congratulations to her Majesty!

I was in London for a few days this weekend and on sunday I went down to the river with my friends and watched the Jubilee flotilla pass by.  Very good it was too, very entertaining and a great atmosphere.  We even managed to avoid the worst of the rain by being near the start, so it was nearly over for us by the time the weather really deteriated.  I grant it doesn't really have that much to do with this blog's theme, but it did feature several interesting military vessels, which of course do, and the truth is I just couldn't resist posting a few pics of a great day.

One of the highlights of the parade was the 'Dunkirk little ships' headed up by MTB 102, which served as the flagship of the fleet during Operation Dynamo.  She is thought to be the smallest ship to ever serve as a flagship for the Royal Navy.

These two are presumably Army boats of some sort, but I can't seem to find out anything else about them.

It turns out the RAF had boats too, at the top is HSL 102 which was used to rescue downed pilots in the channel in WW2.  The bottom picture contains another resuce boat (441) and at the back Linsey 2111 which also served in WW2 as a floating workship and refuller for RAF seaplanes.

And finally HMS Medusa, a harbour defense launch launched in 1943.  She took part in D-Day and continued to serve untill paid off in 1965.

I've Won Some Balls.......

There's been a spate of competitions going around the blogosphere for a while now, I've entered a few and now I've finally won one!

I am now the proud owner of two 17th century English civil war musket balls.  I'm proper chuffed with these so a big thank you to Ian over at The Blog With No Name for running the competition and sending these out to me!

A side effect of this was that Ian also mentioned my blog on his and I got a nice bump in follower numbers as a result.  So welcome to all my new followers and I hope you find something interesting to read (and look at) in my quite mixed up gaming world.

Been Shoping - Some New Books

A couple of days ago I went shoping with the aim of buying some christmas presents, and what always happens when I do this happened again, as well as buying presents for others I also can back with some presents for myself, this time 3 books.

Firstly a book on tanks called 'Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles' by Robert Jackson.  I got this from the Works (a discount bookshop in the UK) for the princely sum of £2.99

The book is hardback and contains 93 full colour pages detailing tanks from the first world war upto the modern day.  I've been looking for something like this ever since I bought my first flames of war models as my knowlegde of WW2 tanks is pretty limited.  The book doesn't go into great detail, but it has a lot of pretty pictures and is ideal as an introduction to the subject, it was just what I was after at the price I wanted to pay.

Next we have 'Moses Pharaoh of Egypt: The Mystery of Akhenaten Resolved' by Ahmed Osman which I picked up very cheap in a charity 2nd hand bookshop.  I've spent most of the last couple of days reading it on and off and the theory it's proposing is really quite fascinating.  The book proposes that Akhenaten (the herectical pharoah who eschewed the old gods in favour of the worship of the one god, the Aten) wasn't killed when he fell from power but lead his followers out of egypt to establish the monotheistic faith that the most popular of the worlds current faiths are derived from, i.e. he was in fact Moses.  It's all very interesting, and he presents alot of evidence, to me a lot of it seems circumstanal, but I'm not a good enough egyptologist or biblical scholar to come down with a definate conclusion, it did convince me of a possible link between the worship of the Aten and the faith of the early Israelites however. 

And finally a Games Workshop Black Library publication 'Thanquols Doom' by CL Werner.  I've only just started reading it so can't give any meaningful thoughts as yet, but I like the rest of the Gotrek & Felix and Thanquol novels.  They're not the greatest works of literature I've ever read, but sometimes there is a place for a trashy fantasy adventure.

The Boxer Rebellion - A Fascinating Photograph

I was reading about the Boxer Rebellion today as I'm considering expanding my figure collection that way and came across the following photograph on wikipedia (click to enlarge):

It shows soilders from the 9 nations of the 8 nation alliance (British India is in the photo but didn't seem to count as an extra country when naming the alliance) that fought against the boxers at the beginning of the 20th century.  From left to right you have soilders representing, the United Kingdom, The United States, Russia, British India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy & Japan.  What I find interesting (apart from the varied selection of uniforms on show) is that they've been arranged in height order, with the British on the left and the Japanese on the right, almost as if they've been arranged in order of superiority.  Its left me wondering who took the picture (I'm guessing a Brit) and wether the sizes are truly representative of a normal soilder for each army or if its essenitally a 'fixed' propaganda piece.  Anyway I found it interesting I hope you did too.