‘It was absolutely not a war crime,’ said the Belgrano’s captain, Hector Bonzo, in an interview two years before his death in 2009. ‘It was an act of war, lamentably legal.’Since that fateful afternoon on May 2, 1982, the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano by the British nuclear-powered submarine Conqueror has been regarded as one of the most controversial events of the Falklands War.Many British critics of the action, which resulted in the deaths of 323 Argentinian sailors, see the sinking as a war crime.These critics, who invariably tend to have their own agenda, and include the former Labour MP Sir Tam Dalyell and the former Ministry of Defence civil servant Clive Ponting, argue that the Belgrano represented no threat, and was actually sailing away from the 200-mile Total Exclusion Zone declared by the British around the Falkland Islands.In their eyes, the action was a disgraceful act of provocation by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher designed to escalate the conflict.However, it...
Spitfire "tipping-off" a V1. If you've never heard of this insane tactic ....... At first V1's were shot down by gunfire.
.With the high risk of being blown up, some of the best pilots started tipping the V1's wing, because of damage to
wing tips they later developed a tactic of disrupting the airflow by placing their wing very close to the V1's wing,
causing it to topple. Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot
to everything else, though some Mossie pilots flew past closely in front of the V1, again causing it to topple. The
thought of doing this at 450mph, 4,000 feet above the ground, at night, and being blinded gives me the willies.
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