My library just grew again 2015...

[rickshaw]

Why would you want to assassinate Freud and Tito?

Why not?  No more troubling Freudism and well, Tito always was a bit of an annoying little snit, if you knock him off you've got a matching set of dictators'/revolutionaries' heads for the mantlepiece.   

[Hobbes]

Tito kept the Balkans in check for decades, I'd say he's worth more alive than dead.

[Hobbes]

The Aeroplane Special on TSR.2.

I haven't seen that about anywhere Harro, what's it like?

It's 114 pages with lots of photos, some of which I hadn't seen before, including shots of XR222 during its restoration, photos of the production line and of the aircraft being scrapped. Also some nice drawings: 3-views, equipment details, things like the reconnaisance pack and the buddy refueling unit.
It doesn't go into as much detail as Damien Burke's book of course, but at £8 it's good value.

See also this post on the Secretprojects forum

[PR19_Kit]

The Aeroplane Special on TSR.2.

I haven't seen that about anywhere Harro, what's it like?

It's 114 pages with lots of photos, some of which I hadn't seen before, including shots of XR222 during its restoration, photos of the production line and of the aircraft being scrapped. Also some nice drawings: 3-views, equipment details, things like the reconnaisance pack and the buddy refueling unit.
It doesn't go into as much detail as Damien Burke's book of course, but at £8 it's good value.

See also this post on the Secretprojects forum

That sounds excellent, thanks. I can't think how I managed to miss it in the shops! 

But the guy on Secret Projects has obviously missed reading both Damian's and Paul Lucas' TSR2 books!

[jcf]

Why would you want to assassinate Freud and Tito?

Why not?  No more troubling Freudism and well, Tito always was a bit of an annoying little snit, if you knock him off you've got a matching set of dictators'/revolutionaries' heads for the mantlepiece.   

If it wasn't Freud, it would've been someone else, it was in the air in the period.

No Tito and post-WWII you'd either have something similar to today's Balkans or a full blown
Russian controlled state. Not convinced either would have been a good thing during the Cold War.

[NARSES2]

My personal view is that Tito is an important part of post WWII European history for the reasons jonc' states.

I have done very, very little reading on Balkans history as it is extremely complicated and your brain soon begins to hurt so my views are just based on a gut feeling

[Go4fun]

Does getting a Nook Speck device count as an addition to my library?
I found a new author "A. American" with his ' Home" series of stories about living in the Southeast US after an EMP attack. An interesting take on what it would be like and a faiely good writer although the editing could use help. 

[rickshaw]

Why would you want to assassinate Freud and Tito?

Why not?  No more troubling Freudism and well, Tito always was a bit of an annoying little snit, if you knock him off you've got a matching set of dictators'/revolutionaries' heads for the mantlepiece.   

If it wasn't Freud, it would've been someone else, it was in the air in the period.

No Tito and post-WWII you'd either have something similar to today's Balkans or a full blown
Russian controlled state. Not convinced either would have been a good thing during the Cold War.

Ah, but no Stalin, no Trotsky either...  Imagine how the Russian Revolution might have turned out with two of the major characters missing.  Without Stalin, no Cold War perhaps at all.

[jcf]

The notion that Stalin was singularly responsible for the Cold War is ridiculous, the Yank and Brit 'powers that be' were
going to act the same, regardless of who was in charge of the Soviet state. The idiotic 1919 intervention proves that.

[rickshaw]

The notion that Stalin was singularly responsible for the Cold War is ridiculous, the Yank and Brit 'powers that be' were
going to act the same, regardless of who was in charge of the Soviet state. The idiotic 1919 intervention proves that.

Stalin's paranoia and intransigence didn't help matters.  No Stalin and the Soviet state develops differently.  The West may not find it as hard, post-war to work with the fUSSR as they did with Stalin in charge. Loads of possibilities in the death of Stalin and Trotsky before WWI.

[jcf]

The 'West', or rather the entrenched wealth that runs it, wasn't interested in working with Socialists of any stripe and that goes back decades
before the Russian Revolution, never mind the aftermath of WWII, so it would have been irrelevant who was in power in Moscow. Anyhow
Russia and the 'West' (whatever the hell that was or is, and truly meaningless when speaking of Capitalism vs. Socialism/Communism as both are
creations of 'Western' aka Anglo-American/European economic/political/social philosophy) were never what one would call 'pals', their interests
being more often divergent than common.

Sorry to burst yer bubble, but Trotsky was a true revolutionary who preached World Revolution, Stalin was only interested in his own power,
which is why he killed Trotsky and his followers and gutted the Internationale. Stalin had zero interest in the active pursuit of the Revolution
outside of the borders of the Soviet Union. Any moves he made in Central/Eastern/SouthEastern Europe post-WWII were to protect his own interests.
Those idiotic Stalin's Hammer novels and other crappy alt-history fiction (which, frankly, is 99.999% of it, regardless of era/subject) which feature
Red Scare/Cold War style bullshit of "Evil Stalinist Hordes" invading western-Europe are just plain stupid. He wasn't going to do that and he
regularly imprisoned/destroyed the Comrades who promoted such notions.
He was a cunning man who played a careful game and knew that any move of that sort would result in his own demise, which, ironically, is probably
why he was so stunned when Hitler invaded in 1941. I think he honestly didn't realize that Adolf was batshit crazy and that subtle notions of
mutual advantage were truly beyond the Austrian's ken.

If you want to talk about possibilities of different history if so and so died, fine, but the notion that the world would automatically have been a
'better place' are rather rose-tinted.

Here's one fer ya, Churchill buys the farm during the Boer War, which saves the world from several volumes of selective, self-serving 'history'. 

[NARSES2]

If you want to argue politics or political history can I suggest you do it somewhere else please ?

Thank you

Chris

[Howard of Effingham]

hmm, in amongst several boxes of aviation related stuff on one of the stalls on Coventry market doing 2nd and vintage....

I found a pile of really useful aviation manufacturers leaflets, inc one from RR on the boeing proposal to re-engine the B-52 with
four of their large turbofans and a very useful retouched photo on the back showing what it would have looked like...  

and topical but surprising, a copy of the September 1953 edition of the National Geographic with articles by HV Morton on 'in the London of the New Queen' and RS Cresson on an 'American Family in Afghanistan'.

and a number of 1950's and 1960's issues of the ROC/Joint Services Recognition Journal, one of which has a glorious cartoon of a
Tu-16 'Badger' on the rear cover. 

and a mild shocker.... with an original copy of AC Kermode's book Flight Without Formulae dated 1941!   

[McColm]

Picked up two magazines.
Aeroplane Illustrated, Classic Airliner- Lockheed Constellation. Issue 8, 99 pages of black and white photos with colour profiles, airliners and military variants, line drawing and internal layouts. A few Real World Whiffs already covered on this site with a few more that haven't. Such as the Speedpak trials carried out by the USAF 42-94558 .The fifteenth and last C-69 to be excepted by the USAF and leased back to Lockheed.

The modelmaker's yearbook, Annual 2015-number 45, Hobby's. 320 pages. Covers the main hobbycraft subjects ranging from glass, wood, card, metal, fabric and plastic models. Loads of tools to drool over with prices to match.
The 1/12 scale dolls house and furnishings looks impressive. Got me thinking of of the potion masters room in the Harry Potter films and the common rooms of the houses.
More of a catalogue than magazine, so for a beginner like myself I can buy a starter set of tools and work my way up.
Quite a lot of woodworking plans and projects to do. The aircraft kits are shoved to the back, behind the rubber band-powered aircraft and remote control kits.

[PR19_Kit]

I bought this a while back, but just read the first 1/4 of Leo McKinstry's 'Hurricane'.

It goes into great detail about the aircraft's early days and how various people in Government an the RAF almost stopped its production, or delayed it enough to ensure we'd have lost the BoB anyway. It reminds me greatly of the bit about the TSR2, 'All aircraft have four dimensions, span, length, height and politics'.

It's also amazing how many people involved in the aviation business in those days had double-barrelled names!