#AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION

[squadron-goals]

Jagdstaffel Boelcke, 12 December 1916

Dear Miss Annamarie! Pangs of conscience put the pen in my hand. Really - I'm ashamed that I haven't thanked you for your splendid letter. I don't have an excuse - except for the state of hibernation in which we have sunk in the almost non-stop foggy weather, and which makes one all too drownsy. You wouldn't believe how much  aviators can sleep in winter! If you come for coffee before 9:30 on a rainy day, you're generally unpopular. Two hours ago, while I was writing the previous line, the news came that the Emperor made an offer of peace to our enemies. You can't guess anything about the success. But even if it is not accepted, it will make Germany's basic position on the world war even more unequivocal than before. It is extremely funny to observe the impression that the word "near peace" has on the individual. I must confess - unbelievable as it may sound - that not one of us let out an unconditional howl of joy at the news. You got used to the war. The imminent upheaval in the "way of life" actually makes each individual think first of what effect it will have on his personal circumstances - man is so much a creature of habit. First there is "Igel", our youngest, will soon be 20 years old, is called Hans Imelmann (with one m, so has nothing to do with Immelmann). First of all, he thinks with quiet horror of the school benches, from which he fled with joy when the war broke out - now he is shooting down English ministers, i.e. he recently shot down his sixth plane, in which a former English agriculture minister happened to be on an observation flight to the front. Another thinks of the hardships of the upcoming assessor exam; a third, active soldier, to the tedious peace time service; a fourth thinks of useless assets in Africa. However, everyone would be happy to put up with it once the time had come. Since Boelcke, we now have the second squadron leader, a Bavarian Lieutenant Walz, whom we asked for as commander. Unfortunately, we had to leave his predecessor Kirmaier (also a Bavarian), who took over the leadership of the squadron after Boelcke's death, on November 22nd over the lines. Our English customers is a bit shy - we have to go farther and farther over the lines to visit them. At that time there were five of us and we were attacked at the same time by two large squadrons over there - each of us had to deal with several opponents. I still saw Kirmaier chasing an already steaming Vickers two-seater, but had several behind him himself - something like that corresponded to his Bavarian taste. I was attacked by a Morane monoplane at that moment. The silly fellow came at me from the front in a clumsy manner - now he's lying near Longueval, where the Delville woods used to be. That was my seventh kill, which was recognized; because of the three Russian ones, only one was credited to me, since the "earth observation", i.e. confirmation by uninvolved people, was missing. They're very particular about it, but that's a good thing because it eliminates any attempts at boastful cheating.

Yesterday evening the new Air General Excellence von Hoeppner was our guest. He said a few flattering things to our squadron, which was a welcome starting point for us to express all sorts of wishes that usually get stuck in official channels. My brother Gerhard comes often and, fortunately, always has a horse brought for me. We then ride far through the area - that would be a difficult decision for me, whether being on horseback or in the albatross is nicer. In the next few days we want to visit our eldest brother Erich, who is not far from Lille. Brother Martin is somewhere in the east with his giant plane. Mother's collection of her sons' postcards probably looks quite colorful. You may have wondered about the location of this letter. Yesterday we received the following decree from the Ministry of War dated December 10th: "His Majesty the Kaiser approved that the Jagdstaffel, which was led by Hauptmann Boelcke, who died undefeated on October 28th, 1916, be given the name "Jagdstaffel Boelcke". This is a great encouragement to live up to our Master's name.

[warningsine]

A high-rise Moscow building housing Russian government ministries has been hit by a drone for the second time in three days, the city’s mayor has said, as air defences also shot down “several” drones targeting the capital region.

The Russian defence ministry said two drones were destroyed by air defence systems in the Odintsovo and Naro-Fominsk districts near Moscow, while it claimed a third was jammed and went “out of control” before it crashed in the Moscow City business district, a cluster of glass skyscrapers that was built to show Russia’s growing integration into world financial markets. . The ministry blamed Ukraine for what it called an “attempted terrorist attack”.

Photos and video showed that a drone had ripped off part of the facade of a modern skyscraper, IQ-Quarter, 3.4 miles (5.5km) from the Kremlin, which houses staff from several ministries, including Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media.

“The facade of the 21st floor was damaged. The glazing of 150 sq metres was broken,” the Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said in a Telegram post, adding that no injuries had been reported.

The towers, often unoccupied at night, are located further from the Kremlin than other highly-defended government targets like the Ministry of Defence, where Russia had stationed a Pantsir S-1 air defence system on the roof last year, and present a large, tall target.

Russia’s economy ministry said its employees were working remotely after the latest attack. Moscow’s Vnukovo airport was also temporarily shut and flights redirected.

Ukraine has not formally admitted it was behind the strikes on Sunday and early on Tuesday, though they appear to be part of a growing strategy to bring home the consequences of Vladimir Putin’s war to Russia’s civilian population.

The Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak suggested in a tweet on Tuesday that the Russian capital, whose residents have largely been able to ignore the devastation being meted out on a daily basis in Ukraine, was experiencing payback.

“Moscow is rapidly getting used to full-fledged war, which, in turn, will soon finally move to the territory of the ‘authors of the war’ to collect all their debts. Everything that will happen in Russia is an objective historical process.

“More unidentified drones, more collapse, more civil conflicts, more war …” he wrote.

In a video address two days ago, the Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, made the same point. He said the war was coming home to Russia, after three drones were shot down over Moscow on Sunday.

“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases. This is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” Zelenskiy said.

The attacks on Tuesday mark at least the fifth time that unmanned aerial vehicles have reached the Russian capital since May, when two drones came down over the Kremlin. Moscow and its surrounding area are more than 500km from the Ukrainian border and the ongoing conflict there.

In Sunday’s attack, Russia said its air defences shot down one drone in Odintsovo in the surrounding Moscow region, while two others were jammed and crashed into the Moscow City business district.

While the damage so far has been relatively minor, the attacks appear designed to show up Moscow’s vulnerability to drone warfare. Ukrainian bloggers on Tuesday ironically repeated claims made in April by the commander of Russia’s air defences, Lieut Gen Andrey Demin.

“There is hardly a better sky shield anywhere in the world than Moscow,” Demin assured a Russian newspaper.

The attack on Moscow came as Russia launched its own drone strike, on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, injuring one person. Five Iranian-made Shahed drones were deployed, Ukrainian officials said.

Two floors of a college dormitory were destroyed and set on fire as Russia targeted “densely populated” areas of the north-eastern city, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said on Telegram on Tuesday, adding that three explosions had been heard in the city.

The chief of police in Kharkiv, Volodymyr Tymoshko, said there were two night-time strikes – one on the college and one on the city centre. One person was injured in the city centre.

It was unclear whether anyone was in the college building when it was struck, with local media initially saying it was empty and later reporting one person had been inside.

[hjmarseille]

ROYAL AIR FORCE FIGHTER COMMAND, 1939-1945.

© IWM CH 3553

Acting Wing Commander C B F Kingcombe, Commanding Officer of No. 92 Squadron RAF, at Biggin Hill, Kent. He later commanded No. 72 Squadron RAF before becoming leader of the Kenley Wing in 1942. In 1943 he was posted to North Africa to take command of No. 244 Wing, at the end of which, he had brought victory score to 18 enemy aircraft.

Wing Commander Charles Kingcombe, CO of No. 92 Squadron RAF at Biggin Hill, Kent, 14 June 1942.

[usafphantom2]

Ronnie Bell Following

The Bachem Ba 349 Natter

Dr. Erich Bachem's Ba 349 Natter (Viper) was the world's first, manned, vertical-take-off interceptor. The aircraft was an imaginative solution to a desperate problem but World War II ended before the weapon saw combat. Dr. Werner von Baun first proposed the concept in 1939 but the Air Ministry (RLM) rejected it as "unnecessary and unworkable." Bachem, an engineer with the Fieseler works, thought the idea had merit. He tried but failed to generate interest in several different proposals for a rocket interceptor.

During spring 1944, the Allied bombing offensive began taking a serious toll on the German war machine. None of the conventional methods employed by the Luftwaffe to intercept the bombers seemed to work so the service began to explore unconventional means. The RLM Technical Office issued requirements for an inexpensive fighter made of non-essential materials that could defend important targets. Messerschmitt, Junkers, Heinkel, and Erich Bachem submitted proposals but RLM officials remained unenthusiastic about Bachem's design. They chose a more conventional offering from Heinkel but Bachem refused to give up. He sought the support of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS (Nazi Party security forces). Himmler liked Bachem's proposal and signed an order to build 150 Natters using SS funds. It was now possible that the SS might develop an aircraft beyond the RLM's control so they placed their own order for 50 Natters and announced the official designation, Bachem Ba 349.

Bachem's design was simple and easy to build. Semi-skilled labor could construct one in about 1000 man-hours. The wings were plain rectangular wooden slabs without ailerons, flaps, or other control devices. The cruciform tail consisted of four fins and control surfaces. Deflecting these surfaces in various combinations controlled pitch, yaw, and roll, once the Ba 349 had reached sufficient speed to generate adequate airflow. Aerodynamic control was augmented by guide vanes connected to the four control surfaces. Bachem positioned each vane within the exhaust plume of the main engine, a Walter 109-509A rocket motor. This is the same basic engine used in the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet (also preserved in the NASM collection). Two liquid fuels combined inside the motor to generate thrust. When T-Stoff (a highly caustic solution of hydrogen peroxide and a stabilizing chemical) mixed with C-Stoff (a hydrazine hydrate/methanol/water mixture), combustion was spontaneous so extreme care was required to handle both chemicals. The Walter motor generated about 1,700 kg (3,740 lb) of thrust but a loaded Ba 349A weighed more than 1,818 kg (4,000 lb) so liftoff required more power.

Bachem got the extra thrust from four Schmidding 109-533 solid-fuel rocket motors that he bolted to the aft fuselage, two per side. Each motor produced 500 kg (1,100 lb) of thrust. At liftoff, all five motors ignited, generating about 3,700 kg (8,140 lb) of thrust. The resulting 1.6 to 1 thrust-to-weight ratio produced acceptable climb performance.

Natter operations were relatively simple and the following account describes a hypothetical mission. A 24 m (79 ft) tower guided the rocket plane during liftoff. The wingtips and lower fin fit inside guide rails to stabilize the aircraft until it cleared the tower. The flight controls remained locked in neutral position until the solid boosters burned out about 10 seconds into the flight. At burnout, explosive bolts blasted away the solids, the flight controls unlocked, and the Natter's 3-axis Patin autopilot began receiving steering commands from the ground via radio. The airplane continued climbing but the pilot could intercede at any time and take full control. Bachem calculated maximum climb rate at 11,563 m (37, 400 ft) meters per minute but flight tests did not confirm this figure.

American daylight bomber formations often approached a target at an altitude of 6,250 m (20,000 ft) to 9,375 m (30,000 ft). After the Natter had climbed even with the formation, the pilot took control, steering his Natter in close. At a range of about 1.6-3.2 kilometers (1-2 miles) from the formation, the Natter pilot jettisoned the nose cone and shotgun style, salvoed all 24 Henschel Hs 217 Föhn unguided rockets.

Rocket fuel would be nearly exhausted by now, so the pilot began to descend. At about 1,400 m (4500 ft), the pilot released his seat harness and fired a ring of explosive bolts to blow off the entire nose section. A parachute simultaneously deployed from the rear fuselage and the sudden deceleration literally threw the pilot from his seat. The pilot activated his own parachute after waiting a safe interval to clear the bits of falling Natter. Ground crews recovered the Walter motor to use again but the airframe was now scrap.

Bachem set up a factory to design and build his dream at Waldsee in the Black Forest. By November 1944, the first Natter was ready for tests configured as a motorless glider. A Heinkel He 111 bomber carried one to 18,000 ft and released it. The pilot found the aircraft easy to control. At 1000 m (3,200 ft), he fired the explosive bolts and the escape sequence worked as designed. A powered vertical launch failed on December 18 because of faulty ground equipment design. On December 22, the aircraft made its first successful launch with the solid fuel boosters only because the Walter motor was not ready. Ten more successful launches followed during the next several months. Early in 1945, the Walter engine arrived and the Natter launched successfully with a complete propulsion system on February 25, 1945, carrying a dummy pilot. The launch proved that the complete flight profile was workable. All went according to plan, including recovery of the pilot dummy and Walter rocket motor.

Now a man had to fly and the first test came on February 28. Oberleutnant Lothar Siebert climbed into a Ba 349A, strapped in, and rocketed off the launch tower. At about 500 m (1600 ft), the Natter shed its canopy and headrest and the aircraft veered off and flew into the ground, killing Siebert. No cause was determined but the ground crew may have failed to lock the canopy and it could have struck the pilot. Despite the tragedy, more pilots volunteered to fly and the Bachem team launched three flights in March.

With the end near, the Germans erected a battery of ten Natters at Kircheim near Stuttgart. Pilots stood alert day after day but no U. S. bombers flew into range. The U. S. Seventh Army overran the site but not before the Germans blew up all ten Natters and their launchers.

It is interesting to speculate about the Natter's potential effectiveness. Realistic flight training was next to impossible using an aircraft that destroyed itself after every flight. However, given the short duration of a typical interception (about 5-10 minutes), and positive ground control for much of the flight, the German could have eased training with a simple ground simulator. Once the German's erected a Natter site, U. S. Army Air Forces strike planners could easily route the bombers out of harm's way. Accuracy of the unguided rocket salvo is also questionable and it was a one-shot opportunity. It is safe to assume that the Bachem Ba 349A Natter was a bad idea from the start and as a bomber interceptor, it was a total failure.

Only two Bachem Natters are known to exist. The Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany, displays a Ba 349A restored in the colors and markings of one of the unmanned test aircraft. The NASM has the other Natter. U. S. forces captured this artifact at war's end and shipped it to Freeman Field, Indiana, for analysis. The captured equipment number T2-1 was assigned to the Natter and the U. S. Air Force transferred it to the National Air Museum (now NASM) on May 1, 1949.

Via Flickr

[xhxhxhx]

I Know, I Know, I Know

In Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut quotes David Irving for the death toll from the firebombing of Dresden: 135,000 dead. Irving happens to be a Holocaust denier. And that number happens to be a lie.

Towards the end of the book, Vonnegut quotes Irving by name:

One of the books that Lily had brought Rumfoord was The Destruction of Dresden, by an Englishman named David Irving. It was an American edition, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1964. What Rumfoord wanted from it were portions of the forewords by his friends Ira C. Eaker, Lieutenant General, U.S.A.F., retired, and British Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, K.C.B., K.B.E., M.C., D.F.C., A.F.C.

I find it difficult to understand Englishmen or Americans who weep about enemy civilians who were killed but who have not shed a tear for our gallant crews lost in combat with a cruel enemy, wrote his friend General Eaker in part. I think if would have been well for Mr. Irving to have remembered, when he was drawing the frightful picture of the civilians killed at Dresden, that V-1’s and V-2’s were at the very time falling on England, killing civilian men, women, and children indiscriminately, as they were designed and launched to do. It might be well to remember Buchenwald and Coventry, too.

Eaker’s foreword ended this way:

I deeply regret that British and U.S. bombers killed 135,000 people in the attack on Dresden, but I remember who started the last war and I regret even more the loss of more than 5,000,000 Allied lives in the necessary effort to completely defeat and utterly destroy nazism.

So it goes.

The figure is significant. It is more than Hiroshima, where 70,000 to 80,000 died in the initial bombing. “Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima, for instance,” Vonnegut writes early in Slaughterhouse-Five. “I didn’t know that either.” Not until he read Irving. presumably.

That figure was significant to the press coverage, like the New York Times review of March 31, 1969:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an indescribable writer whose seven previous books are like nothing else on earth, was accorded the dubious pleasure of witnessing a 20th-century apocalypse. During World War II, at the age of 23, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned beneath the city of Dresden, "the Florence of the Elbe." He was there on Feb. 13, 1945, when the Allies firebombed Dresden in a massive air attack that killed 130,000 people and destroyed a landmark of no military significance.

Or the Sunday review of April 6, 1969:

Kurt Vonnegut speaks with the voice of the “silent generation,” and his quiet words explain the quiescence of his contemporaries. This is especially true of his sixth novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” in which he looks back -- or tries to look back -- at his wartime experience. In the first chapter he tells us how for over 20 years he has been trying to re-create a single event, the bombing of Dresden by American and British pilots. Vonnegut had an unusual perspective on that event. Safe, as a prisoner of war in a deep cellar under the stockyards, he emerged to find 135,000 German civilians smoldering around him. Dresden had been an open city. We closed it. We.

They led with the figure. It was important. This was the above the headline in the Sunday review: “Like Lot’s wife, he looked back -- at the destruction of Dresden and 135,000 dead.”

As Richard Evans discovered in the 1990s, Irving more or less fabricated that figure. As he recounted in Lying About Hitler (2001):

How many people did Irving think had been killed in the raids, and on what evidence did he base his estimates? The first source he used was information supplied to him by Hans Voigt, who had been a local official in Dresden at the time of the raids. Four days after the attack, missing persons search bureau was set up in the Saxon Ministry of the Interior. Voigt, at the time an assistant school master. was put in charge of establishing a dead persons department for the bureau to collect the records and personal effects of those people already dead, and of those still buried in the ruins. Irving said that it was this department which was “responsible for the identification of the victims and for arriving at some final estimate of the death-roll.”

Voigt’s office had four different filing systems for different data. The first were garment cards, onto which samples of garments taken from unidentified bodies were pasted, together with date, location, and so on. Voigt told Irving that up to the time of the capitulation “we had almost twelve thousand of these cards completed.” The second list was of miscellaneous personal belongings of the unidentified. The third was an alphabetical list of bodies identified by personal papers. The fourth was a list of wedding rings recovered from bodies. With these four indices the dead persons department was “able to clear up the identity of some 40,000 of the dead.” Thus Irving arrived at an “absolute minimum” death toll of 40,000. This in turn tallied with the figure of 39,773 given by Georg Feydt, the first person to write a reasonably considered account of the attack in 1953.

However, Irving did not accept 40,000 as the actual figure because Voigt had told Irving that he himself “estimated that the final number would have been 135,000.” In 1963 Irving was reported to have explained: “The Germans simply struck off the first digit to make the figure more acceptable to the Russians, who contended that Bomber Command was not a powerful weapon.”” In other words, he apparently thought that the Russians wanted to reassure the citizens of the Eastern bloc that Western bombing was not very dangerous. There was no evidence for this supposition. Voigt wrote to Irving as early as September 1962, blaming the amendment on “Dresden officials” (especially the then mayor Walter Weidauer), who “reduced the figure out of fear of the ‘Big Four,’ so as not to speak ill of them.” This did not seem to me to be particularly strong motive. The Russians were not involved in the bombing of Dresden. At the height of the Cold War, they would have had every incentive for inflating the figure, so as to put the Western Allies in a bad light. Yet Irving repeated the claim in 1995.

There was no corroborative evidence of any kind about the missing digit. Moreover Voigt was apparently not a popular man with the communist authorities in Dresden. Weidauer decried him as a “virulent fascist” who had been rightfully thrown out of East Germany. This was typical of the language the Communists used for people who proved a nuisance to them. Still, Voigt, then living in West Germany, may have had a political motive in accusing the Soviet and East German authorities of falsifying the statistics. Weidauer added that the death register was still extant in the Dresden Town Hall with a highest card number of 31,102 for an unidentified body. In addition there were the so-called street books. The numbers in the street books, which were compiled according to the streets and houses where the dead were found, exactly matched those on the registration cards. Irving could only sustain the figure of 135,000, therefore, by relying on a postwar speculation which he must have known was shaky and was discounted by most other writers on the raid, with good reason. This did not say much for his claim that he based his work on careful research into contemporary documentation.

In later editions, Irving further falsified his numbers, and claimed higher death tolls, but the 135,000 always depended on that invention. He put a "1″ in front of “35,000″ and claimed that as the figure.

The probable death toll was lower than that 35,000, maybe 25,000 to 30,000. That came out in the judgment at Irving’s libel trial, David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, [2000] EWHC QB 115:

13.124 When asked what was the supporting evidence for these inflated claims, Irving relied on the estimates for the number of casualties made by Mehnert and Fetscher and on the recollection of Frau Grosse, which I have mentioned. He also testified that his claims had been based on estimates as high as 250,000 which he had received from a great many individuals. Irving neither identified the individuals nor disclosed the letters. He prayed in aid also the fact that there were in Dresden at the time an unquantified number of refugees fleeing before the advancing Russian army. Finally he relied on the estimate of Hans Voigt, summarised in paragraph 11.52 above, that 135,000 had been killed. But, as stated in paragraph 13.126 below, none of this material casts significant doubt on the accumulation of evidence that the true death toll was within the bracket of 25-30,000.

[...]

13.126 It appears to me that the evidence which I have summarised in paragraph 13.124 affords a very slender basis for the claims which Irving has made for the numbers killed in the raids. The evidence of Mehnert, Fetscher and Frau Grosse was secondhand and unverified. In the absence of any indication on what they were based, I do not consider the Irving should have given any credence to estimates in letters from unidentified individuals. His speculation about the number of refugees does little to cast doubt on the reliability of the figures quoted in the official reports. Voigt's evidence was uncorroborated and unlikely to be correct in the light of the number of deaths recorded on the official cards. In my view, Irving should not have quoted numbers based on this evidence. ... In my judgment the estimates of 100,000 and more deaths which Irving continued to put about in the 1990s lacked any evidential basis and were such as no responsible historian would have made.

For Irving, Dresden was a useful tool. If there were 135,000 or 250,000 dead at Dresden, it helped even the scales with the Allies. It was the mirror image of his Holocaust denial: German crimes were overstated and Allied crimes were understated.

Irving wanted his readers to see the bombing of Germany as the moral equivalent of the Holocaust. Evans again:

Irving wrote to Kimber in 1963 declaring his view that the crime of World War II had not been genocide but "innocentocide," the killing of civilians, and that therefore the Eastern and Western powers were just as guilty in his eyes as the Germans and the Japanese. For him Dresden was a crime. Nowhere in the earlier editions was there an explicit effort to draw the parallel. Instead, Irving allowed others to draw this obvious conclusion and then somewhat disingenuously congratulated them on their independence of mind. Thus he wrote to Sydney Silverman MP, who had reviewed the book in Tribune: "I am not someone who holds political views similar to your own, but I really must congratulate you— in spite of this—for having stuck your neck out so firmly and unmistakably by drawing a parallel between the Nazis' atrocities and what happened in Dresden; this is something I myself did not claim in my book.”

Three decades later, Irving was making the parallel explicit. In a speech delivered in Toronto on 8 November 1992, he estimated the numbers who died in Auschwitz (“most of them from epidemics,” he said) as 100,000. “Around one hundred thousand dead in that brutal slave labour camp.” Around 25,000 of these had been killed by shooting or hanging, according to German radio reports from Auschwitz received and decrypted by the British, he added. He continued:

Twenty-five thousand killed, if we take this grossly inflated figure to be on the safe side: That is a crime; there is no doubt. Killing twenty-five thousand in four years—1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944—that is a crime; there is no doubt. Let me show you a picture of twenty-five thousand people being killed in twenty-five minutes. Here it is, in my book, a vivid picture of twenty-five thousand people being killed in twenty-five minutes by the British (in February 1945) in Pforzheim, a little town where they make jewellery and watches in Baden, Germany. Twenty-five thousand people were being burned alive. ... That is what it looks like when twenty-five thousand civilians are being burned alive in twenty-five minutes. One person in four, in twenty-five minutes. One person in four in that town. As I said when I was speaking in Kitchener yesterday, it is as though somebody came to Kitchener, a town of about a hundred thousand people, and killed one person in four in twenty-five minutes. That too is a crime. Twenty-five minutes! In Auschwitz it was a crime committed over four years. You don't get it spelled out to you like that. Except by us, their opponents. When you put things into perspective like that, of course, it diminishes their Holocaust—that word with a capital letter.

Irvings almost incantatory repetition of the figures "twenty-five thousand" and "twenty-five minutes," mentioned in this passage respectively four times and five times, compared with his figure of twenty-five thousand for Auschwitz mentioned only twice, left no room for doubt about which crime he considered the greater.

That was what Dresden meant to Vonnegut, too:

I happened to tell a University of Chicago professor at a cocktail party about the raid as I had seen it, about the book I would write. He was a member of a thing called The Committee on Social Thought. And he told me about the concentration camps, and about how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on. All I could say was, “I know, I know. I know.”

Vonnegut never amended Slaughterhouse-Five. So it goes.

[greatworldwar2]

• Siegfried Line

The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall, was a German defensive line built during the 1930s opposite the French Maginot Line.

The official name for German defensive line construction program before and during the Second World War that collectively came to be known as the "Westwall" (and "Siegfried Line" in English) changed several times during the late 1930s reflecting areas in progress. Border Watch program (pioneering program) for the most advanced positions, Limes Program, Aachen-Saar Program, Western Air Defense Zone, Geldern Emplacement between Brüggen and Kleve. These programs were all pushed forward with the highest priority, putting a concentrated demand on available resources. The origin of the name "Westwall" is unknown, but it appeared in popular use from the middle of 1939; there is a record of Hitler sending an Order of the Day to the soldiers and the workers at the "Westwall" on May 20th, 1939.

The Border Watch program was a series of small bunkers with 50 cm (20 in) thick walls were set up with three embrasures towards the front. Sleeping accommodations were hammocks. In exposed positions, similar small bunkers were erected with small round armoured "lookout" sections on the roofs. The programme was carried out by the Border Watch (Grenzwacht), a small military troop activated in the Rhineland immediately after the region was re-militarised by Germany after having been de-militarised following the First World War. The Limes Program began in 1938 following an order by Hitler to strengthen fortifications on the western German border. Limes refers to the former borders of the Roman Empire; the cover story for the programme was that it was an archaeological study. Its Type 10 bunkers were more strongly constructed than the earlier border fortifications. These had 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) thick ceilings and walls. A total of 3,471 were built along the entire length of the Siegfried Line. They featured a central room or shelter for 10-12 men with a stepped embrasure facing backwards and a combat section 50 cm (20 in) higher. This elevated section had embrasures at the front and sides for machine guns. The Aachen-Saar program bunkers were similar to those of the Limes programme: Type 107 double MG casemates with concrete walls up to 3.5 m (11 ft) thick. One difference was that there were no embrasures at the front, only at the sides of the bunkers. Embrasures were only built at the front in special cases and were then protected with heavy metal doors. This construction phase included the towns of Aachen and Saarbrücken. The Western Air Defence Zone continued parallel to the two other lines toward the east, and consisted mainly of concrete Flak foundations. Scattered MG42 and MG34 emplacements added additional defence against both air and land targets. Flak turrets were designed to force enemy planes to fly higher, thus decreasing the accuracy of their bombing. The Geldern Emplacement lengthened the Siegfried Line northwards as far as Kleve on the Rhine, and was built after the start of the Second World War. The Siegfried Line originally ended in the north near Brüggen in the Viersen district. The primary constructions were unarmed dugouts, but their extremely strong concrete design afforded excellent protection to the occupants. For camouflage they were often built near farms.

Standard construction elements such as large Regelbau bunkers, smaller concrete "pillboxes", and "dragon's teeth" anti-tank obstacles were built as part of each construction phase, sometimes by the thousands. Frequently vertical steel rods would be interspersed between the teeth. This standardisation was the most effective use of scarce raw materials, transport and workers, but proved an ineffective tank barrier as US bulldozer tanks simply pushed dirt bridges over these devices. "Dragon's teeth" were blocks of reinforced concrete stand in several rows on a single foundation. There are two typical sorts of barrier: Type 1938 with four rows of teeth getting higher toward the back, and Type 1939 with five rows of such teeth. Many other irregular lines of teeth were also built. Another design of tank obstacle, known as the Czech hedgehog, was made by welding together several bars of steel in such a way that any tank rolling over it would get stuck and possibly damaged. If the contour of the land allowed it, water-filled ditches were dug instead of tank traps. Examples of this kind of defence are those north of Aachen near Geilenkirchen. The early fortifications were mostly built by private firms, but the private sector was unable to provide the number of workers needed for the programs that followed; this gap was filled by the Todt Organisation. With this organisation's help, huge numbers of forced labourers up to 500,000 at a time worked on the Siegfried Line. Transport of materials and workers from all across Germany was managed by the Deutsche Reichsbahn railway company, which took advantage of the well-developed strategic railway lines built on Germany's western border in World War I. Working conditions were highly dangerous. For example, the most primitive means had to be used to handle and assemble extremely heavy armour plating, weighing up to 66 short tons.

The Siegfried Line at the start of the Second World War had serious weaknesses. German General Alfred Jodl said after the war that it was "little better than a building site in 1939", and when Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt inspected the line, the weak construction and insufficient weapons caused him to laugh. Despite France's declaration of war on Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, there was no major combat at the Siegfried Line at the start of the campaign in the west, except for a minor offensive by the French. Instead, both sides remained stuck in the so-called Phoney War, where neither side attacked the other and both stayed in their safe positions. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda drew foreign attention to the unfinished Westwall, in several instances showcasing incomplete or test positions to portray the project finished and ready for action. During the Battle of France, French forces made minor attacks against some parts of the line, but the majority was left untested. When the campaign finished, transportable weapons and materials were removed from the Siegfried Line and used in other places such as the Atlantic Wall defences. The concrete sections were left in place in the countryside and soon became completely unfit for defense.

With the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6th, 1944, war in the west broke out once more. On August 24th, 1944, Hitler gave a directive for renewed construction on the Siegfried Line. 20,000 forced labourers and members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), most of whom were 14–16-year-old boys, attempted to re-equip the line for defence purposes. Local people were also called in to carry out this kind of work, mostly building anti-tank ditches. Even during construction, it was becoming clear that the bunkers could not withstand the newly developed armour-piercing weapons. In August 1944, the first clashes took place on the Siegfried Line; the section of the line where most fighting took place was the Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen Forest) area in the Eifel, 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Aachen. The Aachen Gap was the logical route into Germany's Rhineland and a main industrial area, and was therefore where the Germans concentrated their defence. The Americans committed an estimated 120,000 troops plus reinforcements to the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. After the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge began, starting in the area south of the Hürtgenwald, between Monschau and the Luxembourgish town of Echternach. This offensive was a last-ditch attempt by the Germans to reverse the course of the war in the West. German loss of life and material was severe and the effort failed. There were serious clashes along other parts of the Siegfried Line and soldiers in many bunkers refused to surrender, often fighting to the death. By early 1945 the last Siegfried Line bunkers had fallen at the Saar and Hunsrück. The British 21st Army Group also attacked the Siegfried Line. This Army Group included American formations and the resulting fighting brought total American losses to approximately 68,000. In addition, the First Army incurred over 50,000 non-battle casualties and the Ninth Army over 20,000. This brings the overall cost of the Siegfried Line Campaign, in American personnel, close to 140,000.

German propaganda, both at home and abroad, repeatedly portrayed the Westwall during its construction as an unbreachable bulwark. At the start of the war, the opposing troops remained behind their own defence lines. As a morale booster for British troops marching off to France, the Siegfried Line was the subject of a popular song: "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line". When asked about the Siegfried Line, General George S. Patton reportedly said "Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity." During the postwar period, many sections of the Siegfried Line were removed using explosives. In North Rhine Westphalia, about thirty bunkers still remain; most of the rest were either destroyed with explosives or covered with earth. Tank traps still exist in many areas; in the Eifel, they run over several kilometres. Since 1997, with the motto "The value of the unpleasant as a memorial" , an effort has been made to preserve the remains of the Siegfried Line as a historical monument. This was intended to stop reactionary fascist groups from using the Siegfried Line for propaganda purposes. Nature conservationists consider the remains of the Siegfried Line valuable as a chain of biotopes where, thanks to its size, rare animals and plants can take refuge and reproduce. This effect is magnified because the concrete ruins cannot be used for agricultural or forestry purposes.

[antoine-roquentin]

after mark esper’s firing, trump’s active secretary of defense, since november 9, has been christopher miller. miller came up through the green berets, and has been an active proponent of special forces for use not just in a counterinsurgency role in places like somalia and afghanistan, but to "defeat Chinese and Russian aggression.” in service of such a role, he wrote an article for task and purpose on october 19, in which he laid out such a strategy. the article included a file photo not described in the article itself, but dated to 1986 carrying the description “PSSE-B Section P-23 at the 'Bridge of Spies', circa 1986: Edgar Smith, Alex Hernandez, David Gensiejewski, Terry Malgrem, Dennis Bohen, Gary Jones, Sam Edgar, John Schuler, Alex MacRae, David Farmer, Wally Wing“

the cia’s own archives describe PSSE-B well:

As Stejskal notes early on, the first SF units were patterned after those of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II. After some experimentation with structure, SF settled on 12-man teams, each member crosstrained in several areas to add depth to the limited manpower. Besides being SF-qualified, each unit member was required to hold a Top Secret clearance and to demonstrate a high level of proficiency in German or an Eastern European language; those with the best language skills and who represented the bulk of the unit early on tended to be “Lodge Act” soldiers, ethnic Eastern Europeans welcomed into the US Army in the postwar period.

Two external developments affecting Det A were the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall five years after the unit arrived in Berlin, which heightened the tension and potential danger, and the Vietnam War, which decreased the pool of potential replacements for the unit. From a high of 10,000, the number of SF troops declined to 4,200 by the mid-1970s. As the author points out, the unit also had to deal with the constant challenge of missions other than its primary UW one: underwater operations, in which only one team was trained; counterterrorism operations, which involved close coordination and training with the German police and anti-terrorist force GSG-9; and close quarters battle training, in concert with the FBI, the Israelis, and Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS).

As the author notes, Det A was training for participation in the Iranian hostage crisis following the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Even then, its primary mission was intelligence collection and the rescue of the three Americans held captive at the Foreign Ministry. Again, the Det’s mandatory support to Army exercises limited personnel available for the Iran hostage rescue mission. The collision of a helicopter and a C-130 at the Desert One landing site in Iran aborted Operation EAGLE CLAW and led to widespread adverse publicity; an unintended consequence was that team members were left in Iran to find their own way out. Afterward, the Det A contingent began training for its own follow-on, SNOWBIRD, inside the Foreign Ministry. The 20 January 1981 release of the hostages made the task superfluous.

In 1981, SACEUR Gen. Bernard Rogers visited the unit for a briefing, the upshot of which was a refocusing on strategic intelligence collection and reporting and an emphasis on CT operations—the latter both an “opportunity” and a “problem,” according to Stejskal—rather than UW, which he notes was still perceived as counter to “the American way of war.” (5) Fatefully, the shift also triggered an OPSEC survey of the unit that uncovered irregularities. Adding insult to injury, the unit’s OPSEC was compromised by a Newsweek article focused on a team member who had participated in the hostage rescue operation and mentioned an “SF unit in Berlin.” As a result of that disclosure, the OPSEC survey judged that the unit should be shut down and a new unit be created in a different location, which happened in 1984.

The new unit was designated the US Army Physical Security Support Element-Berlin (PSSE-B), its classified designator the 410th SF Detachment. The PSSE-B was ostensibly an MP unit tasked with conducting vulnerability surveys on US government facilities. This renaissance brought with it two significant problems, however—first, Det A and the PSSE-B were never divorced from one another, not in the eyes of the German police, with whom they trained and not with the German public, with whom they had interactions, and most definitely not in the eyes of Soviet and East German military and intelligence entities. Second, PSSE-B’s Regional Survey Teams found themselves doing little else; thus, the unit was spending 60 percent of its time on its cover rather than on its true mission. Although the unit was able to participate in a full urban UW exercise in 1985, other missions still intruded, including CT (such as TWA 847, the Achille Lauro cruise ship attack, and the La Belle disco bombing) and the fatal shooting of Military Liaison Mission (MLM) member Maj. “Nick” Nicholson by a Soviet border guard.

The other unexpected development was the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event prompted security concerns and the withdrawal of all SF and Military Intelligence (MI) units in Berlin until a decision could be made concerning future dispositions in Germany, if any. In the meantime, the unit’s extensive linguistics capabilities came in handy when a flood of refugees from the former East Germany began inundating the West. The unit’s last mission was to provide linguistics support to the Joint Allied Refugee Operations Center in Berlin. In this radically changed environment and with no need for its mission, PSSE-B was officially disbanded on 15 Aug 1990 and the UW mission would fade for a decade.

stejskal was himself transferred from Det-A to PSSE-B, having worked in it for a decade prior on such unconventional warfare missions: “specifically, missions targeting the Berlin road, rail, and canal infrastructure.”

[charlieweasleyxmc]

The Horntail

(Y/N) reached forward, petting the puppy crup along its fuzzy spine, soft hairs peeking up between her fingers as she rubbed her hand along its back. The crup yipped, panting.

She glanced back at Professor Kettleburn and just saw him give her a thumbs up before she rushed off to the next challenge.

Rushing straight forward, she reached the next black veil, hanging above her in the forest.

The veil dropped and she breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the kneazle sitting there. Moving forward, she allowed it to sniff her hand, and slide down to rub its own back along her hand. It then continued on to slide behind her and she jumped to her feet, wiping off her hands and glancing back for the okay at Professor Kettleburn to move on, but saw a strange looking witch in dark robes talking to him at the start of the obstacle course. There was more commotion. The students who had not yet done the course were shoving between each other to look at the other wizards and witches passing through.

(Y/N) glanced back at the remaining veils, but decided against continuing on while Professor Kettleburn was so distracted. She jogged back to the front of the course, Kettleburn not even registering she was there as he stared in concern at the witch speaking to him.

“Who is she,” (Y/N) asked Liz, who was next up to take the obstacle course, the black veil that (Y/N) had moved around in front of Liz blocking the other girl from seeing any of (Y/N)’s strategies with the creatures.

Not that Liz needed any help with her Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L.

Liz grimaced, “I don’t know what’s going on, but that woman is from the magical creatures office at the ministry. I heard her say something about dangerous to Professor Kettleburn before he got her to quiet down.”

(Y/N) frowned.

Dangerous?

Finally the witch stopped talking to rejoin two other wizards who had remained to wait for her. Professor Kettleburn turned back to the group of students waiting to take their O.W.L.

“Professor,” Rowan called first, “what is going on?”

Kettleburn smiled in what (Y/N) thought was a reassuring way, but which succeeded in only looking dejected, “These witches and wizards are just coming to collect a creature at Hogwarts. Nothing to be concerned about.”

“But Professor!” Penny called, “I heard her say dangerous.”

At this, the witch stopped and turned around to glance at the students. She came back a few steps and smiled at Penny and then all of them in what (Y/N) once again thought was meant to be reassuring, but wasn’t.

“It’s nothing to worry about, children,” she said, her tight bun giving an air of authority, “we are just coming to collect The Hungarian Horntail found in the Cursed Vault a few days ago.”

“The Horntail?” Charlie asked, his voice edged, “why are you collecting the Horntail?”

“Oh, no need to be scared,” the witch smiled at Charlie, “The thing will be exterminated soon enough and won’t be able to hurt anyone. We were just discussing with your Professor where to keep it till then.”

Charlie gaped, his eyes unseeing, his face horrified.

The rest of the class stared shocked as well, but the woman just nodded resolutely and moved to walk away.

Before she could reach her co-workers, a ravaged voice hollered towards her.

“No!”

(Y/N) knew immediately it was Charlie.

“No!” He cried, taking a few steps and reaching towards the witch, “You can’t! He didn’t hurt anyone! He’s not dangerous!”

The woman raised a quizzical eyebrow, “not dangerous. Son, you may not know, but he nearly killed a whole group of students. We would be irresponsible if we left him alive.” She pivoted away.

“No!” Charlie screamed, trying to run after her, but being caught almost immediately by Jae and Diego. “No! Please! Please don’t hurt him! Please!”

She heard the wracking sobs before she saw them, as she was watching the ministry official walk away, but the sound crashed into her heart and she stumbled at a jog towards Charlie a moment later.

He had clattered to the ground, Diego and Jae on the ground a foot from him, clearly having let him go once he fell.

She didn’t know what else to do. So, she fell beside him.

He didn’t even register her presence, which scared her more than anything else.

So, she did the only thing she knew how to do, she wrapped her arms around him the way he had for her all those weeks ago, pulling him back against her. He cried into her as she held him, hoping that some way she could piece him back together the way he had her.

“And then I’m sure I failed my Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., and I’m sure I made a few mistakes in Care of Magical Creatures—”

“Rowan!” Jae finally exclaimed, “we don’t need to hear the play by play! We get it! You passed!”

“Speaking of the Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L.,” Penny turned to Bill, “has anyone seen Charlie since then?”

Bill nodded slightly, “he wants to be alone.”

“Is Professor Kettleburn going to let him retake his Care of Magical Creatures exam?” Rowan asked, concerned.

Bill nodded, “he’ll take it in a week…once he’s more up to it.”

Rowan nodded, turning back to the group to discuss O.W.L.s. (Y/N) used the opportunity to whisper to Bill.

“Where is he?”

“Astronomy Tower.”

The tower was just cool enough on a spring day like this. It wasn’t so warm that it heated up the metal, nor so cold that you needed a jacket.

She was glad. She didn’t think that Charlie would have left to get a jacket even if he needed one.

But she had brought him a sweater all the same. Andre had taken it off for his friend when (Y/N) had said where she was going.

“Hey, seeker,” she said, sidling up to him and putting her hands on the railing.

He peeked at her from where he leaned on it, chin on his crossed arms.

“What are you doing up here?”

The question wasn’t uninviting or angry, just interested.

“Bill told me where to find you.”

He sighed in understanding.

“I won’t ask how you are,” she said quietly, “because I can pretty much guess. I just want to let you know that your friends are here for you.”

He nodded against his arms.

“Just so you know, I got you a signed copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It was supposed to be for after we finished our O.W.L.s, but maybe I should give it to you now. I know Newt Scamander is your favorite. I can go get it for you now, if you want.”

She looked up and found him gaping at her.

“What?!”

“(Y/N)! You’re a genius!”

He took off across the tower.

“I am...?” But he was already gone and with no more hesitation, she raced after him.

She saw him turn a corner down the corridor as she raced out of the tower, barely keeping up with him as he stormed through the castle.

Finally he stopped right outside of Professor Dumbledore’s office. She suppressed her surprise as the griffin opened up for him. Charlie turned to her, his open mouth showing he was surprised as well.

Hesitantly, he took a step, then another step, then he was out of her sight.

She rushed forward, clattering up the stairs before they disappeared.

When she stumbled into Professor Dumbledore’s office, she saw Charlie immediately, standing just a few feet from her.

Professor Dumbledore was standing by his desk, watching them both.

“Sorry, Professor,” She said, “the door just opened up for us.”

Professor Dumbledore smiled, stepping down from the rise where his desk was.

“Yes, I know. I let you in.”

Charlie and (Y/N) stared at Professor Dumbledore, but the old professor seemed content to make them wait in suspense.

Finally it was Charlie who couldn’t wait any longer, “Please, Professor,” he said, the first words polite. “Please. You can’t let them hurt the Horntail.”

“And why not?” Charlie looked taken aback, but Dumbledore continued, “You of all people know what harm he could have done to you and your fellow students, Mr. Weasley.”

Charlie opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Please, Professor,” She said, piping up, “The Horntail is a dragon. He was just acting as dragons do. He shouldn’t be killed for what he is.”

Dumbledore gave her an appraising look.

“Please!” Charlie said, his voice earnest again, “He’s just what he was made to be. He isn’t dangerous. He just needs to be with his own kind.”

Dumbledore looked between them, “and what do you suggest I do?”

Charlie perked up, “well,” he looked a little abashed, “we could write to Newt Scamander. He has a great deal of experience with dragons. I read that he even worked with Ukrainian Ironbellies during the Second World War. We could contact him for his expertise.”

Professor Dumbledore continued to observe Charlie, “I agree, Mr. Weasley and as such, I have done that very thing.”

Charlie blinked, “you…have?”

“He has.”

She watched as the new addition to their gathering exited the back area of Dumbledore’s office and into the area they were now occupying. When she saw the downright awe that filled Charlie’s face when he saw the man, she knew immediately who the elderly gentleman was.

Newt Scamander smiled kindly at them both.

“Mr.…Scamander?” She breathed. Charlie had not yet closed his mouth. “Will you help us take care of the Horntail?”

Newt’s smiled deepened, “indeed. The Hungarian Horntail will not be hurt. She is to be taken to the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary for her own safety, and I strongly believe, her own bliss.”

Charlie blinked and she watched him stare at Newt in disbelief.

“Really?” he asked.

Mr. Scamander smiled even deeper, “really, Mr. Weasley.”

She glanced at Professor Dumbledore.

He turned his eyes from Charlie to her and, as he looked at her from above his half-moon spectacles, his eyes twinkled.

While the astronomy tower had been the perfect temperature earlier in the day, on a spring night like this, it was almost frigid.

(Y/N) shivered as they climbed through the door, but she practically felt her stomach drop out of her body when she saw what laid at the top of the stairs.

It was her.

The Hungarian Horntail.

Charlie practically rammed past her to scurry up the steps, but she hesitated, remembering the last time she had faced that creature. Instead, she slowly took one step at a time, breathing a sigh of relief at the top when she saw that the Horntail was asleep.

She stared in awe though when she saw who was keeping him asleep.

Newt Scamander stood just to the right of the Horntail, talking to Professor Dumbledore. His wand was out, a steady stream of what looked like blue liquid gliding from the tip of his wand to the Horntail.

Newt gave Charlie another one of his kind smiles as Charlie walked up beaming, his eyes flicking between his hero and the dragon beside him as if he couldn’t take in enough of them.

“Right on time, Mr. Weasley,” Newt said, pointing across the sky, “we have company.”

Charlie and (Y/N) both gazed across the night sky, the moon barely giving enough light to see a speck blocking out some of the stars.

“What is that, Professor?” she asked, sidling up to Professor Dumbledore.

“You’ll see.”

She gave him a skeptical look at this comment, but Professor Dumbledore didn’t answer, only kept staring across the sky in what she could have sworn was a giddy way.

(Y/N) turned her face back towards what was coming at them in the distance. She couldn’t be sure…but she could swear…

A roar rang out, almost melodious in nature, but she knew only one creature that could sound a roar like that.

A dragon.

She gaped at it as it came closer, glancing at Charlie once to see that he was visibly shaking with excitement. The tower began to quake, the air getting warmer as the dragon came in closer, finally stopping to flap and hover in the air next to the tower.

She glanced at the giant Hungarian Horntail, taking up almost all the space in the tower.

“Wotcher!” They all snapped their heads up to three people perched on the dragon’s back. Taking a closer look at the flapping dragon, (Y/N) could tell it was a Common Welsh Green. One of the wizards on his back jumped down onto the plating of the tower and (Y/N) could tell it was a woman.

The witch walked over to Newt and Professor Dumbledore, which gave (Y/N) the time to observe her.

She wore leathers from head to foot, even a leather headband holding back the ends of her brown hair that weren’t firmly in her ponytail. The light leather was a beautiful contrast with her tan skin.

She nodded respectfully at Newt as she came to stand before him.

“Do you need her to fly or hover?” Newt asked, looking at the Horntail.

“No need,” the woman said glancing at the other witch and wizard still mounted on the Welsh Green. “She’ll follow him easily enough.”

Newt nodded. With one flick of his wand, the stream of blue light from the tip went out.

“You might want to take a step behind me, Miss (Y/LN), Mr. Weasley,” Dumbledore said with a funny smile.

She didn’t need to be told twice. She slid behind Professor Dumbledore with no hesitation, Charlie beside her a second or two later.

And only just in time. For the next moment, the Hungarian Horntail rustled a little, and then lifted her head, getting up onto her legs a moment after that.

(Y/N) stumbled back, getting to edge of the back of the tower.

But no one else seemed worried, the Dragon Tamer, for that was what she had to be, simply stepped out of the Horntail’s way as she shook herself, a roar whistling out of the Horntail’s mouth.

“Brace yourselves,” was all she heard from Newt before what felt like an earthquake shook the tower as the Horntail lifted into the air, the Welsh Green maneuvering out of her way so she could take flight into the sky above the tower, flapping beside him.

The Welsh Green moved away from the tower, the Horntail following after him.

Newt smiled after them for a moment before turning to the Dragon Tamer.

“We should go,” she said with a grin, “someone would have heard those roars. You’ll be asked after the missing Horntail in the morning,” she said, turning to address this to Dumbledore.

He nodded, “and I, of course, know nothing about it.”

The witch grinned wickedly and then Disapparated.

(Y/N) turned to Professor Dumbledore, but he answered her before she could speak.

“Don’t you worry, Miss (Y/LN). I cannot punish you for a rule I’ve broken myself. This time,” he said, a gleam in his eye.

“But what about the Horntail, Professor?”

It was Newt’s voice who answered her.

“She will be taken good care of in the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary,” he said moving to stand beside Charlie. “Are you curious to know about the sanctuary, Mr. Weasley?” Newt asked.

(Y/N) looked at Charlie for the first time since the Horntail left.

His eyes were wide, his expression awed, as he continued to stare at the sky, while answering Mr. Scamander with a nod without looking at him.

“Very good,” Dumbledore stated, “I suggest we all leave the tower rather quickly before anyone decides to investigate the source of those two roars.”

She nodded, bustling after Professor Dumbledore as he made his way to the stairs, Newt directing Charlie close behind them.

“I think,” Newt said, “that I should like a spot of sunrise Butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks. Would you like to accompany me, Mr. Weasley?”

Charlie nodded vigorously, the spell of the sky having left him so that he gazed at Newt with all his attention.

“Very good,” he said, nodding to Dumbledore, “I shall speak with you later, Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore smiled, nodding to Newt, “good morning, Newt,” he said, before watching Newt and Charlie depart down the hallway.

“Professor Dumbledore?” She asked.

“Yes, Miss (Y/LN)?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know Mr. Scamander?”

Dumbledore smiled, looking down the corridor, “he was a student of mine, one of the most talented wizards I have ever had the pleasure to teach.”

(Y/N) watched after them, though they had long turned the corner.

“He does seem like a very good kind of wizard, like he does something because he believes it to be right.”

Dumbledore smiled, “yes, I believe he does, as does Mr. Weasley. He is also a very good kind of wizard;” he gazed down at her, looking at her above his half-moon spectacles, a twinkle in his eye.

“Yes,” she said, a smile coming to her lips now, “I believe he is.”

Check out this amazing art at:

https://gurvana.tumblr.com/post/187222023565/chibi-btw-id-like-to-go-to-london-visit-the

[simon-martin]

EDWARD ARDIZZONE: SHELTER SCENE - a big thank you to Nick Higbee of @pallantgallerybookshop for donating this lithograph to @pallanthousegallery where it joins a strong collection of art made during the Second World War by artists such as John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Eric Ravilious. It shows wartime Londoners sheltering from the Blitz beneath Tilbury railway arches in Stepney, 1941. Ardizzone had been made an Official War Artist in February 1940. It was suggested by the Director General of the Ministry of Information that Ardizzone might focus on air raid shelters during the Blitz. "The Tilbury" was the largest of all the air raid shelters in the Second World War, housing as many as 16,000 people. The conditions there fuelled calls for a general improvement in public shelters during the early stages of the Blitz. The watercolour for this poster is Ardizzone's largest wartime painting and is housed at the Imperial War Museum. #edwardardizzone #warart #worldwarll #history #lithography #lithograph #ardizzone #modernbritishart #secondeorldwar #blitz (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGAsKGTlAC_/?igshid=1y9s2ku4qkfe

[somar78]

An Original SAS Land Rover Series 2A 109 Pink Panther – The “Pinkie”

The Pink Panther, often referred to as the “Pinkie”, is a heavily customised Land Rover Series 2A built for British Special Air Service desert warfare operations in the Middle East.

The SAS are globally renowned as being one of the single toughest and most effective special forces units in the world, so building them a 4×4 exclusively for desert use was no small undertaking.

The choice of pink may seem strange but it was discovered that it was the most effective color for camouflaging vehicles in the desert – particularly in the dawn and dusk parts of the day.

The story goes that an aircraft had been painted pink in order to make it highly visible, it crashed and proved impossible to find in the desert sands. It was later discovered entirely by accident.

The first SAS vehicles had been American Jeeps during the Second World War, they’d be used for sabotage and reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines and they’d proven to be highly capable.

Above Image: Men of the Long Range Desert Group returning from a patrol behind enemy lines during WWII in North Africa – circa 1942

The Land Rover Series 2A Pink Panther – The Pinkie

In 1968 the British Ministry of Defence bought 72 examples of the Series 2A long wheelbase Land Rovers (the 109), it was officially known as “Truck, General Service, 3/4 Ton” or “FV 18064”.

These factory-stock 109s were sent to Marshalls of Cambridge for conversion to SAS specification.

The basic outline of this desert preparation included the following: four fuel tanks with a combined capacity of 100 gallons, a heavy duty chassis, heavy duty suspension, sand tires, differential guards front and back, and a spare tire was mounted to the front.

Both doors and the windscreen were removed, as was the roof. Rifle boxes were added along with shovels, jerry cans, and sand ladders. For military purposes the vehicles were equipped with a general-purpose machine gun (GPMG), an anti-tank weapon, rifles, grenade holders, smoke canisters front and rear, navigation equipment, and spotlights front and back.

The pinkies came from Marshalls painted bronze green, but for SAS desert service they were painted in light pink, typically including the wheels and even the tires. It’s hard to know what the enemy combatants in the desert must have thought because they’re all dead, but it must have been a sight to behold seeing a bright pink car come roaring over the sand dunes full of decidedly well-trained SAS operatives.

Most of the original 72 Pink Panthers didn’t survive their military service, and those that did (approximately 20) are now amongst the most famous and highly-sought after Land Rovers in the world.

Many replicas have been made, but when an authentic Pinkie comes up for public sale word of it spreads like wildfire across the Land Rover world, and the classic car world to a degree.

The Original Pink Panther Shown Here

The Land Rover you see here is an original 1968 Series 2A Pink Panther, it’s been part of the collection at PA Blanchard & Co since 1986 and it’s now for sale for the first time in over 30 years.

The vehicle comes with a copy parts book and handbook along with a complete equipment schedule and illustrated spare parts for the body. Much of the original equipment remains with the vehicle and perhaps most importantly it’s wearing its correct original paint color.

The asking price is £64,995 and if you’d like to read more or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

The post An Original SAS Land Rover Series 2A 109 Pink Panther – The “Pinkie” appeared first on Silodrome.

source https://silodrome.com/sas-land-rover-pink-panther-pinkie/

[essilt]

Fic: Mnemosyne's gift (WIP)

Autors: @katerina150 , @essilt Theseus Scamander / Leta Lestrange, Canon Het Relationship, Het, Alternate Universe, Epistolary, Drama, Romance, Family Feels Notes: BC THEY ARE OUR BBS AND JFC WE JUST CAN’T! Notes2: We’re sorry for mistakes, english isn’t our native language. Sum: Fantastic Letters and what are they hiding.

[selectboy8]

What $325 Buys You In White Laser

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[hjmarseille]

ROYAL AIR FORCE 1939-1945: BOMBER COMMAND

© IWM (CH 14855)

Crew members of Lancaster PA995/BQ-V of No 550 Squadron board their aircraft at North Killingholme for its 100th operation on 5 March 1945. Left to right are: Sergeant J Nicolson (mid-upper gunner), Flight Sergeant Jack Bold (bomb aimer) and Sergeant M McCutcheon (rear gunner).

[usafphantom2]

Ronnie Bell Following

De Havilland Mosquito PR Mark XVI of No. 140 Squadron RAF

A De Havilland Mosquito PR Mark XVI of No. 140 Squadron RAF, warms up its engines in a dispersal at B58/ Melsbroek, Belgium, before taking off on a night photographic-reconnaissance sortie.

A de Havilland Mosquito PR Mk XVI of No. 140 Squadron RAF warms up its engines at Melsbroek in Belgium, before taking off on a night photographic reconnaissance sortie, 15 February 1945.

C 4995

Part of

AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION

Via Flickr

[xtruss]

Biden's $735 Million Arms Sale to “an Illegal Regime of Zionist Cunts: Isra-hell” to Include Missile Type That Hit Gaza Tower

— By Tom O'Connor | Newsweek | May 17, 2021

$735 million arms sale to Israel approved last month by President Joe Biden would include the same kind of precision-guided weapons that the Israel Defense Forces use to target hundreds of sites across the Gaza Strip, including a tower housing international media outlets.

Congressional committee chairs were notified on May 5 of the weapons sale, first reported Monday by The Washington Post and confirmed to Newsweek by two congressional staffers. The notice came just days before the rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians erupted into a deadly campaign involving rocket fire by Palestinian groups led by Hamas on one side and IDF airstrikes and artillery fire on the other.

The proposed U.S. package includes Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that convert missiles into so-called "smart bombs" with lethal accuracy and destructive effect. The sale is subject to a 15-day review that is set to end on Thursday, amid a sharp spike in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The deepening violence on both sides of what has already become the worst conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions in years has garnered international concern. It was one reportedly bloodless attack that has particularly captured global attention.

On Saturday, the IDF bombed Gaza's Al-Jalaa Tower, which housed the offices of top media outlets including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, whose employees rushed out of the building after being given a warning of the impending attack by Israeli authorities shortly before the strike.

The dramatic destruction of the site, which the IDF argued was a legitimate target because it "contained military assets belonging to Hamas military intelligence," was captured in photo and film. The footage of the attack also reveals the munitions used, one that comes from the very same family of JDAMs included in Biden's proposed weapons sale to Israel.

Asked by reporters Monday about the planned arms sale, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki deferred to the State Department, which she said did not believe had announced "any future sales or weapons sales." She did, however, note the robust continued ties maintained between the two allies.

"We do have an ongoing and abiding strategic security relationship and partnership with Israel," Psaki said.

A State Department spokesperson told Newsweek that U.S. officials "are restricted under Federal law and regulation from publicly commenting on or confirming details of licensing activity related to direct commercial sales of export-controlled defense articles or services."

But given the ongoing violence in the region, the spokesperson added a call for de-escalation as the Biden administration works with regional countries in an effort to resolve the crisis.

"We remain deeply concerned about the current violence and are working towards achieving a sustainable calm," the spokesperson said.

Smoke billows as a Joint Direct Attack Munition dropped on Al-Jalaa Tower during an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, a city controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 15. The U.S. considers Israel a key security ally and contributes billions of dollars a year in military assistance, but President Joe Biden has expressed concern over the IDF strike that destroyed a building housing international media outlets who were told to evacuate. MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The targeting and destruction of Al-Jalaa Tower have been condemned by a number of local and foreign media groups, including two of its occupants, The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, which launched its own investigation identifying the weapon that wrecked its offices as a GBU-31, one of several JDAM variants known to have been exported by the U.S. to Israel in past years.

As Israel faced pressing questions regarding the decision to take out the building, IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus offered a three-part rationale for the strike. He said the structure was "not a media tower, and it's not a media center," but rather a militant headquarters used by Hamas for three main purposes.

The first entailed "officers of the military intelligence, basically collection and analysis of military intelligence, obviously used for military purposes, against us."

The second was "research and development, where the best subject matter experts were operating from inside that building, using the hardware, computers and other facilities inside the building to develop weapons, military weapons against us as well."

And the third involved "highly advanced technological tools that are in or on the building."

Conricus declined to go into specifics, citing security concerns, on the final point, but said such tools were used by Hamas "in fighting against us in order to hamper or limit the activity of the IDF inside Israel and on civilian activity along with the Gaza envelope." He reiterated the extent to which the IDF has identified how groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad embedded their military infrastructure "within civilian facilities."

He also emphasized the degree to which the IDF went out of its way to ensure non-combatants had left the building beforehand, even if this the forewarning "was also used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to salvage a lot of very important equipment. That, he said, "is a military loss that we are willing to 'suffer' in order to minimize and to make sure that there are no civilian casualties in the strike on the building."

Later that same day, President Joe Biden phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. leader expressed his support for Israel's right to defend itself, condemned Hamas' rocket launches and mourned the loss of life both sides. He also "raised concerns about the safety and security of journalists and reinforced the need to ensure their protection."

Netanyahu defended the operation in an interview aired Sunday by CBS News, in which he described Al-Jalaa as "an intelligence office for the Palestinian terrorist organization housed in that building that plots and organizes the terror attacks against Israeli civilians," making it "a perfectly legitimate target." He said it was thanks to the IDF that the building's inhabitants escaped in time.

"You weren't lucky to get out. It wasn't luck," Netanyahu said. "It's because we took special pains to call people in those buildings to make sure that the premises were vacated, and that's why we brought down that building."

The Israeli leader also suggested that he had shared with the U.S. evidence backing up the Israeli claims of Hamas' involvement at Al-Jalaa Tower, saying "we share with our American friends all that intelligence." Specifically, he said such matters are communicated "through the intelligence services."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for his part, told reporters Monday that he had "not seen any information provided" regarding the airstrike, "to the extent that it is based on intelligence, that would have been shared with other colleagues and I'll leave that to them to assess."

Following Blinken's consultations with regional officials, including Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Qataris, Biden held Friday his third call with Netanyahu since the latest conflict began and for the first time "expressed his support for a ceasefire."

U.S. Air Force senior airman and 33rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron weapons load crew member runs checks on an inert GBU-31 V3 bomb during a weapons load competition April 16 at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The U.S. exports such Joint Direct Attack Munitions to around 30 countries around the world. AIRMAN COLLEEN COULTHARD/33RD FIGHTER WING PUBLIC AFFAIRS/U.S. AIR FORCE

Hamas has denied that it had a presence in the building, one of a growing number of Gaza high-rises reduced to rubble over the past week.

"The targeting of Al-Jalaa Tower is part of a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are being committed against civilians," Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said Monday in a statement obtained by Newsweek, "in addition to the targeting of homes, residential neighborhoods and civilian institutions."

Abu Obeida, spokesperson for Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades, threatened on Monday to unleash a new round of rockets against Tel Aviv if the IDF did not cease bombing what he called "civilian homes and apartments." The IDF on Monday stepped up its bombing of what it said were "houses served as a part of Hamas' terror infrastructure."

Hamas and affiliated organizations such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad have fired what the IDF estimates to be 3,350 rockets toward Israel over the past week, hundreds of which were said to have fallen short of Israeli territory and hundreds more of which were intercepted by the advanced Iron Dome defense system. Israeli operations from land, air and sea, meanwhile, have targeted hundreds, if not thousands of sites across the densely-populated Palestinian enclave.

The conflict's death toll is estimated have reached well over 200, with the Gaza-based Ministry of Health placing the Palestinian toll at 212, most from Israeli bombings but also including nearly two dozen killed by Israeli police in the West Bank, and the IDF counting 10 Israelis dead due to rocket fire.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Firefighters battle exhaustion along with wildfire flames (AP) They work 50 hours at a stretch and sleep on gymnasium floors. Exploding trees shower them with embers. They lose track of time when the sun is blotted out by smoke, and they sometimes have to run for their lives from advancing flames. Firefighters trying to contain the massive wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington state are constantly on the verge of exhaustion as they try to save suburban houses, including some in their own neighborhoods. Each home or barn lost is a mental blow for teams trained to protect lives and property. And their own safety is never assured. Oregon firefighter Steve McAdoo’s shift on Sept. 7 seemed mostly normal, until late evening, when the team went to a fire along a highway south of Portland. “Within 10 minutes of being there, it advanced too fast and so quick ... we had to cut and run,” he said. “You can’t breathe, you can’t see.” That happened again and again as he and the rest of the crew worked shifts that lasted two full days with little rest or food. They toiled in an alien environment where the sky turns lurid colors, ash falls like rain and towering trees explode into flames, sending a cascade of embers to the forest floor. “The sky was just orange or black, and so we weren’t sure if was morning or night,” he said. “My crew and I said that to each other many times, ‘What is going on? When is this going to end?’”

Rescuers reach people cut off by Gulf Coast hurricane (AP) Rescuers on the Gulf Coast used boats and high-water vehicles Thursday to reach people cut off by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally, even as a second round of flooding took shape along rivers and creeks swollen by the storm’s heavy rains. Across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, homeowners and businesses began cleaning up, and officials inspected bridges and highways for safety, a day after Sally rolled through with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 meters) of rain in many places before it began to break up. Crews carried out at least 400 rescues in Escambia County, Florida, by such means as high-water vehicles, boats and water scooters, authorities said. In Alabama, on both sides of Mobile Bay, National Guard soldiers from high-water evacuation teams used big trucks Thursday to rescue at least 35 people. At least one death, in Alabama, was blamed on the hurricane. Nearly 400,000 homes and businesses were still without power Thursday night, mostly in Alabama and Florida.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87 (AP) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said. Her death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.

Flights to nowhere (Washington Post) With international travel in much of the world still disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, some airlines are resorting to “flights to nowhere” that target passengers who long for air travel—and some are willing to shell out plenty of money for the tickets. Qantas, among the latest to advertise a flight that departs and arrives at the same airport, told Reuters that the trip sold out less than 10 minutes after going on sale on Thursday. “It’s probably the fastest-selling flight in Qantas history,” a spokeswoman for the airline said.

Health-care workers make up 1 in 7 covid-19 cases recorded globally, WHO says (Washington Post) Health-care workers account for 1 in 7 coronavirus cases recorded by the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency said this week. “Globally, around 14 percent of covid-19 cases reported to WHO are among health workers, and in some countries it’s as much as 35 percent,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva. The figures are disproportionate: Data collected by the WHO suggests that health workers represent less than 3 percent of the population in the majority of countries and less than 2 percent in almost all low- and middle-income countries. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that health-care workers accounted for 11 percent to 16 percent of covid-19 cases during the first surge of infections in the United States. When covid-19 began spreading through Western nations early this year, health-care workers faced critical shortages of personal protective equipment, also known as PPE. Even now, well over half a year into the pandemic, there are shortages of tests.

Bank of England considers negative interest rates (Yahoo Finance) The Bank of England yesterday indicated that it could cut interest rates below zero for the first time in its 326-year history as it tries to shore up a U.K. economic recovery that is facing the dual headwinds of the coronavirus and Brexit. After unanimously deciding to maintain the bank’s main interest rate at the record low of 0.1%, the nine-member rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee said it had discussed its “policy toolkit, and the effectiveness of negative policy rates in particular.”

Why French Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About Crime (NYT) In the Babel Tower of French politics, everyone agrees at least on this: Crime is out of control. The leader of the far right warned recently that France was a “security shipwreck” sinking into “barbarity.” A traditional conservative conjured up the ultraviolent dystopia of “A Clockwork Orange.” On the left, the presumed Green Party candidate in the next presidential contest described the insecurity as “unbearable.” And in the middle, President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers warned of a country “turning savage”—the “ensauvagement” of France—as they vowed to get tough on crime and combat the “separatism” of radical Muslims. The only catch? Crime isn’t going up. The government’s own data show that nearly all major crimes are lower than they were a decade ago or three years ago. But like elsewhere, and mirroring the campaign in the United States, the debate over crime tends to be a proxy—in France’s case, for debates about immigration, Islam, race, national identity and other combustible issues that have roiled the country for years.

India’s coronavirus cases jump by another 96K (AP) India’s coronavirus cases jumped by another 96,424 infections in the past 24 hours, showing little sign of leveling. The Health Ministry on Friday raised the nation’s total past 5.21 million, 0.37% of its nearly 1.4 billion people. India is expected to have the highest national total of confirmed cases within weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 6.67 million people have been infected. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on Thursday made a fresh appeal to people to wear masks and maintain social distance as his government chalked out plans to handle big congregations expected during a major Hindu festival season beginning next month.

Russia boosts its military presence near Chinese border (Foreign Policy) Russia is bolstering its troop presence in the country’s east in response to growing geopolitical threats in the region, though the Kremlin did not say what those threats are. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 500 units of new, advanced equipment were being sent to the region, but he did not specify the destination. The moves are likely a response to China’s growing assertiveness, though some parts of the region have been gripped by protests against the government of President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. In July, people took to the streets in the city of Khabarovsk, which lies along the border with China, after the arrest of the region’s hugely popular governor, Sergei Furgal, who beat out Putin’s favored candidate in an election in September 2018.

Taiwan scrambles air force as multiple Chinese jets buzz island (Reuters) Taiwan scrambled fighter jets on Friday as multiple Chinese aircraft buzzed the island, including crossing the sensitive mid-line of the Taiwan Strait, in an escalation of tensions the same day a senior U.S. official began meetings in Taipei. Earlier on Friday, China’s Defence Ministry announced the start of combat drills near the Taiwan Strait, denouncing what it called collusion between the Chinese-claimed island and the United States. Beijing has watched with growing alarm the ever-closer relationship between Taipei and Washington, and has stepped up military exercises near the island, including two days of mass air and sea drills last week.

Apprehensive Thais await major political rally in Bangkok (AP) A two-day rally planned this weekend is jangling nerves in Bangkok, with apprehension about how far student demonstrators will go in pushing demands for reform of Thailand’s monarchy and how the authorities might react. In an escalation of tactics, organizers plan to march to Government House, the prime minister’s offices, to hand over petitions. The initial demands of the alliance of groups behind a series of anti-government demonstrations were for a dissolution of Parliament with fresh elections, a new constitution and an end to intimidation of political activists. But the main organizers behind this weekend’s rally have been promoting an additional point. They want restraints on the power of the monarchy, an institution long presented as the nation’s cornerstone and untouchable. This open challenge to the palace has dramatically raised the political temperature.

‘Boiling again’: Lebanon’s old rivalries rear up amid crisis (Reuters) An old rivalry between Christian factions who fought each other in Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war has flared again on the street and in political debate, renewing fears of fresh unrest as the nation grapples with its worst crisis since the conflict. The feud between supporters of Michel Aoun, now Lebanon’s president, and Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces (LF) led to a tense standoff this week near Beirut. Gunshots rang out, but no one was hurt. The rivalry today is about more than Christian politics: Aoun is allied with Hezbollah, the heavily armed, Iran-backed Shi’ite party. Geagea spearheads opposition to Hezbollah, saying it should surrender its weapons. The standoff was the latest in a country that has seen sporadic violence intensify as an economic crisis that erupted last year has deepened. It was compounded by a huge blast that ripped through Beirut on Aug. 4. The government has resigned and efforts to form a new one under French pressure are floundering. “The security situation is reaching a breaking point,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Israelis Prepare to Celebrate the Year’s Holiest Days Under Lockdown (NYT) As Israelis prepare to celebrate the holiest days on the Jewish calendar under a fresh lockdown, organizing prayer services is proving to be more of a mathematical brainteaser than a spiritual exercise. Rabbis are having to arrange worshipers into clusters of 20 to 50, separated by dividers, determining the number and size of the groups based on complex calculations involving local infection rates, and how many entrances and square feet their synagogues have. Masks will be required, and many seats will have to remain empty. The three-week national lockdown was timed to coincide with the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur holy days and the festival of Sukkot, in the hope of causing less economic damage because business slows down in any case around the holidays. It was also aimed at preventing large family meals that could become petri dishes for the virus. Israel successfully limited the spread of the virus in the spring, but recently its infection rate has spiraled into one of the world’s worst. The country has had more than 300 confirmed new cases per 100,000 people over the last week—more than double the rate in Spain, the hardest-hit European country, and quadruple that of the United States.

Violence in Ethiopia (Foreign Policy) More than 30 people were killed in militia attacks in western Ethiopia last week, officials said on Thursday, underscoring the country’s worsening security situation and creating new problems for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The attackers are “groups aimed at overturning the reforms journey,” Abiy said in a tweet. Abiy entered government promising sweeping reforms of the country’s political system, but his efforts have since faced criticism from opponents and former allies. Last week, the country’s Tigray region held parliamentary elections despite the national government’s decision to postpone the vote over coronavirus concerns. The region is home to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the country’s dominant political force before Abiy’s takeover in 2019.