Tribunus

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but currently the RAF has fewer frontline combat aircraft than Saudi Arabia. However, your pilots and their training is far superior. As for your planned Aircraft Carriers. They are being designed specifically for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But because of cost overruns and scheduling delays, it is looking less and less likely that the Navy version of the F-35 will ever be produced. The U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps versions may be produced, but that is dependant upon the Contractor getting back on schedule and getting cost under control. Hopefully the UK Defense Ministry will hold off on building these Carriers until they are sure that they will have aircraft for them. But if the UK is like the US, then I as a tax payer would be a little nervous. As we say in Texas. "How can you tell when a politician is lying?" ....................... "Their lips move!"

Welcome to the Dogz Mate.

I had not seen that. Thanks for sharing.

Please give him my best wishes

It does look beautiful and is very relaxing. Good find Sweper

I have a question please. I’m still running 4.10.1. There is the 4.11 patch. Then there is a 4.11 fix, (which I believe is un-official) and now we have an official 4.11.1 patch. What is the correct patch order? With the 4.11 patch, do I need to just install the official 4.11.1 patch and not bother with the 4.11 fix? Or do I need to install the 4.11 patch, the 4.11 fix and then the 4.11.1 patch?

It’s hard for people to imagine the poverty that exists here. The average Egyptian lives on roughly 70 dollars a month. So that much scrap metal was to them a Treasure. Finding it must have seemed like a gift from Allah. As for the pilot, the area that he went down in is very remote. The nearest oasis is Mut and that’s about 300 km to the northeast. A fighter pilot is not going to be carrying enough water for that sort of hike. Hopefully, he wasn’t lost and knew exactly where he as and was able to radio in his location. Or he was with his squadron mates and they reported his position. We will not know until someone gets the tail number and does a little research. And that is if someone gets there soon enough to get the tail number.

Al Wadi al Jadid is in the far southwest corner of Egypt near the Libyan border. That is a long way from anything related to the war in the Western Desert. I really wonder what the pilot was doing that far south. He is easily 400 km south of the Mediterranean. There is nothing down there but a couple of oasis occupied by Berbers and Bedouins. They pretty much make their living by smuggling goods in and out of Libya, to include occasional slaves, so that would explain the Libyan license plates. As far as destroying a historically significant aircraft, Mates that is something that is far beyond their level of reasoning. They will tear the aircraft apart trying to scavenge items that they feel are valuable, like machineguns. The rest will be considered scrap metal. As far as being uncivilized, you would have to live here for a few years to truly appreciate the gulf that exists between the Western World and the Arab World.

You can't really see the license plates on the vehciles clearly, but I think that they are Libyan. They are definitely not Egyptian, Algerian or Tunisian. So if it is Libya, that would make this a Kittyhawk flying with the Desert Air Force out of Egypt. That narrows the search down a great deal. Unfortunately, with the current political instability in Libya, the U.S. Embassy here in Egypt would not take kindly to me driving around the Libyan desert looking for a wrecked Kittyhawk. Since the Desert Air Force flew Kittyhawks from early 1942, until the Axis surrendered in Tunisia in early 1943, there were many opportunities for a aircraft to go down. I hope the pilot got home.

I've just about complete my preparations for beginning the search. I've got my 4x4 stocked with food, water, extra petrol, and camping gear. But before I depart, I will need a little better idea of where to begin my search. The article said that the plane was found in the Sahara. Technically the Sahara is the desert that is west of Tunisia. What the British called the Western Desert in Egypt is technically the Libyan desert. Unfortunately, many people use the term Sahara to describe the desert that runs from the Nile to the Atlantic. So lets examine the facts. We can tell from the picture that it is a Kittyhawk not a Tomahawk, so that places it in 1942 at the earliest. But the British used Kittyhawks all over North Africa, so the location of this aircraft could be anywhere. When we think British Kittyhawks, most of us immediate think of the Desert Air Force and the battles in Egypt and Libya. But there were also RAF fighter squadrons flying Kittyhawks out of Algeria against Axis targets in Tunisia, which would have meant that they were flying over the Sahara. So we really do not have a lot of information to go on. I do know that the combined size of the Sahara desert and Libyan desert is roughly 2,000 kilometers by 500 kilometers. That is a pretty large area to search. So it would be extremely helpful if you chaps could narrow the search area down to something a bit more manageable. Something the size of Scotland perhaps.

If you don’t buy beer, the terrorist win.

~S~ Sid, I’m not sure what the event was Mate. But from the looks on everyone’s face, it was inappropriate.

Don't Ask - Don't Tell The look on the Trooper's face is priceless!

George Washington has been honored as Britain's greatest enemy. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9204961/George-Washington-named-Britains-greatest-ever-foe.html

That would not surprise anyone who has ever worked in the Middle East.

I’m having strange problems with my CH controllers. Il-2 will either “see” my Pro Throttle or Pro Pedals, but not both. Windows 7 sees them both. The CH control manager can see them and I can calibrate and save them, but IL-2 will only see one of them Please disregard Something that I did as I was stumbling along seems to have fixed the problem.

Make some pop corn, open a beer and pull up a chair.

He needs to share whatever he is smoking with Painless.

Alas, I don’t have any good photos. But back in the good old days when Egypt still had tourist, one of my favorite weekend pastimes was to be at one of the antiquity sites, like the Giza Pyramids, when a bus load of Italian tourist showed up. The young ladies (usually in the company of a much older man) would almost always be dressed like they were out for a stroll in a fashionable part of Rome or Florence. They would be wearing a sheer silk blouse without a bra, a tight and very short skirt and high heels, 10 cm high or higher. It was amazing fun to watch them wiggle and jiggle their way around the rough terrain, giant chunks of stone work and inevitable filth, trash and feces (horse, camel and human) that litter all of the antiquity sites in Egypt. All the while trying to be the center of attention for their much older male companion. I’m confident that if CaptJackG ever made it to Cairo, that he would have one of these lovely young ladies on his arm. Just watching them try to move around the rougher parts of the site, where they might have to stretch their legs in order to step up onto a 60 cm stone block, in their short, tight skirts, while at the same time being careful to not forfeit what little virtue they still retained, was well worth the price of admission. But as I said, that was back in the good old days. Now we are all taking bets as to if it will be hyper-inflation or the elimination of government subsidies in exchange for an IMF loan that will trigger the food riots.

But Italian ladies definitely know how to dress themselves in order to please a man. Viva Italia

Your first few encounters with the Dogz can be a bit unsettling, to say the least. You'll rapidly discover that there are some aspects of this Squadron that will take some getting use too. So please try and be open minded and tolerant of your new Squadron Mates.

Happly Birthday to both of you Gentlemen.

His reaction sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Hmm.. looks like a normal paycheck saturday night in any town of Sweden . Or any town in Texas.

Hmmm None of those really have a Second World War feel to them. And in my opinion, they don’t really capture the essence of what it means to be a member of the Danger Dogz. So here is my suggestion for an Official Danger Dogz song. Show me the way to go home. Performed by the Andrew Sisters Be sure to watch the entire clip, not just the introduction