Protests In Hong Kong

[bojan]

7 hours ago, R011 said:

...as well as give hundreds of Canadair Sabre F4 to the RAF.

Thread drift - Some of those then ended in Yugoslavia. While most were in bare metal finish some had RAF 2-color cammo, and that cammo became basis of every Yugoslav non-fighter aircraft cammo, surviving to this day, through with slightly different shades due the change from British based color system to RAL:

1959:

2019:

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by bojan

[Stuart Galbraith]

35 minutes ago, DB said:

You seem to forget that it's a global responsibility to ensure the blame for everything falls on the British, with a tanknet sport being Stuart baiting, which be as ever he is completely unable to resist.

Personally I find it amusing that  the UK is being criticised for not cutting its cloth appropriately post war whilst at the same time being criticised for not holding on to Hong Kong long after the point where we were incapable of defending it. Which should it be?

What can I say, I need a valid excuse to avoid working. I cant help it that so many Tanknetters thoughtfully provide me one, can I?

As for the rest, exactly. We do it right, nobody notices, least of all Americans. We look after ourselves, we arent a team player.

[Stuart Galbraith]

8 minutes ago, bojan said:

Thread drift - Some of those then ended in Yugoslavia. While most were in bare metal finish some had RAF 2-color cammo, and that cammo became basis of every Yugoslav non-fighter aircraft cammo, surviving to this day, through with slightly different shades due the change from British based color system to RAL:

1959:

2019:

 

That green and grey looks remarkably close to the fighter command green and grey adopted around 1942.

 

 

I shouldnt be surprised, the Indians were still painting their transport aircraft in 1950's RAF Transport Command Colours until recently.

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[bojan]

Few MiG-21PF were also painted in the similar cammo, looks surprisingly good for a MiG-21 (model since all actual pics I have are B/W):

Edited June 23, 2021 by bojan

[seahawk]

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Well that narrative is the US was strong on communism in this period, would bear and burden, etc etc. And then they are so pedantic as to destroy millions of dollars worth of kit that could have been used against communists in Indo China, and they prefer to stick to a set price.

The US clearly had not shifted the mental gears to look at Communism in the same light they had fascism. If they had, they woudl ahve been doing precisely what they did with the allies during the war, donating it.  They were not going to do anything else with it, so why not?

So I guess the UK and France were welcoming Communism as they were not even willing to pay the 6% when the USA shouldered 94%?

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 hours ago, seahawk said:

So I guess the UK and France were welcoming Communism as they were not even willing to pay the 6% when the USA shouldered 94%?

Tell me, how many parts of the CONUS were invaded or Bombed? Go and look at a Blitz map of London, you will see why.

As it was, the UK developed the Atomic Bomb independently, laid the foundation stone for NATO, reformed the Home Guard (even Chris Werb was surprised about that one) developed 3 nuclear bombers, constructed a Battleship, committed to an Army Corp kept in Germany for perpetuity, fought the Korean war by sending a Brigade and a naval Task Force (including Marines) to South Korea, supported the Dutch in the war in Indonesia (I think we supported the French at the same time in Indochina till they got up to speed), started fighting the Malayan Insurgency, helping the Greeks in their Civil War (They got a LOT of kit from us) and winding up the British mandate in Palestine. And thats whilst attempting to repair the damage from WW2, build a healthcare system, and rejig British industry for the future. There is simply no other country in the early cold war period doing so much for so little and getting so little credit for it.

All that was in Attlee's first term.  But socialists are the source of all evil, and all apparently completely identical to the forces of the former Soviet Bloc. Go figure.

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 hours ago, bojan said:

Few MiG-21PF were also painted in the similar cammo, looks surprisingly good for a MiG-21 (model since all actual pics I have are B/W):

Didnt this scheme also make it onto the Mig29?

They have this scheme for the Mig21 in DCS, it does look good. I dont think it was particularly effective camouflage, but I think the RAF retained it for other reasons. The Hawker Hunter looked particularly smart in it.

[seahawk]

13 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Tell me, how many parts of the CONUS were invaded or Bombed? Go and look at a Blitz map of London, you will see why.

As it was, the UK developed the Atomic Bomb independently, laid the foundation stone for NATO, reformed the Home Guard (even Chris Werb was surprised about that one) developed 3 nuclear bombers, constructed a Battleship, committed to an Army Corp kept in Germany for perpetuity, fought the Korean war by sending a Brigade and a naval Task Force (including Marines) to South Korea, supported the Dutch in the war in Indonesia (I think we supported the French at the same time in Indochina till they got up to speed), started fighting the Malayan Insurgency, helping the Greeks in their Civil War (They got a LOT of kit from us) and winding up the British mandate in Palestine. And thats whilst attempting to repair the damage from WW2, build a healthcare system, and rejig British industry for the future. There is simply no other country in the early cold war period doing so much for so little and getting so little credit for it.

All that was in Attlee's first term.  But socialists are the source of all evil, and all apparently completely identical to the forces of the former Soviet Bloc. Go figure.

Still the US offered 94% discount, yet the old Empires wanted the stuff for free. So the US chose to destroy it. I understand that. And to be honest very few of those actions were meant to fight communists, it was only a side effect of a desperate attempt to hang on to the dissolving empire.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nope, the US wasnt offering anyone a discount. We were spending all that, it just took us the next 60 years to pay it off. This was not charity.

Up till 1956, it was about holding onto Empire, you are absolutely right. No arguments here. The point you are overlooking is most of the seperatist groups were predominantly either Communist or had Communist factions in origin. Or Arab nationalist, which created an entirely similar set of problems, as we have seen. Or even, as in Egypt, a nightmare brew of the two.

So the antiseperatist fight was, like or or not, precisely the same thing as the struggle against Communism, whether one wants to view it in those terms or not. Look at Indochina for a prime example of this.

The US, perhaps understandably, didnt want to get involved in these Colonial battles, but that was ok. They would eventually, with even fewer allies than they would if they had done it a decade and a half earlier. Maybe that commends itself to US conciences they werent supporting Empires, but it must have looked mighty strange to all those US Marines in Khe Sahn in 68, particularly with the US President ranting he didnt want it to turn into another Dien Bien Phu.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[seahawk]

Maybe the problem was that the UK did spent more than it could afford, because it still believed to be the glorious empire of the 19th century, when it was not.

[R011]

8 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Nope, the US wasnt offering anyone a discount. We were spending all that, it just took us the next 60 years to pay it off. This was not charity.

Perhaps not, but it was a very advantageous deal for Britain save for a condition British negotiators wanted.  Sixty years to pay at 2% interest to buy goods at a tenth the cost to the provider with ninety percent of the aid written off entirely and you complain?

Quote

most of the seperatist groups were predominantly either Communist or had Communist factions in origin.

Not especially.  The Mau Mau weren't.  The Arabs weren't until after Suez.  The Iranians weren't.  For a non-British example, the Indonesians weren't.  The Viet Minh were, but were able to convince Americans for a while that they were a coalition of nationalists which just happened to have Communists in it.

Edited June 24, 2021 by R011

[R011]

17 hours ago, DB said:

You seem to forget that it's a global responsibility to ensure the blame for everything falls on the British, with a tanknet sport being Stuart baiting, which be as ever he is completely unable to resist.

Personally I find it amusing that  the UK is being criticised for not cutting its cloth appropriately post war whilst at the same time being criticised for not holding on to Hong Kong long after the point where we were incapable of defending it. Which should it be?

The issue isn't that the UK should have cut its coat according to what it could afford.  Eventually, the UK set its priorities and made defence cuts - perhaps correcting too far.  The issue is that it isn't America's fault that times were hard in the forties and fifties and that the British economy has been quirky ever since.

[Stuart Galbraith]

33 minutes ago, R011 said:

Perhaps not, but it was a very advantageous deal for Britain save for a condition British negotiators wanted.  Sixty years to pay at 2% interest to buy goods at a tenth the cost to the provider with ninety percent of the aid written off entirely and you complain?

Not especially.  The Mau Mau weren't.  The Arabs weren't until after Suez.  The Iranians weren't.  For a non-British example, the Indonesians weren't.  The Viet Minh were, but were able to convince Americans for a while that they were a coalition of nationalists which just happened to have Communists in it.

It was a very good deal, and suited what we needed at the time. But it certainly wasnt charity, as alleged. And it was no substitute for the US using its latent strength early in the cold war when it might have saved itself a LOT of bloodshed later on.

Indonesia did not start Communist, but it certainly veered in that direction strongly in the mid to late 1950's. When the Soviets were selling them top of the line hardware like Mig21, even a Sverdlov class Cruiser, its clear quite how much into the Soviet orbit they were drifting. Ditto Egypt, I would agree yes, they were not Soviet leaning from the start, but its interesting how immediately after Suez they went straight to the Eastern Bloc for their hardware, rejecting US investment as another example of imperialism. So that probably is the problem. The US was too identified with their imperialist allies, to make a clear case of being clean hands. Something the Soviets very easily could do, particularly as most of what the Arabs wanted at that stage was cheap military hardware.

How much of this was inevitable? I dont know. I do know it should have been fairly self evident to the US state department that the decolonization effort would inevitably be exploited by the Communists either from the start or later, particularly as they seemed to grasp it very strongly having seen it happen in Europe.  Instead they seem to have had the remarkably deluded belief that all those former Colonial territories would all elect George Washingtons and embrace Democracy, just like America's founding fathers did. Which proved at a very early stage to decidedly not be true with Syngman Ree in South Korea. But why let reality get in the way of a good theory?

 

 

 

[R011]

No one was claiming the US loans were charity.  You were claiming the US was making the UK pay war time loans that were the cause of Britain's postwar economic troubles.  That was bullshit and you got called on it.

[bojan]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Didnt this scheme also make it onto the Mig29?

Similar pattern but with lighter and more "faded" colors was used:

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

The Soviet Mig29As had a similar scheme, that might be the factory Mig finish. Looked nice anyway.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, R011 said:

No one was claiming the US loans were charity.  You were claiming the US was making the UK pay war time loans that were the cause of Britain's postwar economic troubles.  That was bullshit and you got called on it.

Sorry, but Seahawk was implying just that. Look at the allegation of the US spending 94 percent of its GDP and the crafty UK spending 6. It cant be implied as being much else.

It was the cause of its problems when we were exporting coal to cover the payments at the same time as we were suffering the worst winter on record. Thats not bullshit, its actual historical fact. My side interest is in locomotives, and I know they were having continual breakdowns through burning what was technically brown coal which we imported from the US, because the Welsh coal, which was highly calorific, was exported to cover the immediate loan repayments. Yes, it was that valuable an export, in a period when we didnt really have any exports.

You cant have it both ways, you cant pretend we were doing too much and the US was being incredibly overgenerous. One of those clearly has to be wrong.

 

Edited June 24, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[R011]

12 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

It was the cause of its problems when we were exporting coal to cover the payments

 

Keyes wanting to pay in USD was the problem.  The US didn't demand it.  If other parts of building a socialist state while being a superpower caused hardship, that's tough.  That was no one's fault but the British and partly, the Germans - and you got more than even with them.

[Stuart Galbraith]

We go around in circles. To replace the stock lost in bombing, housing had to be built. To build houses quickly, it needed a command economy. At that point, you may as well have a socialist one. Ive heard before on this grate site that private investment would have provided it. But it wouldnt, because the housing market had collapsed even prewar, the reason for all those big country estates selling up, property just wasnt worth what it was. There was nobody to provide the housing stock unless central and local government took a leading role in it. At that point you have essentially a socialist Government, whomever sits in the chair.

So as far as parts of what that Labour Government did in 1945, I quite agree, they did nationalize far too much. Parts of it, such as the coal industry, healthcare and even parts of construction, there were no realistic alternatives on offer. Even if we had Churchill and the Conservatives in for another 5 years, we would still have been just as broke, it was an inevitable fact of where we were after 6 years of war. The idea that it was voting for a Socialist Government tipped us into bankruptcy just does not stand up.

Re coal, I cant find much immediately online, there was a bit more in a couple of books ive got on the Great Western Railway stashed somewhere, but there was this. South Wales coal was ringfenced for export. That was the best coal in the country, and we couldnt use it, because it was worth more exporting it than using it. That is a particularly bad place for any country to be in, particularly one reconstructing from a war, and suffering from several bad winters in a row.

http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/m_in_gwr_oil_fire.htm

Edited June 24, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[nitflegal]

5 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

We go around in circles. To replace the stock lost in bombing, housing had to be built. To build houses quickly, it needed a command economy. At that point, you may as well have a socialist one. Ive heard before on this grate site that private investment would have provided it. But it wouldnt, because the housing market had collapsed even prewar, the reason for all those big country estates selling up, property just wasnt worth what it was. There was nobody to provide the housing stock unless central and local government took a leading role in it. At that point you have essentially a socialist Government, whomever sits in the chair.

So as far as parts of what that Labour Government did in 1945, I quite agree, they did nationalize far too much. Parts of it, such as the coal industry, healthcare and even parts of construction, there were no realistic alternatives on offer. Even if we had Churchill and the Conservatives in for another 5 years, we would still have been just as broke, it was an inevitable fact of where we were after 6 years of war. The idea that it was voting for a Socialist Government tipped us into bankruptcy just does not stand up.

Re coal, I cant find much immediately online, there was a bit more in a couple of books ive got on the Great Western Railway stashed somewhere, but there was this. South Wales coal was ringfenced for export. That was the best coal in the country, and we couldnt use it, because it was worth more exporting it than using it. That is a particularly bad place for any country to be in, particularly one reconstructing from a war, and suffering from several bad winters in a row.

http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/m_in_gwr_oil_fire.htm

This is where I think there tends to be a disconnect between you all Europeans and we in the USA; completely different experiences.  When living in Europe I gained a new appreciation for how savaged even the victors were and how close to collapse they were.  Short of the US just bankrolling everything (which they ultimately kinda did) they were not coming back without help and/or bloody revolution.  In the UK my take is reconstruction via capitalism only works if there is capital.  Which they really didn't have.  Embracing light socialism was the best case scenario to avoid outright communism.  

In the USA we have to go back to the 1860's South to see that type of widespread devastation and even with the whole country supporting many aspects of reconstruction were more of a militaristic socialism then anything else.

[rmgill]

On 6/23/2021 at 3:58 AM, BansheeOne said:

I'm not sure how we got from criticizing British socialists for depending upon the US for global security to criticizing British socialists for wasting money on an unnecessarily large defense establishment, on the Hong Kong thread, but I guess that's TankNet for you. 😁 

THREAD
JACKER
2021TM

Edited June 24, 2021 by rmgill

[rmgill]

14 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

All that was in Attlee's first term.  But socialists are the source of all evil, and all apparently completely identical to the forces of the former Soviet Bloc. Go figure.

Do property rights exist or not? If they don't exists then sure, socialism is fine. If those rights do exist and people thus have a right to the product of their work labor OR a fair exchange of capitol for that work, then yes, Socialism is evil. 

Socialism has in it's very nature the end result that people will be enslaved for their own good. Yes. That's evil. It shouldn't take much reasoning to someone who's a product of the English enlightenment to make those points understood. 

 

[rmgill]

11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

We go around in circles. To replace the stock lost in bombing, housing had to be built. To build houses quickly, it needed a command economy. At that point, you may as well have a socialist one. Ive heard before on this grate site that private investment would have provided it.

You can have functional command economies to get things done quickly while still leaving the owners in control/owning their property. Look at the National Socialists. They did it that way. Is that so bad? 😉

 

11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

But it wouldnt, because the housing market had collapsed even prewar, the reason for all those big country estates selling up, property just wasnt worth what it was. There was nobody to provide the housing stock unless central and local government took a leading role in it. At that point you have essentially a socialist Government, whomever sits in the chair.

One of the interesting things is that if you have to take dramatic efforts to fix things do you, when the emergency has passed, relinquish all of those dramatic efforts for the justness of doing so or do you continue to stick to the mode where people don't get to own their own stuff? 

 

11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

So as far as parts of what that Labour Government did in 1945, I quite agree, they did nationalize far too much. Parts of it, such as the coal industry, healthcare and even parts of construction, there were no realistic alternatives on offer.

You'd be broke but you'd have not killed entrepreneurial spirit allowing you to become un-broke in the process. 

 

11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Even if we had Churchill and the Conservatives in for another 5 years, we would still have been just as broke, it was an inevitable fact of where we were after 6 years of war. The idea that it was voting for a Socialist Government tipped us into bankruptcy just does not stand up.

The net effect of taking enterprise away is that you kill it. 

11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Re coal, I cant find much immediately online, there was a bit more in a couple of books ive got on the Great Western Railway stashed somewhere, but there was this. South Wales coal was ringfenced for export. That was the best coal in the country, and we couldnt use it, because it was worth more exporting it than using it. That is a particularly bad place for any country to be in, particularly one reconstructing from a war, and suffering from several bad winters in a row.

With a free market you then have the ability to have the market make those decisions instead of some minister in London doing so between tea and his afternoon mássage parlor visit. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

16 hours ago, nitflegal said:

This is where I think there tends to be a disconnect between you all Europeans and we in the USA; completely different experiences.  When living in Europe I gained a new appreciation for how savaged even the victors were and how close to collapse they were.  Short of the US just bankrolling everything (which they ultimately kinda did) they were not coming back without help and/or bloody revolution.  In the UK my take is reconstruction via capitalism only works if there is capital.  Which they really didn't have.  Embracing light socialism was the best case scenario to avoid outright communism.  

In the USA we have to go back to the 1860's South to see that type of widespread devastation and even with the whole country supporting many aspects of reconstruction were more of a militaristic socialism then anything else.

Yes, thats a really good observation that had not occurred to me.

[seahawk]

Every country was devastated, most adjusted their policy to this reality