Veckans ord: ingengör

Jag är både tekniskt och vetenskapligt högutbildad men alltför många dagar funkar ingenting och jag får inget klart och då känner jag mig som en enkel ingengör.

Satumaa

Unto Mononen's tango ”Satumaa” is sometimes referred to as the second national anthem of Finland. So in honour of the 90th anniversary of Finnish independence, here is Reijo Taipale's classic version.



(Apologies for the sound quality.)

By popular request

Earlier this summer, the well-preserved remains of what is believed to be Lockheed P-38F Lightning serial number 42-7677 were found on a beach in Wales by Cardigan Bay, where they had been covered and protected by sand since the plane was abandoned there after a forced landing in 1942. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery is on the case and has already named the aircraft “The Maid of Harlech” after nearby Harlech Castle.

This has caused considerable excitement as surviving P-38s in any shape are relatively few and there are even fewer individuals of the P-38F, in fact the other P-38Fs are “Frankenstein aircraft”, composed of parts from multiple individuals. Accordingly the plane will be excavated in the coming spring and after preservation placed in some suitable museum.

While the find in itself is quite fantastic I am also pleased that a “new” Lightning has come to light, as it is an interesting and beautiful aircraft. (I have modelled the P-38M nightfighter once.) It was very advanced for its time and in fact many of the problems that beset the aircraft during its service life were due to its high performance, as the then-current state of aerodynamics did not fully understand the phenomenon of compressibility, which led to the death of many a pilot who exceeded the maximum allowable dive speed. Another factor which caused problems was that the first prototype was lost by an inexperienced pilot during an ill-advised speed record attempt, considerably delaying the test programme so that the aircraft had to be rushed into service while still suffering from teething troubles and fixes had to be applied in the field.

A good popular overview of the Lightning is Martin Caidin's Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38, with the caveat that Caidin is aviation history's answer to Herman Lindqvist—a good story is always more important than uncertain and tentative history…

A Swedish literary connection is Bertil Cleve's Fantomen – Pojkarnas Flygbok 1940, in which two Swedish volunteers participate in the Finnish Winter War with a privately procured Lightning with a tail-gunner! In the spirit of the times the Swedes are handsome, upright and brave, the Finns are taciturn, tough and enormously brave, whereas the Russians are subhuman cowards. Sometimes I pretend people no longer think like that.

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Thanks to Dr Whom for grammar control.

Myopic review

A non-aviation-interested friend was very amused by a review I wrote on The Aviator without ever touching on the human actors. I'll do that trick again…

Christopher Priest's book The Separation [Priest, 2002] is an alternate history with multiple layers. Alternate histories typically build on the premise that one single, but important, thing has been changed relative to “our” universe and the author then attempts to draw out the consequences of that. But, as noted by Christie [1944], everything that happens is the consequence of lots of other things that happened before that so rarely can you just posit that a single thing changed, but other things will have changed as well.

In this review I will, in the spirit of Carter [1985], pick up a throwaway line from the book and speculate over what other changes in the alternate universe had to have taken place in addition to the explicitly stated changes. The passage in question is the following:

Kurt Hofmann was a civilian test pilot working for the Messerschmitt company at a small airfield in eastern Germany. On May 10, 1941, under conditions of immense secrecy, Hofmann piloted the maiden flight of a revolutionary new type of aircraft. It was an experimental fighter powered by as jet turbine engine. The prototype Messerschmitt Me-163 flew at 995 kph (621 mph) before landing safely. This aircraft was widely used on the Russian Front from late in 1943 until the end of hostilities, becoming the standard ground-attack fighter-bomber, It was found to be superior not only to early marques of the Russian MiG-15 jet fighter, but also to the North American Sabre that was entering serviced with the USAAF at the same time.

Now, to work out the differences to our version of the universe, let us just enumerate the superficial differences and then think about the possible reasons for these.

In our universe the Me 163 was a rocket-powered interceptor. It was first flown under rocket power at the large testing site in Peenemünde by well-known test pilot Heini Dittmar; in July 1941 according to Green [1971], on August 13 according to Anderton [1975].

The F-86 Sabre was first flown in October 1947 and the MiG-15 in December the same year [Anderton, 1975], by which time the United States Army Air Forces had become the independent United States Air Force.

So, to start with the Me 163. Clearly what is described is a completely different aircraft. “Our” Me 163 was a diminutive aircraft with a rocket engine with very limited endurance, able to reach great altitude in very short time. Merely redesigning it to use a jet engine would change the design quite considerably, at the very least requiring air intakes and ducts for the engine—or more likely, for two engines. To turn it into a (successful) ground attack aircraft would require a larger aircraft, carrying more fuel, ordinance and, not least, armour. In fact, we would probably end up with something similar to the Me 262, which aircraft is not mentioned in the passage above, though it was considerably more successful in our timeline.

Perhaps the explanation is that in the Separation universe the Me 163 is in fact identical to our Me 262 and the rocket interceptor was never built.

This in turn requires some other things to change. Our Me 262 was not ready to fly under jet power until July 1942 after a protracted design process [Morgan and Weal, 1995]. A jet fighter had flown already in April 1941, the Heinkel 280, but neither it nor the Messerschmitt design got the necessary support from the Reichsluftfahrtministerium [Green, 1970]. The Heinkel design was killed outright and the Me 262 was not a priority project until 1944 or so. Apparently, in the Separation universe, key persons at RLM were more visionary. This would imply, in my mind, that Ernst Udet never became Generalluftzeugmeister or resigned from the post fairly soon. The question is who would replace him. It would have to be a person who would both have the organisational skills to run the technical office of RLM as well as the political skills to stand up to Göring. People such as these would be few and far between in the immediate pre-war Germany. Perhaps Ernst Heinkel could have been one of these, but what would he have been offered to take up this job, instead of his own industry? And would he have been impartial enough to award design contracts to Messerschmitt, one of his hardest competitors? Maybe this could have been achieved if the RLM had been organised more along the principles of the British Ministry of Aircraft Production, more focused on working together for a common cause than backstabbing each other, but this seems to have been utterly antithetical to the very soul of Nazi Germany. But, maybe things will work just by luck and accident, so that Germany has a technically skilled and visionary Generalluftzeugmeister who prioritises the development of a next generation of combat aircraft and that Germany manages to import the metals needed for the exotic alloys necessary for efficient jet engines. They would have to come via neutral countries, perhaps Sweden will increase its trade with Germany and in exchange receive more German military material. There could have been Bf 109s flying in the Swedish air force!

So, with some probability we could imagine German jet fighters actually in service by 1943. Now, what about the MiG-15 and the Sabre? In our time-line they are both second-generation jet aircraft, based on aerodynamics data collected in Germany after the war by the Allies. However, as noted above, we do not have to assume that the planes in the Separation universe match the aircraft with the same names in our timeline, so they could in fact correspond to early Soviet and US jet aircraft designs, such as the Lavochkin La-15 and the Bell P-59 Airacomet, both of which would have been outperformed by almost any German jet aircraft design.

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Anderton, David. 1975. Jet Fighters, Phoebus Publishing, Ltd.
Carter, Paul. 1985. “The Constitutional Origins of Westly v. Simmons”. Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact (CV)10, October 1985, pp 86–96.
Christie, Agatha. 1944. Towards Zero, Collins.
Green, William. 1970. Warplanes of the Third Reich, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Green, William. 1971. Rocket Fighter, Random House, Inc.
Morgan, Hugh and Weal, John. 1995. German Jet Aces of World War 2, Osprey Publishing, Ltd.
Priest, Christopher. 2002. The Separation, Scribner.

Veckans ord: gemfört

Som förutvarande statsanställd antogs jag egentligen diarieföra all post jag fick, men det kan ju nån med mer tid över ägna sig åt. Om jag överhuvudtaget behöll brevet kunde jag sätta ihop det med ett gem och lägga i en tidskriftssamlare, så blev brevet i alla fall gemfört.

Things of beauty

As I went to work this morning a huge gibbous moon hung in the clear sky over Solna. A SAS MD-80 southwards from Arlanda flew low enough that it passed underneath the moon, then banked sharply in a π rad turn north again. I stood long and looked after it.

I've measured mine, it took a while…

The original

Everybody who grew up in Sweden in the 1970s is familiar with ”Hey baberiba!”. My children only know it as ”Smurf baberiba” and asked about its origins. I realised it probably was not original with Rockfolket either and did a bit of googling and found that it is in fact an old Lionel Hampton piece: “Hey-Ba-Ba-Re-Bop”. It swung even then.

Buy Nothing Day

Yeah, we got through Buy Nothing Day and concocted some interesting dishes out of weird stuff we found at the back of the larder, the Thai potato-and-parsnips soup was surprisingly good. But, tomorrow will require a major raid to the food store…

Veckans ord: ployetylen

Eten eller etylen är ett enkelt kolväte som förekommer i många sammanhang. Bland annat avges den av växter, framförallt av mognande frukter och blommor. På människor har gasen en euforisk effekt. Ökar man eten-halten i luften torde euforin stiga men samtidigt börjar man drabbas av syrebrist vilket kan leda till döden. Man ska nog därför inte försöka överraska sina kamrater med ployetylen på gastub utan nöja sig med att försiktigt lukta på blommor.

Buzzword of the year

I don't know if it is due to the onmarch of New Atheism, but suddenly “agnostic” is the word to use, though with regards to technology rather than the supernatural. What last year would have been “format-independent” is now presented as “format-agnostic”. I don't see that we thereby have gained in clarity.

To further confuse the issue, in many cases even “format-independent” would be a bit of marketing lies, as what in most cases is intended is “supports several different formats” where the magnitude of “several” is subject to the subjective opinion of the writer. A system could of course be format-independent in the sense that it is easily extended with user-supplied code to handle any new formats, very neat from a programming perspective, but usually not what someone buying a computer system expects.

My new goal in life!

Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) is one of my heroes. Now he has divulged yet another reason to worship him: instead of a sofa, he has gotten himself a ball pit. I am so getting one for my next home!

Awesome speed

Yep, I hardly have time to look away from the screen…

Gym gymnastics

OK, I'm sure these guys are famous without me knowing, but I'm just so utterly impressed with their choreography:


Thanks to Skane for the tip!

Veckans ord: allienerad

Om man känner sig utanför kan man kanske hitta andra som också känner sig utanför och så kan man slå sig ihop och ihop slå på andra. Man är allienerad.

In the top 7%

The new dual-core Intel Mac just blasts through work units, I even missed the 35000-mark while turning my back.

Belgium, man, Belgium!

Stockholm C, Monday morning 08:20. Sleet. Cold outside, cold in my head, cold in my heart. I crave solitude but the X2000 to Malmö is all but full.

Östergötland and Småland have a snow cover. Listlessly I try to read documents in preparation for my meeting.

Malmö C, 12:50. The sun shines over the chilly city. I grab a Whopper Meal (sorry, we're out of orange juice) and try to make phone calls. No reply.

København H, 14:40. The main hall feels even colder than outside. I wander around aimlessly rather than freeze on a bench. The benches are anyway taken over by addicts, some joyously high, most silently sunken in on themselves. Finally, the IC3 train to Hamburg. A happy baby gurgling and giggling somewhere behind me, a pair of German girls in front of me, reading thrillers and eating fruit they've brought with them in sensible plastic containers. The sun has set and Zeeland is dark. I have electricity but no Internet, so I can't reach the file server. I return the laptop to my backpack.

Ferry from Rødby to Puttgarden. I refrain from going up on deck, curl up and read about homogeneous transform matrices, erratic bits staying in my mind.

Hamburg Hbf, 20:30. Cold and dark, I have two and a half hours to spend. I am disoriented at first but find the food court after a bit of spinning around. Three slices pan pizza later I am less hungry and cold, but still tired. The book store beckons. Motorbuch Verlag offers thick volumes in German, but I don't want to lug any more luggage and anyway I already have enough reading material.

Fretting, I loaf around the station, watching various shops clean up and close down. The train arrives. Classic sleeper car, no need to fold out the beds. For a couple of seconds I think I will have the compartment to myself, but I am soon joined by a polite elderly gentleman. His accent gives him away as a Swede. The train judders away into the night, I sleep fitfully and when the wake-up alarm by my head goes off I am grateful for the official end of the night.

On my return from the shower a very upset man harangues the car attendant, who tries to pass me my breakfast. I cannot follow all the rapid German, but gather that somebody has attempted to enter the man's compartment pretending to be a train employee. While I gulp my morning tea and croissant, two burly men in DB uniforms come through the corridor. The train stands outside Brussels for a long time, but I do not know how the story ends.

Bruxelles Midi, 06:30. Rain, cold. Not fancying a walk through the city I find my way into the Métro system. The PA system plays pop classics, but the sound quality is awful, the music fading in and out as from a bad AM station.

At the hotel I have plenty of time before my meeting. I try to write postcards, struggling to find the right non-committal but vaguely cheerful phrases.

In meeting, I try to make incisive points and intelligent comments but I notice myself nodding off every time I blink.

When the meeting is over, I still have seven hours before my train back home leaves. I take over a sofa in the hotel lobby and sit and read.

Bruxelles Midi, 23:10. When ennui gives way to annoyance. It's easy to find my train on the info board, it burns in bright red with the comment supprimé/afgeschaft. What? The station is mostly empty, so it is easy to find the queue of upset travellers besieging the lone Belgian railways employee to find out what has happened and how to continue on their respective journeys. The SNCB person has his opinion clear, this is all our own fault, since the railway strike in France has been publicly announced. (That I just arrived in the country the same morning and don't expect strikes in France to affect a train from Belgium to Germany doesn't matter.) However, out of the goodness of his heart he writes out and stamps a form that in essence amounts to a Note from Mum: “This person has missed a train due to circumstances outside his control, please let him have a seat on your train.” and adds an itinerary to Stockholm for me for the next morning. Right, and where am I supposed to sleep tonight? Not his problem, but out of the kindness of the heart of the Eurostar management we are allowed to sleep on the lobby floor of the Eurostar hotel. Sheesh, I'm too old for this kind of shit! A likewise annoyed Brit and I strike out along Rue de l'Angleterre to find a hotel with free rooms.

Hotel Continental, 00:10. I have stayed in seedier places, but not by a wide margin and not for the price of 150 EUR a night. On the other hand, by virtue of having gotten the last room in the hotel my dominion for the night is a giant room-and-a-half with no less than seven beds to choose from. They are all uncomfortable. The room is rather cold, which turns out to be due to the French windows not closing properly. On the other hand it means that the room is well aired out. And then there is the railway right outside. I prop a chair in front of the rickety door and then I fall asleep.

Bruxelles Midi, 08:00. Brilliant sunshine over chilly Brussels. I try to argue a bit more with the SNCB staff to at least get reservations for the trains I have to take—in particular I'd like a sleeping car reservation for the night train from Malmö—but their computer system does not see bookings and, anyway, it's not their problem.

Bruxelles Midi, 08:30. The electronic information boards stop working.

Bruxelles Midi, 10:22. Against all expectation the THALYS train to Cologne leaves on time. To my surprise the Note from Mum is accepted without comment by the conductor. The Ardennes are as beautiful as ever.

Köln Hbf, 13:20. The train to Hamburg is late. I am anxious, I don't have much time for train change in Hamburg.

Hamburg Hbf, 17:26. The train driver has managed to regain lost time and I dash to the next platform to catch the Copenhagen train. I end up across a young Finnish couple (young enough that I have to keep myself from asking them why they aren't in school) who have been Interrailing around Germany and the Netherlands for the last month and now finally are on their way home to Tampere. We play cards and chat for the rest of the journey.

København H, 22:23. They must be practicing to turn the station into a skating rink. I catch the train to Malmö.

Malmö C, 23:08. Out of the goodness of his heart the conductor allows me aboard the train, but no sleeping place for tramps. I find that they do not dim the lights in the cars just because it is night and everybody would like to sleep. I must have slept though, because I wake up around Linköping.

Stockholm C, 05:45. Fuzzily, muzzily I stumble home, soak myself in the tub and then in bed.

Veckans ord: semiarier

När jag fortfarande arbetade på institutionen kunde man ibland se lappar som påannonserade semiarier. Jag kom fram till att det måste handla om mig, visserligen (tämligen) blond och blåögd, men inte alls tillhörande den indoeuropeiska språkgruppen.

Veckans ord: yrka bilfall

Under Franska revolutionen, eller snarare, under det senare Skräckväldet, högg man som bekant huvudena av folk som limpskivor. En drivande orsak till detta var Maximilien Robespierre som i Välfärdsutskottet ständigt yrkade bilfall som lösningen på alla problem.

Finished model 2007-IV

Sopwith Camel B7270 from 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Clairmarais, France, April 1918, flown by Captain Roy Brown. Model from Revell, scale 1/28, commissioned work.

The decals were so awful I thought I could do better just painting the national insignia, but it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to mask concentric circles. In retrospect I should have made new decals instead. On the other hand I'm quite proud of the wood grain I managed to produce on the propeller and other wooden details.