This audio was recorded on 24 February 2023
Firstly a huge thanks to Susan Yu for her generous gift, which will go towards Fallouts Project 13! Thank you, Susan, you’re the best, and a quarter glass of the Adjutant’s favourite port awaits your attention in the Lounge.
On this week’s episode of the Adjutants Lounge, Phil and Ben talk War Crimes, the Luftwaffe in the east, Galland and Wittmann, and the Battle of Britain. All of which is interspersed with the usual chuntering, random thoughts verbalised and good humour that has become the hallmark of the Adjutants Lounge. Honestly, you’ll be hard-pushed to find this level of quality and professionalism elsewhere.
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Partial transcript:
00:00:36
Ben Skipper: Hello and welcome back to the Atlas Lounge. Uh, I'm joined by Dr. Phil Blood. Hello.
00:00:42
Phil Blood: Phil Gould.
00:00:44
Ben Skipper: Hey, how you doing?
00:00:46
Phil Blood: Hi, everybody.
00:00:48
Ben Skipper: Hey, everyone. As you can see, I've got my special doodle thing because my doodle wasn't working. Technical stuff here. You know, I'm a.
00:00:58
Phil Blood: Boomer and everything works, including my background.
00:01:01
Ben Skipper: Like your background, F16, topical.
00:01:04
Phil Blood: Biggles and the Royal Air Force. Kind of lucky to even have a picture, actually.
00:01:11
Ben Skipper: You are you. Well, it's like. Really? Yes, really. I'm not inept with technology. I'm a technophobe and proud of it.
00:01:19
Phil Blood: Cool. The button.
00:01:23
Ben Skipper: That's the issue. It's not a switch. It's not a switch. Nah. Before. Before we get on with today's podcast, I must thank Susan Yu for her very, very, very, very generous donation. So Susan, thank you. That's going to be invested in our next project.
00:01:43
Phil Blood: Thank you, Susan. But also thank you for your comments, your kind comments on Woody when you mentioned it. And the fact that we are such, um. I don't know. I'm sorry. Nice persons who only do things quietly and.
00:02:04
Ben Skipper: Think think Susan recognised our quality as professional broadcasters. Since we've gone, you know, all technical and stuff and we're giving CNN, Fox, CBS.
00:02:17
Phil Blood: Your technicalities amaze me with your brilliance, but the inability to be able to get a camera is still the things.
00:02:27
Ben Skipper: Can't even get a background. Can't even get a groovy background like you and I can't get my head around working back to front. It's all weird.
00:02:33
Phil Blood: Well, that's because you were in the Royal Air Force and I was.
00:02:42
Ben Skipper: Oh, bless you. You really. The more I think about it, the more I think now wouldn't get in. They wouldn't touch me with a bargepole. What was it? What was it to say about the recruitment process as the late 90s? Late 90s?
00:02:55
Phil Blood: Who's worse? Them or you?
00:03:03
Ben Skipper: And yet here we are. Hello.
00:03:08
Phil Blood: Buddies.
00:03:17
Ben Skipper: So you like my F-16? I did. Very topical. Well, sort of. Well, we'll mention ever so briefly, because II did swear that we weren't going to mention what, Ukraine war and somebody wanting F-16s. Interesting factoid. F-16 nine months training to fly Eurofighter two years.
00:03:40
Phil Blood: There you go. How long do they take to build these things?
00:03:46
Ben Skipper: That's a good point. Well presented. They got a production line somewhere in America, somewhere like probably Ohio or Kansas. Absolutely.
00:03:54
Phil Blood: And so what? You can build one in a week like Spitfires and Lancasters, and then they're rolling out 30,000 in a year. Yeah.
00:04:02
Ben Skipper: Yeah, something like that. At this point, everyone's going to be there are going to be people going, No, no, you've got it all wrong. Yeah, probably have. Um, you know, this is, this is, what, fourth, fifth, fourth generation fighter. It hasn't, it hasn't got propeller on. I'm not interested. There you go.
00:04:23
Phil Blood: Fourth generation.
00:04:25
Ben Skipper: Mm. How'd you like them apples?
00:04:28
Phil Blood: Okay. So it's not Hawaii in the fifth generation. It's it's fourth generation.
00:04:33
Ben Skipper: Think so? Yeah, think so.
00:04:35
Phil Blood: So you can speak to it while you're on the tube.
00:04:38
Ben Skipper: Believe so. And don't get harassed. Marvellous.
00:04:41
Phil Blood: That's the limit of my technicalities today.
00:04:46
Ben Skipper: All I can tell you is. We get to talk, we're going to talk books today and all sorts of modelling are Tokyo books. You got a really good idea that you you have passed.
00:04:59
Phil Blood: To me. I have.
00:05:02
Ben Skipper: Yeah, you have. You got two really good ideas. You got. You got the Whitman book, which we're going to be doing.
00:05:07
Phil Blood: Oh, yeah. That's my guilt session at the minute. I'm working my head off to try and get it done because I promised people at the end of last month. But COVID and as you can hear, I'm still coughing with it. Um, so big apologies to everybody, but as soon as it's done, everybody gets everybody who supports us gets a free copy. We've agreed that from the very beginning and yes, am humbled by the delays, but it's going to happen. And just as a taster, um, a large part of it concerns questions over what Whitman's, um, status as a Nazi. So I'm sure that will make me very popular. But he was right. He was educated in racial extermination and and a large part anti-Semitism, which was a driving force of his military fanaticism. And his beliefs in the higher master race. But anyway, that side.
00:06:09
Ben Skipper: So we got that one. And then we got another one, which you. Well, when I say we, I'm using the royal we here, which is really wrong because it's actually coming from you. Um. About the Luftwaffe in the East. Yeah.
00:06:21
Phil Blood: Think everybody's spoken about everybody talks about, um, I think there was a battle in Britain somewhere, and then there was these roobarb and custard raids when the Battle of Britain lot got shut down by the Germans and ended up writing books about more captivity than they were flying. Um, but aside from all of that stuff and of course the latest story, which is the eighth Air Force destroyed the Luftwaffe. Uh, the bombing was all good by the Royal Air Force, and it was all it was really good because it drove Nazis out. It stopped the war effort, and the Germans couldn't get tanks and guns and equipment anymore and, you know, all that stuff. And it cleansed. It cleansed the cities of national socialist ideology. Wow. Driving by. Driving the people out of the cities. So because the cities were empty, no Nazi ideology.
00:07:27
Ben Skipper: When did this What have I missed? This is typical of me. I'm writing about the yeomen of the guard at the moment. And so this assertion. Yeah, exactly. Who? Not the Gilbert and Sullivan musical, by the way. Not that one. Where is this assertion?
00:07:45
Phil Blood: Like the Pirates of Penzance? That's my favourite. I know people think I'm a bit more serious, but actually, like the Pirates. Is it the Pirates of Penzance? Oh, no. HMS Pinafore. That's it. Sorry, I always get confused, but then live in total state of confusion from one day to the next. Well, I'm.
00:08:05
Ben Skipper: Just going to confuse you even more talking about pirates. Disney. Disney did a thing. You know, they do those movie guides for children in the comics. Good. Yeah. You know, like a guide to being a good pirate. One of the things a good pirate doesn't do is steal from other pirates.
00:08:22
Phil Blood: Okay.
00:08:25
Ben Skipper: There you go.
00:08:26
Phil Blood: That's piratical.
00:08:28
Ben Skipper: Isn't it? What's the point? Being a pirate?
00:08:30
Phil Blood: I hadn't thought of that.
00:08:33
Ben Skipper: Yeah. Yeah. But apparently that's. That's the way to be a good pirate is not to steal from other pirates. But anyway, back to the Pirates of Penzance, which in turn is get back to.
00:08:40
Phil Blood: You and Dustin are always stealing on me.
00:08:47
Ben Skipper: What?
00:08:47
Phil Blood: Plagiarism? No. Oh.
00:08:50
Ben Skipper: Plagiarism. No, no, no. Didn't say.
00:08:52
Phil Blood: Oh. Oh. Oh. Well, now, just going back to these remarks by the eighth Air Force. Okay. Um, LeMay perfected strategic bombing, took it to Japan. Well, to the theatre and then on to Japan. Uh, I would have thought the 12th and the 15th Air Force has probably had a bigger impact against, um, the German material war effort with the raids against Palestine and other targets.
00:09:23
Ben Skipper: Yeah.
00:09:24
Phil Blood: I was thinking more of how they used to say things like, you know, we're dropping the bombs in the pickle barrel and all that stuff.
00:09:33
Ben Skipper: So that was about that, that the, the, the gunsight, the Norden gunsight, which was meant to be so amazingly accurate and so brilliant. Um, and yeah. And, well, he wasn't that great, certainly over, you know, the early campaign over Japan when they didn't fully understand the the jet stream especially. Well anyway there's been.
00:09:53
Phil Blood: There's been all this, you know, bombing and fighting and fighting and bombing and um.
The Adjutants Lounge Audio