if given the chance would you kill Hitler?

That's the question isn't it, everybody was thought in school that Hitler and the Nazi's were some of the most evil people in history and killed millions of people before the heroic Americans landed in France fighting all the way towards Berlin, but if you had the chance to go back in time and change all the horror and all of the hate of the Second World War would you do it, stop the death of the 6,000,000 Jews or the 20,000,000 Russians, would you do it?

As for me, NO!

Yes you're probably just reading over that last sentence again where I just acknowledged all the pain and suffering inflicted on millions of people and me stating I wouldn't have stopped it.

My reason is.

If Hitler was stopped in 1939 God only knows what happens, people have asked that question for years, (well actually they ask stupid what if questions, like what if the Nazi's have invaded America or World War III fought out in 1996), but the entire Hitler thing is interesting, I mean just one man not being there with his big ideas could have altered the course of history, what if Germany was left barely armed like the Treaty of Versailles said in the first place, chances are any chance of a war (maybe with the Soviet Union) it would be crush Europe, maybe maybe not but nobody knows what would have happened.

Some people have toyed with the analogy though!

The real Shughart and Gordon

Back in 1993 during a raid in Mogadishu (Somalia) the second Black Hawk to be shot down Super Six Four came under attack from an angry mob of Somalians, some of the crew members had survived and had armed up preparing to take defensive positions, two Delta snipers Shughart and Gordon (also known as D-boys) were dropped in to defend the crash site.

With no backup coming (and the fact they were outnumbered by dozens of skinnies) and only with their own guns and not much extra ammo they went right into the middle of the battle!

But coming under bitter attack they eventually ran out of ammo and ended up dead like the rest of the crew (except the pilot Durant), the story has been confused over the years and I'm going to try and illustrate what exactly happened over those 15 minutes after the Durant had been shot down!

I will use screen shots from the 2001 film (directed by Ridley Scott) and extracts from the 1999 book by Mark Bowden to show my point.

Text from the novel about the post crash of Super Six Four:

He picked up his weapon, an MP5K, a little German 9mm sub machine gun. The pilots called them SP's or Skinny-poppers.

Durant realized that with his leg and back broken he would be unable to pull himself out of the chopper. He pushed the piece of tin roof away from him and revolved to defend his position through the broken windshield. Durant remembers seeing Frank sitting in the doorway opposite, about to push himself out, it was the last time he saw him.

That's when Shughart and Gordon showed up.
He didn't know either of the Delta operators well, but he recognized their faces. Seeing them gave him an enormous sense of relief. It was over. He figured they were part of of a rescue team. His next thought had been to get the radio up and operating, but now, with his rescuers already on the ground there was no need. Shughart and Gordon were calm. There was gunfire, mostly from the choppers overhead. The D-body reached in and lifted Durant out of the craft gently, one lifting his legs and the other grabbing his torso, as if they had all the time in the world, and set him down on his side by a tree. He was not in great pain. With the airframe and a wall joined behind him, and a wall to his left that ran all the way back behind the tail of the chopper, Durant was in a perfect position to cover the whole right side of the aircraft.



That's when in the book from Durants point of view (since he was the only real survivor) the mob got a lot bigger and hundreds of skinnies begun to move to the position of the crashed helicopter.

Mike Durant still thought things were under control. His leg was broken but it didn't hurt. He was lying on his back, propped against a supply kit by a small tree, using his weapon to keep back the occasional Skinnie who posked his head through the clearing. There was just about a fifteen-foot space between the wall to his left and the tail of the chopper. Durant admired the way the Delta guy had positioned him.

He could hear firing over on the other side of the helicopter. He knew Ray Frank, his copilot, was hurt but alive. And there were the two D-boys and his crew chief, Tommy Field. He wondered if Tommy was okay. He figured there were at least four men on the other side of the bird and probably more from the rescue team. It was only a matter of time before the vehicles showed up to take them out.
Then he heard one of the operators - it was Gary Gordon - cry out that he was hit. Just a quick shout anger and pain. He didn't hear the voice again.

The other one - Randy Shughart - came back to Durant's side of the bird
"Are there any weapons onboard?" he asked. There were. The crew chiefs carried M-16s. Durant told him where they were kept, and Shughart stepped into the craft and rummaged around and returned with both. He handed Durant Gordon's weapon, a CAR-15 loaded and ready to fire. "What's the support frequency on the survival radio?" Shughart asked. It was then, for the first time that it dawned on Durant that they were stranded. The pilot felt a twist of alarm in his gut. If Shughart was asking how to set up communications, it mean he and the other guy had come in on their own. They were the rescue team. And Gordon had just been shot!



The book states that Durant heard Shughart cry out among the roars of the mob that raided the crashed helicopter, Durant was nearly killed but later simply taken captive and was lucky to be released three days later, even though it was assumed in the novel that Gordon died first it is not exactly fact since even Durant himself isn't sure who died first.

Many believe it was Shughart but if it was him Gordon would have given Durant his M-21 a very distinctive weapon instead of the CAR-15, is it also stated that Gordon would never give up his CAR-15 if he was still able to fight.

In Durants own book A Company of Heroes Durant says he only heard Gordon say "damn it I'm hit," and not long later Shughart coming around and giving him a CAR-15.

In 2001 during the invasion of Afghanistan a GPS tracker was discovered with the name G Gordon written on it, it was for a long time believed that it was Gordon's one he had used in Somalia and had been somehow smuggled to Somalia but it was later turned out that it wasn't in fact Gordon's GPS but was from another helicopter pilot lost earlier in Operation Anaconda.

Why you shouldn't mess with Somali pirates

Combined Task Force 150 (shown below) is a combined force of multinational navy ships assigned to the war on terror, the thought of naval frigates fighting terrorists doesn't sound right, but that's exactly what they do, if you count Somali pirates as terrorists!



Since 2005 Somali terrorism across Africa has started and as recently as this month its returning once again to large!

For instance take the beautiful French yacht MY Le Ponant, no passengers were onboard but there were 30 crew onboard, hijacked by pirates, the crew were later freed but not until the owner of the yacht allegedly paid a ransom.

This is stranger then fiction, they literally took over the ship held everybody hostage, waited until it got out of the hands of the United States, forced the owner to personally pay a ransom and then let the hostages go, damn, the French later tracked them to land and caught all six of them.









After several more similiar incidents involving cargo ships one incident on September 25th caught my attention, the Ukrainian owned cargo ship MV Faina was heading to Kenya to deliver some military goods (33 Soviet made T-72 tanks) when 50 pirates boarded them hijacking the ship and holding all of the crew hostages (the boarding left), a large naval task force of Russian and American ships along with aircraft had forced to stop them actually unloading the dangerous cargo, but its reported that some had escaped with only small arms off it!

Still though, that was pretty darn ballsy!

More recently (today actually) the Sirius Star a Saudi FUCKING SUPERTANKER was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden along way from the "Maritime Security Patrol Area" patrolled by international warships in the Gulf of Aden.

This raises an eyebrow of what exactly they can do with that amount of motivation!

Bond movie franchise faithful to the books

A friend of mine recently thought that the Bond movies were exactly like the books, how wrong he was in the end.

Here I list all 14 Bond novels and 2 short stories to see how exactly like the movies of the same name they are.

Casino Royale: Back in 2006 the first seemingly faithful Bond movie Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig was made, roughly 80% of it is faithful to the novel. It is obviously updated from to a post Cold War setting.

Live And Let Die: The 1973 Roger Moore movie had the voodoo parts, Mr. Big the crime boss and drugs but the rest of it was completely made up.

Moonraker: Written way before Star Wars the book contained a man named Drax who ran rockets in the UK to defend against Russia (basically done up V2's), obviously they don't go into space like in the movie and have big Star Wars like laser fights.

Diamonds Are Forever: The same Bond girl who does diamond smuggling is in the movie and so are the homosexual killers, the rest of the real movie involves diamond lasers and an oil rig!

From Russia With Love: From Russia With Love the movie is nearly exactly the same as the novel (probably because Ian Fleming was still around at the time.

Dr. No: Again very like the novel except there was more action in the novel (that's a switch), and as far as I remember even involved a scene where Bond and Ryder steal that flaming dragon car thing and escape off the island using it (that would have been awesome if it had been in the movie).

Goldfinger: That famous laser scene that was about to melt Bond's balls in half in the movie was actually a buzz saw in the book (ouch), the golf scene in the movie is exactly the same as in the book but in the book they actually planned to steal the gold from Fort Knox instead of nuke it.

Thunderball: Nearly identical to the book but still has some minor differences that can still be ignored since Fleming himself helped write the screen play!

The Spy Who Loved Me: The novel only featured a minor character with steel teeth that involved into the killer Jaws, didn't involve the ship that could swallow up submarines or the submarine Lotus.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service: George Lazenby's only outing as James Bond was again very like the book except again added in action.

You Only Live Twice: You Only Live Twice (the film) was made as a movie before On Her Majesty's Service and the whole point of the book was Bond getting revenge off Blofeld for killing his wife, it like the novel is set in Japan but instead of a final showdown at a castle the final showdown is in a hollowed volcano, with ninjas fighting off goons in orange jumpsuits.

The Man With The Golden Gun: The book featured an assassin who possessed a golden gun and a third nipple, that was about it!

The Living Daylights: It wasn't a novel but a short story and is pretty much the same as the start of the movie of the same name.

So there you have it, in some cases completely faithful and at other times it appeared the directors went off on their own accord!

Russian message clear: "Don't fuck with us"

With Bush continuing to piss off the world the new rising Russia has pretty much a simple message to the Kennedy like Obama, that is not to fuck with them, Russia promises to place short-range missiles on RussiaÕs western border if Washington proceeded with its planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

The same missile system that the US has been going to build in Poland since 2007 to defend Europe against missile strikes from countries like say Iran.

Oh wait!



That's right back in 2007 when Bush was trying to go to war with Iran over their alleged uses to develop a nuclear bomb (sound familiar?) President Putin who had been Bushes ally in the War on Terror since as far back as late 2001 visited Tehran and shortly after even delivered uranium to Iran, damn that guy rocked, you see it works both ways, if you're part of the Iranian nuclear program you'll need the uranium and if you're part of the Bush Administration it may give you some excuse for launching an offensive against a country that never provoked a war!

Russia even stated they would rather have Obama president and Obama has even stated this on the National Defence Missile System.

"I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems."

Now that's someone talking sense for once in the last eight years instead of threatening World War III.

What the IRIAF consists of today

It seems that Bush has not attacked Iran, tensions have been rising since 2006 when it was even suggested that nukes be in such an attack since it was too big to invade!

What I always wanted to know was whether or not the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) would have posed a credible threat to USAF aircraft?

Back in the 1970's in the Shah's Iran the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) was spending millions on high technology from the United States, by 1979 the air force had over 450 modern aircraft even a match at the time for the Soviet Union, these aircraft included 120 F-4 Phantom II jets, 79 Grumman F-14 Tomcats (out of a scheduled 80) and even F-5's.

These were later transferred into the successor of that the IRIAF after the 1979 revolution, for the next year alot of these were grounded due to maintenance problems with several Tomcats, but on September 1980 after the Iraqi Air Force launched its invasion by using the IrAF to strike IRIAF aircraft on the ground they failed the main objective since most IRIAF were sheltered in concrete bunkers.

Iran launched the largest air operation in the whole Iran Iraq War and in the countries history, less than 24 hours later Operation Kaman 99 was launched, 60 F-14 Tomcats were launched to protect Iran some armed with the AIM-54 missile system, 30 F-4's then hit back at Iraqi air bases taking out 55% of it there and then.

For the rest of the war Iranian F-14's were used for protecting the Khark Island installation, over 300 air-to-air engagements against IrAF fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers, were fought in these areas alone between 1980 and 1988.

The IrAF had acquired some French Dassault Mirage F-1's which downed a total of three Tomcats.



In Operation Desert Storm in 1991 several Iraqi planes fled to Iran to avoid being destroyed by coalition craft, these included several Mirage F1s, MiG-25 Foxbats, MiG-21 Fishbeds, MiG-27s, Su-24MK Fencer-Ds, MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-20s, Su-22M Fitters, Su-25 Frogfoots, MiG-23s and a number of Il-76s.



Also in 1993 Russia sold Iran a number of MiG-29 Fulcrums, Iran only bought a handful of them and have not yet decommissioned the older US built F-4's and F-14's.

Wooden Planet and Vincent Wards other strange ideas

When Alien 3 was in pre production there was confusion over where the plot was going to go. After Aliens (probably the best Sci-Fi movie EVER MADE) the plot was going to have to pick up after the conclusion of that movie which had Ripley, little girl Newt, an android Bishop and marine Hicks escape alive from the colony that was infested with aliens, Vincent Ward had an idea of where to pick it up from.



Take a 14th century type monstery only in space, Wards idea was that it would be a wooden planet (go figure) with a eight feet deep atomosphere, the inside would be huge monasteries and the outside would be wheat fields and an artifical lake at the top where the Sulaco would crash into starting off the movie.

As in the final cut of Alien 3 only Ripley survives and Hicks and Newt (two awesome characters we loved from the last movie) are just written off like that, the alien escapes into the sewer and the monks obviously imprision Ripley because she is a woman and they're monks, then the alien starts killing monks and taunting Ripley and preying on monks across the wheat fields until they eventually lure the alien with glass solar panels and dump boiling glass on top of it or something like that to kill it, then Ripley just walks into the burning wheat fields and dies.







The Problem

Ward continued to pride himself on the fact that there had been nothing like this in cinema before that's probably because he didn't exactly piece it together properly, for instance how in the name of God could they build a planet solely made out of wood in the middle of space, and that one fact why wood of all things?

I could see where he was trying to go with this but there are certain things he hurt in the process, those are the laws of physics, and my intelligence.