The F4U was a great plane… but… The Hellcat was better. The Corsair might have been faster but the ‘Cat had the energy addition rate. The late Spits were fine planes but… Hell’s teeth by then they’d shark-jumped. The Tempest was (and which Tempest do you mean – the 2 or the 5?) way too late to make a big impact. The P-51s had the range to go to Berlin and back. The Spit was a great defensive fighter but it was not capable of going on the offensive. The P-51 was (read Johnnie Johnson on the importance of offensive fighter operations). By the start of 1945 1/3 of all German war work was AAA. Ever wonder why? The 8th AF Mustangs were caning the FW-190s and whatnot of the Luftwaffe. Caning them.

The P-38 almost got there but… It was built to a contract for a very small number of craft and it took Lockheed a lot of time to re-jiggle it for mass production. The P-47 was dreadful. The initial test-pilot said “It can dive great which is good because can it hell climb”. Designed as an interceptor and almost exclusively used as a fighter-bomber. Ever wonder why?

No, the Mustang is king of the hill. A Spit 8, 9 or 14 could wax it in a furball but (critical point) not over Berlin.

P-51D-25 – almost the Sabre. Now that was something special.

“To-day was a beautiful day, the sky was a brilliant
Blue for the first time for weeks and weeks
But posters flapping on the railings tell the fluttered
World that Hitler speaks, that Hitler speaks
And we cannot take it in and we go to our daily
Jobs to the dull refrain of the caption ‘War’
Buzzing around us as from hidden insects
And we think ‘This must be wrong, it has happened before,
Just like this before, we must be dreaming”

Louis MacNeice, “Autumn Journal”

It was the Thirties that gave us the really great Swing bands. I’ve little to no time for the dance bands that swang (the Dorsey brothers, Glen Miller and so on), but oh lawdy, the jazz bands that swang… Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington.

Jazz was mainstream. High school students cut classes to form queues so long they wrapped around the block (several times) to get in the concerts. And Goodman, who took his music (too?) seriously he asked his audience to stop dancing in the aisles and to revere his music.

Did cars ever look better? Was fashion ever kinder to women? Was architecture ever more grand yet more human?

And of course, none of this says anything about the really great dance bands in the big London hotels. jack Hylton, anyone?

Seriously, if you want to know what was being played in the great London hotel ballrooms in the ’30s, try listening to R2 on Sunday eves from 22.00.

Give me a time portal. You won’t see me for the dust.

SpaceShipOne
The Internet
The handheld computer

but I take your point. And like the thirties we have rampant anti-capitalism and millenialist political cults with useful idiots to advocate them. I once wrote of Margot Wallstrom’s blog that the 2020s would be the 1930s: maybe I overestimated.

‘As for the 1930s, what’s not to love about airships and flying-boats?’

You mean apart from the crashing and the inefficiency and the unreliability? Apart from that, I guess there’s nothing not to love about either one – and at least you could smoke on any one of the international airships and flying boats, and get a decent drink besides.

llater,

llamas

I’m not sure that Head Gardener (it was spelt in capitals in those days and was roughly the equivalent of Regimental Sergeant-Major in the below-stairs pecking order) was quite what we’d call ‘working class’ nowadays, but there you are.

Suburbs with houses with drives. Crittall windows.

Gillette building.

What have we got?

Very few people owned motorcars in the 1930′s, 40′s or even 50′s. Mass car ownership did not really get started til the 60′s.