Friday, September 07, 2007

Today In History: Won't say "Uncle!"

The Jerries give London a drubbing. London gives the Jerries the finger.

September 7th 2007 marks the 67th anniversary of the start of the London Blitz.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

In celebration of the anniversary, I think I'll start up European Air War and have my RAF pilot (Wing Commander Nigel DeFault) shoot down a bunch of Jerry He-111s over London.

Pip-pip, cheerio!

Comrade Misfit said...

You want some history, Tam, come take a ride on a Super Connie in the 1950s with Arthur Godfrey:

http://tinyurl.com/39ljpy

I clipped the two videos there to my blog, but you can find more on YouTube.

Anonymous said...

One of those moments in history. Never have so few...

I picture a very proper British officer taking a moment for himself and whipping out a very snide " Hallo, Jerry " with mid digit extended now thanks to Tamara.

Anonymous said...

Make me want to watch "Battle of Britain" again.

I only watched it this past Monday.

Tokarev

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_(film)

Anonymous said...

Ben, the very proper British officer would know that the mid-digit only is insufficient. Historically we prefer the first two fingers, back of the hand towards the intended recipient of the insult.

This predates Churchill's V-sign or that bloody hippy peace gesture.

Anonymous said...

JQ,

Granted, giving the forks is certainly the British thing to do. But giving the Germans the finger as described in the original post was what I saw in my mind's eye.

BobG said...

Actually giving them the "ok" hand signal might have worked also; it is the symbol for arseloch.

Anonymous said...

The Jerries got worse than fingers: they could get on the Brit frequencies (easier than they could get on their own!) and used to make a little friendly talk ("We don't want war...let's get together...") The English responses were such that even a "Narzi" shouldn't have had to hear it.

jeff said...

When I lived in Europe, I was chatting with the pilots of some old WW2 airchines that were on hand for an air show. I commented on the Spitfire, and he mentioned that they had intended to bring the Lancaster over as well, but the Germans wouldn't give them clearance to overfly Germany.