DC Tom

Uh, yeah. That was the doctrine: one group per carrier, high group takes the near target. That's how targets were allocated. McCluskey blew the target allocation, because he didn't know naval dive bombing doctrine, because he was a fighter pilot leading the scout bomber squadron. And there was a very specific reason for that doctrine: because the doctrine of carrier warfare at the time was to disable the other fleet's carriers, to gain air superiority over the enemy fleet. Doctrine specified an even target allocation of carriers between groups, because to achieve air superiority they had to hit all the flight decks, not just have everyone diving on the first one they saw. And McCluskey, not understanding that, almost blew the battle. If Best hadn't been cognizant enough of McCluskey's mistake and pulled his flight out, no one would have dived on Akagi, meaning the Japanese would have possessed two operational carriers (him, and Hiryu) after the initial attack, with a significantly greater number of operational strike aircraft (at least two full deck spots). That's a significantly different situation for Fletcher and Spruance to handle than Hiryu alone with a weakened composite air group. Yes, I know, I only have book knowledge. But I know the doctrine of the period...and more importantly, so did Best, so I'm going to agree with the experienced squadron commander who retrieved the battle from McCluskey's error. Except they didn't. They held their dives. It was how they were trained, and fought. Usually pilots didn't see debris, because they rarely had huge chunks of debris such as entire planes magically decelerated by flak coming at them, and things usually moved too quickly to see and react. But dive bomber pilots, of all air forces in the era, held their dives in the attack.

That one antifa idiot at the end...I can just hear him saying "Dungeon master, is he allowed to do that?"

It's extraordinarily difficult. It's tempered by having a greater-than-average knowledge of filmmaking, so I understand the need to trade-off historical accuracy for technical or narrative reasons (e.g. Dunkirk, which made trade-offs in accuracy for a typically Nolanesque warped timeline, that served to capture the "spirit" of Dunkirk without a pretense to being a documentary narrative). Basically can't watch most war movies (I still haven't seen U-571.) And Roland Emmerich, in particular...his tradeoffs between accuracy and filmmaking suck. Badly. Take, for example, just before the snippet of the trailer I referenced above. Starting at 1:37. Dive bomber pilot in a vertical dive sees plane hit by AAA 100 yards in front of him. Flaming plane starts to slow down, he's heading directly for it. Cut to pilot's face, cut to pilot's hand moving the stick. Pilot swerves around flaming plane, continues dive. What's wrong with that? 1) Planes do not dive in dense groups like that. They dive singly, or by flight. 2) Dive bombers do not dive at 90 degrees. 3) When a diving plane is hit, it does not slow-down mid-dive. They swerve, their dive steepens. They don't lose velocity. (That's a really stupid error. There's plenty of archival footage of planes being shot down that shows this.) 4) If it did, a pilot wouldn't have time to swerve out of the way. 5) If he did, he'd swerve far more than he does in the clip. 6) Dive bombers held their dives. They didn't move to avoid "mid-air debris" - partially because there usually wasn't such a thing, but mostly because they're diving to hit a target. Once they nose over, they're trying to hold their sight on the target and maneuver with it to put a bomb on it. Diving from 18k feet, they have 2-3 minutes to sight the target, put the reticule on it, figure course, speed, and rate of change of both (in their heads, no computers), and decide how to release the bomb. If they maneuver in a dive, they miss. Now, why is all that nitpicky ***** "wrong?" Because they're unnecessary trade-offs. An accurate scene would be 30-60 seconds of a pilot in a dive. (30-60 seconds as a trade-off for 2-3 minutes). Cut between pilot's face and his view out the windscreen repeatedly, with increasing rapidness. No other planes near him, flak coming up. As the scene progresses, tighten each cut. Ship gets closer, you get closer to the pilot's face showing more and more stress. Ship's getting larger in the sight and on the screen. Flak's getting closer. Scene gets tenser. Pilot finally drops his bomb, pulls up, and goes roaring away at 3000 feet. That captures the solutide and tension of that sort of combat flying, until the sudden release of that tension. It also captures the focus and the tunnel vision that the pilot would develop in completing his mission (with the increasing tightening of the shots). That's dramatic, tense, and historically accurate within the constraints of good filmmaking. The choices Emmerich makes, above, are just plain stupid in comparison. He clutters the screen with multiple extraneous objects and exaggerates details to give the illusion of excitement. He creates unrealistic situations (the magically slowing plane, and unrealistic movement) to generate the illusion of tension. And he does so because he confuses spectacle for drama. Because he's a ***** sociopath of a director. And yes, I'm saying I could write a better Midway movie than Roland Emmerich. But that's an extremely low bar.

Or...Otisburgh?

It's not the CGI that's the problem, it's how it's used to create a spectacle rather than tell a story. Emmerich is the worst of the bunch. There's no emotional depth to his movies, just shallow manipulation and superficial stimulation masquerading as feeling. Literally, the definition of sociopathy. Personally, I can't judge him...but he is a sociopathic filmmaker.

Immediately after the officers leave, somebody robs the place and empties the cash drawer, and they complain "Where were the police?" They were in the extreme elsewhere, so you'd feel safe.

Go ahead then. Submit your flying broom. Tell me how that works out.

It's not the first time a brainless idiot has erroneously called me wrong.

I think the original poster meant "Too bad Tom Brady wasn't with him" in the sense that Mr. Bundchen could have laid hands on him or given him some magic water and healed him on the spot.

Like I said, it's a solid basalt cap out here. Earthquake waves travel far. The Mineral quake was felt in Canada, north of Toronto.

"Please don't publish photos that can be used as evidence in court." But they're peaceful. Sure.

Genius would have been doing it on his day off.

The big difference is that federal programs can't accept donations - it violates all sorts of regulations and has the potential for ethics violations. Even a congresscritter can't donate such - that could constitute bribery of government workers, and certainly violates separation of powers. Same reason trucks full of private donations were turned back from New Orleans after Katrina. Your church donating to another private organization in Mexico is completely different.

Except McClusky screwed up. He was a fighter pilot who didn't know naval bomber doctrine (he was promoted to air group commander just before Midway, and didn't have time to learn). During the ultimate bombing of the Kido Butai, he was leading the scout bomber squadron in the low position, and should have flown on to bomb Akagi while the bomber squadron in the high position dove on Kaga (as doctrine at the time was one squadron per enemy carrier). Instead, he incorrectly dove the scout bombers on Kaga, while the bomber squadron correctly dove on Kaga as well. That would have left Akagi completely uncovered, except the VB-6 squadron leader saw the error and pulled his flight out of his dive on Kaga. And instead dove his three planes on Akagi - which, from the trailer, is one of the things the new movie gets right. At 1:42 in the trailer, there's three planes diving (at roughly the right angle - about 70 degrees) on a carrier with the island to port and the Katakana letterア on the aft deck. That carrier's Akagi, so that's certainly Dick Best's flight. That and Ensign George Gay being the sole survivor of Torpedo 8 looks like the only things the movie gets right.

And cheating.

I remember the quake we had in VA about 10 years ago. Was at work, the desk started shaking gently. About ten seconds later, it got more energetic and things started bouncing up and down. People started running to the elevator (idiots) to evacuate the building, except me and another guy who looked at each other and said "So that's an earthquake? Let's do it again, so we can be sure." (Because science is repeatable, and amateur scientists are idiots.) Was also interesting because of the ten-second delay between the P- and S-waves. Earthquakes travel pretty far in the eastern US, since it's basically a solid basaltic plate, so the time difference meant it was relatively far away, so feeling it that strongly meant it was relatively strong (for the east). And DC still hasn't recovered from the "disaster."

Not difficult, so much as boring. It's not all it's quacked up to be. (If anyone wants to report that pun to the moderators and ask I be banned for it, I understand completely.)

The USPTO has some standards. Rowling couldn't submit a magic broom patent, for example, because "magic" isn't patentable. She'd have to describe how it works. At least one of those patents from Hedge's link shouldn't have been awarded, as it was a perpetual motion machine.

You better not be talking about his "I used to be able to work constructively with segregationists" comments. Because working with people you disagree with isn't racism, it's maturity.

I rest my case.

Well that's just stupid. Ducks are lousy public speakers. They make mistakes all the time.

The answer "ALL OF THEM" is clearly incorrect, as Millard Fillmore never made a mistake at the mic. That the microphone hadn't yet been invented is only relevant in that presidents that predated the microphone - such as Millard Fillmore - clearly could not have made any mistakes at a microphone. Which makes the provided answer of "ALL OF THEM" not just incorrect, but stupidly incorrect.

Which was not specified in the post I quoted, was it?

Yeah, I want to see Roland Emmerich thrown to a pack of rabid ferrets. I'd watch that movie.

"They're going to have their Confederate flags flying and their license plates and all kinds of trouble making..." NOOOOOOO!!!!!! Not LICENSE PLATES!!!!!! Go drunk, Chris, you're home.