Comments on: Cabbage crates coming over the briny?

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:02:48 +0000

Wikipedia: The F.B.5's performance proved to be inadequate for its intended role; although its forward firing machine gun was a great advantage, the fighter did not have the speed or rate of climb to pursue its quarry. By the end of 1915 it was outclassed by the Fokker Eindecker. Some examples of the improved Vickers F.B.9 were sent to France, pending sufficient supplies of the Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b, but the active career of the "Gunbus" was soon over. The remaining examples were mostly used as trainers. They also mention 50 of the later FB9 being used as trainers.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:39:28 +0000

I did think of that, but the FB5 went out of active service in 1916. Maybe it was still being used for training? 'Bus also could have been retained as a generic name, I suppose.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:01:21 +0000

The Bus may be a reference to the Vickers FB5, known as the Vickers Gunbus, the world's first purpose-built fighter. Interestingly, the nickname survives to this day; the VC-10 is known as the Vickers Funbus.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:21:27 +0000

Lester:

Swung dash, could be!

Thanks for the attempted posts ... it's just an idea for the back-burner.

By: Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:19:56 +0000

"Tilde." It's called a "tilde."
I never stop being helpful.
A pancake is when you come in at the perfect speed for a landing run, and settle onto your landing gear --and it turns out you were still a few feet of the ground. Oops. As a fairly common form of accident, it does show why landing gear design was so much more complicated than it seems.

By: Lester

Lester — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:18:15 +0000

Tilde. So it's a chicken-tilde-fixing, clearly, in order to be unambiguous to a typesetter. (Any mechanical device which fixes a chicken to Tilde has got to be pretty bizarre...)

More seriously, maybe it's not a tilde, but a swung dash as a mark of omission - in which case the OED's source may have delicately glossed over a properly nautical obscenity, perhaps?

Speaking of which, that chicken-*******-fixing device otherwise known as my computer has THREE TIMES NOW thrown away my attempt to comment further on bomb shelters and construction dates. Short answer: sorry, no evidence on mine. It sounds like a superb measure, but probably a very difficult one to study now most private shelter builders have moved or died. Maybe Mass Observation or the building industry's trade press might provide clues as to waves of private shelter construction? If only there were a large body of searchable private diaries...