Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Paper Skies" channel.

  1. It's not very well known that Soviet armament engineers were some very talented people. We largely don't know who they were because of "state secrets". For example in small arms, the Kalashnikov infantry rifle (AK-47), was invented by the Soviets during World War 2. Now used by guerilla forces worldwide, because of the ruggedness of this weapon; dip it in mud and it will still fire. Decrying the appalling mass-infantry wave tactics more redolant of the Battle of the Somme in World War 1 by the Soviets tactical command, by mid-war the Soviet soldier was well equipped with up-to-date weapons, often better than his German opponents (for example, plenty of automatic or blowback reloading infantry assalt rifles), instead of the World War 1 era bolt action Mauser, still often used by German infantry.
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  2. The book, "Animal Farm" by George Orwell (Eric Blair) was inspired by his experience of being involved with the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side, in which the military forces of the Soviet Union were heavily involved in. Possibly, Blair talked to Soviet citizens he met while serving in Spain about the Soviet Union (Blair was an ambulance driver as well as a journalist). Blair later wrote the book "Animal Farm" inspired by the Bolshevik revolution there in 1917. He got it quite spot on, although his work was fiction. Definitely not for children.
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  3. Many Western allied airmen drank where possible, during WW2 as well. Where RAAF Australian aircrews flying the minelaying PBY Catalina flying boats long haul flights over the Pacific (Black Cats), had a way of cooling their bottles of beer in the hot Pacific tropics; they would pour petrol (aviation fuel) in a canvas bag and leave the beer bottle submerged in the petrol (with the beer cap on of course). The petrol, being a volatile hydrocarbon evaporated faster than water, when you sling your bag under the wing, cooling the beer almost as well as being in a refrigerator.
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  4. "Shit, my MiG-25 is burning up. Coolant tanks must've been drained by the ground crews 😅"
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  5. Seems a supreme stupidity to put so many high ranking naval officers on the same flight. Why was that done? They had a conference that got them on the same chartered plane? I bet it was a bad week for the Kremlin.
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  6. No one wants the USSR to come back, except Putin. The best thing about the USSR (other than gifted individuals; scientists and artists and engineers) were the landings on Venus. This author is quite right; the USSR was not a normal country and while a few brilliant people incredibly managed to do their great work, some of them somehow surviving in gulags up to 10 years before being pardoned. Anyone who wants the time of Stalin to return is either lying, mad, stubbornly trapped in an ideology or a psychopath. Or all of the above.
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