What's a cubit?

What’s a cubic inch?  (What’s a cubit?).  It is a measure of the size of a piston engine.  Cubic inch displacement is the volume of a cylinder, measured from top dead center to bottom dead center (stroke). Another way of phasing it is displacement of a single cylinder is the cylinder’s stroke times the piston’s area.  And naturally for a multiple cylinder engine, which most of them are, the displacement of the entire engine is the displacement of one cylinder times the number of cylinders. 

   The larger the engine’s displacement, the more power it can produce.  Power comes from burning fuel.  The bigger the displacement the more fuel the engine can burn.  Rule of thumb used to be, that a well designed engine could produce one horsepower per cubic inch of displacement.  Now a days I see plenty of new cars with advertised horsepower considerable larger than one horsepower per cubic inch.  I am not sure I believe those numbers. 

   In recent times the car industry has begun to rate displacement in liters instead of cubic inches.  Handy conversion factor, there are 63 cubic inches to the liter.  A liter is a tad more than a quart.

   Car engines only have to produce full rated horsepower for short periods of time, say the time between when the traffic light goes green until the car reaches the speed limit (or perhaps a little bit more).  Then the throttle is eased back to probably a quarter or less of full rated power.  It doesn’t take much power to keep a car rolling at a steady speed.  If a car engine were operated at full rated power continuously it would break down after a few minutes.  Engines for aircraft and boats need to produce substantial power to keep the aircraft or boat moving.  Air or water drag is far greater than road drag in a car. 

Advice for Joe Biden

 Joe,  You don't ever tell the Russians, or any of our other enemies, that we are not planning military action.  You let them guess what we might do.  They might, or might not, fear US military action, but you want to leave 'em guessing.  We might just scare them off if we kept our mouth shut.  

Note:  If you want to get Putin's attention, transfer a US armored division into the Ukraine.  We do have an extra armored division don't we?

Capitalism vs Communism

 “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  Winston Churchill said this. 

 

We used to call it communism, but the Russians blackened the name of communism so thoroughly that lefties now call themselves socialists instead of communists. What ever you call it, it goes back to Karl Marx, writing in the 1850s and 1860s, very early in the industrial revolution.  Things were rougher back in those early days. Marx observed that the capitalists, those who owned the businesses, took home a lot more money than the ordinary workers did.  Marx called this unjust (and a bunch of other things too) and proposed his solution.  Private ownership of nearly everything would be made illegal.  Government ownership of “the means of production” would pay everyone in the enterprise the same wages. 

    This sounded pretty good, and the Russians, the North Koreans, the Cubans, and the Columbians, and some others too, fell for it.  The results were not good.  “The means of production” were operated by government bureaucrats, who are never very good at anything, especially something difficult like management.  Lacking anyone to cut deals with suppliers, and truckers, hire and fire, and take risks, the businesses languished, lost money, did layoffs, or went out of business.  Government wages were skimpy at best.  Production fell off.  Plenty of misery was created.  “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”. 

    Capitalism has incentives.  The capitalists are strongly motivated to make the business a success, mostly because they wanted the money, and partly because they wanted the fame that came to successful capitalists. The more valuable workers get pay raises to keep them working for the business, as opposed to quitting and going to work for a competitor.   With everyone in the business motivated to make it a success, it will succeed.  That is why they say the streets in America are paved with gold.   

December 7th, the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

    A most important event in World War II.  When World War II broke out, with the German invasion of Poland, the United States made a very firm resolution to stay out of this new European War.  We had suffered serious casualties in World War I and had gotten little to nothing for it.  Part of little to nothing was the Senate, led by Senator Lodge, refused to ratify the League of Nations treaty that Wilson brought home from Paris.  Be that as it may, the Americans were NOT going to join another European war, no matter what.  The American establishment, starting with President Franklin Roosevelt and working down, saw Hitler as an existential threat and wanted to deal with him.  But the voters were dead set against that idea, and Roosevelt, probably the strongest 20^th century president, was unable to change voter’s minds.

   Pearl Harbor changed all that, overnight.  The word that the Japanese had sunk our battle fleet, with 2400 casualties, in time of peace, with out a declaration of war, was infuriating.  The country went from isolationism to “let’s fix the Japanese” in less than a day.   

   In actual fact, it took a very stupid Japanese government to do Pearl Harbor.  There was plenty of stuff they could pick up, cut off European colonies that had plenty of oil to keep Japan running.  We would have sent some nasty grams about this, but before Pearl Harbor there was no way we would have done anything more than nasty grams about Japanese aggression.  After Pearl Harbor we were mad and wanted revenge.  We got it. 

   At the time, the United States was the most powerful country in the world.  We had an educated loyal population of maybe 120 million, a continental territory, plenty of natural resources, a huge industrial base, and a Navy about as big as Japan’s.  In short we were an 800 pound gorilla, and the Japanese kicked us in the teeth.  Not smart. 

   Winston Churchill had been working his hardest to persuade the Americans to come and help him deal with Hitler.  Churchill could be very persuasive, he had established a good working relationship with Roosevelt, he was well known thru his writings, but until Pearl Harbor he had not been able to talk the Americans into joining Britain in the war against Hitler.  Churchill heard the news of Pearl Harbor over a regular radio broadcast.  He immediately called Roosevelt, expressed his sympathies, and offered a declaration of war against Japan that very day.   He ended his day convinced that the United States would get into the war against Hitler and supply the combat power needed to defeat the Nazis.  Churchill wrote in The Grand Alliance “Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Breaking the line

   Crossing the Tee did not work in sailing ship days, partly because sailing ships could not sail into the wind.  At best a square rigged sailing warship might point up 35 degrees into the wind, leaving 55 degrees to go before being head to wind.  In short, there was 110 degrees of course where sailing fleets could not sail, out of 360 degrees for a full circle.  Whereas a later steam fleet could steam any course the admiral desired.

   Sailing fleets sailed and fought in line ahead, at least after the British took out the Spanish Armada back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.  In fact the British Fighting Instructions to its captains were very firm, not to say fierce about staying in line, not breaking out the line for any reason whatsoever, on pain of court martial.  If my fleet is in line ahead I can do the enemy a lot more damage because all of my guns bear on the enemy.  Not only that, I will take less damage from enemy fire hitting my sides, which are stout and nearly shot proof, than a single broadside delivered to the vulnerable stern, one of which can knock all the fight out of a ship. 

    Sailing ship actions depended upon the wind.  The British preferred to hold the weather gauge, (to be to windward of the enemy)  This permitted them to control the action, they could engage when they felt the time was ripe, or not engage but keep the enemy at battle stations for days.  The French preferred to hold the lee gauge (to be down wind of the enemy).  This permitted a French admiral, who saw his fleet getting beat, to order a turn downwind, a square rigger’s best point of sailing, and get away. 

   If both sides stayed in line ahead and fired on each other, in many cases neither side could do much harm to the enemy.  Lot of powder got burned, lot of victory claims were made, but nothing was decided.

   Nelson understood this before Trafalgar.  He decided to try “breaking” the enemy line, having a lot of his ships get thru the enemy line and then bring two broadsides to bear on each enemy ship, the broadside of the ships that broke thru the line and the ships that didn’t.  This was totally against Fighting Instructions, hence Nelson’s famous comment    “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”  At Trafalgar Nelson in 100 gun Victory broke the French line in one place and Cuthbert Collingwood, his second in command broke the French line in another place. The result was annihilation of the French fleet, handing control of the sea to the British for the rest of the Napoleonic wars.

Handguns inapropriate for teen agers

 The Crumbley parents are facing involuntarily manslaughter charges, probably because Mr. Crumbley bought the handgun his kid used to murder four classmates and wound a lot more.  The story I get is Mr. Crumbley went shopping for the handgun with his son.  

   I don't think teenagers need or should be allowed to have handguns.  Want to teach the kid to shoot?  Get a .22 rifle, preferably a bolt action or a lever action rather than semi auto.  Or a .410 shotgun. 

Crossing the Tee.

A century ago crossing the Tee was the battle winning naval maneuver.   Warships, (battleships mostly) traveled in line ahead, each ship followed the ship ahead of it.  Full firepower was available to both sides, the guns were all mounted in turrets that could traverse 180 degrees.  Dead ahead, not so good.  Only the lead ship could fire dead ahead.  The ship behind the lead ship could fire somewhat to port or to starboard, but could not fire dead ahead lest it hit the ship leading the line ahead.   

   To cross the enemy's Tee you brought your line ahead fleet in front of, and at right angles to, the enemy.  Then was all of your guns could fire on the enemy and only the few forward guns of the enemy lead ship, four or maybe six, could return fire.  

The classic maneuver was used at Jutland, the first and only head to head clash of modern battleship fleets.  Canny old admiral Jellicoe, commanding the British fleet, managed to cross the German's Tee twice that day.  Crossing the Tee remained an important maneuver up and thru World War II when the aircraft carrier became the important capital ship.  Carriers were expected to stay well out of gun range of an enemy fleet and let her aircraft do the work.