BOC: ME262

[Jon Jarrett]

        Jazza does his normal bit of replying to a thread long after it's
dropped... Argument a little while back about what point ME262 was trying
to make. I don't think it's standing anywhere on politics really, it's
more about getting past the politics to the personal dilemma facing Von
Ondine (which has to be Imaginos-related, but I don't yet know how):
"Must these Englishmen live that I might die?" Up in the sky Nazism or
whatever doesn't matter: maybe it should, but if it's his life against
theirs, and if the evil of the regime means he ought to let the bombs
fall, he's not going to bother being moral...
        Other sidethreads: it kind of makes the plane the source of his
power, which of course it is in a real sense, but also in a justificatory
sense: this is the 'Prince of Turbojet', after all, and the sheer ability
to destroy in the name of any cause that the plane displays is all the
excuse it needs to unleash it... Sort of like an airborne `Black Blade'
with a patriotic edge.
        If you really need politics in it, then I reckon it's patriotism
before all else. After all, `Von Ondine' is a noble and therefore
statistically less likely to be a Nazi.. But on the other hand,
considering the detail errors elsewhere in the song I doubt very much
that the subtext is that carefully put together...
        Errors, for the pedants (like me!): the 262 didn't fly at
night, except a very few two-seater versions: but Ondine is alone surely.
The British didn't use Fortresses except for ECM work this late in the
war, and the Americans only flew them in daytime. No 262 carried both
cannon (`gray-silver slugs') and the R4M rocket installation in the
`snout', and those with that installation never tested it in combat
because of the blinding effect of twenty-four rockets firing off from
right before the pilot's eyes. Not to say Von Ondine couldn't be flying an
experimental one for an emergency mission, but special pleading required,
I think.
        Hmmm. Am I taking this all a bit too seriously?
                                                        JAZZA
 /_________________________________________________________________________\
 |         Jon Jarrett, Pembroke College, Cambridge                        |
 |         (01223 460728)                 jaj20 at hermes.cam.ac.uk           |
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 |  "There is a certain pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know" |
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