Harp
I'll Lock Up
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- Chicago, IL US
Me too. My interest in these sweaters is linked to my interest in the Armed Services and my interest in history.
I remember the end of Leonid Brezhnev. I think he was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who only lasted a short time. I also remember following with interest the Falkland Islands conflict, being pretty much equally interested in both the Royal Navy and British Army.
I once attended a NATO briefing as a graduate student after the Falklands. A very impressive Royal Air Force Group Captain led the Alliance team
which also comprised a German naval commander; an Italian naval commander; and an American commander and naval aviator.
A thorough briefing on Warsaw Pact naval capabilitiy followed a somewhat shallow review of the Falklands-shallow because the audience
mostly comprised civilians, college kids without prior service and the junket was something of a NATO public relations ploy aimed at the campus crowd.
I was somewhat surprised that the American pilot had a rather parochial aircraft carrier perspective; seeming oblivious of the exocet missile capability
and how technology had radicalized naval surface warfare. If either of the two British carriers had been struck and sunk, a 1.5 billion pound carrier downed
by a $30k exocet, a revolutionary episode comparable to the Merrimack-Monitor duel of the American Civil War would have resulted, when all wooden
hull navies were rendered technically obsolete. A good brief nevertheless. I remember the RAF officer deftly shifting discussion away from the
Falklands campaign to annual defense expenditure-the Royal Marines got short shrift, and I know a Gurkha outfit had led a beach assault,
but nothing said about them either. Wearing an olive green commando sweater around today, weather is suppose to dip to 40* but overall quite mild.