Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for April 05, 2023

A bee? Tanks, but no tanks.

it is thought that a spider in the cockpit caused the crash of a Dutch Airforce F16 in 2006. In fairness, the suspected spider was a camel spider and you really wouldn’t want to be sharing a small space with one of them…

He tanked it.

“ᴡᴀs ɪᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴏᴜʀsɂ”

To bee or not to bee, tanks, I’ll pass.

LOL!

Half a bee, philosophically-Must, ipso facto, half not be.But half the bee has got to be-A vis-a-vis its entity, d’you see?

But can a bee, be said to be-Or not to be, an entire bee-When half the bee is not a bee-Due to some ancient injury?

(Eric Idle, John Cleese)

My newspaper runs this without color and it makes no sense. Cannot recognize a tank nor camo uniform.

The scene on California State Route 163 in San Diego.

Now the zombies come.

I wish I knew Russian. The caption would read, “The war in Ukraine, Captain. I never saw it coming.”

My wife’s uncle did lose a tank in World War II. He had malaria, “stole” it and forgot where he parked it. It’s probably in some town square in a small Italian village somewhere.

2 bee or not 2 bee.

That’s as bad as when you spot a spider crawling across the windshield..inside…

It was a drone.

His military career just might bee in the tank.

LOL!!!

There were two of them. To differentiate one was called A Bee and the other B Bee.

Back before thermal imaging and infra red optics (before the M1 tank was fielded) I saw several tanks flip during night training at Ft Irwin, CA. It was nearly impossible for the tank drivers to maneuver in the wadis’ without lights. It still happens from time to time from what I read. (I was there 80-82).

Just think how bad it would have turned out if it had been a spider!

Very funny, the way comics should always be, thanks Dave…

Mud dauber nest on the hatch.

“BEE in the Tank!!! I repeat- BEE in the TANK!!, over” “Roger that, but I wasn’t scheduled for Tank duty today, Over.”

It’s Spring!!! Tank planting season.

Russian tank driver?

Old memory, I read (history/fiction ???) that some soldiers disabled an enemy tank crew by shoving a bee or wasp nest down the tank’s gun barrel.

That’s usually what would happen…

…inside the tank?

Bee-lieve it or not!

Well, this joke tanked.

Another great day…..https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nZE-uNsNzNE

In Eric Frank Russell 1957 science fiction novel Wasp, a Terran is being recruited to take part in an undercover war on an enemy planet. He is shown three news clippings:

“…

“The third detailed an automobile accident. Three killed, one seriously injured, the car a complete wreck. The sole survivor had died nine hours later.”

The recruiter tells him about the crash, "We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through the window and started buzzing around his face. … The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn’t even use it. Nevertheless, it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap.

“’I see the point,’ agreed [the protagonist], ‘but where do I come in?’

“‘Right here,’ said [the recruiter]. ‘We want you to become a wasp.’”

( The 1986 Introduction to the novel, by sf author Jack L. Chalker, mentions that:

“During World War II, Russell, along with many other writers, found himself in the service. In Russell’s case, he explained once in a letter, he found himself attached to military intelligence in London, where a number of other past and future writers also worked, including Ian Fleming. There, in Whitehall, they and their wily bosses spent the war dreaming up nasty tricks to play against the Germans and the Japanese. Among the schemes they actually pulled off were the notorious ‘man who never was’ operation which convinced Hitler that the allies would invade at Calais and the operation … in which rubber dummies parachuted out of a night sky, set off firecrackers that tied up most of a German division the night of June 5, 1944, pulling them away from the Normandy beaches.” )

IMHO fun novel.