Giving You the New Sci-F- cover for Kindle USA

Kindle USA & Paperback

GO, GO, GO, with HMS Thunder Child.

The Last Days of Thunder Child is sporting a new front cover for kindle download only. The book image remains the same.

Giving you a wonderful pastiche of the old retro Sci-Fi story you all know and love.

An adaptation of War of the Worlds - a minor pastiche of H.M.S. Thunder Child and her mythical battle against three of the Martian edifice fighting machines.

The pastiche story is called:

The Last Days of Thunder Child.

        

           By C. A. Powell

It takes the reader aboard the Victorian ironclad and is set in the year of 1898.

You will be taken on adventure by sea and across land with Mister Albert Stanley, the ministry of defense man who delivers Captain McIntosh his orders.

The old English civil servant and the Scottish captain of Thunder Child embark upon a journey of dreadful discovery and cold realization.

Get it now! $2.99 download KINDLE USA on Amazon.com

Giving You Queen Cartimandua of Roman Britain and the Iceni Warrior Queen!

Queen Cartimandua lived during the time of Queen Boudicca - the Iceni Warrior Queen. Cartimandua was a queen of the Brigantes and ruled  for 26 plus years. She was more successful than Boudicca yet less famous. This is because she was friends with the Roman Empire. Even in 69 AD during the Year of the Four Emperors - when Cartimandua was overthrown by her divorced husband, she still escaped into exile deep within the Roman Empire. 

In the story of Meeting Boudicca; Cartimandua tells three Roman guards a tale of how she once met Boudicca after she was defeated and before the warrior queen committed suicide. It is a tale of intrigue that Cartimandua relates to her guards before departing Roman Britain to go further into the sanctuary of the mighty empire and drift out of recorded history.

The Splendid Sabre F86 Jet Fighter of the Korean War

The F86 Sabre Jet was a fabulous piece of American engineering that gained legendary status during the Korean War of the early 1950s. It gained notorious recognition during various dogfight duels against Soviet Migs in Mig Alley along the North Korean/China border. 

The Sabre F86 took on the might of the Soviet-built Mig jets during the Korean War. Many of the Soviet Migs were flown by Soviet instructors who locked horns with the American Sabre pilots. The Soviets found themselves up against better opposition then they bargained for. The exploits of the American fighter pilots have become legend against North Korea's Soviet piloted Migs. 

Sabre F86 during Korean War

Often dogfights went across the border of North Korea into China's Manchuria Province where many of the Mig airfields were. On one occasion, an American Sabre pilot got into a dogfight that took him over into China as he pursued his Mig opponent. He was led over an enemy airfield where he managed to shoot down the Mig fighter. As the Soviet crashed into the airfield it took out a line of Migs standing idol on the airfield. 

American Sabre F86 Jet and North Korean (Soviet-built and flown Mig)

The American Sabre F86 was a wonderfully crafted jet with streamline development that went through further advance and modification during the daring dogfights in the notorious Mig Alley of the Korean War. It is a truly wonderful aircraft that attracts great attention even to this day.

HMS Thunderer - The Victorian Battleship's accidents



HMS Thunderer's starboard boiler
exploded in September 1876



H.M.S. Thunderer was the sister ship of H.M.S. Devastation. She  was an early British Victorian battleship  that suffered two major accidents in her early years. The first being an explosion on the 2nd September 1876.



One of her two boilers was over heating due to pressure valves corroding in the upper section. This was on her starboard boiler. Also this boiler's pressure gauge was out of order so it was simply shut off. Such a thing is inconceivable today and its hard to think it was then, but as the starboard boiler began to over heat, the men in the engine room were unaware of the serious and deadly conditions they were working in. The commanding officer was down in the engine room at the time. (Perhaps he was there because of the fault.)

While the commanding officer was in the vicinity, the top half of the boiler exploded killing 15 men instantly, including the commanding officer. A further 70 men were seriously injured, of which another 30 of these would die later from the wounds they suffered. 

As a result of this accident, new protocols were introduced concerning engine checks and stability - careful monitoring that had to be maintained and procedures concerning engine shutdown.

Then on 2nd of January 1879 a second accident aboard H.M.S. Thunderer, brought about further changes within the Royal Navy. This time with the phasing out of muzzle loading turret guns to breech loaders with longer barrels. On this particular day after the New Year's Day, H.M.S. Thunderer was in the Sea of Mamora on a gunnery exercise.

H.M.S. Thunderer was testing her guns when the left hand cannon of the fore turret had misfired. The right hand gun had gone off but the left had not. The gunners inside the turret may have held their ears as the two guns were fired and so be unaware that only one gun had fired. When the muzzle loaders were wheeled back inside the turret, each gun barrel was lowered to hatches in the floor where ducting led down to the armourers below. They would slide a charge up the ducting into the waiting muzzle followed by a shell.

Fore turret destruction by left hand guns double loading.

The gun crew and the armourers below deck would have been unaware that as the guns were rolled forward out of the turret's gun ports, the left hand cannon had an explosive and shell sitting upon another explosive and shell. It was double loaded.

The order to fire was given and as the guns ignited the left hand one exploded in the turret. The 12" gun of 38 tons of steel in the confines of metal walls was horrendous. The luckless gun crew inside the revolving turret did not stand much chance. As a result 11 men were killed and 34 wounded. At first the crew were not sure what happened and the ship returned to Britain. The remaining right hand gun of the fore turret was dismantled and taken to Woolwich Arsenal in London. The cannon wheeled inside a tunnel of a mounded hill composed of dirt and sand bags - an armoured cell of containment. It was double loaded to create the same condition. When the gun was fired it exploded in the same way and upon checking damage they were able to prove that this was the cause of the accident - double loading the barrel.

As a result the admiralty brought in a directive for all ships to have muzzle loaders withdrawn and replaced with breech loaders. This would prevent an accident of such nature occurring in future.

Testing right hand gun at Woolwich Arsenal