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OT: Bears in the air!


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Media is making a big deal out of a couple of Tu-95 Bear bombers flying off the coast of Alaska.  They, undoubtedly were testing when our radar picked them up, just as we have and do to their air defenses.  This has been going on since the Cold War.  As was shown in the photos, several pair of F-22 fighters intercepted them and escorted them.  The Bears stayed in international airspace the whole time.  One false move and the -22's would have been all over them!

 

This reminds me of the photo that the Denver Post published on the front page, a number of years ago, when some Bears flew down our East Coast, escorted by IIRC, F-4's.  The photo, taken by the backseater in the F-4, shows the Russian tail gunner with his hand upraised with the back of the hand showing, and the index and middle finger spread.  The caption read, "Russian tail gunner flashes a "V-for-victory sign" to our pilots".  Except that "V-for-victory" is done with the palm outward.  What the gunner was flashing was the European equivalent of the mighty "bird"! :P :lol: 

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I thought this was going to be an old CB radio reference. :D

 

If the media can't find itself with both hands....

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2 hours ago, Trailrider #896 said:

This reminds me of the photo that the Denver Post published on the front page, a number of years ago, when some Bears flew down our East Coast, escorted by IIRC, F-4's.  The photo, taken by the backseater in the F-4, shows the Russian tail gunner with his hand upraised with the back of the hand showing, and the index and middle finger spread.  The caption read, "Russian tail gunner flashes a "V-for-victory sign" to our pilots".  Except that "V-for-victory" is done with the palm outward.  What the gunner was flashing was the European equivalent of the mighty "bird"! :P :lol: 

 

This guy...?  :rolleyes:

 

292012849_F-4-Tu-95-4TailGunner.thumb.jpg.2e96614abf845cbbe924b2f8fdef15e5.jpg

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I mooned a Russian spy ship once in the North Atlantic...didn't have the full effect since I was wearing a union suit long johns under my dungarees. 

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2 hours ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

I thought this was going to be an old CB radio reference. :D

 

If the media can't find itself with both hands....

If they did, Pat, all they could do is play with themselves. 

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Some History on the V sign.

 

Origins[edit]

A commonly repeated legend claims that the two-fingered salute or V sign derives from a gesture made by longbowmen fighting in the English archers at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War, but no historical primary sources support this contention.[27] This origin legend states that English archers believed that those who were captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer operate their longbows, and that the V sign was used by uncaptured and victorious archers in a display of defiance against the French.

Alternatively, there is evidence against this interpretation as the chronicler Jean de Wavrin, contemporary of the battle of Agincourt, reports that the captured archers would have three fingers cut, and not two.[28][29] Wielding an English longbow requires three fingers, as is the case for modern bows.[30]

 

 

220px-Religion_saved_by_Spain.jpg
 
Religion saved by Spain, by Titian

Another early appearance of the sign is in Titian's painting Religion saved by Spain commemorating the Battle of Lepanto created between 1572 and 1575. This is an allegoric painting, portraying Spain as a woman in a dramatic landscape, with a shield in her right hand and a spear with the flag of Victory in her left hand. Both her hands show symbolic V ("victoria") gesture.

The first contemporary evidence of the use of the insulting V sign in the United Kingdom dates to 1901, when a worker outside Parkgate ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture (captured on the film) to indicate that he did not like being filmed.[31][32]Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren that the much-older thumbing of the nose (cocking a snook) had been replaced by the V sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.[31]

Between 1975 and 1977 a group of anthropologists including Desmond Morris studied the history and spread of European gestures and found the rude version of the V-sign to be basically unknown outside the British Isles. In his Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, published in 1979, Morris discussed various possible origins of this sign but came to no definite conclusion:

because of the strong taboo associated with the gesture (its public use has often been heavily penalised). As a result, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing it in detail. It is "known to be dirty" and is passed on from generation to generation by people who simply accept it as a recognised obscenity without bothering to analyse it... Several of the rival claims are equally appealing. The truth is that we will probably never know...[31

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Very interesting.  But the woman in the painting has the hand on the spear palm outward (although hidden by the shaft of the spear).  Winston Churchill used the palm-outward as the vee-for-victory symbol.  But I was told by several refugees from the Hungarian uprising that with the back of the hand toward the viewer, the meaning was definitely insulting and obscene.  Frankly, I prefer the good ol' American Bird! :P

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I often use the pinky finger raised alone with the back of the hand exposed.  It's for those who don't rate the very best!!

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