korea

ARMOURED CAR FROM FIDDLERS GREEN

Lanchester-Armored-Car - $6.95

In 1914, the Lanchester was the second most numerous armoured car in service after the Rolls-Royce. It was originally designed to support air bases and retrieve downed pilots. In 1915, the Lanchester underwent hull remodelling and was formed into armoured car squadrons. This model has a fun Bush/Cheney version included.

Lanchester Armored Car

Lanchester AFV Armoured Car developed by George Lanchester had 6 forward and reverse gears
Next to the Rolls Royce Armoured Car, series the Lanchester armored cars were the most common type in use by the British Army in the Great War.
Twenty of these vehicles also served the Russian Army beginning in 1915. The vehicle had a six-cylinder, 4.8 liter engine which developed 65 b.h.p. at 2200 r.pm.; the gear-box was three-speed epicyclical type and transmission was by worm drive to the rear axle. As an armoured car with about 8mm of armor, it weighed between four and five tons, the top speed was about 50 m.p.h. The crew consisted of three or four men and the armament was one Vickers-Maxim machine gun mounted in the turret, although a Lewis light machine-gun was usually also carried, stowed inside the car.
The Lanchester Armoured Car was manned by a crew of four and armed with a Vickers-Maxim machine gun mounted in the turret, although a Lewis light machine-gun was usually also carried, stowed inside the car. It had a top speed of 80 kmh and a range of 290 km. After 1915 the Lanchester Armoured Car was phased out and replaced by the Rolls-Royce Armoured Car.

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What people say...

Chip and All, Noticed this the other day at the FG site. Oh man! Really looking forward to this and can't wait 'till available for purchase. FG's released only some land vehicles as called for or a support for a few of the aircraft models, I was not sure if you wanted to delve into other areas. Hope this one goes well for you and will lead to others. i mainly enjoy the WWII models, but also the early flying machines. Maybe some early or odd wheeled vehicles, be they military, civilian or concepts. Good day! Joe Golden

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Lanchester Armored Car

The GB Lanchester Armoured Car of 1915

The Lanchester Armored Car in WWI camo

Lanchester RNAS Armored Car on exhibit

Lanchester Armored Car with a curio of gonguzzelers

Lanchester Armored Car in spiffy WWI . Note the white-walls on this model. :))

Lanchester Armored Car posing in Russia with lovely horse

Lanchester Armored Car stuck in Great War mud

Lanchester Armored Car in woods with GB officers

Lanchester Armored Cars being inspected

Interestingly colored model of the Lanchester Armored Car

Nicely colored blue-gray model of R.N.A.S. Lanchester Armored Car.

Lanchester Armoured Car from its ugly rear

Lanchester Armoured Car showing exciting aft details

Thank you Don Boose

 

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Specifications for the Lanchester 4x2 Armored Car

Crew: 3-4 Weight: 9400lbs Length: 16 ft Width: 6 ft Height: 7.5 Armour: up to 8 mm Engine 6-cyl 60 hp Lanchester petrol engine Power/weight 12.8 hp/tonne Suspension 4x2 wheel Performance Speed: 50 mph Primary Armament Vickers machine gun (turret) Secondary armament Lewis Gun (stowed inside)

Deutsches Panzermuseum - German Tank Museum Musée des Blindés - French Tank Museum Bovington Tank Museum - United Kingdom Tank Museum Yad La-Shiryon- Israeli Tank Museum Parola Tank Museum - Finnish Tank Museum General George C Marshall Museum- Dutch Tank Museum Tank Museum-Kubinka, Russia Australian War Memorial- Canberra, Australia WWI Tanks in the Fiddlersgreen collection (Feb 2011) Renault FT-17 Mark IV German A7V Whippet

reka reanimated

airfix new

Called the General Lee if fitted with the American designed taller turret and the General Grant if fitted with the British built smaller turret, the Lee Grant was one of the first American tanks to reach the British during the Second World War.  Also used across the Pacific, the Lee Grant led to the design of the Sherman tank, the Allies' most important and numerically vital tank of the war.  Build either version of this famous tank with our re-released kit with its new illustration.

hinton hunt

all english sparkling wine

English Sparkling Wines: The A-Z List

Click here to download the table below in PDF format
Last updated: 1st July 2010

Vineyard	Wine	Vintage	Varietal blend	Retail
a’Beckett’s	Estate Sparkling	2006	Seyval blanc, Auxerrois	£16.50
Astley	George Eckert Vintage Brut	2006	Kerner	£13.50
Avalon	Pennard Brut	2006	Seyval blanc	£25.00
Avonleigh Organic	Avonleigh Quality Sparkling	2008	Pinot noir, Chardonnay	£17.50
Beaulieu	Beaulieu Bubbly	2006	Bacchus, Müller-Thurgau, Reichensteiner	£14.95
Biddenden	Gribble Bridge White Sparkling Wine	2003	Reichensteiner 70%, Pinot Noir 20%, Scheurebe, Ortega 10%	£15.75
Biddenden	Gribble Bridge Pink Sparkling Wine	2007	Gamay, Pinot noir	£15.75
Binfield (Champion Wines)	Binfield Brut	NV	Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner	£9.99
Binfield (Champion Wines)	Champion Gold	NV	Pinot Noir, Chardonnay	£11.99
Binfield (Champion Wines)	Champion Silver	NV	Pinot Noir, Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner, Müller-Thurgau	£9.99
Bluebell Estates	Hindleap Blanc de Blancs	2007	Chardonnay	£23.00
Bluebell Estates	Hindleap Classic	2007	Seyval blanc	£17.00
Bluebell Estates	Hindleap Classic Cuvée	2007	Pinot noir 70% Chardonnay 30%	£20.00
Bookers	Sirius Rose	2005	Merlot 80%, Seyval blanc 20%	£ 19.45
Bookers	Bolney Barts Bubbly	2006	Pinot noir	£ 19.45
Bookers	Bolney Blanc de Blanc	2006	Chardonnay	£ 23.49
Bookers	Bolney Antares	2008	Dornfelder	£ 23.49
Bookers	Bolney Bubbly	2008	Müller-Thurgau 60%, Chardonnay 40%	£ 15.00
Bosue	Quality Sparkling Wine	2006	Orion	£19.50
Bothy	Halycon Days	2008	Ortega, Findling, Huxelrebe, Albalonga, Bacchus	£12.90
Bow-in-the-Cloud	Cloud Nine	2006	Seyval blanc	£14.00
Breaky Bottom	Cuvée Brian Jordan	2005	Seyval blanc	£20.05
Breaky Bottom	Cuvée John Inglis Hall	2006	Seyval blanc	£20.05
Brightwell	Sparkling Chardonnay	2006	Chardonnay	£17.00
Broadfield Court	Broadfield Quality English Sparkling Wine	2007	Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner	£19.99
Broadfield Court	Broadfield Quality English Sparkling Wine	2007	Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner	£19.99
Camel Valley	Pinot Noir Brut Rosé	2007	Pinot noir	£24.95
Camel Valley	Cornwall Brut	2008	Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner	£19.95
Camel Valley	Pinot Noir Brut White	2007	Pinot noir	£29.95
Camel Valley	Pinot Noir Brut Rosé	2008	Pinot noir	£24.95
Camel Valley	Sparkling Red	2008	Rondo	£14.95
Carr Taylor	Brut Sparkling Rosé	2006	Pinot noir 75%, Pinot Meunier 25%	£18.99
Carr Taylor	Vintage Brut	2006	Reichensteiner 75%, Schonburger 25%	£19.99
Carr Taylor	Brut Sparkling White	NV	Reichensteiner 50%, Schonburger 50%	£14.99
Carters	Sparkling Brut	NV	Orion, Chardonnay	£14.95
Carters	Sparkling Rosé	NV	Orion, Chardonnay, Dornfelder	£14.95
Castle Brook	Chinn-Chinn	2006	Chardonnay 48.4%, Pinot noir 29.0%, Pinot Meunier 22.3%	£20.00
Chapel Down	Pinot Reserve	2004	Pinot Noir 70%, Pinot Blanc 30%	£24.99
Chapel Down	Pinot Noir Chardonnay	2006	Pinot noir, Chardonnay	NA
Chapel Down	Blanc de Blancs	2007	Chardonnay	NA
Chapel Down	Century (Extra Dry)	NV	Pinot Noir, Reichensteiner, Müller-Thurgau	£16.99
Chapel Down	English Rosé	NV	Pinot Noir, Reichensteiner, Müller-Thurgau	£19.99
Chapel Down	Rosé Brut (2006)	NV	Pinot Noir	£24.99
Chapel Down	Vintage Reserve Brut	NV	Pinot Noir 40%, Müller-Thurgau 30%, Reichensteiner 30%.	£16.99
Chilford Hall	Chilford Hundred Rosé	2004	Müller-Thurgau, Reichensteiner, Dornfelder	£16.50
Chilford Hall	Chilford Hundred White	2004	Müller-Thurgau, Reichensteiner	£15.50
Danebury	Cossack	2004	Auxerrois 95%, Rulander (Pinot gris) 5%	£21.00
Danebury	Cossack	2005	Auxerrois 95%, Rulander (Pinot gris) 5%	£21.00
Davenport	Blanc de blancs	2005	Reichensteiner	£16.50
Davenport	Limney Estate	2006	Auxerrois 65%, Pinot noir 35%	£18.00
Daws Hill	Daws Hill Brut	2007	Chardonnay 59%, Auxerrois 35%, Pinot Noir 6%	£24.00
Daws Hill	Daws Hill Brut	2008	Chardonnay 36%, Auxerrois 30%, Pinot Noir 23%, Pinot Meunier 11%	£24.00
Denbies	Greenfields	2002	Pinot noir 50%, Chardonnay 35%, Pinot Meunier 15%	£21.99
Denbies	Cubitt Reserve	2006	Pinot noir	£34.99
Denbies	Sparkling Rosé	2006	Pinot noir	£17.99
Denbies	Whitedowns (2004)	NV	Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner	£15.99
Dunkery - Exmoor	Exmoor Brut	1995	Pinot noir	£15.95
East Sutton	Rackham's Sparkling Wine	2005	Pinot noir 60%, Bacchus 40%	£19.95
Frome Valley (Paunton Court)	Paunton Court Sparkling	2006	Seyval blanc	£14.25
Furleigh Estate	Casterbridge	2007	Chardonnay, Pinot noir	£22.95
Glyndŵr	Vintage Rosé	2005	Seyval blanc, Rondo	£14.90
Glyndŵr	Vintage White	2005	Seyval blanc	£14.90
Greyfriars	Greyfriars Sparkling	2001	Chardonnay, Pinot noir	£12.50
Greyfriars	Greyfriars Sparkling	2004	Chardonnay, Pinot noir	£12.50
Greyfriars	Greyfriars Sparkling	2006	Chardonnay	£12.50
Gusbourne Estate	Gusbourne Brut Blanc de Blancs	2006	Chardonnay	£24.99
Gusbourne Estate	Gusbourne Brut Classic Blend	2006	Chardonnay 46%, Pinot noir 41%, Pinot Meunier 13%	£21.99
Hale Valley	Hale Valley Brut	2006	NA	NA
Hazel End	Three Squirrels	2007	Müller-Thurgau, Huxelrebe, Reichensteiner, Bacchus	£14.50
Hush Heath Estate	Balfour Brut Rosé	2006	Pinot noir 55%, Chardonnay 40%, Pinot Meunier 5%	£36.99
Ickworth	Suffolk Pink	2005	Auxerrois 85%, Pinot noir 15%	£19.50
Ickworth	Suffolk Pink	2006	Auxerrois 85%, Pinot noir 15%	£19.50
Jenkyn Place	Jenkyn Place Brut	2006	Chardonnay 61%, Pinot noir 23%, Pinot Meunier 16%	£25.00
Kenton	Vanessa Sparkling	2006	Auxerrois 66%, Ortega 34%	£14.50
Leventhorpe	Leventhorpe Brut	2006	Seyval blanc	£15.00
Llanerch	Cariad Blush	2005	Seyval blanc, Reichensteiner, Triomphe	£17.95
Meopham	Meopham Valley	2004	Chardonnay 55%, Pinot Noir 45%	£16.50
Meopham	Meopham Valley Rosé	2005	Pinot Noir 55%, Chardonnay 45%	£19.50
Meopham	Meopham Valley	2007	Reichensteiner	£15.00
New Hall Vineyards	New Hall Sparkling	2008	Pinot Noir and Chardonnay	£14.95
Newnham Park (Herons Ghyll)	Herons Ghyll Estate	2006	Reichensteiner, Huxelrebe	£14.99
Nutbourne	Nutty Brut	2006	Reichensteiner, Pinot noir	£16.50
Nyetimber	Blanc de Blancs	2001	Chardonnay	£28.99
Nyetimber	Classic Cuvée (Waitrose)	2002	Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier	£25.99
Nyetimber	Classic Cuvée	2003	Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier	£25.99
Nyetimber	Classic Cuvée	2005	Chardonnay 62%, Pinot noir 19%, Pinot Meunier 19%	£25.99
Old Walls	Old Walls Brut	NV	Auxerrois, Pinot noir Précoce	£16.75
Old Walls	Old Walls Rosé	NV	Pinot noir Précoce, Auxerrois	£16.75
Parva Farm	Tintern Parva Dathliad Sparkling	2004	Seyval blanc, Pinot noir	£17.50
Parva Farm	Tintern Parva Dathliad Sparkling	2005	Seyval blanc, Auxerrois, Regner	£17.50
Parva Farm	Tintern Parva Dathliad Sparkling Rosé	2006	Seyval blanc, Pinot noir, Regent	£19.95
Pebblebed	Sparkling Rosé	2006	Seyval blanc, Rondo	£25.00
Pebblebed	Sparkling White	2008	Seyval blanc, Rondo	£22.50
Penarth	Penarth Estate Pink Sparkling	2006	Pinot noir 50%, Pinot Meunier 50%	£21.50
Penarth	Penarth Estate Sparkling Wine	2006	Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier	£18.50
Pheasants Ridge	Pheasants Ridge Brut	NV	Faberrebe	£15.00
Plumpton Estate	The Dean	NV	Pinot noir 93%, Chardonnay 7%	£20.00
Plumpton Estate	The Dean Blush	NV	Pinot noir 94%, Chardonnay 6%	£20.00
Renishaw	Renishaw Quality Sparkling Wine	2006	Seyval blanc	£15.00
RidgeView	Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs Magnum	2001	Chardonnay	£63.00
RidgeView	Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs	2006	Chardonnay	£21.95
RidgeView	Knightsbridge Blanc de Noirs	2006	Pinot noir 51%, Pinot Meunier 49%	£24.95
RidgeView	South Ridge Cuvée Merret	2006	Chardonnay 63%, Pinot Noir 30%, Pinot Meunier 7%	£18.49
RidgeView	Bloomsbury	2007	Chardonnay 64%, Pinot noir 23%, Pinot Meunier 14%	£19.95
RidgeView	Cavendish	2007	Chardonnay 25%, Pinot noir 34%, Pinot Meunier 41%	£19.95
RidgeView	Fitzrovia Rosé	2007	Chardonnay 46%, Pinot noir 32%, Pinot Meunier 22%	£21.95
RidgeView	Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs	2007	Chardonnay	£21.95
Ridgeview	Pimlico Rouge de Noirs	2007	Pinot Meunier 76%, Pinot Noir 24%	£24.95
RidgeView	South Ridge Cuvée Merret	2007	Chardonnay 52%, Pinot Noir 30%, Pinot Meunier 18%	£18.49
Ridgeview	South Ridge Cuvée Merret Rosé	2008	Chardonnay 33%, Pinot Noir 40%. Pinot Meunir 24%	£19.99
Rosemary	Rosé Brut	2007	Rondo	£14.99
Rosemary	Sparkling White (Dry)	2007	Seyval blanc 50%, Orion 50%	£14.99
Saint Anne`s	Oxenhall Bubbles	2006	Seyval blanc	£10.95
Sandyford	Sandyford Sparkling	2004	Bacchus 70%, Reichensteiner 30%	£15.30
Sedlescombe	Bodiam Brut Organic	2008	Seyval blanc	£25.00
Sedlescombe	Rosé Brut Organic	2008	Pinot noir	£35.00
Shardeloes Farm	Shardeloes Sparkling Pink Brut	2006	Triomphe, Reichensteiner	£19.99
Sharpham	Sharpham Sparkling	2007	Pinot gris 70%, Pinot noir 25%, Auxerrois, 2.5%, Meunier 2.5%	£21.50
Somborne Valley	Mariage Réussi	2006	Pinot blanc, Pinot noir	£16.99
Somborne Valley	Rosé	2006	Pinot noir	£14.99
Stanlake Park Wine Estate	Stanlake Brut	2005	Pinot noir 90%, Chardonnay10%	£18.99
Stanlake Park Wine Estate	Heritage Brut	2006	Reichensteiner 80%, Seyval blanc 20%	£14.99
Stanlake Park Wine Estate	Rosé Superior	2006	Pinot Noir 70%, Pinot Meunier 30%	£19.99
Strawberry Hill	Premier Sparkling	2004	Chardonnay 50%, Pinot noir 50%	£16.50
Surrenden	MQC	2004	Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier	£24.00
Surrenden	MQC	2006	Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier	£24.00
Tas Valley	English Sparkling	2004	Reichensteiner	£26.00
Tas Valley	English Sparkling	2006	Reichensteiner	£18.00
Terlingham	Terlingham Sparkling	2007	Seyval blanc	£20.00
Terlingham	Terlingham Sparkling	2008	Pinot noir, Chardonnay	£20.00
Theale	Founder's Reserve Blanc de Blancs	2005	Chardonnay	£22.99
Three Choirs	Vintage Reserve	2004	Pinot noir 30%, Seyval blanc 70%	£16.50
Three Choirs	Vintage Reserve Pinot Blanc Du Noir	2005	Pinot noir	£16.25
Three Choirs	Vintage Reserve Pink	2006	Triomphe	£16.50
Three Choirs	Classic Cuvée	NV	Seyval blanc 65%, Reichensteiner 25%, Pinot Noir 10%	£10.25
Throwley	Throwley Reserve Brut	2003	Chardonnay 50%, Pinot noir 50%	£16.50
Throwley	Throwley Reserve Brut	2004	Chardonnay 50%, Pinot noir 50%	£16.50
Tiltridge	Elgar Sparkling	2006	Seyval blanc	£13.95
Titchfield	Festival	NV	Seyval Blanc	£8.99
Titchfield	Southern Shore Brut	NV	Auxerrois, Pinot Noir	£12.50
Titchfield	Southern Shore Rosé	NV	Auxerrois, Pinot Noir	£14.99
Valley Farm (Wissett Wines)	Wissett Brut Reserve	2005	Pinot Meunier, Pinot Gris, Auxerrois	£17.99
Warden Abbey	Abbot Sparkling Brut	2007	Regner, Reichensteiner, Müller-Thurgau, Bacchus	£16.00
Warden Abbey	Vineyard Sparkling Extra Dry	2007	Bacchus, Reichensteiner	£16.50
Welcombe Hills	Blanc de Noir	2006	Pinot noir	£14.95
Welcombe Hills	Sparkling Bacchus	2006	Bacchus	£12.50
Welland Vallley	Steeplechase Brut	2006	Reichensteiner 60%, Seyval blanc 40%	£15.00
Welland Vallley	Tickled Pink Brut	2007	Reichensteiner 50%, Seyval blanc 50%	£15.00
Wickham	Demi-Sec	2006	Dornfelder	£14.99
Wickham	Rosé Brut	2006	Dornfelder	£14.99
Wroxeter Roman	Shropshire Sparkling Rosé	2006	Rondo	£24.95
Wroxeter Roman	Shropshire Sparkling White	2006	Reichensteiner, Madeleine Angevine	£24.95
Wyken	Wyken Moonshine	NV	Auxerrois, Pinot noir	£16.50
Yearlstone	Vintage Brut	2006	Seyval blanc	£16.99
Yearlstone	Vintage Brut Pink	2006	Dornfelder 70%, Pinot noir 30%	£24.99
Yearlstone	Vintage Brut	2008	Seyval blanc	£16.99

the truth about the alamo finally by Daniel N. White

 heres a review of a new book about the alamo from the blog dandelion wine

" We now have a  truthful book about the Alamo. somehow it seems to have escaped critical attention, particularly, to no great surprise, here in Texas. The book isExodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth, by Phillip Thomas Tucker. Published in 2010 by second-tier publishers Casemate, this book has not received any reviews by any major national source, nor any attention by any of the Texas newspapers.* Hell I’d have thought that San Antonio, which although by population numbers is the US’ 9th largest city has always really been Mexico’s northernmost city, and is also where the Alamo, or what little is left of it, resides, would have paid some attention, but nothing from those quarters. Dallas, the most insecure, mean-spirited city in the country, sizeable parts of which would throw big parties every November 22nd if they could get away with it**, hasn’t officially denounced this book, and I’d have thought that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, or the many fulminating reactionary textbook activists there who contribute so much to keeping Texans stupid, would have held press conferences, marches, and bookburnings over this book and its contents. Nope. Nothing from the East Coast, or the Left Coast, both of which have well-founded grudges against Texas, only in part on account of our most recent ex-president, grudges that could be readily slaked by the handy and complete demolition of the Texas founding myth done here. Unfortunately for them, they are likely to get a new dose of grudges from the impending Perry presidency, alas. Them and the rest of us, alas squared.

Tucker, a historian for the USAF, brings to the table the essential military knowledge necessary to write about a military event. All previous authors about the Alamo were journalists who knew nothing about military matters and the battlefield, or second-tier academics, who all were equally ignorant. Both groups most all lack facility in the Spanish language, and neither group ever did any real research into Mexican archives for the firsthand accounts of participants that Tucker found when he went looking in Mexican archives. Both groups either lazily and uncritically promoted the Alamo myth, or, perhaps worse, saw where the evidence led and shied away from drawing the necessary if unpopular conclusions. Doesn’t say much for either group.

Tucker shows, from contemporaneous Mexican and American accounts, that there was no fight to the last man at the Alamo. Instead, the defenders, who were caught completely flat-footed asleep by a surprisingly well-planned and executed Mexican attack, mostly all bolted and ran from the Alamo and were cut down by Mexican cavalry that Santa Anna had placed in position for that task. A sizeable contingent of defenders were in the ‘hospital’ and were massacred there, and there was a cluster of defenders, led by Dickenson, who fought bravely in the Alamo chapel in an effort to buy time for their comrades’ escape. Even with their bravery, the fight was over inside of twenty minutes, start to finish. No real battle winds up that quick; it was an ignominious rout.

A sizeable fraction, half or better probably, of Mexican casualties (which totalled around 300) were friendly-fire casualties, from the untrained Mexican infantry firing blindly, from the hip, in the dark, into the backs of their countrymen. Contrary to the Old Joe myth, there were in fact two escapees from the slaughter, and they were interviewed, and their accounts got circulation at the time. The flight from the Alamo appears to have been the defenders’ plan all along, and Tucker argues that if Santa Anna had postponed his attack for a day or so that the defenders would have sought surrender terms on account of the severe morale, illness, and command dissention problems in the Alamo garrison. The lack of interest in preserving the Alamo, which was mostly demolished before the DRT saved what was left of it 60 years later, shows not just the ordinary extraordinary greed and shortsightness of Texans, but also likely shows that the Alamo myth wasn’t entirely accepted by a fair or better percentage of the people who lived then. The failure of anyone in San Antonio to gather the defenders’ ashes from the burn piles afterwards–they were almost all left untouched for the two or so years it took for the winds to disperse them–also shows that there was no real love lost between San Antonio’s inhabitants and the persons claiming to be their defenders. That, and a desire of most Texans back then to forget the Alamo, as time enough hadn’t transpired for the myth to displace most people’s back then ordinary doubts about what actually happened. I suspect that the contemporaneous newspaper storytelling about the Alamo, which all began the fight to the last man myth, wasn’t entirely believed by the readership. People could smell a rat back then, probably better than now.

The defenders did an embarrassingly bad job of reinforcing the fortifications while they had the chance; mostly out of their unwillingness to do manual labor with pick and shovel. Holding the Alamo was a first-class strategic mistake, as it neither barred Santa Anna from San Antonio’s resources nor prevented him, should he have decided to, from bypassing it and attacking instead the Texian center of resistance in East Texas, and thereby quickly and handily defeating the revolt. The Texians own decision to stay in the Alamo was in large part based on the large numbers of cannon they had there, and their unwillingness to abandon them to the Mexicans. The cannon did them no good during the battle, as they lacked the manpower to crew them, the emplacements to use them, and neither the projectiles or powder to fire them. A terrible mistake, holding the Alamo for its cannon, one that was stupefyingly obviously militarily wrong. Houston’s unwillingness to send relief to the Alamo may have been from his chronic drunkenness (and likely opium stupefaction) but a part of it was likely his and other politicians in Washington-on-the-Brazos’ desire to remove from the scene several political rivals, Crockett foremost. That, and there was a considerable class rivalry between the white po-boy drifters holed up in the Alamo and their East Texas planter betters–the Texas Revolution was yet another rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

The majority of the book, like most accounts of the Alamo, is a recounting of the events that led to the Texas secession from Mexico in 1835-6. The elephant in Texas history’s living room has always been, of course, slavery, and even my 7th grade Texas History textbook 35 years ago mentioned that the Texas founding fathers were slaveholders. Most historians haven’t done that much better a job of facing that elephant since, but Tucker does the best job to date of pointing out how that issue was the key issue that drove Texas secession. Slaves and cotton equalled wealth and status here in the US back then, and obtaining that combination was unquestionably the best and most accessible ladder up that an ambitious white male back then had. Texas’ white settlers came here from the first, even before Moses Austin’s efforts, with that goal in mind. The conflict between Anglo and Mexican in Texas was most of all a conflict between Anglo slaveholders and wanna-be slaveholders and a Mexico newly freed from European peonage’s deep desire to eliminate slavery in its borders. American historians have over the years danced around, or at best dealt gingerly at a distance, with this fact. Tucker lays it out, plainly and directly, better than I’ve seen elsewhere.

What the textbooks then, and most histories still now, don’t mention is what a lot of scoundrels, greedheads, and sorry hustling-assed lowlifes the Texas Republic leaders were. They were all, every last one of them, dreadfully militarily incompetent and only a few of them were even marginally capable of the political leadership that a successful revolt requires. Fortunately for Anglo Texas, Santa Anna made two fatal mistakes–investing the Alamo and napping at San Jacinto that afternoon. Grant, in his memoirs, talking about his experiences in the Mexican War, said that we the US were lucky to be fighting an enemy like the Mexicans, or else, he said, we’d have been taught some hard lessons. Same was true in 1836, Mexican military incompetence matched by Santa Anna’s political incompetence. Tucker doesn’t preach about this; he just lays out the facts, which speak for themselves.

Tucker has a decent discussion of how the Alamo myth functioned in the 19th Century to provide a rationalization of Anglo racial superiority, the theft of Texas from Mexico, and the subsequent dispossession, exclusion and marginalization of Tejanos from position and property. Where the book fails is bringing the Alamo myth into the 20th century, and for that matter, the 21st. The Disney and John Wayne ’50′s glorification makes some sense in the light of American Cold War insecurities, but why Disney revisited it five years ago needs explanation. Was it a commercial pastiche, or a re-hashing of a myth to serve domestic war politics a second time, for a (series of) war(s) even more fraudulent and unnecessary than the Cold War?

The book has its flaws. It is in dire need of proper editing, and could usefully have been shrunk by a third or better in length. Tucker is no shakes as a prose stylist. There are suppositions about events and motivations in the Alamo that are good suppositions, but lack documentation enough to be presented as facts. But there is hidden within a delightful secret to this book that won’t be obvious to most ahistorical Americans, but one obvious to Clio’s servants and admirers. This book will give social scientists a test case the likes of which has never before happened. A widespread and deeply held founding myth has been destroyed by this book, and this provides a unique opportunity to study the diffusion and struggle of truth versus myth. How many years will it take to change the textbook accounts? How long before Americans acknowledge that the Alamo was a chapter of military ignominy and embarrassment, and not an epic of heroism? Will latinos pick up on this book, and use it for their political and social struggles? How will this story fare in other countries’ histories of us? I am looking forward to how things develop on these fronts–it is a truly rare opportunity to learn about ourselves, how we think, how we come to hold our beliefs. I am pleased to do my bit by publicizing this book, to advance truth against myth, to kill the lies that have been deliberately spread, and to expose the professional incompetence and pusillanimity of the official and influential. My congratulations to the author, for a fine and overdue and much needed book.

*Both the Guardian and the Daily Mail in the UK reviewed it, interestingly enough. They both liked it.

**Shoot I’m being too mean to Dallas here. Contrary to what too many braindead Yankees still like to think, Dallas was then and has always remained embarrassed by its (very limited) responsibility for the death of JFK. On the other hand, this statement is absolutely true about Miami, at least amongst the guisano cubanos.