Article 19-A Bus Drivers Blood Pressure Follow-Up By: Fill & Download for Free

"An Yll Wynde That Blowth No Man To Good"“America has the best wind resources in the world. Not harvesting America’s wind would be like going to Saudi Arabia and not drilling for oil.” Ditlev Engel, Chief Executive of Vestas Wind SystemsOf all renewable energy, the most contentious is wind. Wind stirs most passion and documentaries are made of suffering communities at war with each other lying in the shadow of the big blades. ‘Big wind’ companies are made to sound as evil as ‘big oil’ in their calculated pursuit of profits. I know people living north of London in the UK, who are actively moving to cancel wind farm installations on the grounds of fears of wind turbine syndrome (WTS)[i] a serious health problem described by people who live close to the towering structures.The Caithness Windfarm Information Forum (CWIF)[ii] produces a list of the frequency of all wind turbine related accidents globally confirmed by press reports. Renewable UK[iii] also follow such data with reports on such topics as:Radar and aviation securityScenery despoliationProperty pricesHealth Impacts from aerodynamic noise and shadow flickerThe CWIF reports find that blade failure is the most common problem that causes accidents with fire a close second and poor maintenance coming third. They found that globally, total accidents since the 1970’s numbered 1,549, a level that is growing each year along with the number of installed wind turbines. Fatal accidents also are rising but at a much lower level with a total of 146 deaths in 108 accidents since 1970, with 14 in 2011 but more in 2012.Blade Failure – Up to 2012 there are 289 incidents with some cases of parts of blades being thrown up to a mile away from the turbine hub. In Germany, parts of blades have penetrated roofs and walls of nearby buildings. ‘Renewable UK’ reported 1,500 accidents in the UK alone over the five years up to 2011 with some deaths and serious injuries. Unless there is an injury, there is no requirement for an incident to be reported. The Wind industry plays down the incidents. In 2006 part of a wind turbine blade snapped off its hub and crashed into a field in high winds. The operator, Cumbria Wind Farms said, “Nothing like this has happened there before”, but they forgot to mention that in fact one month after the park opened in 1993, a similar accident had occurred. A similar situation occurred with Scottish Power with a blade separation event in Whitelee. Three bladed wind turbine blades are secured only on one end, unlike many vertical and arguably safer VAWT wind turbine designs. The Risø National Laboratory[iv] in Denmark reported 15 turbine collapses in the three years from 2005 to 2008.Fire – can occur due to gearbox lubrication failure or friction within the nacelle or when bearings fail. 231 incidents of fire have been reported. Most fire is restricted to the turbine nacelle but out of reach of firemen on the ground. In dry weather there is a danger of wildfire. Wind turbines are also a magnet for lightning strikes which can ignite flammable blade resins. In October 2013 a crew of 4 mechanics were working for a service company that was charged with maintaining the 13 turbines at Deltawind’s Piet de Wit wind farm in the Netherlands. They were in a gondola next to the nacelle of a Vestas V-66, 1.75 MW turbine, when a fire likely caused by a short circuit blocked the only escape to the stairs in the shaft. Two men jumped through flames to reach the stairs and saved themselves, while the two remaining men, only 19 and 21 years of age were trapped and died. One jumped from the tower and the other was burned.[v]Structural failure – 148 instances mainly of collapsing turbines in storms but also including component failure. This is a very expensive form of failure but mostly at arm’s length from human beings.Ice Throw – In icing conditions, wind turbines can fling a loose piece of ice a considerable distance, but as with aircraft wings, the performance of the turbine blade deteriorates as ice builds up. Turbines are equipped to detect imbalances caused by ice and normally shut down. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) agency, established by President Nixon in 1970, detailed requirements for wind turbine workers to observe when in icing conditions. Complaints about ice are common and the fear is that rotating blades in melting conditions will fling heavy chunks of damaging and lethal ice long distances. This is alleged to have happened in Whittlesey in England, where lumps of ice two feet long were flung from a 410 foot wind turbine, through the air, finally colliding with a carpet showroom and car park. Residents had the offending turbine shut down. A report by GE’s wind turbine division[vi] did alert users that ice chunks can indeed be flung several hundred yards. A Swiss study[vii] made in a ski resort in 2007 showed that up to 5% of the ice on a turbine was able to travel 260 feet from the turbine. As experience grows with wind farms the ability to protect the community that lives near them improves. Ice is thrown a maximum of 400 feet and this is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. A 2003 report cited 880 events between 1990 and 2003 alone and another report published in 2005 described 94 incidents. Further reports in 2006 reported 27 further incidents.Transportation of wind turbine components to the installation site – 147 incidents since 1970 including a house being rammed through by a turbine tower section in Germany, a utility pole being knocked through a restaurant and a turbine section falling off in a tunnel. In one case a $75 million barge was lost at sea with expensive turbine sections. Transportation is the largest cause of public fatalities including the Brazilian bus disaster mentioned above. In a single incident in Brazil in March of 2012, a bus driver was behind a slow truck, hoping to overtake. He was indicating and thought the truck ahead of him was moving over to let him pass. He gunned the accelerator to overtake only to suddenly find himself faced with a 40 ton wind tower section being transported in the oncoming lane. It sheared off the left side of the bus, driver included. 14 passengers and the driver died on the spot and two more died later[viii].Bird Deaths –"When you look at a wind turbine, you can find the bird carcasses and count them. With a coal-fired power plant, you can't count the carcasses, but it's going to kill a lot more birds." - John Flicker, National Audubon Society, president.Sibley and Monroe estimated that there are about 9,703 species of birds[ix]. They are found on all major land masses and over the oceans. Total populations are difficult to estimate due to seasonal fluctuations in populations but Sibley & Monroe accepted that there are between 100 and 200 billion adult birds in the world. Kevin Gaston and Tim Blackburn[x] doubled that estimate with 200 to 400 billion. Birds are killed by wind turbines and solar installations, but it turns out that the numbers of birds already killed by buildings, high tension lines, vehicles, cats and pesticides are so much greater that there is clearly a perception twist, which is likely deliberate, going on here. This is not to say that we should be complacent about bird deaths. It’s a universally accepted fact that all parties are against any kind of animal mortality as a result of our energy activities. The presentation of it though, ought to be based on the factual wider context of bird deaths from other causes. The Altamont pass was one of the first locations in the US preserved for wind power due to the excellent winds funneled by the hills there. At the time bird deaths were not on the minds of the responsible individuals who created this wind resource.Even institutions who are protective of birds, the National Audubon Society, the US Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society all have commissioned studies that result in the same conclusions afforded by the following chart. Bird deaths by wind turbines do not remotely compare with the impact of cats, cars, power lines or buildings. As wind power increases its penetration however, its currently small impact on birds will grow less than proportionately as operators learn how to avoid avian mortality by siting, colors on blades, kick in speeds and other methods.BIRD DEATHS FROM DIFFERENT CAUSESFigure 9: Bird deaths from different causes, showing that wind turbines are the least of threats among many. Source Bloomberg New Energy Finance, US Forestry Service.Perception of bird deaths can halt wind turbine installations during the public planning phase and then effective resistance can scuttle installation plans. It turns out though, that wind turbines are responsible for only 1 in every 10,000 causes of bird deaths.Small birds are killed in the billions by housecats while wind turbine casualties tend to be relatively larger bird species. Bigger birds, normally not the direct target of a housecat, like the protected Bald Eagles and other birds of prey, are more likely to be killed by a wind turbine than by a cat. Balanced against this has to be the effect of coal and oil on birds mentioned in the earlier solar report. Many energy technologies apparently are bad for birds, but wind and solar are far from being the worst culprits. In 2013 a study by Smallwood indicated that the estimates of wind turbine bird deaths may be understated for three reasons. Estimates of bird deaths by wind turbines depended on counting carcasses found under the turbines. It was entirely possible that searches were done in less than efficient ways and in inadequate search radiuses. Additionally carcasses could easily be removed by predators and his bird death estimate was 573,000, slightly higher than others.[xi]A 2005 study by the USDA Forest Service, was an early indication that wind turbines were a very small impact on overall bird populations.[xii] Then the National Audubon Society produced a study[xiii], funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in September, 2014 which took seven years to finish and which looked closely at 588 of the total 800 species of bird found in North America. 314 of these species are threatened in some way with a loss of environment by the end of the century. Climate change (therefore CONG) is blamed for effectively potentially destroying the ecosystem for 28 species. This data is not included in the chart above in Figure 9. The Bald Eagle and state mascots are at serious risk due to climate change which reduces the bird’s range and alters the lifecycle of their food sources. Bird mortality from fossil fuel pollution and climate change represents a far higher risk than wind turbines as far as the Audubon Society is concerned.In 1918, the US Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), a legislation aimed at protecting populations of over 1,000 species of birds from hunting or other forms of harm. It put in place penalties for causing damage to this part of the US environment. This may have been partly in response to the extinction by humans of the passenger pigeon, which had been the commonest bird in America, ranging in flocks of billions of individuals, but which had become completely extinct by 1914 after being exhaustively hunted for its meat and feathers. Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon died at the age of 29, on September 1, 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. She had been there all her life. She was named after President Washington’s wife and within minutes of her death she was on the way to the Smithsonian museum in Washington inside a 300lb block of ice, where Nelson Wood, the Smithsonian taxidermist preserved her. Twice she left the Smithsonian, once to attend a conservation event in San Diego in 1974 and then a return visit to Cincinnatti Zoo to name a building in her honor. For both trips she travelled by plane in a box in first class with her own flight attendant.[xiv]Birds are famously victims of the huge wind turbine blades. This is certainly true and although bird fatalities from the house cat, vehicles and building windows account for literally millions or billions more, it doesn’t excuse the wind turbine’s effects impact. At least lip service is done to relocate turbines out of birds’ migration paths. Also, most song birds migrate flying at a height of 2,000 to 4,000 feet, well above the tallest wind turbines, at least so far. There is a very disturbing YouTube video of a large, elegant bird of prey being struck down by such a rotating blade[xv]. In an awful European case there was the death of a rare swift, the White-throated Needletail, the world’s fastest flying bird. The poor exhausted creature was spotted by a group of 30 birdwatchers who had made a special trip to the isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The sighting was only the 9time that the bird had been seen since 1846, in Essex. The last time it had been seen at all was 1991. The assembled enthusiasts assembled in the appropriate location and waited for hours before being rewarded by sighting the bird. They were summarily horrified to see the rare bird, which had flown all the way from Australia, knocked down and killed by the rotating blade of a wind turbine.[xvi]The MBTA has been invoked several times to improve conditions for migratory bird species. Between 2004 and 2009 in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, just 85, unprotected, migratory birds were deemed to have died due to exposure to oil and gas facilities owned by Exxon Mobil. The Justice Department fined the company $600,000 or about $7,000 for each bird killed. Exxon pleaded guilty and cooperated with the department spending a further $2.5 million to clean up the sites. It turned out that the fine was equal to twenty minutes of Exxon’s profits, based on $8.6 billion earnings for the first half of 2009[xvii]. Other fossil fuel companies have been fined. BP paid $100 million for the impact of its 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill on migratory birds. Pacificorp, which operates coal fired power stations, paid $500,000 in 2009 after 232 eagles along power distribution lines between its substations were found to have been electrocuted.[xviii]Wind farms started to kill birds on a regular basis although the MBTA was rarely invoked, prompting calls of hypocrisy against those claiming that wind was an environmental solution. Wind farms have been fined for killing birds too, however. Duke Energy was fined $1 million for the deaths of 14 eagles and 149 other birds, including hawks, blackbirds, wrens and sparrows, between 2009 and 2013. Duke were also called upon to restore and do community service (how do you ask a large utility to do that!) and were placed on 5 years of probation while they put together an environmental compliance plan to prevent bird deaths. Interestingly, Duke then applied for a permit to kill eagles, to help provide a context within which the system can absorb the inevitability of bird deaths. Another group, the Wind Capital Group applied for such a license only to be embroiled in an argument over its granting, by the Osage Nation in opposition. Many applications for this license have been filed. Environmentalists complain bitterly when President Obama’s administration, eager for non-polluting wind power, announced a new federal rule that allows wind farms to lawfully kill birds of prey.There is some evidence that birds change their behavior when in the presence of wind farms. Lowther in 1998 discovered that studying a 22 turbine wind farm in Wales, UK, no birds were killed by the turbine and in fact they were seen to have shifted their activity to a different location. Some wind farms have no bird fatalities at all. A study[xix] published in the Journal of Applied Ecology by Pawel Plonczkier and Ian Simms monitored migrating flocks of pink-footed geese using radar as they returned during migration to the shores of Lincolnshire, UK. Monitoring the movement of the birds over 4 years from 2007 to 2010, established that two new wind farms effectively caused the geese to change their flight paths. The proportion of goose flocks flying outside the wind farm locations climbed from 52% to 81% in this time and even geese flying through the windfarm area had increased their altitude to climb above the turbines.An Australian online group called RenewEconomy had an article which summarizes the whole bird situation quite nicely called “Want to save 70 million birds a year? Build more wind farms”, drawing attention to the impact of CONG on birds. Replacing all fossil fuel worldwide, it says, would save about 70 million birds a year establishing wind farms as a strong net benefit for birds. Author Mike Bernard[xx] explains that wind farms kill less than 0.0001 percent of birds killed by human activities annually out of a total 1.5% of human caused mortality.Bats and BarotraumaThe other species which more recently became synonymous with death by wind turbine blade is bats. Most of the damage is done to migratory bat species in the autumn. Bats are famously known for their ability to echo locate hard objects in their local environment, such as tree branches or cave walls, and even insects on the wing while they are feeding. They can actually detect moving objects better than stationary objects so the high death rate from wind turbine blades was puzzling. Several explanations were proposed but 90% of the bat fatalities involved internal hemorrhaging just as might be expected with damage caused by sudden air pressure changes. Birds have a more resistant respiratory anatomy and are killed by being hit by the blades, whereas the bats do avoid the blades, but come so close that pressure changes around the blades cause the damage to their lungs. The mammals have larger, flexible lungs and hearts. Birds have compact, rigid lungs with very strong pulmonary capillaries which can resist the higher pressure changes, even though the blood/gas barriers are thinner than the bats. Wind turbine blades are moved by the wind. An airfoil on a plane pushes against the wind but a wind turbine blade is moved by the wind. In either case, the airfoil cross section causes significant differences in air pressure. The greatest area of low pressure exists at the fast moving (approximately 180 mph) tip of the blade and cascades downwind from the moving blade. A zone of low pressure can cause a bat’s lungs to expand causing tissue damage, or barotrauma. A study[xxi] was paid for by fossil fuel companies like Suncor and Shell, but also from wind turbine companies such as TransAlta Wind and Alberta Wind Energy Corporation as well as academic institutions. They found bat bodies from hoary and silver-haired bats killed at a wind farm in south western Alberta, Canada and examined them for internal injuries. Of 188 bat bodies collected, 87 had no external physical injury. Very few bats had external injuries without internal bleeding.In 2012, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conducted pressure studies[xxii] on mice, which were used because they are a close approximation to bats and discovered that pressures of only 1.4 kilopascals (kPa) were experienced by the bats at the blade tips in 11 mph winds but that it took 30 kPa to cause fatality in mice. There was no suggestion by NREL for an alternative cause of death however. At low windspeeds the pressures are even lower and yet it is at the low speeds that the bats fly which further confuses the issue.Intermittency – When the wind calms, electricity production needs to be backed up by a non-intermittent power source. On May 13th, 2014, Germany experienced 74% of their electricity grid, an astonishing 43.5 gigawatts, successfully supplied by renewable capacity[xxiii]. The world’s fourth largest economy not having to pay for fuel! However, the wind, solar, hydro and biomass generation activities needed to be backed up by over 10 gigawatts of ‘spinning reserve’. While there is no reason why a fossil fuel needs to be chosen to back up the wind, it just happens to be the current case that CONG are the bulk methods most available to make wind and solar intermittency more palatable. The short sighted criticism is that wind doesn’t cut pollution after all but it all depends on which non-intermittent power source is used. Since wind intermittency is mostly offset by the use of fast reacting gas turbines, instead of coal as back-up power or spinning reserve, the impact on emissions can be minor. In the future, sustainable base-load renewable energy can act as spinning reserve. Almost every type of renewable energy can become base load with some tweaks. Solar can go into space. Wind can harvest the energy from almost permanent fast winds at high altitude. Almost all other renewable energy types are already base load anyway, biomass, biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric etc.Noise – like a propeller, wind turbine blades make a noise in contact with the air. Not surprisingly this particular complaint turns out to be very much less annoying than it at first appears. It turns out that noise from other sources is louder and more persistent. Traffic, aircraft, wind itself, household noises, industry, farming etc. When windfarms are going through the public planning stage, it’s quite likely that the developer will ask local residents to sign a waiver for any noise irritation and give them an incentive to do so. They suggest local people accept this $5,000 check and if the turbines happen to be noisy, they have no recourse. One of many states that has addressed this issue is Oregon where a state noise ordinance reflects a specific regulation restricting noise from wind turbines. The law here, allows for noise to exceed what is considered an area’s ambient noise level by a given amount, often the subject of controversy itself. Interestingly in Oregon’s case the law that limits turbine noise is an evolution from one that once enforced industrial noise conditions and was part of the Department of Environmental Quality which was closed down in 1991, before wind power became a state priority.An 85 page study was conducted on the subject in 2009 for the Canadian Wind Energy Association and the American Wind Energy Association. The selected panel concluded that wind turbines do not make people ill because of noise. They did say the swooshing sound of blades could be irritating. Such a conclusion from such a source is hardly surprising, although the study panel members, a doctor, a vibration and acoustics expert from the UK, a professor of audiology and a biological engineer, all claimed to have been at arm’s length and totally able to design the study themselves.Eighteen studies were done between 2003 and 2014, not one of them saying there was any evidence that wind turbines did any harm at all. In 1918 there was a medical condition that at the time was not acknowledged to be real. It was a reaction to the hell of fighting on the First World War front often caused by the close impact of exploding shells. In fact it was called ‘shellshock’. The military term for it was cowardice or desertion and many otherwise perfectly good people were shot at dawn for supposedly letting the side down. In August of 2006, the UK Defense Secretary published posthumous pardons for 306 soldiers, four of whom were only 17, who were executed this way.[xxiv] I don’t think that wind turbine syndrome will one day be recognized as a real complaint, but I wouldn’t like to live close enough to a turbine to experience long term noise effects either.In February of 2015, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) completed a comprehensive study[xxv] on the effects of wind turbines and farms on people who live further than 1,500 meters from the closest turbine. The study identified over 4,000 international papers on the subject of which only 13 suggested a possible relationship between the wind turbine and human health. They determined that the body of direct evidence was small and of poor quality but admitted it was a complex subject as much of it is subjective opinion. NHMRC concluded there is no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans. The concern over the topic led them to recommend specific research to produce a body of high quality observations of those who live within 1,500 meters of wind farms.Resistance to Offshore WindFarmsCape Wind is the name of an offshore windfarm project that has been moving forward at a glacial pace and while it appeared positive for the start of construction as of the end of 2014, just a few months later, the cycle of delays has begun once again. There has been no offshore wind in the Americas, while many large installations have been completed in Europe. The UK has staked part of its energy future on very large offshore wind farms because of the huge reserve of energy there. It hopes to generate 18 gigawatts by 2020 and double that again by 2030.[xxvi]There is a paradox attached to the location of one of America’s most affluent playgrounds, Cape Cod. White warriors of the US clean energy army, people who in any other circumstance would do their best for renewable energy, are here arrayed against the installation of the first offshore wind turbine farm in America because of a fierce determination not to despoil their little plot of nature. This resistance to installation of something new is called “Not in My Back Yard” (NIMBY). Cape Wind Associates has tenaciously hung on to the goal of installing 130, 400 foot tall turbines, which were originally supposed to be up and running by 2006. Opposition has been fierce. An entity called ‘The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound’ has raised millions and paid staff members and a public relations firm in Washington. It has purchased radio, newspaper and TV time and has distributed flyers. It has also engaged the support of wealthy landowners in the region such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Walter Cronkite who lent his distinctive, patriarchal, trusted voice to a radio advertisements for the group.Many Cape Cod beach homes are as much as 7 miles from the proposed site, Horseshoe Shoal. At that distance the relative size of the giant turbines is less than that of a dime held at arm’s length. The indigenous hold-outs were being marginalized and the project was closer than ever to going ahead as of the end of 2014. Today though it is tied down again in delaying lawsuits which seem to never end. The site is in federal waters not subject to the same zoning laws as land based projects. Private money is ready to be put up to pay the expected $750 million equity money. Complainants like these are well funded, whereas the Cape would benefit hugely over two decades at least of clean energy supply for a very reasonable cost. Any foundations placed offshore additionally act as a wildlife magnet, creating the equivalent of an artificial reef teeming with life. There are artificial reef projects achieving this in many locations along the world’s coastlines using old ships, planes and other relics.[xxvii][i] Wind energy is considered a disaster responding to the hoax of climate change in this vociferous website which of course also discusses wind turbine syndrome. Available at: http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/wind-turbine-syndrome/what-is-wind-turbine-syndrome/[ii] The Caithness Windfarm Information Forum. Available at: http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/[iii] RenewableUK. A leading renewable energy trade association. Available at: http://www.renewableuk.com/en/events/conferences-and-exhibitions/renewableuk-2015/[iv] Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy. Available at: http://orbit.dtu.dk/en/organisations/risoe-national-laboratory-for-sustainable-energy%2869f3623e-9f3f-48aa-8b46-4b4fb2abab7f%29.html[v] Available at: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3cd_1383772851#Opj3eWpLL6Co282t.99[vi] David Wahl, Philippe Giguere. Ice Shedding and Ice Throw – Risk and Mitigation. Wind Application Engineering. GE Energy. Available at: http://www.cbuilding.org/sites/cbi.drupalconnect.com/files/ger4262.pdf[vii] Cattin et al. Wind Turbine Ice Throw Studies in the Swiss Alps. EWEC 2007. Based on studies of a 600 kW Enercon E-40 at 2,300 mASL in Swiss Alps[viii] Summary of Wind Turbine Accident Data to 30 September 2014. PDF. Caithness Windfarm Information Forum.[ix] Sibley and Monroe. 1992.[x] Kevin J. Gaston and Tim M. Blackburn. April 1997. How many birds are there? Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1018341530497[xi] K. Shawn Smallwood, “Comparing bird and bat fatality-rate estimates among North American wind-energy projects”, Wildlife Society Bulletin, 26 Mar. 2013. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wsb.260/pdf[xii] Wallace P. Erickson, Gregory D. Johnson and David P. Young Jr. A Summary and Comparison of Bird Mortality from Anthropogenic Causes with an Emphasis on Collisions. USDA Forest Service. PSW-GTR-191. 2005. Available at: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/Asilomar/pdfs/1029-1042.pdf[xiii] Erickson WP, Wolfe MM, Bay KJ, Johnson DH, Gehring JL (2014) A Comprehensive Analysis of Small-Passerine Fatalities from Collision with Turbines at Wind Energy Facilities. PLoS ONE 9(9): e107491. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0107491[xiv] Smithsonian article on Martha, the last passenger pidgeon. Available at: http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/martha2.html[xv] Bald Eagle seriously injured by wind turbine. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU[xvi] Rare swift killed by Scottish wind turbine. Available at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/birdwatchers-see-rare-bird-killed-by-wind-turbine-1-2980240[xvii] Exxon Mobil pleads guilty to bird deaths. Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8322081[xviii] BP and Pacificorp pay fines for killing birds. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-eagle-death-wind-farm-oil-energy-epa-2013-5[xix] Pawel Plonczkier and Ian C. Simms. Journal of Applied Ecology. 2012. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2012.02181.x/epdf[xx] Mike Barnard. 10 August, 2012. Want to save 70 million birds a year? Build more wind farms. RenewEconomy. Available at: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/want-to-save-70-million-birds-a-year-build-more-wind-farms-18274[xxi] Erin F. Baerwald, Genevieve H. D’Amours, Brandon J. Klug and Robert M.R. Barclay. Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines.[xxii] “NREL Study Finds Barotrauma Not Guilty”, November 27, 2012. Available at: http://www.nrel.gov/wind/news/2013/2149.html[xxiii] Germany has 74% of its power supplied by renewable energy. 2014. Available at: http://gas2.org/2014/05/27/for-one-hour-germany-was-powered-by-74-renewables/[xxiv] Posthumous pardons of First World War shellshock victims. Available on: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1526437/Pardoned-the-306-soldiers-shot-at-dawn-for-cowardice.html[xxv] Information Paper: Evidence on Wind Farms and Human Health. February 2015. PDF. National Health and Medical Research Council. Available at: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/eh57a_information_paper.pdf[xxvi] UK Renewable Energy Roadmap. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48128/2167-uk-renewable-energy-roadmap.pdf[xxvii] Positive environmental impacts of offshore wind farms. European Wind Energy Association. Available at: http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/files/members-area/information-services/offshore/research-notes/120801_Positive_environmental_impacts.pdf

MUST READ: Washington Post: The last days of a covid-19 prisoner - Florida Action CommitteeFor some reason, I cannot copy and paste from the article. This is the second time I’m, not able to transfer information from a particular identified website.A man, after 20 years out of prison on probation was arrested for something that was not apparent to the reporter. He was put into jail and when the pandemic COVID-19 began to threaten people in jail, the judge who sentenced him to time in jail ordered Charles Hobbs to be released from jail and put on house arrest. The reason for the release to house arrest was because he had congenital heart failure, kidney failure, and hypertension.For some apparent reason unknown to the reporter, the judges order had not been immediately followed, and Mr. Hobbs developed symptoms of COVID-19 and was found unconscious in his cell. They revived him and was transferred to another cell with COVID-19 prisoners. “He got sicker and ultimately died alone in a Miami hospital on May 2.”“After 22 years, Charles Hobbs tried to overcome his mistakes he made in 1997. But the stigma of a sex offense followed him all his life. Thanks to punitive laws, dizzying registration requirements, and an indifferent corrections staff, his mistake would ultimately lead to his death.”Now, the question is “Was this an unfortunate isolated situation?” I will tell you this. Back in 2017 I was arrested for a technical violation of probation. I forgot my GPS on the way to dialysis that morning. I thought I had packed it as I had done for the previous 338 visits, but that day I was apparently distracted and when my shuttle-bus came to pick me up, I left the GPS at home. The bus could not turn me around because the driver had other passengers in the bus as well. I called my probation officer on the way to the hospital and told him I would immediately arrange for a bus to take me home. I was willing to miss my session or reschedule it once I got my GPS with me. My probation officer said that the treatment was too important to cancel so I was to call him when I left dialysis and when I arrived back home. When I arrived back home (having gotten close to my GPS) my probation officer knew I was home.I was able to produce documentation of precisely where I was and at what time. I was able to provide probation a copy of the bus manifests both ways — going to dialysis and coming back home from dialysis — times of pickup and times of dropoffs both ways. I was able to show my treatment sheet AS I WAS TAKING DIALYSIS because I was monitored every 15 minutes for blood pressure and fluid removal. I also found an article on the net that showed a correlation between a dialysis patient with high creatinine (garbage in the bloodstream between dialysis sessions) level and short-term memory loss. I got that idea from my Social Worker for dialysis patients who said short-term memory loss is pretty regular for dialysis patients, and also why that was. All that documentation was sent to Miami-Dade where I had committed my crimes — coincidentally in 1997.I live in Orlando, and Miami-Dade, irregardless of me being able to categorically prove where I was without that GPS at any given time that day, swore out an arrest order for Orange County to hold me until M-D picked me up to take me down there to jail. I was in Orange County for a solid month where I received dialysis 3X a week M/W/F for 3 hours per session. My dialysis treatments as an outpatient at Florida Hospital East Orlando were 4 hours. So within that month, I lost a total of 12 hours of dialysis I would never get back. The day before Thanksgiving, M-D picked me up and I ended up at TGK (Turner Guildord-Knight) jail near Miami Int’l Airport. I was there for 15 days (half of it in a psych ward — their thinking was I was crazy when I committed the crimes in 1997, so I must be crazy now). I was in a single man cell 24/7 and I received NO DIALYSIS. They could not allow it as a member of the psych ward. I was eventually transferred down to the medical section of TGK for the remainder of my stay and I had two dialysis treatments 8 days apart from each other. The last one was the day before I was to be released I was taken to a dialysis center in Coral Gables, in shackles, in a special area walled off from other dialysis patients, as 2 burly officers and I walked through a back door. Those sessions were 3 hours as well.By the time I was released and my youngest son took me back to Orlando I had lost 30 pounds and without the prescribed dialysis, I was very sick. Unable to walk more than 2 steps before I felt like I was going to fall out. A wheelchair was begrudgingly supplied but not without the officer’s verbal crap wishing I would just die. I was home on Friday, December 9th, 2017. On Monday, December 12 2017, I went to dialysis after my long absence and my Nephrologist who just had a general Idea of where I was “missing in action” after a short conversation, he admitted me to the hospital where I stayed for a solid 2 weeks to undo what Miami-Dade and in part what Orange County did to me for the 45 days I was “gone”.So if Miami-Dade allowed this to happen to a COVID-19 patient … a convicted sex offender under some kind of violation … I do not think this was an isolated incident. It may be the first that the news media got wind of, but probably not the first pandemic death in jail chalked up to something else like natural causes.

German forces would have resupplied and regained control of the surrounding country. For around 18 months the war could have been prolonged in duràtion. In this time whilst possible an atomic bombe might be developed, however superior Russian forces would continue to steadily érodé Germanique résistance in the Eastern front.The Americans had advanced as far as nancy which today is roughly one hours drive away from Vittell. But did not get to advance further again until some time after Christmas 1945 due to the battle of the Bulge and German attempt to capture the port of Antwerp and force the Meuse.The clock was ticking and the race was “on” to capture, steal, seize and lay hand upon as many Nazi military secrets and top-ranking personnel (or kill them) for the British Government, who knew that the Soviets and also the Americans were about to also try to grab the scientists for their own secret post-war programmes.Special section. German Experiments.Seven decades after Nazi camp inmates were tortured in the name of medical research, it is increasingly clear the experimentation was conducted by scientists well beyond known ‘Nazi hacks and SS quacks’By MATT LEBOVIC27 October 2016, 12:02 pm46,677sharesNotorious Nazi physician Josef Mengele as a young doctor and the 'ramp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May of 1944, where Mengele sometimes selected inmates for life, death or 'experimentation' (Public domain)Probably not for the last time, human remains from inmates used in Holocaust-era “medical experiments” were accidentally discovered in Germany last year.Employees of the Max Planck Psychiatric Institute in Munich found the brain samples during construction in 2015, but the finding was not announced until the end of last month. The institute regularly received human remains from experiments performed on Nazi camp inmates during World War II.The man most closely associated with these “medical” activities was Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who selected inmates for the gas chambers or forced labor on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to the Max Planck Institute, the remains found last year were collected by Mengele and other physicians for analysis at the lab, which was then called the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFREE SIGN UP“We are embarrassed by these findings, and the blemish of their discovery in the archives,” said the institute in a statement about the remains, found in jars during building renovations.Israel’s Yad Vashem expressed concern over how long it took officials to publicize the discover, pointing to other examples of the mishandling of human remains from Nazi-era experiments. Two years ago in Berlin, for instance, victims’ bones were discovered in the trash. Last year, the remains of Jews gassed for research were uncovered at a forensic medical institute in Strasbourg, France, meticulously labeled with the victims’ information.Chart published by the Nazi regime in 1935 following the passage of racial laws at Nuremberg, showing the classification of Jews according to ancestry (Public domain)“Next year, we’re going to organize a convention about this issue,” said Yad Vashem’s Dan Machman in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio following the Planck Institute’s announcement.“This [discovery] is something new that was previously unknown, and joins other events that are suddenly uncovered after 70 years,” said the director of research at the international Holocaust center. “Whoever thought this chapter was completely finished is mistaken.”‘Life unworthy of life’Just as he was in charge of implementing the “Final Solution,” SS chief Heinrich Himmler sat atop the chain of command for medical experiments in Nazi camps. Because his guiding obsession was to advance Hitler’s racial utopia, Himmler took special interest in projects like “Block 10” of Auschwitz, where women underwent artificial insemination by SS physician Carl Clauberg, as well as forced sterilization.Long associated with Nazi medical experiments are the 1,000 pairs of twins that Josef Mengele “operated” on at Auschwitz. By murdering twins to perform simultaneous autopsies, Mengele hoped to unlock mechanisms involved in multiple births. As with the insemination and sterilization experiments, the twins were murdered in order to create a world repopulated by Germans.‘Block 10’ of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland, where fertility experiments were conducted on victims during the Holocaust (Public domain)Next to advancing the Nazis’ racial utopia, the second focus of experiments was to assist the war effort. Whether forcing Roma and Sini prisoners to drink sea water, or freezing 300 prisoners to record their shock from exposure, victims were subjected to one atrocity after another. Outside Hamburg, Jewish children had tuberculosis injected into their lungs. At Dachau, a decompression chamber was used to simulate high-altitude conditions, with 80 of 200 victims dying outright.Even before the Holocaust, physicians played a key role in Hitler’s secret T4 euthanasia program, through which 60,000 physically or mentally disabled Germans, including children, were murdered by lethal injection or in gas chambers. The personnel who ran these gassing installations went on to apply their findings at death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.According to historians, Hitler did not need to entice or coerce medical professionals into implementing the T4 program. Not widely probed until recent decades, German scientists apparently outpaced the regime in their haste to deal with “life unworthy of life,” as Nazi propaganda described the disabled.A bus and driver photographed outside Germany’s Hartheim killing center in 1940, where physically and mentally disabled people were given ‘mercy killings’ through the secret T4 program (Public domain)“The German medical community set its own course in 1933,” wrote Hartmut M. Hanauske-Abel in a seminal paper titled, “Not a Slippery Slope or Sudden Subversion: German Medicine and National Socialism in 1933.”In that 1996 paper, Hanauske-Abel wrote about “[the German medical] profession’s eager pursuit of enforced eugenic sterilizations.” His research detailed physicians’ leadership in projects like the T4 “mercy killings,” shattering the image of a few monsters like Mengele being responsible for Nazi atrocities.“The image of Nazi hacks and SS quacks engaged in lethal experiments in the seclusion of death camps is widely held to epitomize the type of doctor on trial in Nuremberg. But it is a false image — a stereotype constructed from incomplete data,” wrote Hanauske-Abel, accusing the German medical community of “enlightened amnesia” about its role in crimes against humanity.For all his research into history, Hanauske-Abel’s license was revoked by Germany’s Chamber of Medicine. He currently teaches at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, with department appointments in women’s health and pediatrics.Justice and silenceLargely forgotten among the notorious defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, two-dozen doctors were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. During almost five months of testimony from 85 witnesses, evidence of atrocities committed at Auschwitz, Dachau and elsewhere was presented, and the tribunal sentenced seven physicians to death.Although thousands of medical personnel were involved in Nazi-era medical experiments on unwilling inmates, just 23 men stood in for all of them at Nuremberg.One of 85 witnesses who testified during the ‘Doctors’ Trial’ at Nuremberg, Germany in 1946 (Public domain)“To untrained judges, attorneys, investigators and juries, as existed during the time of the Nuremberg trials, what emerged was an incomplete, often hasty, and unfair prosecution of crimes that demanded more resources and research,” said Victor Shayne, author of the 2009 book, “Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust.”“The degree of interest in bringing criminals to justice must be questioned, and one must wonder how much this had to do with political interests of the post-war period,” said Shayne in an interview with The Times of Israel. “These included the grab for Nazi scientists that occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the incestuous relationship between Nazi corporations and Allied nations, including the US,” said Shayne.Indeed, several of the most notorious Nazi physicians were rehabilitated after the war.Herr Doctor, the “one that got away”.The author of this article personally knows of one top Nazi Doctor and Scientist who escaped the executioner's rope after the war, from carrying out “experiments” on children in Auschwitz.Given an outwardly respectable new fake name and background and identity, he went to work for the United States Government Nuclear and later, Artificial intelligence programme, and developed various weapons and systems for the British Ministry of Defence, where, much later, he also went to live and work.Among these men was Carl Clauberg of Auschwitz’s horrific Block 10. After being released from a Soviet prison, Clauberg listed Auschwitz on his business card and gave a press conference about his work there and the women’s camp Ravensbruck. Clauberg was arrested in 1955, although the German Chamber of Medicine refused to revoke his license.Physician Karl Brandt (center) was one of 23 German physicians tried at Nuremberg in 1946 for war crimes and crimes against humanity (Public domain)Another prominent Nazi physician who continued his medical career was Baron Otmar Von Verschuer. As Mengele’s chief mentor, the doctor received eyeballs and other remains taken from Mengele’s victims. As with Clauberg, Germany’s Chamber of Medicine upheld Von Verschuer’s medical license after the war, and he enjoyed a career of prominence until the late 1960s.“The annals of the downfall of German medicine are replete with the names of internationally renowned scientists like Professors Planck, Rudin, and Hallervorden and clinicians like Harvard-trained Professor G. Schaltenbrand, who conducted neuro-immunological experiments on uninformed subjects — not at a concentration camp but at the Julius Maximilian University of Wurzburg,” wrote Hanauske-Abel.There is still debate over whether or not it is acceptable to use data obtained from Nazi experiments. For instance, Nazi-era research into the gas phosgene became relevant during the Gulf War, when US military strategists feared it might be deployed against their forces. Publications like The New England Journal of Medicine have rejected papers that make use of data obtained from the Nazis’ victims, including the human “cooling curve” derived from freezing experiments.“In dehumanizing people, whether Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Communists or others, there arises a rationalization for any sort of crime, from torture to stealing to murder,” said Shayne. “And this dehumanization lies at the bottom of Nazi experimentation,” he said.An anti-Semitic Nazi poster in Latvian made for the German occupation of Latvia (Public domain)But to counter that, Hitler would have deployed the Atomic bomb he was secretly developing. Germany would have won the war. A delay of 18 months caused by Germany recapturing Antwerp, which is generally felt would have prolonged the war, during this time, the Nazi Nuclear programme would be deployed.Nazi scientists and laboratories had been busy fermenting all manner of evil new weapons, poisons, and various other frightful experiments in secret positions in the Vosges in Alsace Lorraine.1944 and 1945At the end of November 1944 the U.S. Seventh Army under General Alexander Patch had reached the Vosges region. Grand-Hohékirkel was occupied by elements of the German 25th Panzer Grenadier Division.Otterbiel and Grand-Hohékirkel were to be the next positions to be attacked by the U.S. 100th Infantry Division, but the planned operation was disrupted by the Battle of the Bulge. The Seventh Army withdrew to cover areas vacated by the U.S. Third Army, which moved to confront the German offensive.The 100th returned in March 1945 attacked the area on a broad front. Grand-Hohékirkel was lightly defended, and the Americans, backed up by heavy artillery, were able to capture Grand-Hohékirkel and the Ensemble de Bitche with few casualties.Four-à-Chaux saw little action during the Lorraine Campaign, where most action took place around Hochwald and Schoenenbourg. Block 1 was destroyed using explosives by the Germans before the surrender in 1945.Evidence in support of the Nazi Nuclear programme has repeatedly been discovered but then “sept under the carpet” by the authorities in several countries, when persons have discovered remains of radioactive metals and other clearly nazi nuclear objects still existing and present at the old Nazi secret test sites. Using ground-penetrating radar, 70-year-old Peter Lohr, says he discovered huge caverns in the ground under the Jonastal in Thuringia.Furthermore, using a 3-D imaging technology he found five large metal objects in the cave, at least two of which he believes are atomic bombs.The shape of the metal objects corresponds to the shape of a nuclear weapon, said Lohr, who is a trained mechanical engineer.“The metal's been lying there for 71 years. At some point, it will decay and then we will have a second Chernobyl on our hands” he is said to have already warned German tabloid “Bild”.The authorities don’t seem to be taking his concerns as seriously though.“They just told me that I’m not allowed to continue my research anymore.”There were German designs and aircraft and rocket Missile and Torpedo projects carried out by Nazi scientists and technicians.Germany developed several long-range bombers, that were capable of carrying and dropping the Nazi Nuclear bomb on America, but few got ever produced.Below shows Me 264.He117 push-pull configuration Me 264.Significantly, historians have recently had to change their position regarding the readiness of Germanys Nuclear bomb programme. It seems now, that the Germans DID possess the required components to mount a nuclear bomb. Weapons-grade uranium ore, in fact, 80 tonnes of the stuff, was hidden in railway sidings in the Belgium port of Antwerp. The process of refinement of this required weapon ore then took a lot of time, and for the Nazis to have lost control of their refined uranium was a fatal setback to their successfull development of the atomic bomb they were then building.1938 Oct 01, Germany begins annexing the Sudentenland. 1939 Mar 15, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.There is a mine, far on the western border, called the Joachimsthal Mine.Today it is called Jachymov , but back then was known as Joachimsthal. This place had a silver mine dating back to the 1500s. It also produced Uranium. In fact, when Martin Klaproth first identified Uranium in 1789, I believe that Uranium came from the mine in Czechoslovakia.I would like to know if Germany, at any point from 1938 to 1945, mined Uranium from this mine. If so, how much, and what concentration of Uranium did it have.I'm aware that Germany had a serious atomic bomb project comparable to the Manhattan Project. and I would nevertheless like to know if they ever tried to mine Uranium from here.It seems that, like many secret Nazi science programmes, the construction of the German atomic bomb was spread out across a large geographical area of the occupied Reich territories, and some key elements had fallen unexpectedly under allied control before they could get taken away by the Nazis. There was a uranium refinement plant in Holland.Had Germany assembled each and every component on the same spot, and assembled the kit, it changes the historical perspective somewhat.perhaps the Ardennes offensive was not, after all, the reckless gamble we all used to think it was? perhaps there was, after all, a method to the madness?But, what would have happened if Hitler Atom bombes the Russian forward army?! Food for some debate….Especially if America then retaliated with Thiers….American forces in Ardennes had been badly mauled and rescued by General George Patton, and British forces had committed only a fraction of their true strength. In fact, Montgomery although hé Wrote in His mémoires that hé brought in the full strength with a crack, hé had only actually committed two units of infantry and some tanks.In fact, many British tanks had just been quietly refitting right before the Ardennes offensive. So British strength would have to make a stand while American forces sorted out the chaos they would be in. In fact, like a world war 1 battle nearby there long ago, a stratégie retreat would be wise.So perhaps the burden of attack or defence would fall for the time being on surviving British forces to stave off the follow up German attack called Whirlwind.Earlier the Americans had launched landings in the South of France, codenamed Anvil Dragon Rose, and although these operations were deemed successfull, they split the cooperation up between the allies, and effectively it was from this point in time during the prosecution of the final war, that America and not Britain took over the way the war operation was being run and commanded. Churchills planned landings in the Balkans did not, therefore, take place.Worst still, the Americans allowed the very heavily armed German Army group G from Southern France to escape as far back towards Germany as the Mountains of the Vosges, where they set up a strong defensive base position, and from which other attacks and offensives got launched later in the same year, which very nearly cost the allies Strasbourg (only just liberated) and all of Alsace Lorraine.As it turned out, this German Whirlwind force got as far as Dompaire where a truly massive, but Strangely not well written up battle took place between large numbers of Germain and allied tanks.it is now understood that the tank battle of Dompaire, was on Kursk proportions in size!Before all this, around September 1944 a unit of American trucks, armoured cars and jeeps got attacked over 50 miles behind enemy lines, near Valfroicourt. And, separately, the British SAS had sent men and armoured Jeeps under "operation Loyton" into the area, to kidnap and snatch secret German scientists known to be working in the area.Operation Loyton was the codename given to a Special Air Service (SAS) mission in the Vosges department of France during the Second World War.The mission, between 12 August and 9 October 1944, had the misfortune to be parachuted into the Vosges Mountains, at a time when the German Army was reinforcing the area, against General George Patton's Third Army. As a result, the Germans quickly became aware of their presence and conducted operations to destroy the SAS team.With their supplies running out and under pressure from the German army, the SAS were ordered to form smaller groups to return to Allied lines. During the fighting and breakout operations, 31 men were captured and later executed by the Germans.The Vosges is a region in north-eastern France close to the German border. In 1944 it was sparsely populated and consisted of wood covered hills, valley pastures and small isolated villages, an ideal area for a small mobile raiding force to operate.Secret Operation was to capture German Scientists and laboratory technicians working in various Nazi secret projects in the Vosges.MissionA small SAS advance party commanded by Captain Henry Druce was parachuted into the Vosges on 12 August 1944. The drop zone was in a deeply wooded mountainous area 40 miles (64 km) west of Strasbourg. The advance party's objective was to contact the local French resistance, carry out a reconnaissance of the area, identify targets for an attack and locate a suitable dropping zone for the main force.The main party under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Brian Franks arrived 18 days after the advance party on 30 August 1944. Their landing was not without incident. A parachute equipment container filled with ammunition exploded on contact with the ground.A member of the resistance assisting to move the parachute containers killed himself by eating plastic explosive, believing it was some sort of cheese.A Frenchman who was found in the area supposedly picking mushrooms, who the resistance believed was an informer, was detained. In the confusion following the explosion of the ammunition container, he managed to snatch up a Sten gun and was shot trying to escape.The following day the SAS started patrolling and set up observation posts. Almost immediately they became aware that their presence had been betrayed to the Germans.There were far more Germans in the area than they expected and a force of 5,000 Germans were advancing up a valley near the village of Moussey just a short distance from the SAS base camp.The SAS's aggressive patrolling, sabotage attacks and the number of fire fights they had engaged in, led the Germans to believe they were up against a far larger force than there actually was.Over two nights, the 19 and 20 September, reinforcements were parachuted in which consisted of six Jeeps and another 20 men. The Jeeps, armed with Vickers K and Browning machine guns, allowed the SAS to change their tactics.The Jeep patrols shot up German road convoys and staff cars. A patrol under the command of Captain Druce even entered Moussey, just as a Waffen SS unit was assembling. Driving through the town, they opened fire and inflicted many casualties.In fact, the SAS jeeps drove right through the town square and market place, catching the Germans by surprise as they were loading various trucks and jeeps with supplies. the SAS jeeps opened fire with machine guns and small arms fire, as they drove through the town, killing a number of Germans and damaging several German vehicles as they passed in close proximity.This was along with the attack upon some sort of secret German laboratory and buildings, and the capture of 13 german nazi scientists, the “high water mark” of the entire SAS operation. The Germans were on to their presence in the area and soon they were hunted by a large number of German soldiers..Some of the SAS soldiers graves were rediscovered and exhumed after the war, but not all could be then found.Sitting in their stripped-down jeeps, ready for action, the SAS raiders could not believe their luck. Behind enemy lines in the remote mountainous Vosges region of France, they were hidden in thick undergrowth by the side of a twisting valley road.Suddenly into view came the slender and stylish bonnet of a German army staff car — a welcome target.One of their missions in their two-month undercover operation was to devastate the enemy’s command structure and reduce its fighting potential. Here was the perfect opportunity.Mission: One of their missions in SAS's two-month undercover operation was to devastate the enemy’s command structure and reduce its fighting potential. Left, a British soldier in 1941 and right, an SS soldierAnd it only got better because close behind the first car was a second, and then a third, all stuffed full of German officers and just asking to be hit as they slowed for a junction.In the front of each jeep, the machine-gunners let fly. Two thousand bullets tore through bodywork from bonnet to boot until not a figure could be seen moving in the stricken vehicles. A pall of oily smoke rose above the road.In the deafening silence that followed, the SAS heard more vehicles approaching — a convoy of 20 trucks carrying enemy troops. This would be too big to take on. The jeeps scooted away, back to their mountain-top hideout, job done. It was the autumn of 1944. The SAS had parachuted in weeks earlier to this remote region in Occupied France, close to the German border, and ever since had been harassing Nazi forces, blowing up trains and generally creating mayhem.It was as daring and dangerous an operation as any the SAS had taken part in since its formation three years earlier, well worthy of its ‘Who Dares Wins’ motto.Yet Operation Loyton, its codename, has remained little known, passed over in the official histories in just a few lines. It is revealed here in detail for the first time.It proved a costly mission. Nearly half of those who parachuted into France never came home — a horrific attrition rate. Some died horrible deaths at the hands of the Nazis.The SAS parachuted in to a remote region in Occupied France, close to the German border (seen in file image)Local French people took a terrible beating too, thousands of them killed or sent to concentration camps for sheltering the raiders.The operation became important for another reason, too, as we will see later in this series. Without it, the SAS might well have disappeared completely.In the immediate post-war years, it was officially disbanded in an act of petty spite by a British military establishment that hated its maverick ways. But it was the men of Operation Loyton who defied the top brass and secretly kept ‘The Regiment’ going, ensuring its survival as the unrivalled military strike force it still is today.One of the many extraordinary things about Loyton was how long it lasted. It was only ever meant to be a quick in-and-out mission, a fortnight at the most. In the end, it went on for two months.This was because the SAS found they had been betrayed by a “dog walker” and had become surrounded, and they needed to shoot their way out from one situation to get to safety again for a while.In the aftermath of the D-Day landings, the Allies were advancing through France, with General Patton’s U.S. Third Army smashing its way towards the German border. It was believed the enemy might well dig their last-ditch defensive line in the Vosges. It made sense for the SAS to drop in, boost and arm the local Resistance forces there and ‘make merry hell’ for the enemy.In the autumn of 1944, SAS troops parachuted into a remote region of Occupied France (file image)Commanded by 23-year-old Captain Henry Druce, a small advance party parachuted in at night to establish a secure ‘bandit base’ and a drop zone for more men and supplies to follow. The plan was that as many as 120 SAS troopers would eventually be on the ground to wage shoot ’n’ scoot warfare, the SAS’s specialty.They might even seize one of the mountain passes leading into Germany and hold it until the Allied army arrived — in which case the war could well be over by Christmas.There were two miscalculations. The first was that the Allied forces were advancing much more slowly than anticipated, thereby prolonging the operation indefinitely.The second was that the area was not sparsely defended, as had been thought. On the contrary, a division of 5,000 German soldiers — including battle-hardened veterans from the eastern front — was firmly in place to meet them.Was it possible that the missing men from Operation Loyton were not prisoners of war but had ended their lives there — murdered in cold blood?The moment Druce landed, he found he was up against the vicious Colonel Erich Isselhorst, an experienced killer who had cut his teeth liquidating partisans in Russia. Now the Gestapo chief in the Vosges, his response to reports of parachutists landing on his patch was to launch Operation Waldfest (which translates as ‘party in the forest’) to hunt them down.By his side was Major Hans Ernst, who had recently sent 800 French Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz. A sadistic man, he was a past master at forcing captives to break under extreme interrogation and torture.Suddenly the forests and foothills were flooded with heavily armed German troops, forcing Druce and his men to flee from their first base, trekking through the mountains, pursued by the enemy.The miracle was that they were never betrayed by the locals, despite the Nazis taking extreme punitive measures. In the village of Moussey, an SS punishment squad rolled in at dawn one Sunday and dragged 200 men, women and children from their homes.A jack-booted officer harangued them with just one question: where are the English parachutists hiding? There was an inducement. ‘Any one who steps forward with information about these terrorists will go free.’ The deadly consequences if no one spoke up did not need to be spelt out.Yet not a soul stirred, even though every single one of them knew that the secret camp of the SAS was just a few miles away in the forest.None of the vile threats moved the Moussey villagers, even when the men were marched away, most never to be seen or heard of again. No one informed, not even under torture.Locals such as the buxom Madame Rossi, who lived on the outskirts of the village, took huge risks to protect the band of raiders. On one occasion the Gestapo searched her home from top to bottom, while six SAS men lay hidden there, lying beneath a huge water wheel at the rear.The Waffen SS were active in the region and sent troops to hunt for the SAS soldiers. Villagers were rounded up, and they committed massacres and war crime atrocities.One of the many extraordinary things about Loyton was how long it lasted. It was only ever meant to be a quick in-and-out mission, a fortnight at the most. In the end it went on for two months.Another redoubtable Moussey woman was Mlle Bergeron, who ran messages between the SAS and the French Resistance. The Germans beat her and turned her farmhouse into a brothel and when she still would not crack, they dragged her 80-year-old mother out of bed and forced her to dance in her nightgown until she collapsed and died.Waffen SS Troops searched the countryside and forests looking for the SAS.Still, Mlle Bergeron would not talk. Another woman was marched into the forest at gunpoint and passed so close to the SAS base that the men there could see her through the trees. She, too, said nothing.But the iron fist of Operation Waldfest made life very hard for Druce and his men. With German tanks and troops on every road, the villagers had fewer opportunities to take food to them. ‘We were really boxed in,’ he noted — and beginning to starve.A lesser man might have called off the mission at this point. They had bitten off more than they could chew and should get out fast. Conditions on the ground got even tougher as bad weather set in and the men lived and fought in clothes sodden by non-stop rain.Would this be the fate of those fighters who fell into enemy hands — as well as the men of Moussey and other Vosges villages who had been rounded up in retaliation?It was dirty work in other ways, too. Druce captured two agents of the Milice, the French pro-Nazi militia, and shot them out of hand — something that was originally censored in the official SAS diary of the mission.To add to the discomfort and danger, it was increasingly clear that the Allied armies would not be arriving any time soon.The countryside in the Vosges is quite often Forested and with high hills and valleys. It was a good place to hide but also very difficult to move through for both sides.Jeeps of the SAS were often fitted with machine guns as shown here.But instead of packing it in, Druce gave the go-ahead for the next batch of SAS fighters to come in and launch hit-and-run attacks. They sneaked into a military depot and blew up ammunition trucks in a conflagration that killed and injured 80 Germans.Then more reinforcements parachuted in, two dozen of them this time, led by the brigade commander himself, Colonel Brian Franks, leaving his desk in England for front-line action.The Vosges is a region in north-eastern France close to the German border. In 1944 it was sparsely populated and consisted of wood covered hills, valley pastures and small isolated villages, an ideal area for a small mobile raiding force to operate late 1944 it was also the area that General George Patton’s Third Army was heading towards, but outrunning their supplies they had stopped at Nancy.To counter the American advance the Germans had moved reinforcements, including the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen, into the areaA small SAS advance party commanded by Captain Henry Druce was parachuted into the Vosges on 12 August 1944. The drop zone was in a deeply wooded mountainous area 40 miles (64 km) west of Strasbourg. The advance party’s objective was to contact the local French resistance, carry out a reconnaissance of the area, identify targets for an attack and locate a suitable dropping zone for the main force.NOTE.Ever since the author and his French wife discovered about this mission, a raft of various “articles” has grown up around it from various self-publicists, which is in danger of crowding out and supplanting the original text and report of this mission. There is a degree of confusion and misinformation now circulating around the mission, its objectives targets and actual achievements which is unhelpful.It is my firm intention to present our own material on the subject independently of the various “online” published but often wildly inaccurate sources.Continued….When he saw what it was like on the ground he, too, would have been within his rights to call off the entire operation. He didn’t. Rather, he stepped it up, urging his men to strike hard at the ‘grey lice’, as he nicknamed the enemy because that was how they appeared from his mountaintop vantage point as they moved along the valley floor.They did so with deadly new gadgets devised by the boffins back home — plastic explosives shaped like horse droppings. Scattered on a road, they appeared to be innocent, until a truck passed over them, detonating the powerful charge.But the real game-changer was the arrival of the jeeps. The whole of Moussey turned out to light the drop zone with torches as six floated down in special cradles strung from enormous parachutes at each corner.One of their missions in their two-month undercover operation was to devastate the enemy’s command structure and reduce its fighting potential. Above, troops in a jeep similar to the ones used at the timeFast and furious had always been the SAS way. Now they could sow even more panic among the ‘grey lice’, dashing in with all guns blazing and then making a clean getaway.Not everything went to plan. On his way back to ‘bandit base’ from one mission, Druce cruised into the square at Moussey to see SS troopers lined up opposite frightened villagers, rounded up for yet another round of brutal reprisals.For a split second SAS and SS eyed each other. But Druce was the first to react, accelerating his jeep at the SS ranks as his gunner fired from close range. SS soldiers were blown off their feet as Druce steered for the exit, leaving 20 dead and wounded soldiers in his wake. As he sped away, all he could hope for the villagers was that, in the chaos, they had managed to escape. In reality, they were all being herded away for deportation.Furious at their fate, Franks stepped up the raids so that no German officer could sleep soundly in his bed or travel the roads of the Vosges in comfort. Soon Operation Loyton had destroyed eight German staff cars and their high-ranking occupants. The final tally would be 13.A key part of their mission had been to decapitate the Nazi serpent in the area and they succeeded, making a significant dent in the SS command structure as well as spreading fear among the occupiers. It was as much as any group of raiders like this could expect, if not more.In truth, the Germans had exaggerated the numbers of SAS on the ground and the danger they posed. There were never more than 50 of them at large at any one point and they could only cause so much havoc. But it was the myth of the winged-dagger-wearing avengers that did the most damage.The operation was well worthy of the SAS's 'Who Dares Wins' mottoNot that the SAS had it all their own way, not by a long way. They took casualties from the very start when Sergeant Kenneth Seymour was injured on landing and quickly taken captive.He was fiercely interrogated, as was radio operator Corporal Gerald Davis, who had sought refuge in a church and been turned in to the Gestapo by a priest. Both men were presented with the same ultimatum: tell us all you know, or darkness, pain and bitter death will follow.Among the later reinforcements, Sergeant Fitzpatrick and Troopers Conway and Elliot drifted off in fog and went missing. A French woman — one of the handful of locals not to help the SAS contingent — betrayed them to the Nazis. (really? the author does not agree).Five further SAS men were caught in an ambush and held, along with the others in subterranean cells at a security camp in the garrison town of Schirmek, the nerve centre for Isselhorst’s anti-guerilla operation.A few miles away was Natzweiler, a former ski resort that had been transformed into a concentration camp, the only one ever built on French soil. Within its confines, tens of thousands of inmates would be starved, beaten, tortured and gassed to death.Would this be the fate of those fighters who fell into enemy hands — as well as the men of Moussey and other Vosges villages who had been rounded up in retaliation? It seemed all too likely.As time went on, the SAS operation inevitably ran out of steam. October came and still, the American army had not arrived.Franks’s men were increasingly isolated and under pressure. He radioed a desperate message back to England that the latest resupply from the air had dropped bazookas and bombs when ‘food was the main item I asked for’.By now the weather had switched, autumn into winter. Snow fell in the mountains, leaving exhausted and hungry men shivering in the cold. They were approaching a state in which they would no longer be able to fight.Isselhorst was as merciless as ever, launching fresh purges. Some 1,000 villagers were seized and shipped off to concentration camps.At some stage during this round-up, the location of the SAS base was given away. On their mountain top, the SAS heard the tell-tale metal-upon-metal clink of troops filtering up through the thick woodland towards them. There was the spine-chilling whine of dogs.Nearly half of those who parachuted into France never came home — a horrific attrition rate. Some died horrible deaths at the hands of the Nazis. Above, the Waffen-SS unit combing an area of forest in Germany in 1941Completely surrounded, they waited, fearing the worst. Captain John Hislop couldn’t bear the thought of torture and was determined to go down fighting. He would keep the last bullet for himself.But the attack never came. The Germans retreated, biding their time. But the prospect that they would be back, and in even greater numbers, was not in doubt. Franks ordered his men to abandon the base immediately. They would leave behind their much-loved jeeps and travel light and fast by foot on narrow mountain tracks.Next morning the Germans came in force, blasting the SAS base with tanks and field guns. They were met by a rearguard, seven brave men, commanded by the baby-faced Lt David Dill — a veteran from the first drop all those weeks before.In a ferocious fight, they held out for four hours before the last of their ammunition was exhausted and they surrendered. Their rightful claim to be prisoners of war was ignored as they were handed over to the Gestapo. They joined their other captured comrades in Schirmek.But at least the main body of the Operation Loyton force was still free, though, with little ammo, explosives, food or shelter, their position was desperate. With no real alternative, Franks ordered an end to the mission.He split his 40 remaining troops into four-man and six-man units and sent them off to find their own way through the German defences to Allied lines.The journeys were arduous and dangerous. Franks and his own unit tried to cross a bridge but were chased away by a salvo of grenades and forced to swim the river. They ducked away from enemy patrols just in time, weaving one way as bullets thundered over them, then the other as shots came at them from in front, too.Three of them went to ground as search parties drew closer. Bayonets jabbed into bushes around their hiding place. Just when it seemed the enemy must discover them, a massive barrage of incoming Allied fire slammed in and the Germans fled.The next day they stumbled on a road with soldiers patrolling it — Americans! They were safe at last.Back home, it was time for Franks to draw up the tally sheet. On the plus side, the mission had delivered against seemingly impossible odds, spreading chaos and havoc across the Vosges.Roads and railway lines had been knocked out and supplies disrupted. Dozens of German officers had been killed. An entire enemy division had been diverted to hunt the SAS, pinning down thousands of German troops who would have been better deployed fighting the Allies on the actual front line.But there had been a terrible cost. There were the countless French men and women who had been brutally tortured, deported and slaughtered. And then his own casualties.All in all, 82 SAS fighters had been deployed and only 46 came out alive. Five were recorded as definitely dead, ‘killed in action’. But 31 were listed as ‘Missing, believed prisoners of war’ or simply ‘Missing’.Would they ever be seen alive again?From a source in Special Operations, Franks heard spine-chilling details of the brutality and mass extermination that had gone on at the concentration camp at Natzweiler. Was it possible that the missing men from Operation Loyton were not prisoners of war but had ended their lives there — murdered in cold blood?Answering that riddle would now become the SAS’s next mission. Come hell or high water, Franks decided, the killers of his men must be hunted down.The Germans, unable to locate the SAS base, were aware that they could not be operating without the assistance of the local population. To gain information about the location of the SAS camp, all the male residents of Moussey between the ages of 16 and 60, a total of 210 men, were arrested.Others were also rounded up from farms and hamlets and were executed by the Germans.Captured SAS soldiers were interrogated and then executed by the Germans and buried in unmarked graves.New memorial stones will be placed at the sites of two notorious massacres of captured British SAS troops after the locations were rediscovered in a 13-year-project to commemorate all Second World War deaths from the elite regiment.The locations in eastern France have been tracked down in research to compile the stories of each of the 374 members of the elite regiment, and its forerunner the Long Range Desert Group, killed in the conflict.The research behind the role of honour has found previously unpublished photographs of the exhumation of some of the soldiers, as well as new pictures of the SAS team sent to investigate the war crimes after the end of the conflict.25-year-old Sgt Ralph ‘Jock’ Hay, who served with 2nd SASThe author now intends to place memorial stones at the two sites in the Vosges Mountains after he trawled war crimes trial records and military files and talked to elderly local residents to pinpoint the locations.The killings happened in the aftermath of an audacious SAS mission, codenamed Operation Loyton, to parachute behind enemy lines and attack communications lines in August 1944.The mission is believed to have been betrayed and the men of 2ndSAS found they had parachuted into an area full of German troops.After weeks of hit and run raids, starved of supplies and hunted by German troops, the SAS party withdrew to Allied lines, with many men listed as missing, believed captured.But unknown to the SAS men who had taken part in the mission, Hitler had given his now notorious order dictating that captured commandos should be executed rather than taken a prisoner of war, even if they were wearing a military uniform.The site of the shootings as it looks now.Among those captured was 25-year-old Sgt Ralph ‘Jock’ Hay from Burghead in Morayshire. His party found itself surrounded by SS Panzer troops and was forced to surrender after it ran out of ammunition following an hour-long battle.He and seven others were later driven to a remote forested spot and executed on October 15.According to the testimony of German soldiers accused of the murders after the war, the captured men were one-by-one told to strip off their uniforms and were led at gunpoint from a truck into the trees.As each was led away, those remaining listened in silence until a gunshot was heard and another captive was ordered out.As the eighth and final man was led to a pit now filled with the naked bodies of his comrades, he looked at his German guard and told him: “We were good men.”The victims were exhumed from their shallow grave in late 1945 and reburied by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at the Durnbach War Cemetery.In the intervening years, the actual site of the shootings became lost. Historians believed they had found it in the 1980s and a memorial was erected, but the author believes he has now found the correct site 12 miles away, west of the hamlet of La Grande Fosse.After being interrogated the survivors were transported to concentration camps, from which only 70 returned after the war.On 29 September 1944 Captain Druce was sent to cross back over into the American lines, with the order of battle for a Panzer division which had been obtained by a member of the resistance. Together with F/O Fiddick, R.C.A.F 622 Sqn, they passed through the German lines three times before they eventually reached safety.At the start of October, with Patton's army stalled and supplies running out, the likelihood that the Americans would relieve the SAS had dwindled. It was decided to end the operation, which had only been intended to last two weeks and had now lasted over two months. Lieutenant Colonel Franks ordered his forces to split up into small groups and make their own way back to the Allied lines 40 miles (64 km) away. One patrol was ambushed by the Waffen-SS, killing three men. The fourth, Lieutenant Peter Johnson, was wounded but managed to escape. Another 34 men failed to reach Allied lines.AftermathAt the end of the war Franks began investigating the fate of his missing men. All that was known for certain was that three men accompanying Lieutenant Johnson had been killed, and that 10 men had been buried in the cemetery at Moussey.The SAS was officially disbanded in October 1945. Prior to this the 2nd SAS War Crimes Investigation Team (2 SAS WCIT) had been formed to, amongst other things, look into the events after Loyton. 2nd SAS Intelligence Officer Major Eric 'Bill' Barkworth had been informed of the existence of the Commando Order, which called for the execution of all captured commandos when he was interviewing captured German officers in 1944.In July 1945 Franks was informed by the French that the bodies of some SAS men had been found in the French occupation zone at Gaggenau.Franks ordered 2 SAS WCIT, under the command of Major Beckworth, to travel to the area. Their investigation discovered that of the 31 missing SAS men, 30 had been murdered by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), some of them at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Vosges mountains. One man's fate was never discovered.Erich Isselhorst, head the Sicherheitspolizei in Strasbourg, was sentenced to death by a British military tribunal in June 1946 for the murder of the British POWs but handed over to the French. He was once more sentenced to death in May 1947, now by a French military tribunal, and executed in Strasbourg on 23 February 1948.While posted in Strasbourg, Isselhorst was part of the Operation Waldfest, a scorched earth operation in which villages in Alsace and Lorraine were destroyed to eliminate shelter for Allied troops for the upcoming winter and inhabitants deported as forced labour or to concentration camps. In a coordinated operation by the Wehrmacht and SS, villages were raided, French resistance fighters and the captured SAS soldiers were executed.Isselhorst ordered the execution of the captured British SAS members, as well as a number of French civilians, three French priests and four US airmen. The prisoners were taken over the Rhine river on trucks to Gaggenau on 21 November 1944. The leader of the execution commando, Karl Beck, thought it unwise to leave mass graves of shot allied soldiers in an area so close to the front line. The prisoners were initially kept in a local jail but then, on or shortly after 25 November, unaware of their fate, taken to a local forest and, in groups of three, shot in the head in a bomb crater. One prisoner attempted to escape but was killed as well. Apart from Isselhorst, his second in command, Wilhelm Schneider was also executed for the war crime in January 1947. Beck initially escaped punishment but was sentenced to death in the 1950s.Memorial to the operation at the National Memorial ArboretumIn 2003 a memorial was erected at Moussey to commemorate those who had been murdered. It details the three men from Phantom, the 31 SAS men, the 140 French civilians and one British and two French service women of the Special Operations Executive that had also been caught up in the search for the SAS camp.]A memorial to the operation also exists at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.In late 1944 it was also the area that General George Patton's Third Army was heading towards, but outrunning their supplies they had stopped at Nancy.To counter the American advance the Germans had moved reinforcements, including the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen, into the area.Remnants of Germain retreating units joined advancing Whirlwind fresh German forces. And a large surviving élément of German armour clashed violently near Dompaire and Vil sur IIon.American artillery also supports liberating French army Division LECLERC with its sailor crewed M10 Tank Howitzers coming up the Valfroicourt to Dompaire road.Apparently, this clash of tanks at Dompaire had been comparéd to KURSK for size, but finding documentary proof is a full-time job, from Paris sorry, I don't have time@@((((This battleground is about 2 Hours from bas Rhine and the German border.Otherwise, per status quo, This would leave Northern Belgium effectively cut in 2 pièces, with allied forces then in the middle.America would have to clear the English rear a keep supply open to forwarding army. This is a potentially dangerous gamble. If germanique le supplies powerful fresh forces were to launch an attack on the English corridor….i give them a 1 in 3/chance of holding lower Belgium on the Bastoign to Neufchâteau left flank, direction Vittel.Heavy allied air power would need to support any American rescue attempt and dear old Monty…just might have been bottled up near Neufchateau…with George Patton having to then re-rescue HIM+++ I can imagine what Bernard would have to say about that…ahemmmm