Grrl Power #1308 – Gold plated lining
The military is probably not great for disability inclusion. Not for field work anyway. I mean, battleships don’t have accessibility ramps, and the control panel of a Blackhawk probably doesn’t have braille anywhere on it, and there’s no spot in a submarine next to the sonar station for an ASL Interpreter. (Cause the sonar guy is deaf, see… and the ASL guy has to listen to the returns and sign “PING” cause that was an even dumber example than braille in a gunship*.) They’ve got really specific ways of doing things because if you tell a bunch of 18 year olds to put away the explodey things, you want to be pretty sure they did it right. That almost definitely means they don’t have a lot of accommodations for one-legged pilots. It’s probably totally possible to pilot most helicopters with one leg, but that doesn’t mean the military wants to add that complication when a bunch soldiers’ lives and a $10 million Blackhawk is at stake. So, Peggy assumes that her career as a pilot are over. At least flying for the Air Force. And she actually is right. But not for the reasons she thinks.
Maxima obviously has other ideas. And if anyone tells Max that a one-legged pilot shouldn’t be allowed to fly an Osprey, Max is just like, “Come at me, bro.”
*I originally mistyped gunship as bunship and I almost left it because the idea of bunnies piloting an Apache and fluffy bunny paratroopers amuses me.
Oh, and happy Thanksgiving to those of you who partake.
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Happy Gluttony Day to all!
Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
Peggy looks better with her natural hair color.
Remember, Peggy isn’t heterosexual. Whether *you* think she looks better with brown hair or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that other queer people can see her pink hair at 300 metres and start doing the One Of Us dance.
(The rainbow sleeve tattoo helps too, sure, but it’s less good in a crowd.)
Relax.
No.
Hey mate, do one, aite?
Gotta love the oh so tolerant rainbow mafia thinking they have the right to grant themselves the right to tell ppl who they are and are not allowed to be attracted to.
Heterophobe much.
Would she also “look prettier if she smiled more”?
God forbid someone comments on the looks of a character in a comic that’s 90% fanservice.
Probably. ;)
All they said was that Peggy looks better with her natural hair colour, that’s having an opinion
It may just be that specific undertones of that particular sentence escape me from my ASD-based point of view. I have heard that it is considered sexist to say that to a woman. I don’t understand why. Someone told me (perceived as male) the same thing, so how can it be sexist?
There were two funny situations resembling thia I know from in fiction:
One was in the original Battlestar Galactica where a group of pilots that were still recovering from a disease were still wobbly on their legs and argued: “You sit in a Viper.”
The second was in a Star Wars RPG book where a pilot had lost a leg and got a cybernetic replacement. His argument for still flying? “I’m faster in my fighter than the other pilots because I have only one boot to put on.”
Your anecdote about the cyborg pilot makes me think about Douglas Bader, a WW2 RAF pilot who still piloted while missing both legs. He could actually pull maneuvers nobody else could because of his missing legs. As the blood had a lot less possibilities to flow away from his head, he could take accelerations more easily.
I was thinking about Bader, too. Looked him up on Wikipedia, and was delighted to learn he survived the war and had two successful marriages (first wife died).
Bader was a total bastard in real life, his batman as a POW had to carry him, up & down multiple flights of steps to take a bath each day. When he was eligible for a return to UK as a exchange POW due to his mother dying or something Bader refused to allow it as nobody else would willingly carry him to his bath.
When Kenneth Moore was invited to a RAF dinner to give a speech, just prior to the dinner he was asked about the subject of his speech.
“I thought I’d talk about Douglas!”
“Ohh God, please don’t, most people at this dinner served or knew him & hate his guts for him being a arrogant prick”
Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the greatest combat pilot who will ever be (2530 combat missions, 519 tanks, 9 aircraft [in a ground-attack airplane], 12 locomotives, 2 destroyers, one cruiser, and half the Soviet battleship “Marat”; I can admire the wolf as I line up the sights…), for all that he was an unrepentant Nazi bastard, destroyed his last 26 tanks with a tin leg.
I’d be very interested in seeing rabbit pilots and paratroopers. Could be fun. Well, once you get past the fact that rabbits scream like tortured babies. Although that part could be looked on as psychological warfare. Nobody expects screaming babies falling from the sky.
As God is my witness, I thought bunny-babies could fly.
I too would like to see this bunship. Perhaps as a sequel to Cat Shit One. Ever seen that? Cute but brutal visual pun based upon the fact that “USA GI” in Japanese is “usagi”, or “rabbit”.
There are wererabbits so that gunship it’s just a matter of time.
Wouldn’t that just be Ryo-Oki?
I don’t suppose “Reach For The Sky” is well known in the US but Douglas Bader was a well-known British WW2 fighter pilot ace who lost BITH legs and returned to active duty. There was another fighter pilot who flew with a prosthetic arm. On the Axis side, Hans-Ulrich Rudel was a Stuka pilot who achieved great success as a tank-buster on the Eastern Front, flying with a prosthetic lower leg.
When you are fighting a big war and need everybody you don’t retire aces that still can fly in any capacity. The question is if they should fly or are more valuable as teachers.
I’m sure there were exceptions but the Axis powers for the most part didn’t rotate experienced pilots home for training duty. This really hit the Japanese after they burned through the pilots who had gained their experience over China prior to 1942. The Germans had better pilot training but it eventually caught up with them as well. Early in the war the British needed every pilot they could put in an airplane. Hence, fellows like Bader. Whatever your opinions about the U.S. roll in the war, the Americans had the resources to train up vast numbers of pilots and rotate pilots home as they gained experience. I’m not well read on the Soviet air force but my impression is that early in the war they were still recovering from Stalin’s purges and so probably put all the available pilots into the air.
If memory serves correctly, the Soviet air force was one of the worst affected in terms of sheer loss of training for new pilots during the late stages of the war, I seem to recall hearing something like a couple of weeks of training before starting combat service. Indeed, I’m pretty sure it’s that exact reason that the Night Witches ever got a chance to fly (look it up, the woman were genuine badasses and it’s an interesting story; essentially with resources extremely limited, the Soviet military allowed an all woman bombing squad using wood and canvas planes, and despite the significant handicap, the Night Witches were extremely effective and terrorized the Nazis.)
Douglas Bader’s missing legs were actually an advantage, in one respect: Blood didn’t rush to his legs from centrifugal force, so he could withstand higher G’s than other pilots without passing out.
“*I originally mistyped gunship as bunship and I almost left it because the idea of bunnies piloting an Apache and fluffy bunny paratroopers amuses me.”
Drawings?
Bunship? I think the typo should be funship
I picture the bunny with a switchblade and an intense hatred for telemarketers
Peggy: I guess I can fly for American. I may use the auto-brake feature more than most, but I can still get passengers and cargo from airport to airport.
Maxima: I was thinking you could fly for America, instead. I just ask you to listen to everything I am about say before you say anything; okay?
Fluffy bunny PMCs?
Cat Shit One. (manga was form ADV)
“Botasky and Packy are private contractors, working in the Middle East, with support from a distant helicopter-mobile base.”
You know tue Britain actually had a legless pilot at one point? Best they had too.
King Radical of the Radical Lands would approve
When I tried to join the Navy after high school, as my brothers had before me, I was declared 4F because I was nearsighted past the allowed degree, even though I was corrected to 20/20. I understand they will try harder to keep you once you are in and they have invested in your training and experience, nowadays.
When it comes to militarized rabbits there’s a few options.
The Lapine Empire are the Big Bad Guys in Albedo Anthropomorphics, which started as a hard scifi comic (free to read online these days) and has had both a TTRPG and a miniatures wargame made for it as well. Good source for soldier bunnies equipped with what the 1980s thought of as realistic near-future military hardware – some of which still holds up well today.
There used to be a very tongue-in-cheek minis game called Critter Commandos, which had small teams of various anthropomorphic animal species in pseudo-WW2 gear, including rabbit. The “Ratzis” were the Baddies there. Unfortunately I think the whole line is OOP and hard to come by these days. They also did a Battletech parody called Crittertek that did exactly what it sounds like. Not sure if there was a bunny-mech for that or not.
Someone out there made a Star Wars parody miniatures line that included Duck Vader, with his supporting stormtroopers having bunny ears and cotton tails sticking out of their armor. Think those are still available somewhere, although the current caster eludes me.
Pretty sure Iron Wind Metals still sells Ral Partha’s old “Doom Bunny” figs, which were fantasy rabbit men with axes and swords. These days there are a slew of anthro-bunny fantasy figs out there, ranging from STL files to print your own to novelty sculpts from regular casters, many holiday related. You can even get civilian bunnies if you wanted something to dress up your homebrew D&D town terrain or an Easter display.
Oh, and Interloper Miniatures makes a pack or two of lovely mutant rabbit-people with post-apocalyptic gear, based on the “Hoops” from the Gamma World TTRPG. They’ve also got those freaky cyclops-chicken-men from the Famine In Far-Go adventure. Not a big range of figs, but nice work overall. One of the better attempts at Thundarr & company in 28mm scale, too.
Albedo is still around? I haven’t seen that since about 1990. I’ll have to check it out.
I wouldn’t call Albedo hard sci-fi, unless by “hard” you mean something other than “hard science”. I’m seeing *very* little science.
I stan bunships.
Proofreading: Last panel, should be “witnessing” there. You’re missing an s.
That’s what I get for editing in the page instead of a program that points out my plethoric spelling errors.
And now Peggy being placed in a private ward makes more sense. Maxima knew she’d be having this chat and wanted to make sure there would be no pesky bystanders.
And that’s why Maxi entered via the window… on the fourth floor
Being radical? I always thought the main criterion to join Archon was being atypical. Not that Peggy does not fit that bill as well, mind you.
Tammy Duckworth, Andrew Lourake, Kristin Nelson, Douglas Bader. You would be surprised at how many disabled troops get back on the stick. IIRC there is a guy flying for the 160th with a prosthetic leg, and the Nightstalkers are IT when it comes to helo ops (NSDQ). It’s all a matter of motivation, if you can prove that you can hack it, you can usually get back in the game.
It also helps if you are currently at war and running out of able-bodied soldiers
Don’t feel bad DaveB, there was a Beetle Bailey comic where the general wanted to do a gun inspection but a typo said BUN inspection…
NOTE: There are two versions of the end gag, one had General Halftrack being mooned by the entire regiment and a censored reworking of the men standing at attention with cinnamon buns on a plate.
The general says to the readers: “Now what?!?”
When you’re good at what you do and enjoy it more. It’s an uphill battle to get back into it after you’ve been injured like this. The ones listed are exceptions to the routine. Swing by a VA. Hospital, VFW, or American legion.
I wanted to put up a picture of hard boiled rabbit troops from a 1980’s comic titled “Grimjack” but it’s almost impossible to pull those things out of the internet and even harder to find the right comic box to look through after 40 years.
Not sure if fluffy bunny paratroopers should be a one of comic here with the angle ‘don’t shoot them they’re cute’ then the Vicious Sharp teeth come out. Or suicidal bunnies (look them up) drawing fire by Intent.
Modern helicopters, with their fly-by-wire systems, can be flown by a pilot with an artificial leg reasonably easily.
In the past, when you needed both hands, both feet, and any other spare appendages you might happen to possess to fly one, it wasn’t a good idea unless the pilot was really, REALLY good.
Happy Thanksgiving!
You should draw the gunship as a treat for yourself
Depends very much on where the leg was lost. Below the knee, maybe with some accommodation, above the knee, I don’t think so.
On a whirlybird, the foot pedals control the tail rotor pitch, which in turn controls yaw. You need decent control over both feet to effectively control the bird. On a wheeled ‘copter like a blackhawk it’s worse as they also control differential braking for the wheels for ground handling, using a split heel/toe set up, that I don’t think most could handle with an unpowered prosthetic since you need to apply pressure differentially. A sufficiently skilled pilot could probably handle it, maybe with some alteration to the pedals.
On a plane you could always rig yaw to a hand control for a footless pilot, but in a ‘copter the pilot is already doing different things with their hands, as one is on the stick and the other is on the collective, and that is NOT optional.
Blackhawk Down with bunnies is something i would watch.
Man, now I’m gonna have to go rewatch Men of Honor.
Turns out, a one legged pilot is the least dangerous thing about flying in an Osprey. (Those things are really cool. A helicopter/airplane hybrid with engines that swivel. But, in part due to the extra complexity that brings to the vital systems that keep the thing in the air, they’ve got a long track record of crashing out of the sky without being hit. They were all grounded for most of last year for an investigation and overhaul, brought tentatively back into service, and then promptly crashed again.)
i have a nephew who does Air Force plane maintenance. Ospreys really suck. There are ten hours of maintenance on the things for every hour they are in the air. The stress on the airframe from the rotating wings is no joke.
My brain went to a completely different place when presented with the idea of flying a “bunship”…
At least older helicopters absolutely required two feet to fly, because the feet controlled the tail rotor for yaw (I believe), and flying a helicopter (at least used to) involve manually balancing thrust, blade angle-of-attack, tail rotor speed, and a half-dozen other things every time you made any small adjustment to any of them because helicopters do NOT want to fly. They’re very good at landing on their own (compared to most other aircraft) but flying one, if “Chickenhawk” is to be believed, is 10% book learning, 10% practice, and 100% pure instinct.
That being said, I could absolutely see (heh) a BLIND Sonar technician. Not much light on a submarine anyways, and nothing should really be moving around aside from the people who’re making noise.