#failurefriday — Public Fediverse posts

In 1913 buildings, like destroyers, were still fitted with open bridges for better visibility and (possibly) to make it harder for people on watch to fall asleep...

#FailureFriday

Not many people know the Imperial German Army allied with the Jawas during the Great War...

#FailureFriday

Today’s episode of @TimHarford ’s Cautionary Tales is a good one for @DreadShips ’s #FailureFriday

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/disaster-favours-the-daring-shipwreck-at-honda-point

The modern HMS Raleigh is a stone frigate only, and definitely not sailing anywhere.

The cruiser HMS Raleigh was also very much not going anywhere, albeit for entirely unintentional reasons. Turns out that whilst fog is nice and fluffy the rocks within it can be less forgiving.

After a few years of their still new but immovable cruiser being an embarrassing tourist attraction the navy went back and did some, er, "environmental remediation" with a load of explosives.

[#FailureFriday]

"Jean-Pierre, have you finished le cannon?"
"Oui, monsieur. Real sexy just like you asked."

I've got no idea what's going on here - and as far as I can tell nor does anybody else. I'm pretty sure attempting to kiss the event to death is doomed to fail though....

#FailureFriday

@jalefkowit an aviation #FailureFriday

In a blow to NATO, a mere eight years into its three-year overhaul, and after sinking in its dry dock, going on fire, having a crane fall on it, losing its entire crew to facilitate an illegal invasion, having most of its reconstruction materials embezzled and going on fire again, Russian media is suggesting that strategic rust reserve and occasional environmental disaster Admiral Kuznetsov might not be returning to "service" after all...

#FailureFriday

"Did anybody notice?"
"No, sir. Think you got away with it, sir. Might I suggest left hand down a bit, sir?"

#FailureFriday

One of the first turbine-powered destroyers, HMS Cobra was built as a speculative venture by Armstrong Whitworth. In 1900 the Royal Navy took the bait and paid £70,000 for a ship they didn't want, essentially for the pleasure of knowing nobody owned anything faster.

They needn't have bothered: 20 hours into its delivery voyage Cobra split in half and sank off the Norfolk coast.

That they never really wanted the ship in the first place oddly failed to mollify their lordships...

#FailureFriday

Vestas Wind. The navigator calculated the fastest course was straight across a reef over thirty miles wide and appearing on every chart since the 17th century.

The reef begged to differ.

#FailureFriday

HMAS Canberra did its bit to foster cordial relationships with New Zealand this week, mostly by making sure the the Kiwis couldn't go online and say nasty things like "why the fuck are you blocking our internet?"

#FailureFriday

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/563357/hmas-canberra-accidentally-blocks-wireless-internet-and-radio-services-in-new-zealand

Stunningly ugly even by the standards of car carriers, this exhibit here is Adige (and previously about half a dozen other names). Regretfully its aesthetics weren't the worst of it - a collision with the liner Jupiter in 1988 killed four including a schoolchild and a teacher. The captain was subsequently jailed for 73 months.

#FailureFriday

And so to North Korea, where a plan to amuse and delight the Dear Leader by bodily yeeting their newest warship off the side of the dock and into the water has come badly unstuck - leaving the vessel stranded on its side and apparently broken in two.

The Dear Leader is mightily pissed off, and no doubt the engineer who forgot to carry the one in his calculations is hurriedly hunting for somebody - anybody - else to blame, and quite possibly also a massive roll of duck tape.

#FailureFriday

No joking for this #FailureFriday - an interim report on the foundering of the sailing megayacht Bayesian has been released by the MAIB, and it's absolutely eyepopping.

You can read the report for yourself - it's not overly technical - and I'll pull some bits out into a thread below.

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/foundering-of-the-yacht-bayesian-with-loss-of-7-lives#interim-accident-investigation-report-2025

Not-so-supercarrier Harry S Truman is currently enjoying quite the cruise - clattering into a bulker off Suez, losing its CO as an expression of displeasure from the brass, and now rejoicing in the nickname USS Raid due to its ability to destroy F/A-18 Super Hornets.

Admittedly one was helped into the briny by USS Gettysburg chucking a missile at it, but one simply rolled off the side and the other plopped off the end in a failed landing.

There will no doubt be paperwork...

#FailureFriday

Leaked analysis from Russia suggests that - amongst many, many other issues - dockyard corruption meant missile-toting, mirth-promoting Moskva here sailed with radar domes covered with radio-opaque paint.

The more electronically-minded of you will notice this is a suboptimal state of affairs, and one that was certainly optimal in the process of conversion to submarine.

What air defence doing? Staring at the inside of its own head, apparently.

#FailureFriday

And so to the Bayeux Tapestry, where an extraordinary row over the precise number of willies has broken out. And I'm not talking about the Conqueror.

One chap says a sword is actually a penis, his rival is claiming that's a case of historical Freud. Clearly there's been a cock-up somewhere - or is it all a phallusy?

#FailureFriday

And so to South Africa, where recent Russian achievements in the field of "losing a naval war against a country without a navy" have been matched by losing a helicopter in single combat with a penguin.

After escaping captivity, and taking its definition as a flightless bird extremely seriously, the angry Antarctical avian charged the pilot and created a right old fowl up - and, indeed, down.

#FailureFriday

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5xx036p4vo

Forget tariffs - if you want the perfect way to p-p-p-p-piss off a penguin what you really need is Ky Michaelson's rocket-powered snowmobile.

Not one of nature's natural health and safety inspectors, Ky managed to spin helplessly out of control twice before deciding to add some skis to actually steer the thing.

Eventually he set a world record of 114mph in what scientists call "the contraption" and is still here to tell the tale. Not such a #FailureFriday after all...

Proper #FailureFriday for you now - survey ship Fugro Mercator applied inadvisable empirical methods to proving an Italian island was exactly where the chart said it would be earlier this week, and accordingly paid the price.

It's either that or the captain didn't know his arse from his Elba...

Weighing 69 tons, boasting two turrets and making no sense, the Char 2C tank remains the most voluminous tank ever built.

Commissioned in murky circumstances - the French didn't need a superheavy tank, the French didn't want a superheavy tank, and the naval shipyard that happily accepted the cash couldn't even build a normally heavy tank - everything went tits up when the public discovered they'd paid for a superheavy tank and demanded to see one.

Unsurprisingly it was crap.

#FailureFriday

The real tragedy here is that in another era they could have got fifty quid off You've Been Framed for this...

#FailureFriday

In a case of literal Brough justice, H&S Wisdom has completely buggered up its attempt to navigate the Humber estuary and will now be stuck outside the Yorkshire town until the next properly big tides in a month or so. If, that is, they're big enough to lift it - and they might not be.

And is it a hazard to navigation? Well not there it isn't, no...

#FailureFriday

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjrylxle8pzo

@JenLucPiquant I’m considering this an honorary #FailureFriday post

I miss the #FailureFriday posts from @DreadShips

Destroyer Ouragan.

Built by France, repaired and stolen by the British, then given to the Poles.

The Poles discovered it was an absolute bag of nails, and although they badly wanted to fight the Nazis they didn't mean quite that badly. In any event it kept breaking down and they'd be better off walking.

Given back to the French, who by now figured everybody was taking the piss, and then offloaded back to a baffled Royal Navy - who eventually scrapped it.

#FailureFriday

Anyone aware of modern trends in pubic topiary will know that Brazilians are just a little bit hairy - and none more so than ironclad Javary here.

After its first captain understandably refused to sail it across the Atlantic it was successively downgraded from ocean-going battleship to river monitor and finally - after a brief but decisive contretemps with a rebellious shoreside fort - to nothing more than a hazard to navigation.

#FailureFriday

I once built an ASP.NET based survey system where leaders of EU research projects could report on progress.

After a few weeks in production, it turns out none of the hundreds of surveys submissions were actually saved in the SQL Server database.

I was a junior developer for a leading consultancy firm but nobody bothered to check my work.

Even so, I've felt bad about it ever since (now 20+ years ago).

#FailureFriday

In 1944 Prinz Eugen struck a welcome blow for the allied war effort and an unwelcome blow for light cruiser Leipzig, which was nearly cut in half and essentially removed from the Nazi order of battle.

Serves it right for stopping in the middle of a channel in dense fog to swap from diesel to steam power. The fog clearly not the only thing to be a bit thick that morning...

#FailureFriday #CantParkThereMate

The crypto bros escaped San Francisco for South Beach, but the first casualty of the bubble bursting is a bank in La Jolla? 🤔

#Silvergate #riskcontagion #SanDiego #crypto #banking #FailureFriday