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Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC, (17 November 1887 24 March 1976), often referred to as "Monty", was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer. He successfully commanded Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign during World War II, and troops under his command played a major role in the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa. He was later a prominent commander in Italy and North-West Europe, where he was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord until after the Battle of Normandy.
The family returned home once for the Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated for a term at The King's School, Canterbury. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery went to St Paul's School and then the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for setting fire to a fellow cadet during a fight with pokers. He joined the 1st Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1908, first seeing service in India until 1913.
After recovering in early 1915, he was appointed to be brigade-major training Kitchener's New Army and returned to the Western Front in early 1916 as an operations staff officer during the battles of the Somme, Arras, and Passchendaele. During this time he came under IX Corps, part of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. Through his training, rehearsal, and integration of the infantry with artillery and engineers, the troops of Plumer's Second Army were able to achieve their objectives efficiently and without unnecessary casualties.
Montgomery served at the battles of the Lys and Chemin-des-Dames before finishing the war as General Staff Officer 1 and effectively chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. A photograph of October 1918 shows the then unknown Lt-Col Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (Minister of Munitions) at the victory parade at Lille.
In 1923 Montgomery was posted to the Territorial 49th Division, eschewing the usual amounts of drill for tactical training. He returned to the 1st Royal Warwickshires in 1925 as a company commander and captain, before becoming an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley and a major (brevet lieutenant-colonel). In 1927, he met and married Elizabeth Carver, a widow, and a son, David, was born in August 1928. Elizabeth was the sister of Percy Hobart, WWII commander. Montgomery became lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Battalion of The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1931, and saw service in Palestine, Egypt, and India. He was promoted to full colonel and became an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College in Quetta, India. As was usual, Montgomery maintained links with the Royal Warwickshires, taking up the honorary position of Colonel-of-the-Regiment in 1947. As throughout his career, Montgomery stirred up the resentment of his superiors for his arrogance and dictatorial ways, and also for his disregard of convention when it obstructed military effectiveness. For example, he set up a battalion brothel, regularly inspected by the medical officer, for the 'horizontal refreshment' of his soldiers rather than forcing them to take chances in unregulated establishments. He became commanding officer of the 9th Infantry Brigade in 1937, with the rank of brigadier, but that year also saw tragedy for him. His marriage had been a very happy and loving one, but his wife was bitten by an insect while on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea. The bite became infected, and his wife died in his arms from septicaemia following an amputation. The loss devastated Montgomery, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral.
In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new commander-in-chief, Southern Command, General Wavell. He was promoted to major-general and took command of the 8th Infantry Division in Palestine. There he quashed an Arab revolt before returning in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd (Iron) Infantry Division.
On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF and was briefly relegated to divisional command and only made CB. In July 1940 he was promoted to lieutenant-general, placed in command of V Corps and started a long-running feud with the new commander-in-chief, Southern Command, Claude Auchinleck. In April 1941 he became commander of XII Corps and in December 1941 renamed the South-Eastern Command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces exercise involving 100,000 troops.
In 1942 a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was commander-in-chief. He had stabilised the allied position at Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him with Alexander, and was persuaded by Alan Brooke to appoint Montgomery commander of the British Eighth Army in the North African campaign after Churchill's own preferred candidate, William Gott, was killed flying back to Cairo.
Montgomery's peremptory assumption of command of the Eighth Army was deeply resented by Auchinleck and his departing staff, but transformed the Eighth Army. Taking command two days earlier than authorised on 13 August 1942, Montgomery ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, joined the army and air headquarters together in a single operating unit, and ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. A criticism of the Eighth Army up until this point had been that the constituent units tended to fight their own separate battles. Montgomery was determined that the Army should fight its battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan.
Montgomery made a great effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men, often arranging for cigarettes to be distributed first. Although he still wore a standard British officer's cap on arrival in the desert, he briefly wore an Australian broad-brimmed hat before switching to wearing the black beret (with the badge of the Royal Tank Regiment next to the British General Officer's badge) for which he became famous. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on 19 August.
German commander Erwin Rommel attempted to encircle the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam Halfa from 31 August 1942. ULTRA decryption had confirmed Montgomery's initial decision to defend the area, and Rommel was halted with very little gain. After this engagement, Montgomery was criticised for not attacking the retreating German forces; however, in Montgomery's judgement, the Eighth Army could not defeat the Germans in mobile, fluid mechanised battles and choosing to engage in such a battle, therefore, would play to German strength.
The reconquest of North Africa was essential for airfields to support Malta and for Operation Torch. Ignoring Churchill's demands for quick action Montgomery prepared meticulously for the new offensive. He was determined not to fight until he thought there had been sufficient preparation for a decisive victory, and put into action his beliefs with the gathering of resources, detailed planning, the training of troops, especially in night fighting and in the use of over 300 of the latest American-built Sherman tanks, 90 M7 Priests, and visiting every single unit involved in the offensive.
The Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October 1942, and ended 12 days later with the first large-scale, decisive allied land victory of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500). Montgomery, however, is sometimes criticized for failing to capitalize on his victory at El Alamein.
Montgomery was knighted and promoted to full general. The Eighth Army's subsequent advance as the Germans retreated hundreds of miles towards their bases in Tunisia used the logistical and firepower advantages of the British Army while avoiding unnecessary risks. It also gave the Allies an indication that the tide of war had genuinely turned in North Africa. Montgomery kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. On 6 March 1943 Rommel's attack on the over-extended Eighth Army at Medenine (Operation Capri) with the largest concentration of German armour in North Africa was successfully repulsed. At the Mareth Line, 20 to 27 March, when Montgomery encountered fiercer frontal opposition than he had anticipated, he switched his major effort into an outflanking inland pincer, backed by low-flying RAF fighter-bomber support.
This campaign demonstrated the battle-winning ingredients of morale (sickness and absenteeism were virtually eliminated in the Eighth Army), co-operation of all arms including the air forces, first-class logistical back-up and clear-cut orders. For his role in North Africa he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander.
The next major Allied attack was the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). It was in Sicily that Montgomery's famous tensions with US commanders really began. Montgomery managed to recast plans for the Allied invasion, having Patton's Seventh US Army land in the Gulf of Gela (on the left flank of Eighth Army, which landed around Syracuse in the south-east of Sicily) rather than at Palermo in the west of Sicily as Patton had wished. Inter-allied tensions grew as the American commanders Patton and Bradley (then commanding II US Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they perceived as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. They resented him, while accepting his skills as a general.
During the autumn of 1943 Montgomery continued to command Eighth Army during the landings on the mainland of Italy itself. In conjunction with the Anglo-American landings at Salerno (near Naples) by Mark Clark's Fifth Army and seaborne landings by British paratroops in the heel of Italy (including the key port of Taranto, where they disembarked without resistance directly into the port), Montgomery led Eighth Army up the toe of Italy. Some criticism was made of the slowness of Montgomery's advance. The Eighth Army, responsible for the eastern side of the Allied front, from the central Apennine mountain spine to the Adriatic coast, fought a succession of engagements alternating between opposed crossings of the rivers running across their line of advance and attacks against the cleverly constructed defensive positions the Germans had fashioned on the ridges in between. Eighth Army crossed the Sangro river in mid-November and penetrated the German's strongest position at the Gustav Line but as the winter weather deteriorated the advance ground to a halt as transport bogged down and air support operations became impossible. Montgomery abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort, and the strategic muddle and opportunism he perceived in the Allied effort in Italy and was glad to leave the "dog's breakfast" on 23 December.
Montgomery returned to Britain to take command of the 21st Army Group which consisted of all Allied ground forces that would take part in Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. Preliminary planning for the invasion had been taking place for two years, most recently by COSSAC staff (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander). Montgomery quickly concluded that the COSSAC plan was too limited, and strongly advocated expanding the plan from a three-division to a five-division assault. As with his takeover of the Eighth Army, Montgomery travelled frequently to his units, raising morale and ensuring training was progressing. At St Paul's School on 7 April and 15 May he presented his strategy for the invasion. He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine, pivoting on an Allied-held Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the US armies wheeling on the right.
During the hard fought two and a half month Battle of Normandy that followed, the impact of a series of unfavourable autumnal weather conditions disrupted the Normandy landing areas and seriously hampered the tactical delivery of planned transportation of personnel and supplies which were being carried across the English Channel. Consequently, Montgomery argues in his literary account (WIP) that he was unable to follow his pre-battle plan precisely to the timescales planned outside of battle. It should be noted that the extension of the battle plan by one month was the cause of significant retrospective criticisms of Montgomery by some of his American peers, including the much respected Bradley and equally controversial Patton. However, it can be shown that this may well have been embitterment relating to Montgomery's Bulge press statement above.
Montgomery's plan was clear in its early brief, that is, an aggressive British and Canadian presence in the east to attract the bulk of the German armour, combined with a building up of American forces in the west as preparation to a southern breakout, followed by a pincer east originally towards the Seine, where all bridges west of Paris were destroyed. Correctly the American pincers turned north for an entrapment at Falaise. Regardless of concerns over delays and operational wisdom, Montgomery significantly adapted and strategically planned the Normandy landings to the extent that it was the significant structure which attracted, trapped and destroyed the bulk of the German attacking forces from north western France, that is from the Point de Calais to Le Havre, and beyond. (WIP).
As stated above, this series of battle plans by the British, Canadian and American armies inflicted one of the biggest defeats of the war on the German army in the west. The campaign that Montgomery fought was essentially attritional until the middle of July with the occupation of the Cotentin Peninsula and a series of offensives in the east, which secured Caen and attracted the bulk of German armour there. An American breakout was achieved with Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket at the cost of British sacrifice with the diversionary Operation Goodwood.
The increasing preponderance of American troops in the European theatre (from four out of seven divisions at D-Day to 72 out of 85 in 1945) made it a political impossibility for the Ground Forces Commander to be British. After the end of the Normandy campaign, General Eisenhower himself took over Ground Forces Command while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery bitterly resented this change, even though it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to field marshal by way of compensation.
Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to adopt his strategy of a single thrust to the Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. It was the most uncharacteristic of Montgomery's battles: the offensive was strategically bold, but poorly planned. Moreover, Montgomery ignored ULTRA intelligence which warned of the presence of German armored units near the site of the attack. As a result, the operation ended in an unmitigated disaster with the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem and the loss of any hopes of invading Germany by the end of 1944. Montgomery's preoccupation with the push to the Ruhr had also distracted him from the essential task of clearing the Scheldt during the capture of Antwerp, and so after Arnhem, Montgomery's group were instructed to concentrate on doing this so that the port of Antwerp could be opened.
When the surprise attack on the Ardennes took place on 16 December 1944, starting the Battle of the Bulge, the front of the U.S. 12th Army Group was split, with the bulk of the U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The Army Group commander, General Omar Bradley, was located south of the penetration at Luxembourg and command of the U.S. First Army became problematic. Montgomery was the nearest commander on the ground and on 20 December, Eisenhower (who was in Versailles) transferred Courtney Hodges' U.S. First Army and William Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army to his 21st Army Group, despite Bradley's vehement objections on national grounds. Montgomery grasped the situation quickly, visiting all divisional, corps, and army field commanders himself and instituting his 'Phantom' network of liaison officers. He grouped the British XXX Corps as a strategic reserve behind the Meuse and reorganised the US defence of the northern shoulder, shortening and strengthening the line and ordering the evacuation of St Vith. The German commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel said
"The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough.
Eisenhower had then wanted Montgomery to go on the offensive on 1 January to meet Patton's army that had started advancing from the south on 19 December and in doing so, trap the Germans. However, Montgomery refused to commit infantry he considered underprepared into a snowstorm and for a strategically unimportant piece of land. He did not launch the attack until 3 January, by which point the German forces had been able to escape. A large part of American military opinion thought that he should not have held back, though it was characteristic of him to use drawn-out preparations for his attack. After the battle the U.S. First Army was restored to the 12th Army Group; the U.S. Ninth Army remained under 21st Army Group until it crossed the Rhine.
Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine with operations Veritable and Grenade in February 1945. After a meticulously-planned Rhine crossing on 24 March and the subsequent encirclement of the German Army Group B in the Ruhr, Montgomery's role was initially to guard the flank of the American advance. This was altered, however, to forestall any chance of a Red Army advance into Denmark, and the 21st Army Group occupied Hamburg and Rostock and sealed off the Danish peninsula.
On 4 May 1945, on Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Characteristically, this was done plainly in a tent without any ceremony. In the same year he was awarded the Order of the Elephant, the highest order in Denmark.
On 26 October 1945 he was made a Freeman of Huddersfield.
After the war, Montgomery was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946. He was Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1946 until 1948, but was largely a failure as it required the strategic and political skills he did not possess. He clashed particularly with his old rival Arthur Tedder, who as Deputy Supreme Commander had intrigued for Montgomery's dismissal during the Battle of Normandy, and who was by now Chief of the Air Staff. When Montgomery's term of office expired, the Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed General (later Field-Marshal) William Slim as his successor; when Montgomery protested that he had already promised the job to his protege General Crocker, a former corps commander from the 1944-5 campaign, Attlee is said to have given the memorable retort "Untell him".
Montgomery was then Chairman of the Western European Union's commanders-in-chief committee. Volume 3 of Nigel Hamilton's Life of Montgomery of Alamein gives a good account of the bickering between Montgomery and his land forces chief, a French general, which created splits through the Union headquarters. He was thus pleased to become Eisenhower's deputy in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's European forces in 1951. He was an effective inspector-general and mounted good exercises, but out of his depth politically, and his exacting manner and emphasis on efficiency created ill-feeling. He continued to serve under Eisenhower's successors Matthew Ridgway and Al Gruenther until his retirement, aged seventy-one, in 1958. His mother died in 1949; Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "too busy".
Montgomery was chairman of the governing body of St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey from 1951 to 1966 and a generous supporter.
In 1953, the Hamilton Board of Education in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, wrote to Montgomery and asked permission to name a new school in the city's east end after him. Viscount Montgomery Elementary was billed as "the most modern school in North America" and the largest single-storey school in Hamilton, when the sod was turned on 14 March 1951. The school officially opened on 18 April 1953, with Montgomery in attendance among almost 10,000 well-wishers. At the opening, he gave the motto "Gardez Bien" from his own family's coat of arms.
Montgomery referred to the school as his "beloved school" and visited on five separate occasions, the last being in 1960. On his last visit, he said to "his" students:
Let's make Viscount Montgomery School the best in Hamilton, the best in Ontario, the best in Canada. I don't associate myself with anything that is not good. It is up to you to see that everything about this school is good. It is up to the students to not only be their best in school but in their behaviour outside of Viscount. Education is not just something that will help you pass your exams and get you a job, it is to develop your brain to teach you to marshal facts and do things.
Before retirement, Montgomery's outspoken views on some subjects, such as race, were often officially suppressed. After retirement these outspoken views became public and his reputation suffered. He supported apartheid (although such views were more common in the 1960s than subsequently) and Chinese communism under Mao Zedong, and argued against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery" and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British — thank God." It is claimed - probably mythically - that he said while addressing the House of Lords "As God said - and I do think very rightly . . ."
Ironically, a number of Montgomery's biographers, including Chalfont (1976) (who found something "disturbingly equivocal" in "his relations with boys and young men") and Nigel Hamilton (2002) have suggested that he may himself have been a repressed homosexual; in the late 1940s he conducted an affectionate friendship with a 12-year-old Swiss boy.
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) were broadly judged to be tactless and arrogant. He criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower (whom he accused, among other things, of prolonging the war by a year through poor leadership — allegations which ended their friendship, not least as Eisenhower was still US President at the time). He was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian officer. He was threatened with legal action by Field-Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein. The 1960 edition of his memoirs contains a publishers' note (opposite page 15) drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that in the publishers' view the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat and pointing out that this was in fact not the case.
Perhaps at least in part because of these controversies, Montgomery was never raised to an earldom, although unlike his wartime contemporaries Harold Alexander, Louis Mountbatten and even Archibald Wavell, he had never been a Theatre Supreme Commander or held high political office. An official task he insisted on performing in his later years was bearing the Sword of State during the State Opening of Parliament. His increasing frailty, however, raised concerns about his ability to stand for long periods while carrying the heavy weapon. Ultimately, those fears were borne out when he collapsed in mid-ceremony in 1968 and did not perform this function again.
A favourite pastime of the British press during these years was to photograph Montgomery cashing his old age pension cheque at the local social security office. Because of his eminence, many assumed Montgomery was wealthy and did not need the money. In fact, he had always been a man of modest means and it caused him great anguish that many believed he was taking taxpayer money he did not need.
Another blow was a break-in at his home. Despite making a heartbreaking televised appeal for the return of his possessions, many of which bore only sentimental value, the items were never recovered.
Montgomery died in 1976 at his home in Alton, Hampshire aged 88 years.
After a funeral ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor, he was interred in the Holy Cross Churchyard, Binsted.
His portrait (by Frank O. Salisbury, 1945) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. A statue of Viscount Montgomery can be found outside the Defence Ministry in Whitehall, alongside those of William Slim and Alan Brooke. Another statue of Viscount Montgomery can be found in Brussels, Belgium, watching a Montgomery Square.
On the other hand, he was personally a difficult man. Montgomery did not get on with his contemporaries and mostly associated with junior officers. He was insensitive, conceited, and boastful. He was not an easy man to know socially and not loyal to the staff officers serving immediately under him. His dismissive and occasionally insulting attitude to others often soured opinions about his abilities and personality. His failures happened when he allowed his desire for personal glory to taint his planning, causing him to abandon his usual caution.
In stark contrast to his counterpart in East Asia, Field Marshal William Slim, Montgomery rarely ever admitted to making a single mistake during the Second World War. Slim was far more candid about his own mistakes, even in his wartime memoirs, than Montgomery.
Often it was Montgomery's statements about battles, as much as his actual conduct of them, that formed the basis of controversy. In his career, Montgomery's orders to his subordinates were clear and complete, yet with his superiors his communications would be opaque and incomplete. So, in Normandy he gave the impression to Eisenhower and others that he was attempting a breakout, while playing down this possibility in his actual orders to his subordinates. For example, shortly before Operation Goodwood he removed Falaise as an objective, but did not forward these new orders to SHAEF. Throughout his career he enraged his superiors and colleagues, partly because he would not allow convention to disrupt military effectiveness, partly because of a contempt for authority and an unwillingness to be in a situation where he was not in control, and partly because he could be quite a strange person. Walter Bedell Smith once said to him "You may be great to serve under, difficult to serve alongside, but you sure are hell to serve over!". He also found it difficult to publicly admit his operations had not gone to plan, irrespective of whether they were ultimately successful (Normandy) or unsuccessful (Market Garden, where he claimed that it had been a 90% success).
In the United Kingdom, Montgomery is remembered particularly for his victorious campaign in North Africa, which, with the Battle of Stalingrad, was very much seen as the turning point of World War II. The different nature of the war for the United States means that his reputation there is very much coloured by the controversies in the later stages of the war in Europe, especially around the Battle of the Bulge. These brought into relief both his virtues and failings.
At the end of 1944 there was tension between the Allies owing to a campaign by the British press for Eisenhower to appoint a deputy and for Montgomery to be made the overall Allied ground commander. Immediately after the Battle of the Bulge, on 7 January 1945 Montgomery held a press conference in which he downplayed the role of the American generals, especially Patton, in the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge and focused on his own generalship. Many of his comments were ill-judged, particularly his statement that when the situation "began to deteriorate", Eisenhower had placed him in command in the north, and they were inflammatory to Patton, implying that he needed to be rescued by Montgomery "with a bang". In the press conference Montgomery said that he thought the counter-offensive had gone very well and did not explain his delayed attack on 3 January. According to Churchill, the attack from the south under Patton was steady but slow and involved heavy losses, and Montgomery claimed to be trying to avoid this situation. Montgomery also gave the impression that substantial British forces had been involved in the fighting that repelled the German attack (an impression explicitly corrected by Churchill in the House of Commons). A slanted version inserted by Germany within an Allied radio broadcast added to American resentment.
In a memo to Eisenhower, Montgomery proposed that he should again be made Commander Ground Forces and implicitly criticised recent conduct of the war while American confidence had been shaken and nerves were raw. Eisenhower, encouraged by the Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Marshal Tedder (another person with a long running feud with Montgomery), was on the point of dismissing Montgomery, when Bedell Smith and Montgomery's chief-of-staff, Major-General Freddie de Guingand, pointed that it would be both politically unwise and difficult to justify removing a general who had just won a battle, over generals who had come so close to losing one. De Guingand was able to convince Montgomery of the impact of his words (of which he was apparently unaware) and Montgomery wrote an apology to Eisenhower. The moment passed. Eisenhower commented in his memoirs: "I doubt if Montgomery ever came to realise how resentful some American commanders were. They believed he had belittled them — and they were not slow to voice reciprocal scorn and contempt". On the other hand, during the same press conference Montgomery showed his respect for ordinary troops and eulogised the American soldier:
Montgomery was not critical of all American commanders. He thought General Douglas MacArthur to be the best United States' soldier of World War II.
On Eisenhower, he said:
Montgomery later wrote:
Brooke was perhaps near the truth when he said of Montgomery,
and with some prescience in June 1943
Montgomery was a keen advocate of physical fitness and hard training: in the desert he had all ranks from brigadier down doing daily physical training; any man, no matter what rank, was expected to be fit to fight, and if any officer could not keep up on daily runs, he was sent home - Montgomery once observed that if a middle-aged officer was going to have a heart attack, better for it to happen on a training run than in action. Montgomery was also a critic of Battle Drill Training, which he felt was a crutch used by unit commanders. His personal view, put into action during the Phony War and afterwards, was that company and battalion training in the phases of war—relief in place, passage of obstacles, hasty attack, etc.—was ignored in favour of simple drilling at the section and platoon level.
Montgomery had a deep technical understanding of how the Army operated, at all levels from the infantry company to the Army Group. He helped to shape the Canadian army through assisting the formation of the fledgling First Canadian Army while they were under his command in South-Eastern Army. Montgomery personally visited most Canadian units, down to the battalion level, and assisted Canadian Army commander Harry Crerar in weeding out poor officers, giving direct criticism of battalion commanders, company commanders, and even regimental sergeants-major. Montgomery indirectly shaped the Canadian Army that saw action in Italy and NW Europe.
Montgomery sought changes along these lines in the plan for the Allied invasion of Sicily. His influence however was more limited and his own less-than-spectacular gains in the difficult terrain, were unfavorably compared by some to the thrusting mobility of US General George Patton — a foreshadowing of controversies to come. Operation Husky was a success, but the Germans were able to extract tens of thousands of troops from Sicily to fight elsewhere, indicating that Montgomery's concerns about concepts, planning and execution were not totally off the mark.
His approach can be seen in his insistence on recasting or adjusting the invasion plans of Normandy, generally strengthening initial shock forces and insisting on a clear vision and method of how subsequent battles were to be fought. The success of the D-Day landings owed a great debt to Montgomery's planning. After the war, Eisenhower and his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Walter Bedell Smith told the American military correspondent, Drew Middleton that "No one else could have got us across the Channel and into Normandy... Whatever they say about him, he got us there".
Montgomery felt his approach vindicated at the Second Battle of El Alamein. His strategic vision ushered in much needed clarity, and his defensive preparations (drawing in part on the prior work of his predecessor Auchinleck) also envisioned a decisive counterattack. During the most critical point of the battle his concept of "balance" or flexibility within the confines of a master plan held, and the British were able to shift forces to see off Rommel's thrust, and mount their own riposte that shattered the back of the Axis formations.
The Battle of Normandy saw similar success. He insisted on more forces for the initial landing and a clear vision for the further campaign against some planners who were primarily concerned with just getting on the beach. Despite the failure of all but the Canadians to gain the ambitious targets on D-Day, and the subsequent improvisations, his strategy of attritional battle on the left drawing in German forces and allowing a breakthrough on the right was successful. This approach could not be broadcast on the nightly news and the public perception of the struggle was typically one that saw both Allies equally attempting to break out of the beachhead, with progress being "slow." Montgomery however persisted, and deflecting pressure from his superiors (who remained in England) for quicker results, retained mastery of the developing battle. Overall, he achieved victory well within the originally planned ninety days. Normandy and El Alamein cement Montgomery's place as one of the greatest of the modern British generals in the view of some historians, and vindicate his concept of "balance" within the overall structure of a dominant "master plan".
Further to this, he also displayed a genuine concern for the welfare of the men serving under him: for example, at one time he jeopardised his career by illegally hiring out land to a fair to raise welfare funds; he arranged for female nurses at forward casualty clearing centres in the desert war in 1943; he took a very pragmatic view towards sexual health; directly after the Battle of Medenine he was lobbying Brooke to allow long-serving soldiers to return to England. Coupled with this was his belief that soldiers must actually understand why they were fighting, and that they deserve to have things properly explained to them. Montgomery thought that one of the most important roles for a military commander was to motivate his men to fight, that military command is "a great human problem". In addition, Montgomery's experiences in the First World War led him to despise generals who led from the rear, well away from any fighting, and so was visible in his campaigns.
The early years of World War II saw a series of humiliating defeats and military reverses for Britain. Montgomery was not the first to unequivocally reverse. His experiences in Ireland had shown him the importance of public support in a war. Montgomery was sometimes ungracious, but he was able to painstakingly articulate a vision for victory and couple with it a good sense for publicity (the use of his distinctive black beret with two badges, for example). He continued these same methods in England prior to the invasion, insisting on a clear concept of battle beyond the beaches, all united under a powerful master plan. Later on, Montgomery was not the only leader who struck a distinctive chord for morale prior to the great invasion, but he was certainly one of the most influential, ensuring not only the troops that stepped ashore on 6 June, were thus men confident in their leaders, their plans, their equipment and their cause, but so were the public. His speaking tour of British munitions factories before D-Day had made Churchill worry that he would be "filling The Mall" with adoring crowds if he was allowed to receive his field marshal's baton at Buckingham Palace.
Similarly, during the Battle of Normandy, the fear of stalemate made the supreme command in Britain pressure Montgomery to push harder. At one point in July 1944, it was thought that Churchill was flying to France to personally sack Montgomery at Eisenhower's request. Air Marshal Tedder complained that Montgomery had not captured suitable airfields from which to operate. Much is made of the fact that many of Montgomery's initial targets were not met, especially the failure to capture Caen on the first day or even for weeks after D-Day (criticism that was compounded after the war when Montgomery insisted that all elements had gone "according to plan", which clearly was not the case, although it should be noted in fairness that the bulk of the German panzer divisions, including SS units, were stationed on the Caen sector). However his predictions, the so called "phase lines" on the maps, were never intended to be a rigid guarantee but a guide, as would be clear from previous opposed landings at Salerno and Anzio. Much of the criticism resulted from Montgomery giving his superiors and the press the impression that he was trying to achieve large-scale breakouts while actually fighting an attritional campaign. However, in the end Montgomery's success was achieved in less time than planned.
Montgomery was not a dashing general, and deliberately methodical, usually not willing to sacrifice military effectiveness for other people's agenda. The realities of the wartime Britain must also be remembered. It had seen severe early defeats, an economy almost crippled, shortages caused by constant German U-boat attacks, and dwindling supplies of manpower to fight on fronts ranging from the Far East to the Mediterranean. There simply were no more big armies to commit wholesale in Normandy or elsewhere. Montgomery thus carefully husbanded the troops he had left. Furthermore, much of his apparent caution sprang from his regard for human life and a desire not to throw the lives of his troops away in the manner of the generals of the First World War. Therefore, for El Alamein, Normandy and the Ardennes, he was not prepared to go into an offensive until there was complete readiness of both men, equipment, and logistics. This approach sometimes exasperated his superiors, but it generally brought success, and ensured his popularity with his men.
The criticism of slowness and caution has been taken further with Montgomery being called primarily a "general of matériel": one who emerged at the right time and place to take advantage of the massive outpouring of American and British war production, ensuring the Allies local material superiority against their opponents. But this charge is hard to maintain in a war during which material weight counted above almost all factors. It was a mass production war in every theatre, and the same "matériel" criticism of Montgomery must then need to apply to the great Russian commanders of the Eastern Front like Zhukov or Konev, as well as to the American effort. Equally, it ignores the successful improvised actions in North Africa, Normandy, and the Ardennes, and yet as stated above, Montgomery did not have the man power or equipment to achieve those scale victories; so in essence one could say he was doing more with what he had, than any other general in Europe.
The conception of such a plan was impossible for a man of Montgomery's innate caution... In fact, Montgomery's decision to mount the operation aimed at the Zuider Zee was as startling as it would have been for an elderly and saintly Bishop suddenly to take up safe-cracking and begin on the Bank of England.It has been suggested that the ambition of the plan may have been a result of interpersonal friction and competition with the American generals, as well as other personality traits
A result of the concentration on Market Garden was the failure to clear the Scheldt estuary, which surrounded the vital port of Antwerp. In the autumn of 1944 the Allies required a port to shorten their supply lines and allow supplies to be brought in for the advance into Germany. It also meant that the Germans could reinforce their defensive lines in Holland, blocking one main axis of advance into their homeland. Montgomery pleaded the difficulties of continual fighting in prior weeks and logistical problems, but the result of the distraction of Market Garden was the escape of the German 15th Army and lengthy operations to clear the Scheldt. Thompson calls it "Montgomery's most agonizing failure", while Montgomery himself later noted that this was "a bad mistake — I underestimated the difficulty of opening up the approaches to Antwerp ... I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong."
Field Marshal Montgomery almost never paid so much as lip service to the dictum that the destruction of the enemy forces is the object of military strategy. ... Montgomery's aggressiveness was that of the energetic fencer, not that of the general who annihilates enemy armies, of Napoleon, of Grant, or of Moltke.


text:
Jet Airways takes students from Cochlear Implant Habilitation and Infant Training Centre and Kamla Dharamshi Narsee Shruti School for a tour of the airline's maintenance hangar
Opens up the world of aviation for over 100 children in association with Disney Pixar, Reliance Home Video and Games (RHVG), and Sony DADC
Mumbai, December 21, 2013
Jet Airways, India's premier international airline today offered over a hundred students from the Cochlear Implant Habilitation and Infant Training Centre, and Kamla Dhamshi Narsee Shruti School, a unique educational tour of Jet Airways' aircraft maintenance hangar at the old Santacruz Airport, at Kalina (Mumbai). The educational excursion was organised in keeping with the airline's focus on supporting causes relating to child development and education in the community.
At a half-day event held in association with Disney Pixar, RHVG and Sony DADC, the children were given an opportunity to explore a static Boeing 737-aircraft parked at the hangar. The students assisted by their teachers, were given talks on the working of an aircraft, to include important areas of aircraft maintenance, cockpit and landing gear operations. This was followed by a visit to the engine, structure, brake & wheel and seat shops. Attended by children with hearing impairment, the educational excursion provided them with insights into airline maintenance and operations, while interacting with Jet Airways Engineers, Pilots and Cabin Crew.
To add an element of fun and entertainment, Jet Airways in association with its corporate partners DISNEY PIXAR, RHVG AND SONY DADC, organized several activities at the party venue (Hangar).This included a mascot 'Smurf' a character from the Sony pictures' movie 'The Smurfs-2', a colouring session using the popular brand of crayons Crayola, and a helicopter challenge game sponsored by RHVG. The day finished off with the screening of a children's animation film over refreshments Aptly entitled 'The Planes', a new release from Disney Pixar, was sponsored by Sony DADC.
Mr. Gaurang Shetty, Senior Vice President, Jet Airways, said, "It is indeed a privilege for us to work with notable NGOs who give us the opportunity to open up the world of aviation for their students, in an informative, informal and entertaining atmosphere. It is most gratifying to see that the excursion had had a positive outcome for our young guests from the Cochlear Implant Habilitation and Infant Training Centre and Kamla Dharamshi Narsee Shruti School, who showed great enthusiasm during the excursion and at the same time take home happy memories.
About Jet Airways
Jet Airways currently operates a fleet of 113 aircraft, which include 10 Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft, 10 Airbus A330-200 aircraft, 4 Airbus A330-300 aircraft, 72 next generations Boeing 737-700/800/900/900 ER aircraft and 15 ATR 72-500 and 2 ATR72-600. With an average fleet age of 5.19 years, the airline has one of the youngest fleet of aircraft in the world. Flights to 75 destinations span the length and breadth of India and beyond, including Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Bangkok, Brussels, Colombo, Dammam, Dhaka, Doha, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jeddah, Kathmandu, Kuwait, London (Heathrow), Muscat, New York (Newark), Riyadh, Sharjah, Singapore and Toronto.
About JetKonnect
JetKonnect is a dedicated product designed to meet the needs of the low fare segment. JetKonnect will also offer guests a Premiere service on nearly all domestic routes. With its mixed fleet of Boeings and ATR aircraft with nearly 303 daily flights connecting 49 destinations across India, JetKonnect provides more flexibility and choice to its guests. JetKonnect's convenient schedules, reliable service and low fares, promise to bring greater value and a seamless flying experience to our customers.
Jet Airways and JetKonnect together operate nearly 579 daily flights, both domestic and international.
About Sony DADC
Home Entertainment Services by Sony DADC' is a division of Sony DADC Manufacturing India Pvt. Ltd. (A 100 % subsidiary of SONY Corporation). Sony DADC has blazed the highest of quality manufacturing standards on all recorded formats including Compact Discs, DVDs, Blu-ray & 3D Blu-ray discs. Global partner to all major International Studios like Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE), Warner Home Video (WHV), Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (WDSHE), Sony Music and National Geographic.
About Reliance Home Video & Games
Reliance Home Video & Games (RHVG) is the leading player in the Indian Home Entertainment industry and also a key player in the Toys & Games licensing and merchandising industry. The company is the exclusive licensee to prestigious studios including Universal Pictures Int. Ent., Paramount Home Ent. Global, DreamWorks Pictures, BBC Worldwide Ltd., Tanweer Group and PVR Home Entertainment. RHVG has launched blockbusters such as Satyagraha, Barfi, Lincoln, Fast and Furious 6, Despicable Me 2, The Godfather Trilogy, Fast and Furious franchise, etc on home video besides prestigious regional titles like the Satyajit Ray Collection. Through its New Media and Digital Distribution arm, RHVG provides Video on Demand content to ISPs, Telecom Companies, VAS aggregators, online retailers, platforms and devices. Amongst the top 5 licensing and merchandising brands in the toy & gaming business in India, RHVG is the fastest growing company in the kids' leisure space. The company is the exclusive licensee to Crayola (the No.1 worldwide producer of children's art & stationery products from USA), Moose Enterprise (leading toy company of Australia) & Spin Master (No.3 Toy Company in North America). The company is also the exclusive licensee to leading developer and publisher Codemasters for their gaming software for PC & Console.
© Jet Airways (India) Ltd.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
White confirmed that they will return to the Republic of Ireland in 2014. The company's last event in the nation was UFC 93 in Dublin in Jan. 2009. White also said the company is planning on running an event in South Africa, though no timetable is finalized.
The UFC president credited both initiatives to Garry Cook, who was hired last year as the company's vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
"When we announced that Garry Cook was taking over in England, I told you guys he's a sharp guy and a great guy," Cook said. "He's kicking ass over there."
As for Bangor, which may seem a random place to hold an event, this one's personal to White, who has family ties to the Central Maine city.
"My grandparents used to live up in Maine outside of Bangor," White said, "I have a place up there. They just built a new arena up there. And a new casino, it's a really nice casino. I was blown away when I saw it. ... I would love to do a Fight Night up there in Bangor. I'm trying to get that done. I don't know if I can pull it off financially. "
Bangor's Cross Insurance Center, a 5,800-seat arena, is scheduled to open in September.


text:
This conversation is closed.
What will be the best renewable source of energy in 2050?
As of now, we have Wind, Water, Solar, Geothermal, and many more. But as our technology changes and diversifies, do you think we will use completely different sources?
Jul 31 2012: I am a Mechanical Engineer. First, scientists don't really have much to do with applied technology; they may do a lot of relevant research, but the nuts and bolts (which add up to dollars and cents) are determined by engineering, production, distribution, etc. You asked about what will be the 'best' renewable energy source. How 'best?' e.g. most portable, least impact, least capitol expenditure, least cost in a major system (city size), least cost in a house sized system, geographic location, etc, etc. And of course, if you did specify more or less precisely an application we could analyze, a) there would still probably be choices with subjective differences, b) the answer will change over time. In the current issues of Mechanical Engineering, this issue is being discussed, and the consensus is that there are no clear winners; there are too many unknowns to be worked out in the various alternatives.
You specifically asked about renewable resources, which precludes nuclear fission, fusion and fossil fuels. Sadly, by 2050 we will probably still be using these. Geothermal is pretty picky about siting, so not scalable up very far. I live in Washington State and I saw a study done not too many years ago on Vashon island in Puget Sound, looking at all the extant alternatives for supplying renewable energy there. By a pretty wide margin, solar was the only one that even had a chance of supplying significantly all the need (not. Vashon is a semi-rural place, above 45 degrees latitude. I'm not saying solar cells is 'the' answer because even within the solar field, there is a ton of diversity; hot water can be collected with just pipes and a pump. Electricity can be generated by solar cells, stirling generators, steam towers, salt ponds, etc. etc.
Frankly, from my perspective, the most urgent need right now is to stop constructing buildings using old technology that consumes energy like it is going out of style. We can pretty much make a zero-consumption house now
Barry Palmer
Aug 1 2012: Mr. Webber, Thank you!
- +1
You have put this whole discussion in a very realistic context.
Also, you have given me some more reading to do. Never heard of electricity from salt ponds before.
Keith Henson
Aug 6 2012: For the bulk of our energy resources, a 44 year old idea, power satellites, might become the dominate power source.
- +2
It can scale to tens of TW, the energy payback time is less then 2 months.
The reason it has not been taken seriously is the high cost of lifting parts to GEO. Rocket performance is limited by the energy in chemical fuels, barely enough to get 2% of takeoff mass to GEO.
If you can sidestep the limitation of chemical fuels, then the payload fraction goes way up. Solid state lasers, grown up versions of the tiny ones in CD players, will do that. I.e., unrelated developments in electronics are about to cause a "Black Swan" effect on space transportation.
Burning hydrogen in air is even better than lasers—till you run out of air. The current concept is an air breathing rocket plane such as Reaction Engines' Skylon for the first 2 km/s velocity gain and hydrogen heated to 2700 deg K by a multi GW laser in GEO for the rest of the velocity to LEO. That gets about 25% of the starting mass on the runway to LEO as payload. From there up, lasers deliver around two thirds of the mass in LEO to GEO, about 18 tons out of 120 or 15%. Three times an hour.
That gets the cost down to under $100/kg, the cost of power plants to $1.6 B per GW, the cost of power to 2 cents per kWh or less and the cost of synthetic gasoline made with electric power to a dollar a gallon.
Further bootstrapping (10% of new power sat construction) allows lift capacity to grow by a factor of 3 every year (based on laser capacity). Goal is energy at such low cost that humanity can painlessly get off fossil fuels in two decades. Cost is about 1/3 of the $500 B for a Mars mission *and* you get a Mars mission virtually for free by sending the 100th power sat (all 25,000 tons of if) to Mars for local propulsion. (The high cost is due to having to haul up the first power sat with conventional rockets.)
The previous iteration of the concept is here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898Jul 29 2012: I think it will (have to) be a simple system at the level of each household. Simple meaning mechanical rather than nuclear or chemical, because of the risk values. At the household level because we have to overcome the transport variables (miles of wire, transformers, whatever). As a hypothetical example, imagine something like a roulette wheel where the rim and the ring around it are magnetic opposites. With such a low-friction coefficient, a small input can sustain output creating an amplification. I don't know if this works, but look at how low the risk/repair costs for something like that would be.
Jul 29 2012: We are on the same page Erik ( see my post to Debra Smith above). I realy feel that all renewable energy will be co-opted and monopolized by the plutonomy if we do not have a household controled site specif, lo tech lo cost solution available.
As I am sure you have noticed, public policy onn renewable energy globally is being driven by the plutonomy ad certainnly not in the direction of household specific generation using lo tech equipment.
That leave sit up to us, "we the people" of the world to find and make these household specific lo cost lo tech choices..if there is no one to but what he plutonomy is offering..and if we stay on our pols to include and provide strong incentives for household ( and community) specific energy generation independent of the grid.
If on a per household basis in Maine the subsidy and electricity costs increases being given to wind power and thr grid to collect and distribute windpower were divied up every single person ad every single business in Maine could be off the grid and on endlessly renewable low cost lo tech energy.
Household specific lo tech renewable energy will not get the subsidies and tax credits unless "we the people of the globe" demand that and make that choice for ourselves ahead of public policy.
Ken brown
Jul 27 2012: We need to tap the ley lines but i suppose we need to figure out how to use them in the first place.
- +2
Ahmad Ragab
Aug 7 2012: GravitationAug 5 2012: We will properly revisit some of the older ones.
- +1
Solar Chimney Spain 1980's did not work. 200 m diameter 200 m tall.
Simple revisit on basic arrangment with a little attention to proper science choices in that arrangement rather than leaving things to chance by lack of attention in arrangement. Factors of 100's are available to imrove things when you look at why it did not work.
Difficulty is attracting funding for simple revisit on small scale as proof of concept before rushing into bigger plants or destroying credibility of the option based on one failed but very expensive test.
1980's 50 million odd Euros. Failed.
Simple 15.5 m dia x 14 m tall model with simple but rather effective on paper changes needs only 166,000 USD over 2 years to properly document, trial feasibility build at 15.5m dia by 14m, and determine how to scale it up to large.
Any venture capitalist takers?
Aug 5 2012: This is excellent input from a knowledgable source. Thanks Terry.Aug 6 2012: No VC's necessary for you. China is there:
Aug 6 2012: Enrico,
I will state my position again. The web shows the same fundamental mistakes as Spain. Spain produced 0.1% efficiency according to unbiased academic reports. Without changes it will not succeed. No fundamental changes shown.
Environmission 2000 public quotes on costs for 1000 m tower in Australia well under typical construction costs that is why from 2000 on its public cost estimates escalated but still not enough. You can track their predictions in published documents 2000 to 2009. That is why scheme now gets scaled back 200MW to 50MW. Still not a project.
China is same arrangement. You cannot scale up a 0.1% plant design to larger and expect improvement no matter how well meaning the intent of renewables. Rethink is required and it is possible. Simple fundamental errors exist in the arrangement.
I will again state to get funding is difficult for a basic revisit, but revisit is necessary.
Electrical transmission was dead in the water a long time ago despite its promise until an individual approached and stated he knew what was wrong and could make it work as it was so simple. Took a long time till someone took him seriously and he drew the coils of the first transrformer on a single piece of paper. Hola. The rest as they say is history.
Don't want to distract from overall conversation so will leave it at this.Aug 5 2012: I would invite you to take a look at
The Quixote Project at http://jpssis.com/index.html
And help us in our quest of the perfect windmill.
Aug 5 2012: A solid symetrical aerofoil in place of the "sails" would be more efficient and quieterAug 6 2012: Try taking advantage of vortices.
You could borrow the tubercle design concept from Whalepower to redesign the leading-edge finish of your sails. This has been proven to decrease the minimum windspeed needed to begin operation and to improve output power by 20% during field testing.
(basically it uses a serrated edge)
Additionally, you could affect the local air environment:
I would suggest trialling designs to fit to the support structure in order to funnel air into the effective sail region by decreasing air pressure at your rotational centre. This could yield very large improvements in output power.Aug 5 2012: I worked at a wind energy company. During my stay mt beleif that wind energy is the best solution was challenged. Granted - it is far better than oil. But its still far from perfect!
-The oil in every windmill has to be changed often. (we are talking a lot of oil here)
-The current buisnessmodel is sending a sparepart to several underdevisions of a company, hereby increasing the price of the item. This leads to a lot of co2 emission because of the excessive transport.
- The machine emits a low-frequence constant noise which is feared to affect humans and animals in a negative way.
Dont understand me wrong: i am a fan of windmills. I'm just saying that we need to get better at building them.
Regarding the "best" renewable solution, I think we need a healthy mix of them all. I especially would like to see big development in sea-wave energy. Sadly it seems that it will be one of the only things we can use the oceans for anyways, as we are in the process of destroying most life in it.
Aug 5 2012: I would invite you to take a look at
The Quixote Project at http://jpssis.com/index.html
And help us in our quest of the perfect windmill.
Aug 5 2012: Stop already!
Aug 6 2012: Stop already? I apologize if I somehow offended.Aug 8 2012: David has every right to show what he currently believes will be the best source. Since you, Debra, seem to already have submitted your opinion, I suggest you allow him to expres his ideas, even if they are biased. Thank you very much.Aug 5 2012: Thank you for the invitation, David.
I don't know what position you have in this organization, but maybe you can enlighten me about this:
- Who will realize the best of the ideas?
- Where will it be patented?
- Will the design be open source? / who is making money from it?
I hope I'm too paranoid and that there's no real necessity questioning your intentions :)
Aug 6 2012: Thanks for your comment and your spot on questions.
In fact, right now, I am the organization.
Read A Humble Introduction on the site if you are interested further.
I hope it would give you an honest idea of my intentions.
This is very new territory for me. I need to make a living, but the idea must go beyond
making anybody rich, including myself. I am in the 99%, just getting by. I have a patent pending, big deal. I can't pay my medical bills.
I want to see this wind turbine design do some good for people. I am struggling
over just how to share / sell / give away what I have managed to develop so far so, yes I can make some money, but that it doesn't fall into 1% profiteering hands.
I am working on open source materials, which is a lot of work.
Thanks in advance for any other thoughts you may have.
all good things,
DBAug 6 2012: After being on this site for some time, and with an MBA in marketing, I simply believe that this is not the place for business self promotion especially when persons think this is a targeted market who thinks as they do and when they paste in their contacts on several of our threads. Then, I think that sense of inappropriateness can be fairly expressed.I am personally pro-wind as Lenart has learned and while I appreciate learning I do not appreciate it being held out like a carot. If you wish to contribute to the mass of knowlege you are of course more than welcome but if your motivation is to profit from the like minded this is NOT the place. TED has paid advertisers that make this format possible.Aug 5 2012: Thanks Lennart, for sharing your experience, where else would we be able to gain such insight
Barry Palmer
Jul 31 2012: The "best" source will be the one that provides the most electricity at the lowest cost when ALL of the costs are included in the calculation. Now, this calculation includes only the direct costs of production, and environmental costs are ignored. Unless we do something to change this calculation, the most widely used source will be the one that is cheapest and the "best" will be used by a few hardcore environmentalists. IMO, changing this calculation is the major challenge in the quest for a sustainable economy. This is a matter of values, and that will be extremely controversial. Environmentalists are already fighting some renewable energy projects because of the environmental effects, and somebody should.
- +1
Ian Sheane
Jul 28 2012: Electro magnetic spectrum has more possibilities if we learn to try and control it. Take the super conductor that levitates, due to the manipulation of magnetic waves. imagine if we could some how make a plain that could some how ride the waves like on a track. Who know there might be something in this idea.
- +1
Jul 29 2012: This is being explored by scientist around the world and interestingly sound ( sonar luminescennce) is also a possible source of cold fusion..a long way to go in knowing how to produce it in controllable ways. perhaps something we humans knew and had once and just forgot.
Jul 29 2012: The closest attempt anyone will ever make for anything akin to "unconventional" fusion before 2050 might be the Z machine
"bubble fusion" is almost certainly a waste of effort
Jul 30 2012: Thanks Enrico..both interesting links..hadn't heard of the challenges to the sonar luminescence experiments or of Sandia's Z-Machine.
Cold Fusion is definitely a long term holy grail of cheap infinitely renewable energy..perhaps something promisng will happen before 2050 even if that technology may not be widely available by then.
What appeals to me about it is the possibilty that it could be household/community/business specific..available without needing a grid or distribution system and called on demand in direct response to demand..at least that's my dream/ vision.
Sound/vibration ( a wave energy) may have powers we have forgotten or don't yet understand..along with so much of what we don't know understand. Is it Nasa that is doing the experiments with acoustical levitation? So far only a tiny ball..but who knows what answers the real workings of the universe offer us that are yet undiscovered or even imagined?.
What do you imagine/envision?Jul 30 2012: Superconductor research is increasingly interesting. Many people are wanting to exploit graphene (scientifically in-fashion), I am sure there are applications for either that are difficult for a single person to concieve...
I have always enjoyed the idea of lightning harvesting, regardless:
Solar should satisfy domestic requirements while using the grid as backup
Commercial and industrial requirements will always need large power plants (including geothermal, hydro, and windfarms)
I expect to see tritium as an abundant commodity, sometime well after the first commercial fusion station is built, which would be very optimistic to say before 2050.
I would be thoroughly pleased to see LFTR's available in every Country, producing useful power and byproducts including breeding tritium for fusion.
Serious improvements in transport efficiency will come from step-change technologies. Industrial research into step-change technology is increasingly more neccessary for sufficient competetive edge.
Wrt acoustics: not very much is unknown, equations are simple.
Things like: dark energy harvesting, moon/space harvesting, and cold fusion are honestly nothing worth considering unless you are writing a science fiction novel.Jul 28 2012: Pat caught my attention with soylent green. What we do will be limited by physical laws. I am reminded of a Feyman comment on PBS to that type question. I found a recent plasma physics lecture on Ted recently very interesting and very disconcerting. Radioactive materials contained by a magnetic bottle. I hope, but.... We have seven (7) billion people and growqing in a world with real physical limits. We have long been warned of limits by scientist and populizer's Asimov, Meade, etc. etc. but Bubba doesn't listen.Jul 27 2012: Dark Energy. It's everywhere and with Moor's Law we should be able to tap into it by then. Just a thought outside the box.Jul 27 2012: I'd say solar in some form. After all, most energy have their origin in solar. Perhaps if we can use photosynthesis in some clever way. For nuclear, molten salt reactors is promising as a safer alternative. I'm sceptical if we can make cold fusion work before 2050. And hot fusion is coupled with extensive risks.Aug 10 2012: I would suggest water. As we are 80 percent water we will always hopefully be very careful about not contaminating it or the natural filters and condensers the planet uses to maintain a fresh water supply. I mean looking after the trees and forests and I mean making sure global warming does not melt too much of the polar ice caps. The weather pattens have been very odd in Europe this year because the air currents and sea currents are in the wrong place. By air current I mean jet stream and by sea current I mean North Atlantic Drift. Everyone is going down with head colds (I know this is a virus) and hayfever. People are developing really nasty respiratory infections. Everyone having to go to work isn't helping because people sneezing on the buses is spreading the viruses by droplet. Mother Nature has her filters and the most effective treatments are plant based. So I say water. I don't necessarily mean hydro-electric and it would be better if it was salinated water. I think there is something in the ionisation of water that might be worrth exploring.Aug 10 2012: Wind,hidden resourcesandUntapped resourcesAug 9 2012: To produce 1 gallon of gasoline the thermal energy equivalent to 0.8 gallons is required on the refining process.
By raising temperature hydrogen can be produced at 50% efficiency. The used heat can be recovered and reused.
The following reference can also be used with natural gas or solar heat source.
http://www.fchea.org/core/import/PDFs/factsheets/Hydrogen%20Production%20From%20Nuclear%20Energy_NEW.pdfAug 9 2012: I am not impressed.
Aug 9 2012: that makes two of usAug 9 2012: How would you know?
Aug 9 2012: you demonstrated. use the reply link for reply. duh.Aug 9 2012: At least I have one!
Aug 9 2012: no you don't. that was my point.Aug 9 2012: The first thing to do is to take a long, hard look at energy usage, and to make that as energy-efficient as possible. It is unbelievable how much we squander our energy (and natural resources) because it is still relatively cheap.
Only when USAGE becomes efficient, will we then have a chance of powering our lifestyles with renewables by 2050.
Wherever there is a problem such as this, take a look at how nature solves it. As one example, biomimicry can solve problems such as natural air-conditioning by designing buildings that mimic termite mounds. This principle is already being used successfully in Zimbabwe:
http://inhabitat.com/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/Aug 8 2012: Water! HYDROGEN! OXYGEN!
Aug 9 2012: buzzwords!Aug 8 2012: I imagine that we will use the same sources but more sparingly!
Aug 9 2012: your imagination sucksAug 8 2012: HumansAug 8 2012: I am very impressed with all of these different answers! thank you!Aug 7 2012: Thank you so much for two marvelous insights! I just recently saw the Whalepower design, but it didn't dawn on me that vortices could have a dramatic positive on our design as well. But, of course! Wow, thanks! I will be getting in touch with them.
And yes, I think there are a number of ways to funnel air flow using the support structure or other architectural features depending on where the turbine is being used. I know from living in New York City years ago that there are places in the urban environment that are like wind tunnels! People far brighter than I can certainly determine the best locations for potential urban wind turbines, and if a location could be greatly improved with the addition of some form of wind funneling structures, that in itself could lead to some very exciting, creative as well as functional, design challenges.
Also, I will share with you the irony, that upon receiving your two terrific ideas on how this idea could be improved, I also received notice from the TED Conversations Admin that the conversation I had hoped to start by posting our website was removed as it is "too self-promotional for the TED.com community". I am a TED community virgin, and regret any over reach on my part. In fact, I am struggling, having been inspired by over 120 TED speakers, on how to go about sharing this idea/invention so that it is put to the best use as quickly as possible by as many people that could benefit from it as possible, (open source, collaboration, etc.), and yet protect it so it doesn't go down some get-rich-quick route for the already rich, or wallow in some bureaucratic research lab for years sucking up grant money and getting nowhere. I thought what better place to go for ideas, but TED! Now I know. But, any thoughts you have on that dilemma would be appreciated as well. I would certainly like to continue our conversation in the proper forum, perhaps by email, as we are a bit off topic for this thread.
Again, thank you so much.
David BrossmanAug 7 2012: I don't know about 2050 but right now and for the foreseeable future a technology called pyrolysis is going to make a big impact on solid waste landfills. Look it up. Incredible technologyAug 6 2012: I'll go with water, I guess?Aug 6 2012: Algae Based Bio-Fuel is going to make some great strides in the coming years. There will be a wide array of uses and the costs will dwindle as the technology and efficiencies improve.Aug 6 2012: Good question. I am going to look into it further. Thanks.Aug 6 2012: The sails are virtually silent. As for efficiency, this design is far superior to solid "aerofoils." But hey, thanks for the comment. Peace.
Aug 6 2012: Why then do they use solid aerofoils on high performance sailboats?Aug 2 2012: I suspect that after our diet of renewables by 2050, we'll be on the way to create new core sources using both fission and fusion safely, i.e. nuclear waste destruction, secure protection of nuclear fuel and accident containment of production sites.
We might even come up with new sub-nuclear sources of energy that don't involve the release of energy when the cores of atoms are split or united.Aug 1 2012: Have a look at Bloom Energy. this works with hydrocarbons (at the moment AFAIK) but if it could work with biogas a full system could be installed with each house. Bio degradable material can generate the gas which these fuel cells can convert directly to electricity. Plus you don't have any transmission losses.
http://www.bloomenergy.com/Jul 31 2012: Great topic. Looks like a combination of energy solutions may be the key for 2050.Jul 30 2012: http://johnbrianshannon.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/planetary-energy-graphic-energy-resources-renewables-fossil-fuel-uranium-e1331370752412.pngJul 30 2012: Solar energy, undobutlessly. Powerful, cheap, clean, sustainable,.... and multipurpose also (wait and you'll see!) And don't forget dark energy. It may be a grateful and amazin surprise. I'd like living enough for watching it.Jul 30 2012: hi,
Aug 8 2012: Get out.Jul 29 2012: Taken from a previous comment in the David MacKay renewables thread:
The ZN concept MIGHT be capable in 10yrs and would only output 1/10th of the burst speed necessary for a 300MW concept reactor. All of this being in research phase...
Realistically, for even the most optimistically speculative fusion technology we are looking at 2050.
We could have a LFTR built and operating by 2030, which arguably could breed tritium for supply to a ZN or Tokamak reactor. Aneutronic fusion would require a tritium breeder like the LFTR...
By 2050 the majority of new personal automobiles sold will be fuel cell powered and should use H2 fuel produced from thermochemical production and electrolysis. A large amount of electric will be solar and wind if we consider the success of large-scale efforts similar to the desertec project and the current trends in solar and wind power installations. These are the fastest growing (by %) of all energy supply installations. Wind improvements using vortex-effects like "wind-lens" and "tubercle" tech will significantly improve wind efficiency to rival coal EROEI. After 2030 initial GenIV technology should be demonstrated and accelerated nuclear builds up to 2050 will offset excess and growing electric demands. The LFTR will be the most successful GenIV releated nuclear tech, though it is China that will demonstrate it, not the GIF!
http://www.itheo.org/articles/china-announces-thorium-energy-projectJul 29 2012: The google guys were betting on geothermal, i read somehwere and maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part or gratitude for having all my questions answered but I think those guys usually know something.
Jul 29 2012: Geo thermal has become much talked abut here in Maine because of the presence of a group specilaizing in that. ( I think it is called GO Logic) They built a demo 3 bedroom home two years ago for a very modest price ( $350k???) which heats for $350 per year..that is from supplementary electric baseboard heat which is needed only in extreme cold .
I did some research contemplating my next and hopefully last home..there are issues which somehow need to be overcome. Key parts of the very deep underground system need redoing after 15 or 20 years..and the process of installing geothermal may not be suitably for fragile natural settings .
I love that it is building specific and generated from the earth on the property from natural and simple processes that require very little in the way of a technical assist... That protects it from the threat of monopoly and profiteering that is happening now with industrial wid globally and here in Maine.
So a good pick , Debra.Aug 1 2012: The problem with geothermal is its disruptive. So can only be effective with new build houses. Although its a great idea to save energy.
Aug 1 2012: I know so little about this stuff and I am delighted to learn from TEDdies. I know that there is a large winery in Niagara on the Lake Ontario built upon this premise. thank you.Jul 29 2012: I read about the positrons and anti matter and the equal amount of energy they generate compared to a nuclear reactor without any hazards , so I feel that should be the future sources of renewable energy
Jul 30 2012: Could you elaborate on this? I am not familiar with any way of using positrons and anti-matter to generate useful energy. The positrons and anti-matter would have to be "harvested" so to speak, not generated by humans, in order to be useful for energy production. What are your sources on this matter?Jul 29 2012: Think it will be mix of energy efficient smart systems and mix of solar and wind. also solar cells today are not so efficient. Major work will go in increasing efficiency. The incident energy on earth of solar power is 1kw sq mt. but the efficiency of around 10% means we only can convert it to get between 75w -100w /sq mt after conversion into AC. Most houses around 10 sq mt of surface area so they can generate around 5kw of energy per houshold if we could increase the efficiency to 50%. that means with 8 hours every day you would get 40kwh per day more than enough for most houses.
the other one could be direct conversion from ambient heat to electricty. heat cloaks could make this happen in next 2 decades or so.
Jul 30 2012: You would of course need a whole room full of batteries.
Jul 30 2012: Not really - because the way you would use a smart system is quite different. A few batteries are enough if you use when you match your use with peak generation. For example devices such as washing machines, dryers etc which consume lot of energy will be on standby and will switch on when there is peak energy i.e. during day time. This may not work in all geographies but many countries such systems will make complete sense.
Jul 30 2012: As you are a UK resident I should enquire how you will heat your home at night, in winter. I live in Australia and still use a heater when the nights are cold. An electric heater uses more energy than any other appliance in your house. If you heat using anything other than electricity you're not really helping the co2 problem. It would work OK in the tropics though.


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Catassol Solar Oven
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The Catassol Solar Oven is a solar box cooker developed and sold by Pleno Sol located in Brazil. Known for their high quality products, the Catassol Solar Oven joins the PlenoSol 1 and the PlenoSol II line of solar cookers they offer. The new oven features a large reflector surrounding the glass top. The base is able to maintain a focus with the sun for the cooker by having the capability to move both horizontally and vertically. This feature is available with either manual adjustment or with an automatic tracking system. The interior food cooking tray swings from an axle and is able to stay level regardless of the reflector orientation.
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- http://plenosol.wordpress.com/produtos/catassol-forno-solar-de-alta-performance
- http://plenosol.wordpress.com
- http://plenosol.wordpress.com/produtos/fornos-solares/catassol-colossal-forno-solar-de-alta-performance-e-grande-capacidade/
- Pleno Sol YouTube channel
- See Pleno Sol.


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* Offer valid from June 15th to July 5th and from September 1st to 19th 2013 (dates may be subject to slight change)
Offer must be booked and paid in advance. Offer cannot be combined with any other promotional deal. Bookings cannot be changed or refunded.
To take advantage of this special mountain biking deal, please complete the details below and you will receive your promotional code by email.
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Care of the Elderly Patient: Policy Issues and Research Opportunities . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press,
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All Hail Wall Street
If the debate around the fiscal cliff and, particularly, the still-impending sequester demonstrates anything, it's that Richard Nixon's one plunge into economic theory—"We're all Keynesians now," the former president once said—still holds. Everyone acknowledges that laying off hundreds of thousands of government employees, including 800,000 civilian Defense Department workers, and stopping payment to government contractors will, by definition, destroy jobs, at least until the payments resume. It's still Republican orthodoxy, to be sure, to deny that government spending actually creates jobs, but even they acknowledge that the cessation of government spending destroys them. Which illustrates that the problem with contemporary Republicanism isn't confined to their indifference to empiricism but also their indifference to logic. Reasoning—either deductive or inductive—is either beyond them, beneath them or above them.
A second Republican talking point called into question by the fiscal-cliff legislation enacted Tuesday is that the 47 percent don't pay taxes. In fact, every American employee, including the millions who aren't paid enough to pay income taxes, saw their payroll tax increased Tuesday by the bipartisan failure of Congress to extend the payroll tax cut that had been enacted as part of the Obama administration's original stimulus legislation back in 2009. Despite Republican protestations, the payroll tax is a tax, of course, and more particularly, it's a tax on earned income—to coin a phrase, an income tax. The difference is, it's not progressive—the working poor are not exempted, and pay at the identical rate as the rich up to the point where taxable income hits its ceiling.
Even more depressing than the complicity of both parties in raising the regressive payroll tax is their complicity in failing to significantly raise the tax rates on dividends and capital gains—the rate was raised just from 15 percent to 20 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers. The Washington Post's Suzy Khimm summarized the new provisions for Wonkblog: "The tax on capital gains and dividends will be permanently set at 20 percent for those with income above the $450,000/$400,000 threshold. It will remain at 15 percent for everyone else. (Clinton-era rates were 20 percent for capital gains and taxed dividends as ordinary income, with a top rate of 39.6 percent.)" Time was when the Democrats were simply opposed to taxing income from investments at a lower rate than income from work. Indeed, in 2003, as the National Journal's invaluable Ron Brownstein has tweeted, only two Democratic senators voted to lower the capital gains and dividend tax rates to the levels they largely declined to raise earlier this week.
Problem is, the never-very-strong case for taxing investment income at a lower rate than labor income has grown weaker still in the era of globalization. If you invest, say, in General Electric (GE), from which you derive dividend income, you're investing in a company that has hundreds of facilities and many thousands of workers overseas. The investment income you provide the company by buying its stock is as likely to be spent creating jobs in China or India as it is to create jobs in the United States. A GE employee who works in the U.S., on the other hand, is creating value in the U.S. But she's taxed at a higher rate than a shareholder only a fraction of whose investment creates value here. Assuming one purpose of the tax code is to bolster the domestic economy more than the economy of other nations, taxing that investment at a lower rate than the employee's labor is completely backward.
As well, wages constitute a declining share of both the nation's total income and corporate expenditures, reflecting the downward drag that globalization, mechanization and de-unionization have had on workers' incomes. Wages have fallen from 53 percent of GDP in 1970 to 44 percent today—a shift of nearly $1.5 trillion away from wage income. Profits, and with them, dividends and capital gains, have been growing at wages' expense: J.P. Morgan chief investment officer Michael Cembalest has calculated that reductions in wages and benefits were responsible for about 75 percent of the increase in corporate profits between 2000 and 2007. Taxing wage income at a higher rate than investment income, then, only increases the growing economic inequality that characterizes the pre-tax economy.
There's no mystery behind the lower tax rates for capital income than for labor income: They simply reflect the continued, indeed growing, ascendency of capital over labor—in the Democratic Party, based on this week's not-so-grand bargain, no less than in the GOP. Democrats will get a second chance to rectify this imbalance when they have to come up with some more revenues to offset the sequester, which has now been rescheduled to take place two months from now. If the logic of the above arguments doesn't move them, the fact that Wall Street tilted strongly Republican in November's election while labor saved their bacon in the presidential, senatorial, and congressional elections in a dozen states might move them yet.
Thomas Paign
Fri, 2013-01-04 14:05
Wait until we have 7 to 10 % inflation per year, and the capital gains tax rate becomes a penalty for saving and investing. For example, invest $10,000 in 2015, earn 10% per year, while inflation is also 10% per year. In 2022, you cash out of the investment at a value of $20K, and owe $1,500 to $2,000 in capital gains tax. After accounting for inflation, there was no real gain in the value of the investment
The fairest and most reasoned approach may be to return the capital gains and dividend tax rates to the income tax rates, however allow for capital gains to be offset be inflation. This may be a bit complicated, and we may need inflation offset values for multiple market sectors to match the investment, but it could be manageable.
PC Scipio
Sat, 2013-01-05 13:43
Sat, 2013-01-05 17:51
Globalization drives inequality, higher profits, and lower wages. So what? That's the modern Democratic party. That's the world Obama wants. Remember the line about
"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
What that really means is unlimited imported cheap labor to break unions and keep wages down. Just this week Obama contrived yet another Amnesty for illegals. No wage is too low for Obama as long as every American worker has yet to be replaced.
Remember the line about
"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Of course, it's just a myth that immigrants and "free" trade are destroying the lives of millions. It's a myth as long as you are pocketing the proceeds that is. Otherwise, it misery of being on the losing end of elite globalization. Does Obama have a problem with any of it? Clearly he thinks its all an illusion.
Sat, 2013-01-05 21:20
"The regressive payroll tax" had to be raised. We like Social Security, and we want to preserve it. Social Security was designed and intended to be funded separately from the federal budget. During the "payroll tax holiday" that separation was destroyed, and the destruction of that separation would have eventually (probably a couple of months from now) been used against Social Security.
Now we have to figure out what to do with Medicare, which we also want. I'd suggest considering expanding it, by lowering the eligibility age to zero, and funding it with a tax that's also properly isolated from the general budget.
Ben Leet
Mon, 2013-01-07 15:44
Corporate profits are at all-time high as % of GDP, and wage income as a % of GDP at a low. William Lazonick reports that over 10 years 94% of corporate profits went for stock buybacks and dividends. "For 2001-2010, 459 companies in the S&P 500 Index in January 2011 distributed $1.9 trillion in dividends, equivalent to 40 percent of their combined net income, and $2.6 trillion in buybacks, equal to another 54 percent of their net income. After all that, what was left over for investments in innovation, including upgrading the capabilities of their workforces? Not much." Huffington Post, 4.3.12. Then checking at State of Working America, Table 2.4, income separated by source and quintile income group, the top 1% receive 43.4% of their income in dividends, interest, and capital gains, and 64.5%% adding in "proprietors' income and other business. Average income is around $1.5 million. --- Conclusion, most workers receive only wage income and wages are depressed, the employment to population ratio has dropped by 10% since 2000. The very wealthy with 60 to 70% from business, capital gains, interest, dividends, are receiving more income from sources that are more lightly taxed.
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Mahogany Canterbury
- Item No.
Key Features
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Item Details
- Period:
19th Century
- Origin:
A marvelous, late Victorian mahogany canterbury, originally designed for storing sheet music and books. Canterburies first appeared in England during the late 18th century and today are suitably designed for holding magazines and newspapers. Excellent condition.
Circa 1880
Circa 1880


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First word of thread title should be "Opinions", not "pinions".... Couldn't change it myself.
Now I am reading that Bendo is thinking about a GSP dream fight. This right after reading about Also possibly fighting at LW, and Dana saying he would stay at LW if he were to make that move. Of course, Edgar jumped weight, and all of the Jones talk......
Where does this all end? Is this good for the sport? What happens when the weight-jumping Champ wins a title in another division? Is he now stuck at that division? Does he relinquish his previous belt? What happens if he wins the new weight class belt, and he wants to immediately go back to his old weight class?
Personally, I think weight class jumps by Champs should only be entertained once they have truly cleaned out their division, and the only possible fights left are rematches. And a jump in weight class combined with winning the belt in the new weight class should carry a time limit before they are allowed to go back into their old weight class, if they are seeking to do so.


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Cagle sings National AnthemPosted by on November 18, 2012 – 8:00 pm
Country music star Chris Cagle sang the National Anthem prior to tonight's game. He was on the field pregame where he met Hall of Fame center Dermontti Dawson.
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July Ruby™ Barbie® Doll
Release Date: 12/1/2003
Product Code: C5325
Our tribute to the July birthstone reflects the glorious hues of the ruby and brings happy wishes for your very special birthday month. July Ruby™ Barbie® doll wears a spectacular gown trimmed with chiffon and sparkling with glitter. A lovely stole wraps around her shoulders. The faux ruby pendant on her necklace is actually a glittering Swarovski® crystal.
Production doll may vary from the photo shown above. Mattel reserves the right to modify the fashion/fabrics, sculpt, hair color/style, and accessories. Doll cannot stand alone as shown.
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