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173-657: The Calculus Affair (French: L'Affaire Tournesol ) is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin , the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé . It was serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin , his dog Snowy , and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus , who has developed

346-466: A big-game hunter , accidentally killing fifteen antelope as opposed to the one needed for the evening meal. However, concerns over the number of dead animals led Tintin ' s Scandinavian publishers to request changes. A page of Tintin killing a rhinoceros by drilling a hole in its back and inserting a stick of dynamite was deemed excessive; Hergé replaced the page with one in which the rhino accidentally discharges Tintin's rifle while he sleeps under

519-565: A "counter-position to, or flip-side of, the one he represented in the moon books". When Tintin and Haddock arrive in Borduria, they are " treated as honoured guests but are in fact prisoners of the police state", a reversal of the situation in The Blue Lotus in which Tintin believes himself a prisoner but is in fact a guest. As with The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Calculus Affair

692-504: A 24th unfinished album was released, the studios were disbanded, and the assets were transferred to the Hergé Foundation . Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and adventurer who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day. The Adventures may feature Tintin hard at work in his investigative journalism, but seldom is he seen actually turning in a story. Readers and critics have described Tintin as

865-615: A bottle of Valais wine, which he could again use as a model from which to draw. Hergé subsequently travelled to Switzerland in person to produce accurate sketches of scenes around Geneva, which he could then incorporate into the story; these included at Geneva Cointrin International Airport , Genève-Cornavin railway station , and the Cornavin Hotel, as well as the road through Cervens and Topolino's house in Nyon . Despite this realism,

1038-601: A branch of the Western Publishing Company in the 1950s. The albums were translated from French into American English with some artwork panels blanked except for the speech balloons. This was done to remove content considered to be inappropriate for children, such as drunkenness and free mixing of races. The albums were not popular and only six were published in mixed order. The edited albums later had their blanked areas redrawn by Hergé to be more acceptable, and they currently appear this way in published editions around

1211-565: A by now mediocre performance. The first Eindecker victory came on 1 July 1915, when Leutnant Kurt Wintgens , of Feldflieger Abteilung 6 on the Western Front, downed a Morane-Saulnier Type L. His was one of five Fokker M.5 K/MG prototypes for the Eindecker , and was armed with a synchronized aviation version of the Parabellum MG14 machine gun. The success of the Eindecker kicked off

1384-463: A cadre of exceptional pilots. In the United Kingdom, at the behest of Neville Chamberlain (more famous for his 'peace in our time' speech), the entire British aviation industry was retooled, allowing it to change quickly from fabric covered metal framed biplanes to cantilever stressed skin monoplanes in time for the war with Germany, a process that France attempted to emulate, but too late to counter

1557-576: A cameo of himself as a reporter. The Calculus Affair began serialisation in Tintin magazine's Christmas edition on 22 December 1954, and continued to appear in the pages of that publication until 22 February 1956. It would be the first of The Adventures of Tintin to be serialised without interruption since Red Rackham's Treasure (1944). Serialisation began in the French edition of Tintin in February 1955. It

1730-593: A classic Franco-Belgian strip". Syldavia in particular is described in considerable detail, Hergé creating a history, customs, and a language, which is actually a Slavic-looking transcript of Marols , a working-class Brussels dialect. He set the country in the Balkans , and it is, by his own admission, modelled after Albania . The country finds itself threatened by neighbouring Borduria, with an attempted annexation appearing in King Ottokar's Sceptre . This situation parallels

1903-487: A collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana adapted 21 of the stories into a series of episodes, each 22 minutes long. The Calculus Affair was the sixteenth and seventeenth episodes of The Adventures of Tintin to be produced. Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the series has been praised for being "generally faithful", with compositions having been actually directly taken from

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2076-465: A combatant's efforts to gain air superiority hinges on several factors including the skill of its pilots, the tactical soundness of its doctrine for deploying its fighters, and the numbers and performance of those fighters. Many modern fighter aircraft also have secondary capabilities such as ground attack and some types, such as fighter-bombers , are designed from the outset for dual roles. Other fighter designs are highly specialized while still filling

2249-435: A competitive cycle of improvement among the combatants, both sides striving to build ever more capable single-seat fighters. The Albatros D.I and Sopwith Pup of 1916 set the classic pattern followed by fighters for about twenty years. Most were biplanes and only rarely monoplanes or triplanes . The strong box structure of the biplane provided a rigid wing that allowed the accurate control essential for dogfighting. They had

2422-614: A contagious disease. Reflecting Cold War tensions, The Calculus Affair was published at a time when espionage thrillers were popular in France and Belgium. The Calculus Affair marked a return to the single volume format which was to persist for the rest of The Adventures of Tintin . The volume started its publication in Tintin magazine in December 1954. Before working on the book, Hergé would make sketches in pencil; subsequently he would work over

2595-432: A criminal case was initiated, although the matter was transferred to a civil court. Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunities warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness ". Fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft (early on also pursuit aircraft ) are military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat . In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of

2768-443: A difficult deflection shot. The first step in finding a real solution was to mount the weapon on the aircraft, but the propeller remained a problem since the best direction to shoot is straight ahead. Numerous solutions were tried. A second crew member behind the pilot could aim and fire a swivel-mounted machine gun at enemy airplanes; however, this limited the area of coverage chiefly to the rear hemisphere, and effective coordination of

2941-552: A form that would replace all others in the 1930s. As collective combat experience grew, the more successful pilots such as Oswald Boelcke , Max Immelmann , and Edward Mannock developed innovative tactical formations and maneuvers to enhance their air units' combat effectiveness. Allied and – before 1918 – German pilots of World War I were not equipped with parachutes , so in-flight fires or structural failures were often fatal. Parachutes were well-developed by 1918 having previously been used by balloonists, and were adopted by

3114-645: A great deal of ground-attack work. In World War II, the USAAF and RAF often favored fighters over dedicated light bombers or dive bombers , and types such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and Hawker Hurricane that were no longer competitive as aerial combat fighters were relegated to ground attack. Several aircraft, such as the F-111 and F-117, have received fighter designations though they had no fighter capability due to political or other reasons. The F-111B variant

3287-534: A lesson in mathematics. Hergé later admitted the flaws in the original story, excusing it saying: "I portrayed these Africans according to ... this purely paternalistic spirit of the time". Sue Buswell, who was the editor of Tintin at Methuen, summarised the perceived problems with the book in 1988 as "all to do with rubbery lips and heaps of dead animals", although Thompson noted her quote may have been "taken out of context". Drawing on André Maurois ' Les Silences du colonel Bramble , Hergé presents Tintin as

3460-536: A machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves , from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia . Like the previous volume, Explorers on the Moon , The Calculus Affair was created with the aid of Hergé's team of artists at Studios Hergé . The story reflected the Cold War tensions that Europe was experiencing during the 1950s, and introduced three recurring characters into

3633-442: A masked stranger, who then takes off. While escaping, Snowy rips the stranger's coat, causing a cigarette packet to fall off. On the packet, the name of "Hotel Cornavin, Geneva" where Calculus stays was written on it. Tintin fears that Calculus is in danger. Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy head for Geneva. In Geneva, they learn that Calculus has gone to Nyon to meet Professor Topolino , an expert in ultrasonics . The group travel there in

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3806-617: A nearby secret facility. To develop this plot further, Hergé consulted Professor Armand Delsemme  [ fr ] , an astrophysicist at Liège . Hergé's depiction of Switzerland avoided repeating national clichés, instead seeking a high level of realism. Hergé requested that Jean Dupont, the editor of L'Écho illustré  — the magazine in which The Adventures of Tintin was serialised in Switzerland ;— send him documentation on Swiss railways from which he could draw. He also requested that his Swiss friend Charly Fornora send him

3979-608: A number of minor errors were made in Hergé's depiction of Geneva. Hergé's depiction of Borduria was based on Eastern Bloc countries. Their police force was modelled on the Soviet KGB . Hergé named the political leader of Borduria Plekszy-Gladz , a pun on Plexiglas , although the English translators renamed him Kûrvi-Tasch ("curvy tash"), a reference to the fact that the leader's curved moustache, inspired by that of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ,

4152-431: A number of twin-engine fighters were built; however they were found to be outmatched against single-engine fighters and were relegated to other tasks, such as night fighters equipped with radar sets. By the end of the war, turbojet engines were replacing piston engines as the means of propulsion, further increasing aircraft speed. Since the weight of the turbojet engine was far less than a piston engine, having two engines

4325-534: A part of military nomenclature, a letter is often assigned to various types of aircraft to indicate their use, along with a number to indicate the specific aircraft. The letters used to designate a fighter differ in various countries. In the English-speaking world, "F" is often now used to indicate a fighter (e.g. Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II or Supermarine Spitfire F.22 ), though "P" used to be used in

4498-622: A range of specialized aircraft types. Some of the most expensive fighters such as the US Grumman F-14 Tomcat , McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle , Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and Russian Sukhoi Su-27 were employed as all-weather interceptors as well as air superiority fighter aircraft, while commonly developing air-to-ground roles late in their careers. An interceptor is generally an aircraft intended to target (or intercept) bombers and so often trades maneuverability for climb rate. As

4671-719: A result, during the early months of these campaigns, Axis air forces destroyed large numbers of Red Air Force aircraft on the ground and in one-sided dogfights. In the later stages on the Eastern Front, Soviet training and leadership improved, as did their equipment. By 1942 Soviet designs such as the Yakovlev Yak-9 and Lavochkin La-5 had performance comparable to the German Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 . Also, significant numbers of British, and later U.S., fighter aircraft were supplied to aid

4844-617: A result, the colourful supporting cast was developed during this period. Thomson and Thompson ( Dupont et Dupond in Hergé's original version) are two incompetent detectives who look like identical twins, their only discernible difference being the shape of their moustaches. First introduced in Cigars of the Pharaoh , they provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, being afflicted with chronic spoonerisms . They are extremely clumsy, thoroughly incompetent, and usually bent on arresting

5017-679: A retired major general in the United States Army  – really existed and was published in 1947. In the strip, Hergé preserved the English-language title of the book rather than translating it into French, although altered the book's cover design to remove a prominent swastika . The inclusion of the book is one of the few instances that there is any reference to the Second World War within The Adventures of Tintin . The photograph of

5190-476: A sense of responsibility to my readers". Hergé's use of research and photographic reference allowed him to build a realised universe for Tintin, going so far as to create fictionalised countries, dressing them with specific political cultures. These were heavily informed by the cultures evident in Hergé's lifetime. Pierre Skilling has asserted that Hergé saw monarchy as "the legitimate form of government", noting that democratic "values seem underrepresented in [such]

5363-638: A separate (and vulnerable) radiator, but had increased drag. Inline engines often had a better power-to-weight ratio . Some air forces experimented with " heavy fighters " (called "destroyers" by the Germans). These were larger, usually twin-engined aircraft, sometimes adaptations of light or medium bomber types. Such designs typically had greater internal fuel capacity (thus longer range) and heavier armament than their single-engine counterparts. In combat, they proved vulnerable to more agile single-engine fighters. The primary driver of fighter innovation, right up to

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5536-420: A single operator, who flew the aircraft and also controlled its armament. They were armed with one or two Maxim or Vickers machine guns, which were easier to synchronize than other types, firing through the propeller arc. Gun breeches were in front of the pilot, with obvious implications in case of accidents, but jams could be cleared in flight, while aiming was simplified. The use of metal aircraft structures

5709-506: A string of colour adaptations based upon Hergé's original comics, adapting eight of the Adventures into a series (named Hergé's Adventures of Tintin ) of daily five-minute episodes. The Calculus Affair (renamed The Calculus Case ) was the eighth such story in the second series, being directed by Ray Goossens and written by Greg , himself a well-known cartoonist who in later years would become editor-in-chief of Tintin magazine. In 1991,

5882-567: A strip about a Boy Scout patrol leader titled Les Aventures de Totor C.P. des Hannetons ( The Adventures of Totor, Scout Leader of the Cockchafers ) for the Scouting newspaper Le Boy Scout Belge ( The Belgian Boy Scout ). Totor was a strong influence on Tintin , with Hergé describing the latter as being like Totor's younger brother. Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier stated that graphically, Totor and Tintin were "virtually identical" except for

6055-654: A strong protagonist. Tintin's iconic representation enhances this aspect, with Scott McCloud noting that it "allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world". Snowy ( Milou in Hergé's original version), a white Wire Fox Terrier dog, is Tintin's loyal companion. Like Captain Haddock, Snowy is fond of Loch Lomond brand Scotch whisky , and his occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into unintentional trouble, as does his only fear: arachnids. Captain Archibald Haddock ( Capitaine Haddock in Hergé's original version)

6228-403: A taxi, but their car is attacked by two men in another car, who force the taxi into Lake Geneva . Surviving the attack, Tintin, Haddock and Snowy continue to Nyon, where they find Topolino bound and gagged in his cellar. As Tintin questions the professor, the house blows up, but they all survive. Tintin and Haddock meet the detectives Thomson and Thompson , who reveal that the man at Marlinspike

6401-608: A tree. In 2007, the UK's Commission for Racial Equality called for the book to be pulled from shelves after a complaint, stating: "It beggars belief that in this day and age Borders would think it acceptable to sell and display Tintin in the Congo." In August 2007, a Congolese student filed a complaint in Brussels that the book was an insult to the Congolese people. Public prosecutors investigated, and

6574-411: A well-rounded yet open-ended, intelligent, and creative character, noting that his lack of backstory and neutral personality permits a reflection of the evil, folly, and foolhardiness which surrounds him. The character never compromises his Boy Scout ideals, which represent Hergé's own, and his status allows the reader to assume his position within the story, rather than merely following the adventures of

6747-602: A work given to him by Wallez and authored by Joseph Douillet , the former Belgian consul in Russia, that is highly critical of the Soviet regime, although Hergé contextualised this by noting that in Belgium, at the time a devout Catholic nation, "anything Bolshevik was atheist ". In the story, Bolshevik leaders are motivated by personal greed and a desire to deceive the world. Tintin discovers, buried, "the hideout where Lenin , Trotsky , and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from

6920-430: A work whose idioms and jokes would be meritorious in their own right. Despite the free hand Hergé afforded the two, they worked closely with the original text, asking for regular assistance to understand Hergé's intentions. The British translations were also Anglicised to appeal to British customs and values. Milou, for example, was renamed Snowy at the translators' discretion. Captain Haddock's Le château de Moulinsart

7093-455: A youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle ( The Twentieth Century ). The success of the series led to serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir ( The Evening ) and spun into a successful Tintin magazine . In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé , which produced the canonical versions of ten Tintin albums. Following Hergé's death in 1983,

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7266-503: Is a Merchant Marine sea captain and Tintin's best friend. Introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws , Haddock is initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but later evolves to become genuinely heroic and even a socialite after he finds a treasure from his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock ( Chevalier François de Hadoque ). The Captain's coarse humanity and sarcasm act as a counterpoint to Tintin's often-implausible heroism; he

7439-402: Is a fast, heavily armed and long-range type, able to act as an escort fighter protecting bombers , to carry out offensive sorties of its own as a penetration fighter and maintain standing patrols at significant distance from its home base. Bombers are vulnerable due to their low speed, large size and poor maneuvrability. The escort fighter was developed during World War II to come between

7612-539: Is able to defend itself while conducting attack sorties. The word "fighter" was first used to describe a two-seat aircraft carrying a machine gun (mounted on a pedestal) and its operator as well as the pilot . Although the term was coined in the United Kingdom, the first examples were the French Voisin pushers beginning in 1910, and a Voisin III would be the first to shoot down another aircraft, on 5 October 1914. However at

7785-422: Is always quick with a dry comment whenever the boy reporter seems too idealistic. The hot-tempered Haddock uses a range of colourful insults and curses to express his feelings, such as "billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!" ( Mille milliards de mille sabords! ) or "ten thousand thundering typhoons!" Professor Cuthbert Calculus ( Professeur Tryphon Tournesol in Hergé's original version; tournesol

7958-399: Is an opera singer of whom Haddock is terrified. She was first introduced in King Ottokar's Sceptre and seems to appear wherever the protagonists travel, along with her maid Irma and pianist Igor Wagner . Although amiable and strong-willed, she is also comically foolish, whimsical, absent-minded, talkative, and seemingly unaware that her voice is shrill and appallingly loud. Her speciality

8131-558: Is especially noticeable in the seascapes, which are reminiscent of works by Hokusai and Hiroshige . Hergé also declared Mark Twain an influence, although this admiration may have led him astray when depicting Incas as having no knowledge of an upcoming solar eclipse in Prisoners of the Sun , an error T. F. Mills attributed to an attempt to portray "Incas in awe of a latter-day ' Connecticut Yankee '". Tintin first appeared in English in

8304-422: Is frequently replaced by malapropisms such as " Paddock ", " Stopcock ", or " Hopscotch ", while Nestor, Haddock's butler, is confused with "Chestor" and "Hector". Her own name means "white and chaste flower": a meaning to which Professor Calculus once refers when he breeds a white rose and names it for the singer. She was based upon opera divas in general (according to Hergé's perception), Hergé's Aunt Ninie (who

8477-471: Is knocked down, and Calculus is captured by the Syldavian agents, who are able to escape by plane to their home country. The next morning, Tintin and Haddock learn that Bordurian fighter aircraft forced down the Syldavian plane and recaptured Calculus, who is now being held in Borduria. They travel to Borduria's capital, Szohôd, intent on rescuing him. In the city, they are escorted to their hotel by agents of

8650-616: Is known as an interceptor . Recognized classes of fighter include: Of these, the Fighter-bomber , reconnaissance fighter and strike fighter classes are dual-role, possessing qualities of the fighter alongside some other battlefield role. Some fighter designs may be developed in variants performing other roles entirely, such as ground attack or unarmed reconnaissance . This may be for political or national security reasons, for advertising purposes, or other reasons. The Sopwith Camel and other "fighting scouts" of World War I performed

8823-708: Is the French word for 'sunflower') is an absent-minded and partially deaf physicist and a regular character alongside Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock. He was introduced in Red Rackham's Treasure , and based partially on Auguste Piccard , a Swiss physicist. "Everybody wants to be Tintin: generation after generation. In a world of Rastapopouloses , Tricklers and Carreidases —or, more prosaically, Jolyon Waggs and Bolt-the-builders —Tintin represents an unattainable ideal of goodness, cleanness, authenticity". —Literary critic Tom McCarthy , 2006 Hergé's supporting characters have been cited as far more developed than

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8996-453: Is the Jewel Song ( Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir / Ah! My beauty past compare, these jewels bright I wear ) from Gounod 's opera Faust , which she sings at the least provocation. She is often maternal toward Haddock, of whose dislike she remains ignorant. She often confuses words, especially names, with other words that rhyme with them or of which they remind her; "Haddock"

9169-471: The Adventures of Tintin from a more "adult" perspective as Les Métamorphoses de Tintin , published in English as The Metamorphoses of Tintin, or Tintin for Adults in 2010. In reviewing Apostolidès' book, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal of The New Republic thought that it was "not for the faint of heart: it is densely-packed with close textual analysis and laden with psychological jargon". Following Apostolidès's work, French psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron examined

9342-469: The Allies entered Brussels and Hergé's German employers fled. Le Soir was shut down and The Adventures of Tintin was put on hold. Then in 1946, Hergé accepted an invitation from Belgian comic publisher Raymond Leblanc and his new publishing company Le Lombard to continue The Adventures of Tintin in the new Le journal de Tintin ( Tintin magazine). Hergé quickly learned that he no longer had

9515-601: The Art Deco designer, also affected early Tintin adventures: "His influence can be detected at the beginning of the Soviets , where my drawings are designed along a decorative line, like an 'S'". Hergé also readily adopted the image of round noses from George McManus , feeling they were "so much fun that I used them, without scruples!" During the extensive research Hergé carried out for The Blue Lotus , he became influenced by Chinese and Japanese illustrative styles and woodcuts . This

9688-540: The Combined Bomber Offensive . Unescorted Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, however, proved unable to fend off German interceptors (primarily Bf 109s and Fw 190s). With the later arrival of long range fighters, particularly the North American P-51 Mustang , American fighters were able to escort far into Germany on daylight raids and by ranging ahead attrited

9861-563: The Italian conquest of Albania , and that of Czechoslovakia and Austria by expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II. Hergé's use of research would include months of preparation for Tintin's voyage to the Moon in the two-part storyline spread across Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon . His research for the storyline was noted in New Scientist : "The considerable research undertaken by Hergé enabled him to come very close to

10034-572: The Junkers D.I , made with corrugated duralumin , all based on his experience in creating the pioneering Junkers J 1 all-metal airframe technology demonstration aircraft of late 1915. While Fokker would pursue steel tube fuselages with wooden wings until the late 1930s, and Junkers would focus on corrugated sheet metal, Dornier was the first to build a fighter (the Dornier-Zeppelin D.I ) made with pre-stressed sheet aluminum and having cantilevered wings,

10207-579: The Paris Gare du Nord railway station, following which he organised the publication of the story in book form. The story's popularity led to an increase in sales, so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants. At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second story, Tintin in the Congo , designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo . Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted

10380-502: The RAF and the USAAF against German industry intended to wear down the Luftwaffe. Axis fighter aircraft focused on defending against Allied bombers while Allied fighters' main role was as bomber escorts. The RAF raided German cities at night, and both sides developed radar-equipped night fighters for these battles. The Americans, in contrast, flew daylight bombing raids into Germany delivering

10553-569: The Sopwith Tabloid and Bristol Scout . The French and the Germans didn't have an equivalent as they used two seaters for reconnaissance, such as the Morane-Saulnier L , but would later modify pre-war racing aircraft into armed single seaters. It was quickly found that these were of little use since the pilot couldn't record what he saw while also flying, while military leaders usually ignored what

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10726-760: The Stangensteuerung in German, for "pushrod control system") devised by the engineers of Anthony Fokker 's firm was the first system to enter service. It would usher in what the British called the " Fokker scourge " and a period of air superiority for the German forces, making the Fokker Eindecker monoplane a feared name over the Western Front , despite its being an adaptation of an obsolete pre-war French Morane-Saulnier racing airplane, with poor flight characteristics and

10899-851: The United Kingdom . He also sent Tintin to fictional countries of his own devising, such as the Latin American republic of San Theodoros , the East European kingdom of Syldavia , or the fascist state of Borduria —whose leader's name, Müsstler, was a portmanteau of the names of the Nazi German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini . In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium as World War II spread further across Europe. Although Hergé briefly fled to France and

11072-402: The battlespace . Domination of the airspace above a battlefield permits bombers and attack aircraft to engage in tactical and strategic bombing of enemy targets, and helps prevent the enemy from doing the same. The key performance features of a fighter include not only its firepower but also its high speed and maneuverability relative to the target aircraft. The success or failure of

11245-405: The "illustrations and the scenario are vibrant and rich; the story thread holds from beginning to end". Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier stated that the introduction of Wagg and Cutts the butcher represented "yet another turning point in the series", praising the characterisation of Wagg as "bitter and successful social satire". They were critical of Syldavia's inclusion as an antagonist in

11418-429: The 1957 Belvision animated series Hergé's Adventures of Tintin , the 1991 Ellipse / Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin , and the 1992–93 BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of the Adventures . During a thunderstorm , glass and porcelain items at Marlinspike Hall shatter inexplicably. Insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg arrives at the house to take shelter, annoying Captain Haddock. Gunshots are heard in

11591-689: The Arab emir, and Abdullah his mischievous son, Dr. Müller the evil German psychiatrist, Oliveira da Figueira the friendly Portuguese salesman, Cutts the butcher whose phone number is repeatedly confused with Haddock's, and Allan the henchman of Rastapopoulos and formerly Haddock's first mate. The settings within Tintin have also added depth to the strips. Hergé mixes real and fictional lands into his stories. In King Ottokar's Sceptre (revisited once more in The Calculus Affair ) Hergé creates two fictional countries, Syldavia and Borduria , and invites

11764-578: The Bordurian secret police, who have been ordered by police chief Colonel Sponsz to monitor the duo. Aware that they are being monitored, Tintin and Haddock escape the hotel and hide in the opera house, where Bianca Castafiore is performing. When police come searching for them, they hide in Castafiore's closet. When Sponsz comes to visit Castafiore in her dressing room, Tintin is able to steal papers from his overcoat pocket that will secure Calculus' release from

11937-643: The British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force referred to them as " scouts " until the early 1920s, while the U.S. Army called them "pursuit" aircraft until the late 1940s (using the designation P, as in Curtiss P-40 Warhawk , Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and Bell P-63 Kingcobra ). The UK changed to calling them fighters in the 1920s , while the US Army did so in the 1940s. A short-range fighter designed to defend against incoming enemy aircraft

12110-439: The British countryside would be acceptable to British readers. The resulting 1966 album is the dramatically updated and redrawn version most commonly available today. As of the early 21st century, Egmont publishes Tintin books in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Tintin books have had relatively limited popularity in the United States. The works were first adapted for the American English market by Golden Books ,

12283-460: The British, the Americans, the Spanish (in the Spanish civil war) and the Germans. Given limited budgets, air forces were conservative in aircraft design, and biplanes remained popular with pilots for their agility, and remained in service long after they ceased to be competitive. Designs such as the Gloster Gladiator , Fiat CR.42 Falco , and Polikarpov I-15 were common even in the late 1930s, and many were still in service as late as 1942. Up until

12456-480: The Congolese as childlike idiots, in later decades it was accused of racism, but at the time was uncontroversial and popular, and further publicity stunts were held to increase sales. For the third adventure, Tintin in America , serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, and used the work to push an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist agenda in keeping with

12629-483: The German flying services during the course of that year. The well known and feared Manfred von Richthofen , the "Red Baron", was wearing one when he was killed, but the allied command continued to oppose their use on various grounds. In April 1917, during a brief period of German aerial supremacy a British pilot's average life expectancy was calculated to average 93 flying hours, or about three weeks of active service. More than 50,000 airmen from both sides died during

12802-665: The German invasion. The period of improving the same biplane design over and over was now coming to an end, and the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire started to supplant the Gloster Gladiator and Hawker Fury biplanes but many biplanes remained in front-line service well past the start of World War II. While not a combatant in Spain, they too absorbed many of the lessons in time to use them. The Spanish Civil War also provided an opportunity for updating fighter tactics. One of

12975-570: The Golden Claws was the first to be published with Hyslop's lettering. Hyslop was given versions of Hergé's artwork with blank panels. Hyslop would write his English script on a clear cellophane -like material, aiming to fit within the original speech bubble. Occasionally the size of the bubbles would need to be adjusted if the translated text would not fit. In the early 2000s, Tintin's English publishers Egmont discontinued publishing books featuring Hyslop's handwritten lettering, instead publishing books with text created with digital fonts. This change

13148-493: The Hall's grounds, and Tintin and Haddock discover an unconscious man with a foreign accent who soon disappears with an accomplice. The next morning, Professor Calculus leaves for Geneva to attend a conference on nuclear physics . Tintin and Haddock use the opportunity to investigate Calculus' laboratory, discovering that his experiments were responsible for the glass-shattering of the previous night. While exploring, they are attacked by

13321-714: The Hergé Foundation has presented such criticism as naïveté and scholars of Hergé such as Harry Thompson have said that "Hergé did what he was told by the Abbé Wallez", Hergé himself felt that his background made it impossible to avoid prejudice, stating: "I was fed the prejudices of the bourgeois society that surrounded me". In Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , the Bolsheviks were presented as villains. Hergé drew on Moscow Unveiled ,

13494-670: The Hergé Foundation, Hergé's widow Fanny Rodwell said: "We never thought that this story of friendship would have a resonance more than 40 years later". The study of Tintin, sometimes referred to as "Tintinology", has become the life work of some literary critics in Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. Belgian author Philippe Goddin has written Hergé et Tintin reporters: Du Petit Vingtième au Journal Tintin (1986, later republished in English as Hergé and Tintin Reporters: From "Le Petit Vingtième" to "Tintin" Magazine in 1987) and Hergé et les Bigotudos (1993) amongst other books on

13667-724: The Italians developed several monoplanes such as the Fiat G.50 Freccia , but being short on funds, were forced to continue operating obsolete Fiat CR.42 Falco biplanes. From the early 1930s the Japanese were at war against both the Chinese Nationalists and the Russians in China, and used the experience to improve both training and aircraft, replacing biplanes with modern cantilever monoplanes and creating

13840-932: The Japanese Nakajima Ki-27 , Nakajima Ki-43 and Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Italian Fiat G.50 Freccia and Macchi MC.200 . In contrast, designers in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States believed that the increased speed of fighter aircraft would create g -forces unbearable to pilots who attempted maneuvering dogfights typical of the First World War, and their fighters were instead optimized for speed and firepower. In practice, while light, highly maneuverable aircraft did possess some advantages in fighter-versus-fighter combat, those could usually be overcome by sound tactical doctrine, and

14013-558: The Luftwaffe to establish control of the skies over Western Europe. By the time of Operation Overlord in June 1944, the Allies had gained near complete air superiority over the Western Front. This cleared the way both for intensified strategic bombing of German cities and industries, and for the tactical bombing of battlefield targets. With the Luftwaffe largely cleared from the skies, Allied fighters increasingly served as ground attack aircraft. Allied fighters, by gaining air superiority over

14186-637: The Luftwaffe, and while the Luftwaffe maintained a qualitative edge over the Red Air Force for much of the war, the increasing numbers and efficacy of the Soviet Air Force were critical to the Red Army's efforts at turning back and eventually annihilating the Wehrmacht . Meanwhile, air combat on the Western Front had a much different character. Much of this combat focused on the strategic bombing campaigns of

14359-528: The Scout uniform, also noting many similarities between their respective adventures, particularly in the illustration style, the fast pace of the story, and the use of humour. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium such as the systematic use of speech bubbles—found in such American comics as George McManus ' Bringing up Father , George Herriman 's Krazy Kat , and Rudolph Dirks 's Katzenjammer Kids , copies of which had been sent to him from Mexico by

14532-539: The Soviet Polikarpov I-16 . The later German design was earlier in its design cycle, and had more room for development and the lessons learned led to greatly improved models in World War II. The Russians failed to keep up and despite newer models coming into service, I-16s remaining the most common Soviet front-line fighter into 1942 despite being outclassed by the improved Bf 109s in World War II. For their part,

14705-516: The Soviet Union, Belgian Congo, Peru, India, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia, Iceland, Nepal, Tibet, and China. Other actual locales used were the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Moon. Hergé's extensive research began with The Blue Lotus ; Hergé said that "it was from that time that I undertook research and really interested myself in the people and countries to which I sent Tintin, out of

14878-531: The Soviet war effort as part of Lend-Lease , with the Bell P-39 Airacobra proving particularly effective in the lower-altitude combat typical of the Eastern Front. The Soviets were also helped indirectly by the American and British bombing campaigns, which forced the Luftwaffe to shift many of its fighters away from the Eastern Front in defense against these raids. The Soviets increasingly were able to challenge

15051-496: The US for pursuit (e.g. Curtiss P-40 Warhawk ), a translation of the French "C" ( Dewoitine D.520 C.1 ) for Chasseur while in Russia "I" was used for Istrebitel , or exterminator ( Polikarpov I-16 ). As fighter types have proliferated, the air superiority fighter emerged as a specific role at the pinnacle of speed, maneuverability, and air-to-air weapon systems – able to hold its own against all other fighters and establish its dominance in

15224-529: The United States, Russia, India and China. The first step was to find ways to reduce the aircraft's reflectivity to radar waves by burying the engines, eliminating sharp corners and diverting any reflections away from the radar sets of opposing forces. Various materials were found to absorb the energy from radar waves, and were incorporated into special finishes that have since found widespread application. Composite structures have become widespread, including major structural components, and have helped to counterbalance

15397-557: The advantages of fighting above Britain's home territory allowed the RAF to deny Germany air superiority, saving the UK from possible German invasion and dealing the Axis a major defeat early in the Second World War. On the Eastern Front , Soviet fighter forces were overwhelmed during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa . This was a result of the tactical surprise at the outset of the campaign,

15570-494: The basis for an effective "fighter" in the modern sense of the word. It was based on small fast aircraft developed before the war for air racing such with the Gordon Bennett Cup and Schneider Trophy . The military scout airplane was not expected to carry serious armament, but rather to rely on speed to "scout" a location, and return quickly to report, making it a flying horse. British scout aircraft, in this sense, included

15743-496: The battlefield. Early fighters were very small and lightly armed by later standards, and most were biplanes built with a wooden frame covered with fabric, and a maximum airspeed of about 100 mph (160 km/h). A successful German biplane, the Albatross, however, was built with a plywood shell, rather than fabric, which created a stronger, faster airplane. As control of the airspace over armies became increasingly important, all of

15916-580: The best of all the Tintin books". Biographer Benoît Peeters agreed, describing it as "Hergé's masterwork", "a masterpiece of the classic strip cartoon". Elsewhere, he referred to it as "one of his most brilliant books", describing Wagg as "the last great figure of The Adventures of Tintin ". Peeters added that the story had "the atmosphere of a spy novel worthy of John Buchan or Eric Ambler ". Similarly, Farr described The Calculus Affair as "one of Hergé's finest creations". Biographer Pierre Assouline stated that

16089-414: The bombers and enemy attackers as a protective shield. The primary requirement was for long range, with several heavy fighters given the role. However they too proved unwieldy and vulnerable, so as the war progressed techniques such as drop tanks were developed to extend the range of more nimble conventional fighters. The penetration fighter is typically also fitted for the ground-attack role, and so

16262-569: The butcher (originally Sanzot from the French sans os ("without bones")) and the Bordurian chief of secret police Colonel Sponsz, whose name is derived from the Brussels dialect term for a sponge ( éponge in French). Hergé used his brother, Paul Remi, as the model for Sponsz, although he was also influenced by the image of the Austrian American filmmaker Erich von Stroheim . A key influence on

16435-523: The central character, each imbued with strength of character and depth of personality, which has been compared with that of the characters of Charles Dickens . Hergé used the supporting characters to create a realistic world in which to set his protagonists' adventures. To further the realism and continuity, characters would recur throughout the series. The occupation of Belgium and the restrictions imposed upon Hergé forced him to focus on characterisation to avoid depicting troublesome political situations. As

16608-402: The character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams. Although it's possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin". —Hergé, 15 November 1966. Georges Prosper Remi, best known under

16781-601: The defense budgets of modern armed forces. The global combat aircraft market was worth $ 45.75 billion in 2017 and is projected by Frost & Sullivan at $ 47.2 billion in 2026: 35% modernization programs and 65% aircraft purchases, dominated by the Lockheed Martin F-35 with 3,000 deliveries over 20 years. A fighter aircraft is primarily designed for air-to-air combat . A given type may be designed for specific combat conditions, and in some cases for additional roles such as air-to-ground fighting. Historically

16954-656: The design approach of the Italians and Japanese made their fighters ill-suited as interceptors or attack aircraft. During the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France , Luftwaffe fighters—primarily the Messerschmitt Bf 109 —held air superiority, and the Luftwaffe played a major role in German victories in these campaigns. During the Battle of Britain , however, British Hurricanes and Spitfires proved roughly equal to Luftwaffe fighters. Additionally Britain's radar-based Dowding system directing fighters onto German attacks and

17127-547: The drawings and text in ink. With the development of his own Studios Hergé , he selected the best sketch from a number of versions and traced it onto the page he was creating. In The Calculus Affair Hergé introduced Jolyon Wagg, a Belgian insurance salesman, who appeared in each subsequent adventure with the exception of Tintin in Tibet . Wagg was intended as "the proverbial bore", who provides comic relief by repeatedly annoying Captain Haddock and inviting himself to Marlinspike. For

17300-516: The early 1960s since both were believed unusable at the speeds being attained, however the Vietnam War showed that guns still had a role to play, and most fighters built since then are fitted with cannon (typically between 20 and 30 mm (0.79 and 1.18 in) in caliber) in addition to missiles. Most modern combat aircraft can carry at least a pair of air-to-air missiles. In the 1970s, turbofans replaced turbojets, improving fuel economy enough that

17473-686: The early 21st century, Little, Brown and Company (owned by the Hachette Book Group USA ) continues to publish Tintin books in the United States. Moulinsart 's official Tintin app in Apple 's App Store , launched with the release of the digital version of Tintin in the Congo on 5 June 2015, features brand new English language translations by journalist, writer and Tintin expert Michael Farr . The English-language Adventures of Tintin books were originally published with handwritten lettering created by cartographer Neil Hyslop. 1958's The Crab with

17646-518: The executive director of ICT Europe Tsering Jampa noted was "for many ... their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet". In 2001, the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been released with the title Tintin in Chinese Tibet . The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title. Accepting on behalf of

17819-513: The fighter. Rifle-caliber .30 and .303 in (7.62 and 7.70 mm) calibre guns remained the norm, with larger weapons either being too heavy and cumbersome or deemed unnecessary against such lightly built aircraft. It was not considered unreasonable to use World War I-style armament to counter enemy fighters as there was insufficient air-to-air combat during most of the period to disprove this notion. The rotary engine , popular during World War I, quickly disappeared, its development having reached

17992-546: The final instalment of the series, Tintin and Alph-Art , was released posthumously. The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its protagonist is Tintin , a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer aided by his faithful dog Snowy ( Milou in the original French edition). Other allies include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock , the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (French: Professeur Tournesol ), incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (French: Dupont et Dupond ), and

18165-588: The fortress of Bakhine. After disguising themselves as officials from the International Red Cross , Tintin and Haddock are able to get Calculus released from prison. During their escape, they drive off the road, but are able to hijack a tank and narrowly escape across the border. At the lost property office, a relieved Calculus finally collects the black umbrella by Snowy alongside Tintin and Haddock. Back at Marlinspike Hall, Wagg moves his family in. Meanwhile, Calculus reveals that he forgot to take his plans for

18338-406: The guns were subjected). Shooting with this traditional arrangement was also easier because the guns shot directly ahead in the direction of the aircraft's flight, up to the limit of the guns range; unlike wing-mounted guns which to be effective required to be harmonised , that is, preset to shoot at an angle by ground crews so that their bullets would converge on a target area a set distance ahead of

18511-427: The independence he preferred; he was required to produce two coloured pages a week for Leblanc's magazine, a tall order. In 1950, Hergé began to poach the better members of the Tintin magazine staff to work in the large house on Avenue Louise that contained the fledgling Studios Hergé . Bob De Moor (who imitated Hergé's style and did half the work), Guy Dessicy (colourist), and Marcel DeHaye ( secretary ) were

18684-433: The innovations was the development of the " finger-four " formation by the German pilot Werner Mölders . Each fighter squadron (German: Staffel ) was divided into several flights ( Schwärme ) of four aircraft. Each Schwarm was divided into two Rotten , which was a pair of aircraft. Each Rotte was composed of a leader and a wingman. This flexible formation allowed the pilots to maintain greater situational awareness, and

18857-504: The interceptor. The equipment necessary for daytime flight is inadequate when flying at night or in poor visibility. The night fighter was developed during World War I with additional equipment to aid the pilot in flying straight, navigating and finding the target. From modified variants of the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c in 1915, the night fighter has evolved into the highly capable all-weather fighter. The strategic fighter

19030-420: The last piston engine support aircraft could be replaced with jets, making multi-role combat aircraft possible. Honeycomb structures began to replace milled structures, and the first composite components began to appear on components subjected to little stress. With the steady improvements in computers, defensive systems have become increasingly efficient. To counter this, stealth technologies have been pursued by

19203-564: The leadership vacuum within the Soviet military left by the Great Purge , and the general inferiority of Soviet designs at the time, such as the obsolescent Polikarpov I-15 biplane and the I-16 . More modern Soviet designs, including the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 , LaGG-3 and Yakolev Yak-1 , had not yet arrived in numbers and in any case were still inferior to the Messerschmitt Bf 109 . As

19376-419: The main air superiority role, and these include the interceptor and, historically, the heavy fighter and night fighter . Since World War I, achieving and maintaining air superiority has been considered essential for victory in conventional warfare . Fighters continued to be developed throughout World War I, to deny enemy aircraft and dirigibles the ability to gather information by reconnaissance over

19549-471: The major powers developed fighters to support their military operations. Between the wars, wood was largely replaced in part or whole by metal tubing, and finally aluminum stressed skin structures (monocoque) began to predominate. By World War II , most fighters were all-metal monoplanes armed with batteries of machine guns or cannons and some were capable of speeds approaching 400 mph (640 km/h). Most fighters up to this point had one engine, but

19722-410: The mid-1930s, the majority of fighters in the US, the UK, Italy and Russia remained fabric-covered biplanes. Fighter armament eventually began to be mounted inside the wings, outside the arc of the propeller, though most designs retained two synchronized machine guns directly ahead of the pilot, where they were more accurate (that being the strongest part of the structure, reducing the vibration to which

19895-495: The most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage…" Throughout the war, fighters performed their conventional role in establishing air superiority through combat with other fighters and through bomber interception, and also often performed roles such as tactical air support and reconnaissance . Fighter design varied widely among combatants. The Japanese and Italians favored lightly armed and armored but highly maneuverable designs such as

20068-549: The name, Séraphin Lampion in the original French version, Hergé initially chose Crampon , which was derived from the French expression "Quel crampon!" (English: "What a leech!"), but ultimately preferred the less explicit and harsh-sounding Lampion . Lampion's insurance company was Assurances Mondass , which in the English translation became the Rock Bottom Insurance Company. Also introduced in this volume were Cutts

20241-825: The nucleus. To this, Hergé added Jacques Martin (imitated Hergé's style), Roger Leloup (detailed, realistic drawings), Eugène Evany (later chief of the Studios), Michel Demaret ( letterer ), and Baudouin Van Den Branden (secretary). As Harry Thompson observed, the idea was to turn the process of creating The Adventures of Tintin into a "veritable production line, the artwork passing from person to person, everyone knowing their part, like an artistic orchestra with Hergé conducting". The studios produced eight new Tintin albums for Tintin magazine, and coloured and reformatted two old Tintin albums. Studios Hergé continued to release additional publications until Hergé's death in 1983. In 1986,

20414-433: The opera diva Bianca Castafiore . The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ligne claire ("clear line") style. Its well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories feature slapstick humour, offset by dashes of political or cultural commentary. "The idea for

20587-607: The opposition. Subsequently, radar capabilities grew enormously and are now the primary method of target acquisition . Wings were made thinner and swept back to reduce transonic drag, which required new manufacturing methods to obtain sufficient strength. Skins were no longer sheet metal riveted to a structure, but milled from large slabs of alloy. The sound barrier was broken, and after a few false starts due to required changes in controls, speeds quickly reached Mach 2, past which aircraft cannot maneuver sufficiently to avoid attack. Air-to-air missiles largely replaced guns and rockets in

20760-488: The outbreak of World War I , front-line aircraft were mostly unarmed and used almost exclusively for reconnaissance . On 15 August 1914, Miodrag Tomić encountered an enemy airplane while on a reconnaissance flight over Austria-Hungary which fired at his aircraft with a revolver, so Tomić fired back. It was believed to be the first exchange of fire between aircraft. Within weeks, all Serbian and Austro-Hungarian aircraft were armed. Another type of military aircraft formed

20933-809: The panels in the original comic book. The Adventures of Tintin The Adventures of Tintin ( French : Les Aventures de Tintin ; [lez‿avɑ̃tyʁ də tɛ̃tɛ̃] ) is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé . The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film. The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième ( The Little Twentieth ),

21106-580: The paper's reporter Léon Degrelle . Although Hergé wanted to send Tintin to the United States, Wallez ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union , acting as antisocialist propaganda for children. The result, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , was serialised in Le Petit Vingtième from January 1929 to May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organised a publicity stunt at

21279-492: The paper's ultraconservative ideology. The Adventures of Tintin had been syndicated to a Catholic magazine named Cœurs Vaillants ( Brave Hearts ) since 1930, and Hergé was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers, too. Hergé wrote a string of Adventures of Tintin , sending his character to real locations such as the Belgian Congo, United States, Egypt , India , Tibet , China , and

21452-708: The pen name Hergé , was employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtième Siècle ( The Twentieth Century ), a staunchly Roman Catholic, conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels . Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez , the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a fascist viewpoint. Wallez appointed Hergé editor of a new Thursday youth supplement, titled Le Petit Vingtième (" The Little Twentieth "). Propagating Wallez's sociopolitical views to its young readership, it contained explicitly pro-fascist and antisemitic sentiment. In addition to editing

21625-573: The people". In 1999, the issue of Tintin's politics was the subject of a debate in the French parliament; this event prompted the British weekly newspaper The Economist to publish an editorial on the matter. Tintin in the Congo has been criticised as presenting the Africans as naïve and primitive. In the original work, Tintin is shown at a blackboard addressing a class of African children: "My dear friends. I am going to talk to you today about your fatherland: Belgium". Hergé redrew this in 1946 to show

21798-479: The period of rapid re-armament in the late 1930s, were not military budgets, but civilian aircraft racing. Aircraft designed for these races introduced innovations like streamlining and more powerful engines that would find their way into the fighters of World War II. The most significant of these was the Schneider Trophy races, where competition grew so fierce, only national governments could afford to enter. At

21971-433: The period, going from a typical 180 hp (130 kW) in the 900 kg (2,000 lb) Fokker D.VII of 1918 to 900 hp (670 kW) in the 2,500 kg (5,500 lb) Curtiss P-36 of 1936. The debate between the sleek in-line engines versus the more reliable radial models continued, with naval air forces preferring the radial engines, and land-based forces often choosing inlines. Radial designs did not require

22144-452: The pilot's maneuvering with the gunner's aiming was difficult. This option was chiefly employed as a defensive measure on two-seater reconnaissance aircraft from 1915 on. Both the SPAD S.A and the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.9 added a second crewman ahead of the engine in a pod but this was both hazardous to the second crewman and limited performance. The Sopwith L.R.T.Tr. similarly added a pod on

22317-451: The pilots reported. Attempts were made with handheld weapons such as pistols and rifles and even light machine guns, but these were ineffective and cumbersome. The next advance came with the fixed forward-firing machine gun, so that the pilot pointed the entire aircraft at the target and fired the gun, instead of relying on a second gunner. Roland Garros bolted metal deflector plates to the propeller so that it would not shoot itself out of

22490-406: The plot of The Calculus Affair was an article that Hergé had read in a February 1954 issue of the Belgian weekly La Face à Main , reporting that there had been a number of incidents along the road from Portsmouth to London in southern England in which motorists' car windscreens had spontaneously shattered; the article's author suggested that it may have been caused by experiments undertaken in

22663-410: The point where rotational forces prevented more fuel and air from being delivered to the cylinders, which limited horsepower. They were replaced chiefly by the stationary radial engine though major advances led to inline engines gaining ground with several exceptional engines—including the 1,145 cu in (18,760 cm ) V-12 Curtiss D-12 . Aircraft engines increased in power several-fold over

22836-556: The preceding two-volume story arc, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon , here he had become "the Bad Mother" through his creation of an ultrasonic weapon and the threat that he poses both to the tranquility of Marlinspike and to world peace. He viewed the scene at the end of the story in which Calculus burns the plans to his ultrasonic device as "a symbolic castration", allowing the character to become "the Oedipal Father with whom

23009-566: The propeller arc was evident even before the outbreak of war and inventors in both France and Germany devised mechanisms that could time the firing of the individual rounds to avoid hitting the propeller blades. Franz Schneider , a Swiss engineer, had patented such a device in Germany in 1913, but his original work was not followed up. French aircraft designer Raymond Saulnier patented a practical device in April 1914, but trials were unsuccessful because of

23182-461: The propeller arc. Wing guns were tried but the unreliable weapons available required frequent clearing of jammed rounds and misfires and remained impractical until after the war. Mounting the machine gun over the top wing worked well and was used long after the ideal solution was found. The Nieuport 11 of 1916 used this system with considerable success, however, this placement made aiming and reloading difficult but would continue to be used throughout

23355-454: The propeller blades were fitted with metal wedges to protect them from ricochets . Garros' modified monoplane first flew in March 1915 and he began combat operations soon after. Garros scored three victories in three weeks before he himself was downed on 18 April and his airplane, along with its synchronization gear and propeller was captured by the Germans. Meanwhile, the synchronization gear (called

23528-426: The propensity of the machine gun employed to hang fire due to unreliable ammunition. In December 1914, French aviator Roland Garros asked Saulnier to install his synchronization gear on Garros' Morane-Saulnier Type L parasol monoplane . Unfortunately the gas-operated Hotchkiss machine gun he was provided had an erratic rate of fire and it was impossible to synchronize it with the propeller. As an interim measure,

23701-570: The reader to tour them in text through the insertion of a travel brochure into the storyline. Other fictional lands include Khemed on the Arabian Peninsula and San Theodoros , São Rico , and Nuevo Rico in South America, as well as the kingdom of Gaipajama in India. Apart from these fictitious locations, Tintin also visits real places such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States,

23874-438: The series contains the key to understanding literature itself. McCarthy considered the Adventures of Tintin to be "stupendously rich", containing "a mastery of plot and symbol, theme and sub-text" which, influenced by Tisseron's psychoanalytical readings of the work, he believed could be deciphered to reveal a series of recurring themes, ranging from bartering to implicit sexual intercourse that Hergé had featured throughout

24047-631: The series in his books Tintin et les Secrets de Famille ("Tintin and the Family Secrets"), which was published in 1990, and Tintin et le Secret d'Hergé ("Tintin and Hergé's Secret"), published in 1993. The first English-language work of literary criticism devoted to the series was Tintin and the Secret of Literature , written by the novelist Tom McCarthy and published in 2006. McCarthy compares Hergé's work with that of Aeschylus , Honoré de Balzac , Joseph Conrad , and Henry James and argues that

24220-748: The series. In 1983, French author Benoît Peeters released Le Monde d'Hergé , subsequently published in English as Tintin and the World of Hergé in 1988. English reporter Michael Farr has written works such as Tintin, 60 Years of Adventure (1989), Tintin: The Complete Companion (2001), Tintin & Co. (2007) and The Adventures of Hergé (2007), while English television producer Harry Thompson authored Tintin: Hergé and his Creation (1991). Literary critics , primarily in French-speaking Europe, have also examined The Adventures of Tintin . In 1984, Jean-Marie Apostolidès published his study of

24393-611: The series. Reviewing the book in The Telegraph , Toby Clements argued that McCarthy's work, and literary criticism of Hergé's comic strips in general, cut "perilously close" to simply feeding "the appetite of those willing to cross the line between enthusiast and obsessive" in the Tintinological community. The earliest stories in The Adventures of Tintin have been criticised for animal cruelty; colonialism ; violence; and ethnocentric , caricatured portrayals of non-Europeans. While

24566-505: The series: Jolyon Wagg , Cutts the Butcher , and Colonel Sponsz . Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Red Sea Sharks , and the series as a whole became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition . The Calculus Affair was critically well-received, with various commentators having described it as one of the best Tintin adventures. The story was adapted for both

24739-532: The skies above the battlefield. The interceptor is a fighter designed specifically to intercept and engage approaching enemy aircraft. There are two general classes of interceptor: relatively lightweight aircraft in the point-defence role, built for fast reaction, high performance and with a short range, and heavier aircraft with more comprehensive avionics and designed to fly at night or in all weathers and to operate over longer ranges . Originating during World War I, by 1929 this class of fighters had become known as

24912-417: The sky and a number of Morane-Saulnier Ns were modified. The technique proved effective, however the deflected bullets were still highly dangerous. Soon after the commencement of the war, pilots armed themselves with pistols, carbines , grenades , and an assortment of improvised weapons. Many of these proved ineffective as the pilot had to fly his airplane while attempting to aim a handheld weapon and make

25085-460: The sonic weapon is also authentic. Hergé's decision to name a character Topolino was a reference to Walt Disney , whose character of Mickey Mouse was known as Topolino in Italian. Hergé included a reference to his friend and colleague, the former opera singer Edgar P. Jacobs , in the story, adding a figure named Jacobini to the billing on the opera performance alongside Castafiore. He also inserted

25258-509: The sons [Tintin and Haddock] can compete", thus stabilising "the family hierarchy" of the series. Literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that The Calculus Affair aptly illustrated how Tintin was no longer political in the manner that he was in earlier works like Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930) and Tintin in the Congo (1931); instead, Tintin travels to Borduria to rescue Calculus, "not to fight or expose totalitarianism ". Calculus became "a genius compromised", with his role being

25431-408: The steady increases in aircraft weight—most modern fighters are larger and heavier than World War II medium bombers. Because of the importance of air superiority, since the early days of aerial combat armed forces have constantly competed to develop technologically superior fighters and to deploy these fighters in greater numbers, and fielding a viable fighter fleet consumes a substantial proportion of

25604-436: The story, stating that the Syldavian attempts to kidnap Calculus "strains believability" because they had appeared as allies of Calculus and Tintin in both the preceding two-volume story arc, Destination Moon (1953) and Explorers on the Moon (1954), and in the earlier King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939). The Lofficiers felt that "the plot seems somewhat shoe-horned into the familiar universe" and "one feels that Hergé's heart

25777-409: The supplement, Hergé illustrated L'extraordinaire aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet ( The Extraordinary Adventure of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet ), a comic strip authored by a member of the newspaper's sport staff. Dissatisfied with this, Hergé wanted to write and draw his own cartoon strip. He already had experience creating comic strips. From July 1926, he had written

25950-480: The top wing with no better luck. An alternative was to build a "pusher" scout such as the Airco DH.2 , with the propeller mounted behind the pilot. The main drawback was that the high drag of a pusher type's tail structure made it slower than a similar "tractor" aircraft. A better solution for a single seat scout was to mount the machine gun (rifles and pistols having been dispensed with) to fire forwards but outside

26123-512: The two Rotten could split up at any time and attack on their own. The finger-four would be widely adopted as the fundamental tactical formation during World War Two, including by the British and later the Americans. World War II featured fighter combat on a larger scale than any other conflict to date. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel noted the effect of airpower: "Anyone who has to fight, even with

26296-534: The type of space suit that would be used in future Moon exploration , although his portrayal of the type of rocket that was actually used was a long way off the mark". The Moon rocket is based on the German V-2 rockets. In his youth, Hergé admired Benjamin Rabier and suggested that a number of images within Tintin in the Land of the Soviets reflected his influence, particularly the pictures of animals. René Vincent ,

26469-508: The ultrasonic device with him to Geneva, and that he had left them at home all along; he announces his intention to destroy the plans so they cannot be used to create a weapon. Haddock lights his pipe with the intention of smoking it, but Calculus uses it to burn the plans. Haddock's fit of rage over the plans literally burning up in his face leaves the hard-of-hearing Calculus believing that Haddock has chickenpox ; Calculus relays this to Wagg, who moves his family out of Marlinspike Hall to avoid

26642-589: The very end of the inter-war period in Europe came the Spanish Civil War . This was just the opportunity the German Luftwaffe , Italian Regia Aeronautica , and the Soviet Union's Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily needed to test their latest aircraft. Each party sent numerous aircraft types to support their sides in the conflict. In the dogfights over Spain, the latest Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters did well, as did

26815-473: The war as the weapons used were lighter and had a higher rate of fire than synchronized weapons. The British Foster mounting and several French mountings were specifically designed for this kind of application, fitted with either the Hotchkiss or Lewis Machine gun , which due to their design were unsuitable for synchronizing. The need to arm a tractor scout with a forward-firing gun whose bullets passed through

26988-443: The war. Fighter development stagnated between the wars, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, where budgets were small. In France, Italy and Russia, where large budgets continued to allow major development, both monoplanes and all metal structures were common. By the end of the 1920s, however, those countries overspent themselves and were overtaken in the 1930s by those powers that hadn't been spending heavily, namely

27161-402: The weekly British children's comic Eagle in 1951 with the story King Ottokar's Sceptre . It was translated in conjunction with Casterman , Tintin's publishers, and starts by describing Tintin as "a French boy". Snowy was called by his French name Milou . The process of translating Tintin into British English was then commissioned in 1958 by Methuen , Hergé's British publishers. It

27334-538: The world. From 1966 to 1979, Children's Digest included monthly instalments of The Adventures of Tintin . These serialisations served to increase Tintin's popularity, introducing him to many thousands of new readers in the United States. Atlantic Monthly Press , in cooperation with Little, Brown and Company beginning in the 1970s, republished the albums based on the British translations. Alterations were made to vocabulary not well known to an American audience (such as gaol , tyre , saloon , and spanner ). As of

27507-510: The wrong character. The detectives usually wear bowler hats and carry walking sticks except when sent abroad; during those missions they attempt the national costume of the locality they are visiting, but instead dress in conspicuously stereotypical folkloric attire which makes them stand apart. The detectives were based partly on Hergé's father Alexis and uncle Léon, identical twins who often took walks together, wearing matching bowler hats while carrying matching walking sticks. Bianca Castafiore

27680-444: Was Syldavian . Tintin surmises that Calculus had invented an ultrasonic device capable of being used as a weapon of mass destruction, which Bordurian intelligence agents are now seeking to obtain. Suspecting that Bordurian spies have kidnapped Calculus and are holding him hostage in their Rolle embassy, Tintin and Haddock seek to rescue him. During the attempt, a scuffle breaks out between Syldavian and Bordurian agents, in which Tintin

27853-457: Was "one long tobacco-trail" with cigarettes representing clues throughout the story. As for the opera house scene in which Tintin and Haddock spy upon Sponsz and Castafiore, he compared it to the scene in David Lynch 's 1986 film Blue Velvet in which Jeffrey Beaumont spies on the sexual activities of Dorothy Vallens and Frank Booth . In 1957, the animation company Belvision Studios produced

28026-430: Was a joint operation, headed by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, who worked closely with Hergé to attain a translation as true as possible to the original work. Due in part to the large amount of language-specific word play (such as punning) in the series, especially the jokes which played on Professor Calculus ' partial deafness, it was never the intention to translate literally; instead they strove to fashion

28199-540: Was a prominent symbol in Borduria. All of the furniture in the Bordurian police headquarters was drawn from that found in the Studios Hergé premises. The idea of a sonic weapon was one that had been unsuccessfully pioneered by German scientists under the control of Albert Speer during World War II.A book that Tintin examines in Professor Topolino's house, German Research in World War II by Leslie E. Simon  –

28372-415: Was considered a self-imposed exile, he ultimately decided to return to his occupied homeland. For political reasons, the Nazi authorities closed down Le Vingtième Siècle , leaving Hergé unemployed. In search of employment, he got a job as an illustrator at Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir ( The Evening ), which was allowed to continue publication under German management. On 17 October 1940, he

28545-489: Was instigated by publisher Casterman and Hergé's estate managers Moulinsart , who decided to replace localised hand-lettering with a single computerised font for all Tintin titles worldwide. On 1 June 2006, the Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet 's Light of Truth Award upon the Hergé Foundation, along with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu . The award was in recognition of Hergé's book Tintin in Tibet , Hergé's most personal adventure, which

28718-433: Was known for her "shrill" singing of opera), and, in the post-war comics, on Maria Callas . Other recurring characters include Nestor the butler, Chang (or Chang-Chong-Chen) the loyal Chinese boy, Rastapopoulos the criminal mastermind, Jolyon Wagg the infuriating (to Haddock) insurance salesman, General Alcazar the South American freedom fighter and (on and off) President of San Theodoros, Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab

28891-441: Was made editor of the children's supplement, Le Soir Jeunesse , in which he set about producing new Tintin adventures. In this new, more repressive political climate of German-occupied Belgium , Hergé could no longer politicize The Adventures of Tintin lest he be arrested by the Gestapo . As Harry Thompson noted, Tintin's role as a reporter came to an end, to be replaced by his new role as an explorer. In September 1944,

29064-420: Was no longer a handicap and one or two were used, depending on requirements. This in turn required the development of ejection seats so the pilot could escape, and G-suits to counter the much greater forces being applied to the pilot during maneuvers. In the 1950s, radar was fitted to day fighters, since due to ever increasing air-to-air weapon ranges, pilots could no longer see far enough ahead to prepare for

29237-648: Was not really much into the action part of the story", ultimately awarding it three stars out of five. In his psychoanalytical study of The Adventures of Tintin , the literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès declared that The Calculus Affair marked the beginning of the third and final period of the series, which he believed could be characterised by Hergé's depiction of a world run by "wheeling and dealing" and in which "detective work takes precedence over any mystical quest". Apostolidès considered The Calculus Affair to be both Calculus' "triumph and his defeat". He felt that while Calculus had become "an impartial figure" in

29410-399: Was originally intended for a fighter role with the U.S. Navy , but it was canceled. This blurring follows the use of fighters from their earliest days for "attack" or "strike" operations against ground targets by means of strafing or dropping small bombs and incendiaries. Versatile multi role fighter-bombers such as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet are a less expensive option than having

29583-444: Was pioneered before World War I by Breguet but would find its biggest proponent in Anthony Fokker, who used chrome-molybdenum steel tubing for the fuselage structure of all his fighter designs, while the innovative German engineer Hugo Junkers developed two all-metal, single-seat fighter monoplane designs with cantilever wings: the strictly experimental Junkers J 2 private-venture aircraft, made with steel, and some forty examples of

29756-413: Was renamed Marlinspike Hall. When it came time to translate The Black Island , which is set in Great Britain , the opportunity was taken to redraw the entire book. Methuen had decided that the book did not portray Great Britain accurately enough and had compiled a list of 131 errors of detail which needed to be put right, such as ensuring that the British police were unarmed and ensuring that scenes of

29929-446: Was subsequently published in single form as L'Affaire Tournesol by Casterman in 1956. For this volume Hergé had designed a front cover; initially, it simply showed Tintin and Haddock hiding Calculus from Bordurian soldiers, but he subsequently added shattered yellow glass around the edges of the image for dramatic effect. Harry Thompson opined that while the story's ending was somewhat unsatisfactory and rushed, it remained "probably

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