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How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" 'They might say, it seems to me, "you are rich; we are poor...You have had the past; let us have the future." Above all, I fear they would say, "you are weak and we are strong."' -- Winston Churchill, 16 November 1934 Mr Edward Heath (MP for Bexley): Can the Secretary of State be certain when confrontation over Indonesia will end or when the certainty of the independence of Malaysia can be assured? Mr Dennis Healey (MP for Leeds East): No, I cannot be certain about everything but, I think that it is possible to take some decisions now and that a Government with any sense of responsibility to the British people must take those decisions which it is possible to take... -- Hansard, 7 March 1966, "Defence" During the 1960s, a curious sort of undeclared war was waged between Indonesia on one hand, and Malaysia, Singapore, and their western guarantor, Great Britain on the other. In early 1960s, the Indonesians had fought a similar war against their former colonial masters, the Dutch in an attempt to gain control of what was then Dutch New Guinea. This had involved paratroops, aeronaval combat (a Dutch P-3 and surface warships sank three Indonesian torpedo boats), and ultimately attracted the attention of the Soviet Union, who supplied a Sverdlov-class cruiser to bolster Indonesian naval capabilities. (This was the Ordzhonikidze, which Lionel Crabbe had famously been killed while trying to secretly inspect in 1956.) Ultimately, the overstretched Dutch, who had won every battle, were persuaded to give the Indonesians everything they wanted in a 1962 peace conference. President Sukarno was confident this strategy would work again. As it happened, things didn't quite work out that way, and in a remarkable campaign, conducted largely on the cheap, the British, along with their SEATO allies from Australia and the Malaysian and Singaporean people, emerged triumphant. One of a handful of RAF squadrons to participate (and one of a very few to fire weapons in anger after WWII) was 20 Squadron, whose motto is, appropriately, "Facta non verba". During the Confrontation, they flew Hawker Hunters, a jet which, to be entirely honest with you, has never been my favourite for looks, but I still have at last count nine Revell 1/72 kits of it, so here we are. I'm using a RAFDecals aftermarket sheet, and Freightdog's corrected wheel set -- I can't see the difference, but I trust Colin on this one. God knows how long it will take to build.