He certainly wasn't. If you read his political blog (http://electoral-vote.com/), you'll find this sort of sarcasm is his hallmark.

Right, my extreme understatement was my British sense of humour coming through. I was forgetting that HN has people whose only exposure to Tanenbaum is via the Linus-Tanenbaum debate (or possibly not even that) and for whom his sarcasm and my characterization of it would be less obvious.

My favourite Tanenbaumism, while I'm on the topic: Aircraft carriers are modular. If a toilet gets clogged, it doesn't start launching nuclear missiles.

The quote would be so much better if the subject were submarines instead of carriers.

Perhaps... but the non-modular software equivalents of aircraft carriers routinely do launch metaphorical nuclear missiles despite not being intended to ever have that functionality.

I do agree that aircraft carriers have stronger claims to being British :)