The Unintended Christmas Carol

Three of our most well-known carols are mentioned here, including one that wasn't considered a Christmas song ... at the time.

Objects in Mirror Are Closer ... Well, You Know

 Okay, third time's a charm ... stupid corporate 'puters at work won't let me save this text. Typed it twice already, so here we go:

Winter is coming. No, that's not a blurb for yet another go-round of Game of Thrones.

Our leaves began falling promptly on August 1st this year, which is not an encouraging sign. We've had snow on the nearby mountains, down to about the 5,000 foot mark - twice in the last week. And it was only 41° here this morning.

This is our fourth consecutive colder-than-normal "summer" season, with LOTS of rain since around the 1st of May. I think we've had 23 days of 70°+ weather this year, in total. I don't have the season's total rainfall in front of me, but 2023 is in the top 5 or 6 wettest summers on record. 

We had 70 mph winds that lasted for nearly 24 hours, last week, and lost yet another tall tree. It's worth noting that we purchased this place, some 7 years ago, largely because of it was heavily-wooded (emphasis on was). But now we've lost roughly 40% of the trees which were here. 

Between the 7.2-magnitude 'quake in 2018, a complete septic system replacement, and lots of heavy rains/snows and wind, there's a lot more daylight - and correspondingly less privacy - than when we moved in. I have faith that God knows exactly what He's doing, and this is not a complaint. Rather, think of it as a chronicling of what's happened during our tenure. 

And then there's this: fireweed, a fairly-reliable indicator of each upcoming winter's snowfall, is signaling another year of heavy snow. Well, okay then. 

I have a large snowblower, and am in better health now than I have been for several years. Bring it.

Monopoly & World War II

Monopoly and World War II, interesting factoid

     Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape...   Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe  houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.  

     Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

     Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's O.S.S.) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.  

     At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd.  When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.  

     By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the  U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly.  As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.  

     Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of  Germany or  Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system).  When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.  

     As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's  also managed to add:

1.    A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass
2.    A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
3.    Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!  

     British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.  

     Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets.  Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war.    The story wasn't declassified until 2007, when the surviving  craftsmen from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were  finally honored in a public ceremony.

It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!

TBT: History of The Car Radio

HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO

 

Seems like cars have always had radios, but they didn't.

 

 

Here's the story:

One evening in 1929, two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset.

 

It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.

Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios (Lear served as a radio operator in

the U.S. Navy during World War I) and it wasn't long before they were taking apart a home radio and

trying to get it to work in a car.

 

But it wasn't easy: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical

equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.

 

One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference. When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago.

 

There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. He made a product called a

"battery eliminator", a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC current.

 

But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios.

 

Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention,

he found it. He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin's factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker.

 

Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan. Thinking it might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker's Packard. Good idea, but it didn't work – half an hour after the installation, the banker's Packard caught on fire. (They didn't get the loan.)

 

But Galvin didn't give up. He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention.

 

Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing conventioneers could hear it. That idea worked - he got enough orders to put the radio into production.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

That first production model was called the 5T71.

 

Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier. In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix "ola" for their names - Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the biggest.

 

Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola.

 

But even with the name change, the radio still had problems: when Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression. (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)

 

In 1930, it took two men several days to put in a car radio. The dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install the antenna.

 

These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them.

 

The installation manual had eight complete diagrams and 28 pages of instructions. Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn't have been easy in the best of

times, let alone during the Great Depression.

Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorola's pre-installed at the factory.

 

In 1934, they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire stores.

 

By then the price of the radio, with installation included, had dropped to $55. The Motorola car radio was off and running. The name of the company would be officially changed from "Galvin Manufacturing" to "Motorola" in 1947.)

 

In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios. In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts.

 

In 1940, he developed the first handheld two-way radio – The Handy-Talkie – for the U. S. Army.

A lot of the communications technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II.

 

In 1947, they came out with the first television for under $200.

 

In 1956, the company introduced the world's first pager; in 1969 came the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon.

 

In 1973, it invented the world's first handheld cellular phone.

 

Today, Motorola is one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world. And it all started with the car radio.

So whatever happened to the two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin's car?

 

Elmer Wavering and William Lear ended up taking very different paths in life.

 

Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the 1950's he helped change the automobile experience again when

he developed the first automotive alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention lead to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning.

Lear also continued inventing. He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented those.

  

But what he's really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation. He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet. It was the world's first mass-produced, affordable business jet.

Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.

Keeping Things in Perspective

Birthday number 65 has arrived, so here's an article already written:


For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. 

When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. 

Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million. 

When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. 

When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. 

At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish. 

At 64, the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. 

Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. 

As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. 

Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this.

In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This, too, shall pass.

Rare Historical Photos in Color

99% of these are colorized very, very well.

God's Grace to Me: Chapter 1 - The Early Years

I literally grew up in church. Born in 1955 at Fort Riley, Kansas, my parents had me dedicated in small Baptist church in Junction City while my Dad was in the Army. I never knew a time between then and high school graduation when we were not in church every time the doors opened. Dad served as a deacon; Mom sang in the choir, helped cook and serve church dinners. In the late ‘50s, we helped build and open a new church in Illinois. I remember glazing windows, and even shoveled a small amount of gravel for the new parking lot. I was 4 years old.

In that church, I gave my life to Jesus Christ when I was six.

In 1966, Dad had reconnected with an Army buddy, and we moved to the small Missouri town where his family lived. And as always, one of the first things we did was to join a local church. I sang in the youth choir. 

One Sunday when I was 12 years old, our pastor spoke of his own calling. He had been sitting in a church service, he said, and saw a mother with a newborn baby. That arrested his attention, and he heard that still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11-12) saying, "You've been a Christian for years, yet you've contributed no more to My kingdom than that baby."

As he told that story, I began to cry. I didn't understand why but had the thought "That's just like me." Without any specific instruction, I just knew it was real. I had no thoughts about how or when it might happen, but I knew.

And of course, being the stubborn person that I am, I began to bargain with God. I told him that I'd be a music minister, but I certainly wouldn't preach. The thought of public speaking frightened me. And I'd NEVER be a pastor, I said. I just knew it wasn’t for me.

Yeah, right.

I told the pastor what I believed I’d heard but didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. As it turned out, nothing happened for a quite a while.

But a few years later, the county association of churches decided to form a group of young lay pastors. The idea was to take all those who showed signs of a true calling, provide them with some guidance and training, and make them available to fill in for vacationing pastors, when needed. So local pastors announced the formation of the group and asked if anyone wanted to be a part of it. Our church had recently hired a new pastor, and when he asked whether anyone wanted to a part of it, my hand went up without any conscious decision on my part. In all honesty, I looked up in amazement and wondered how it got there.

But even more surprising to me was neither my parents, the pastor or the deacons ever once questioned that fact that I volunteered. Prior to that moment, I still hadn't ever told anyone except my parents and the previous pastor what had happened to me.

The upshot was that roughly 12 young men wanted to take part. After the group had met a couple of times, we were invited to address the gathering of all the Baptist ministers in that county.

No pressure, right?

Some of the guys were more polished than others. I was decidedly not polished and had never done any public speaking to a group larger than a Sunday School class. My remarks were mercifully brief. Still, the comments made afterward to me were encouraging.

As part of that early training, we were encouraged to volunteer as camp counselors at the county’s Baptist Youth Camp. That summer, a revival broke out one evening while I was in attendance. Later I was asked to go along with one of the older guys – Jerry – who was to preach one Sunday at a small church as a fill-in for a vacationing pastor. Jerry asked me to come along and tell the congregation what had happened.

At the appropriate time, Jerry gave me the pulpit. I opened my mouth to speak, and that’s the last thing I remember about it. I have no idea what I said, but when I was done there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

It was my first experience with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and had no idea what had happened. But Jerry told me it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.

During my senior year, I received a few invitations to fill in at various churches. But graduation was pending, and I’d already decided to enlist in the Navy. In a pattern which I’ve repeated over and over in life, I broke with the traditional path. 

Time for a History Lesson about Gun Control

By Stephen P. Halbrook  |  Posted: Fri. June 22, 2018, 10:29am PTAlso published in Townhall on Fri. June 22, 2018

Advocates of “commonsense gun safety” measures have been promoting two major objectives. One is universal background checks, about which the National Institute of Justice wrote, “effectiveness depends on . . . requiring gun registration.” Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) just introduced a bill in Congress that would do just that—create a national registry of all firearm owners.

The other objective is a ban on “assault weapons,” which have been defined in contradictory, bizarre, ways. The American Medical Association has just reaffirmed its endorsement of such a ban, including the confiscation of all such firearms from Americans at large.

Why hasn’t Congress adopted these proposals?

Perhaps commonsense does matter. Most guns are sold by licensed dealers, who are required to clear every sale through the National Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Congress recently passed the Fix NICS bill because governmental units were often not reporting criminal records to NICS. That’s why the Texas church shooter was able to buy a rifle. His massacre was ended only by a citizen who shot him with an AR-15.

It is doubtful that background checks for occasional private sales between law-abiding citizens would prevent any crimes. Don’t hold your breath waiting for criminals to do background checks on each other.

Similarly, the Parkland school shooting had nothing to do with the ability of law-abiding citizens to own semiautomatic firearms. The FBI did nothing with the information that Nikolas Cruz threatened to carry out the murders, the local sheriff ignored his terroristic threats, and a cowardly deputy just stood outside while students were massacred.

President Clinton did sign a law in 1994, which expired ten years later, banning “assault weapons.” The law was not renewed after studies showed that it had no effect on crime.

The federal NICS law, passed in 1993, prohibits registration of guns and gun owners. Congress has repeatedly rejected gun registration based on bitter historical lessons. Just before the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress forbade gun registration and reaffirmed the Second Amendment based on how the Nazis used registration records to confiscate firearms from their intended victims.

Purportedly to fight violence in the streets, Germany’s Weimar Republic decreed gun registration in 1931, but warned that the records must not fall into the hands of radical elements. Hitler seized power in 1933 and used those very records to disarm political opponents and Jews in order to render them incapable of any form of resistance.

Political protest in France prompted Prime Minister Pierre Laval in 1935 to decree firearm registration and repression of the right to assemble. What could possibly go wrong?

The registration records were critical to the Nazis who overran France in 1940, imposed the death penalty for not turning in guns, and conscripted the French police to ferret out violators. Despite the chance of being executed, numerous French citizens did not surrender their firearms.

The very same Pierre Laval became the chief collaborator of the Nazis during the occupation. The newspapers regularly reported the names of gun owners shot by firing squads.

The brave French who had never registered their guns and retained them formed the basis for the Resistance. To be sure, they never had sufficient arms, and prewar restrictions on “military style” firearms hampered their efforts, leaving them to resist with inferior weapons. Yet they were able to commit acts of sabotage, gain intelligence, and sustain an underground movement to assist the Allies. After D-Day, they engaged in open armed resistance.

Such experiences are as old as humanity. Tyrants, conquerors, and dictatorships of every breed disarm the subjects in order to dominate and exploit them. Does that iron law of history mean anything today?

No such conditions exist in the United States, due in no small part to our rights protected by the First and Second Amendments. But history should teach us to be careful of what we wish for.

Require registration of, or ban, guns arbitrarily called “assault weapons” or even all firearms? Don’t bank on much compliance. Impose felony penalties? As the wartime French illustrated, many wouldn’t comply even with the threat of the death penalty.

Maybe it’s time to pursue real solutions to criminal violence and forget about a war on law-abiding gun owners.

---

Stephen P. Halbrook, Ph.D., J.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the new book Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, and Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State”, The Founders' Second Amendment and Securing Civil Rights, the latter two of which were cited in the the U.S. Supreme Court cases of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago as well as his earlier Amici Curiae Brief in Heller on behalf of 55 members of the Senate, the Senate President, and 250 members of the House of Representatives. Dr. Halbrook is also the author of the book, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right(Independent Institute).

Wrecked Ship From Franklin Expedition, Discovered

In 1845, a pair of ships set sail to map out the North-West Passage from Europe to Asia.



From the Victorian Web comes this narrative:

The Franklin Expedition had five years of food supplies, including 8,000 tins (in one-, two-, four-, six-, and eight lb. capacities) of meat, vegetables, and soup. In Frozen in Time (1987), basing their conclusions on forensic examinations of two of the expedition members' bodies, Owen Beattie and John Geiger contend that the tins were sealed improperly, with lead solder running down the inside of each tin; since lead if ingested is poisonous, the metal probably seeped into the crews’ food. In addition to the technical innovation of tinned goods, Franklin's vessels the "Erebus" and "Terror" had cabins which were heated by hot water piped through the floor. The ships' bows were reinforced with iron planks to help them break through ice. Moreover, each ship was equipped with a specially designed screw propeller driven by a wheel-less steam locomotive from the London and Greenwich Railway. Thus, better equipped than any previous polar expedition, Sir John Franklin set out on his fourth search of the North-West passage on 19 May 1845, with 134 sailors and officers. They were last seen by the crew of two whaling ships, the "Prince of Wales" and the "Enterprise," in Baffin Bay at the end of July. 

But now the Alaska Dispatch News reports:

A recent expedition has found wreckage of a ship believed to belong to the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin, a British explorer who disappeared in the Arctic with two ships during an 1845 attempt to sail the Northwest Passage. The famous lost expedition has been the subject of numerous searches, almost since its disappearance, but the new discoveries mark the first artifacts to surface in modern times, according to a CBC report. The wreckage was first discovered Sunday by an underwater drone operated by Parks Canada, the CBC reported. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the finds in Ottawa, a day after Nunavut officials announced the discovery of a pair of artifacts from the Franklin expedition. The search involved high-tech equipment and techniques, from the underwater drone to ice forensics, but it also validated Inuit traditional knowledge: "The beauty of where they found it is it's proof positive of Inuit oral history," Peter Mansbridge, a correspondent who for years covered efforts to find the Franklin expedition, told the CBC. "The Inuit have said for generations that one of their hunters saw a ship in that part of the passage, abandoned and ended up wrecking …. It's exactly where this guy said it was."

Arctic Thunder 2014: a Preview

Every other year, there's a HUGE airshow at the former Elmendorf Air Force Base, now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER).

Here are some previews:

Arctic Thunder Air Show

July 26 & 27 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson

Gates Open at 9 a.m., flying begins 10 a.m., show concludes 5 p.m. daily

2014 Performers

• Bremont Horsemen
• F-22 Raptor
• U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds
• Skip Stewart
• Oregon Aero® SkyDancer
• Melissa Pemberton
• Bob Carlton
• Arctic Thunder Commercial

Aircraft Displays

• B-2 Stealth Bomber
• Boeing B-52 Stratofortress
• North American Aviation AT-6 Texan
• 1931 Fairchild American Pilgrim 100
• Harvard MkIIB
• Historic Flight Foundation’s North American B-25 Mitchell , “Grumpy”

A Long Day and a Lot of History

Spent the day with an ex-Army officer tour guide and a few other vets and their wives, learning about the Progressive policies of the 1930s which culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. And yes, the Hawaii-based brass & intelligence types knew of the pemding attack and went out of their way to ignore it. 

But all the photos are on my good camera, so the pix and post about today will have to wait.

For now, you might want to Google the following location:

Sled Dog Racing Goes Way Back

From the Anchorage Daily News:

The granddaddy of all sled dog races kicks off in Fairbanks this coming weekend. What? Are they re-doing the Iditarod? No: it is the 69th running of the Open North American Sled Dog Race. This race is the oldest continuously run sled dog race in the world. Andy Kokrine won the first one in 1946 and this years' Rondy champ, Arleigh Reynolds, took home the ONAC trophy last year. This race is viewed by many as the toughest three days on the sprint circuit.

There is a good reason for this. The North American features a couple of 20-mile heats, followed by a run on the third day of nearly 30 miles. This is a significant difference for a dog. He will now be asked to continue his wide-open pace for half-again as far as he did on the previous two days. If you are a dog, you don't know that.

"How far?'" says the dog. "Trust me," his driver says.

The dog has believed Egil Ellis more often than anyone else. Ellis has won the ONAC 12 times. George Attla also convinced his teams to believe; he won eight times over three decades.

When most folks think of racing sled dogs, they think of the Iditarod. However, the Iditarod is a relative newcomer to the racing scene. The first sled dog race with codified rules was the 1907 All-Alaskan Sweepstakes.

[snip]
Sprint races are much faster today. A winning time on a course of 25 miles would be in the neighborhood of 80 minutes, instead of the 2¼ hours it took at Lake Placid. Today's dogs are different. They look more like greyhounds than traditional huskies. Indeed, they have a very strong pointer influence.

What we think of as traditional huskies, such as one sees on the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, are a far different dog than those of decades past. No longer is the heavily furred dog that curled up comfortably outdoors during a January in Fairbanks in demand. Dogs with heavy coats and big bodies get too hot to maintain the speeds necessary in today's competition. If you have a good sprint team, you will have a lot of housedogs or you need a good dog barn.

Thought you folks might like this; read the whole story at the link.

Rare Photos from WWII

I just received these from ajdshootist - I don't know if they've been seen before, but I'm fascinated by WWII history. Enjoy, and remember.

Finds like these are just incredible!! Please, after looking at these, pass them on for all to see. Young and old. Lest we forget. Japanese Kawanishi H8K seaplane after strafing. Kwajalein -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Squad of Rufe's at Bougainville . These things were very nimble even with the pontoons.- The A6M2-N float plane version of the Zero did extremely well, suffering only a small loss in its legendary maneuverability. Top speed was not affected, however, the aircraft's relatively light armament was a detriment. Snow on deck. USS Philippine Sea North Pacific 1945 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   HARVS on the way in shot by a P-47. Rare shot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deck crew climbing up to get the pilot out. He did. That's a fuel tank his foot is on. Empty?---------------------------------------------------------------------- Marines disembark LST at Tinian Island.----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bougainville.   Guam Outside Bastogne (Dec 1944 )   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- German 280mm K5 firing-------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. munitions ship goes up during the invasion of Sicily.------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GERMAN V1-------------------------------------------------------------- Spitfire "tipping-off" a V1. If you've never heard of this insane tactic ....... At first V1's were shot down by gunfire. .With the high risk of being blown up, some of the best pilots started tipping the V1's wing, because of damage to wing tips they later developed a tactic of disrupting the airflow by placing their wing very close to the V1's wing, causing it to topple. Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot to everything else, though some Mossie pilots flew past closely in front of the V1, again causing it to topple. The thought of doing this at 450mph, 4,000 feet above the ground, at night, and being blinded gives me the willies. Panzerkampfwagen VI "E Tiger"------------------------------------------------------------------- Ju-88 loading a torpedo. This is one HUGE bomber .. and it's on pontoons!!!!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- German "KARL" mortars. Sebastopol Reloading a KARL--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOM! Macchi 202v Italian 303 Bombers over N Africa