Saturday, August 06, 2016
Friday, August 05, 2016
a movie you may enjoy, The Lady in the Van
In 1973 London, a playwright develops an unlikely friendship with Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith), a homeless woman who lives in a van in his driveway for the next 15 years.
91% on Rotten Tomatoes
Did you ever hear of the B 32? Probably not. But, they had an incredibly historic moment at the end of WW2
Development of the B-32 started before WWII, in June 1939. US Army Gen. W.G. Kilner delivered a study that recommended development of a new bomber to succeed the B-17 Flying Fortress, despite the added cost, two separate designs from two separate companies should be developed; in case one turned out to be a failure. Boeing entered their XB-29 design, Lockheed their XB-30, and Consolidated their XB-32.
The clear favorite was Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress however it was decided to still pursue a “fall-back” option and Consolidated’s B-32 was selected. A pre-production order was placed in June 1941.
The first production B-32 wasn’t delivered until 19 September 1944, by which time the B-29 was not only in service but already flying combat missions. Clearly, there was no longer any need for a “fall-back” bomber design, but since so much money had already been sunk into the Dominator, production continued and the total final order was actually increased to 1,966 planes.
During the twenty-day interim between the second atomic bomb drop on 9 August and the arrival of the occupation fleet off Japan on 29 August, B-32s (now in Okinawa) flew reconnaissance missions over the Japanese home islands. The actual reconnaissance value was small, but the flights tested Japan’s willingness to refrain from further combat before the surrender ceremony on 2 September 1945.
For the most part, they did, however there was one serious exception.
On 18 August 1945, two B-32s were making a reconnaissance flight over Tokyo when they were attacked by NIK2 “George” fighters. Both planes were hit and one suffered multiple injuries.
One crewman, Sgt. Anthony Marchione, died and sadly became the last American KIA of the Second World War.
During the occupation, the Japanese pilots told American investigators that they felt their airbase was under imminent threat from the bombers. During the 1970s, one of the pilots, the ace Warrant Officer Sadamu Komachi, said that in fact his pilots were enraged that American planes were parading over the Emperor’s palace before the official surrender and acted on the spur of the moment.
Ironically, Komachi himself had flown in the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, so he took part in the first and last air engagements of the Pacific war.
In October 1945, The US Army completely cancelled the entire B-32 Dominator program. At the time of the contract’s cancellation, 118 Dominators (including the 40 TB-32s) had already been delivered to the US Army, including six brand-new, fully war-ready B-32s that were still at the Ft. Worth factory.
All of the B-32s which were already in service, plus the dozen Shop-Assembled GFE examples, were declared “Terminal Inventory” and sent to the scrapyard airfields for surplus WWII warplanes (both reserve storage and terminal inventory).
Most of these planes were still fresh and in any other circumstance, such waste would have been unconscionable. In particular, the twelve Dominators were literally brand new, as in their one and only flight had been from the factory to the collection airfield.
the Texas Railway Equipment company which actually bought the airfield’s entire collection of discarded WWII warplanes, (4,800+ total of all types) in one of the largest postwar scrap contracts.
Reportedly, a Texas Railway Equipment exec bragged that the company had covered it’s payroll overhead simply by barreling and reselling the aviation fuel left onboard the planes. Some of the B-32s had seen such little use that their motor oil could be salvaged and reused.
Finally, the last B-32 Dominator in anything close to complete shape was actually one of the early YB-32 pre-production planes, which somehow ended up at McClellan AFB, CA. It was used as a firefighting trainer until 1956, appropriately alongside a discarded B-29 Superfortress.
https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/b-32-dominator-terminal-inventory/
21 electric motors and controllers powering the winches that righted the capsized USS Oklahoma after the attack on Pearl Harbor, were salvaged from Honolulu's retired streetcars.
This was accomplished by lightening Oklahoma by removing 350,000 gallons of fuel oil, and filling the empty bunkers with air. Next twenty one electric street car motors were installed on Ford Island and connected by cables to the hull of the ship. The street cars had been less used into the late 1930s as cars became more popular, and by the summer of 1941 were pulled from service completely, having been replaced in the Rapid Transport Company with busses and trolley coaches.
Twenty-one concrete foundations were poured near the water’s edge on Ford Island. Seated in them were the electric motors from the Honolulu street cars powering winches. With a system of hauling blocks and pulleys, the winches’ combined strength could exert a titanic 345,000 tons of pulling force. Forty-two miles of one-inch wire ran from the winches, through the blocks, out over a row of 40-foot A-frame towers built on Oklahoma’s hull, and finally to pads welded to the ship.
Finally, twenty-two hundred tons of crushed coral was dumped on the shore side of the ship to prevent sliding.
During 1942, the Navy made arrangements with the Pacific Bridge Company, a firm of skilled engineers who were playing an indispensable role in Pearl Harbor salvage work, for a joint project to raise Oklahoma.
Lugs were welded to Oklahoma’s upturned hull. Cables were attached to these, and passed over the tops of high wooden towers erected on the hull, called bents, to give the cables better leverage, then hooked to powerful electric winches on Ford Island.
Weights that could be reached were removed, oil was pumped out of accessible tanks and compressed air was used to create an air bubble to lighten the hull. When all was ready, the winches took a careful strain on the righting cables, and Oklahoma gradually edged back toward an even keel. This began March 8, 1943. Turning at a snail’s pace, the winches reeled in cable for more than three months. By June 16, Oklahoma was upright.
Once she was upright, great efforts were made to cover the many holes caused by Japanese torpedoes. This was accomplished by securing patches, one of which was 130 feet long by 57 feet tall. Large portions of the ship were then dewatered with the use of ten inch water pumps. The ship was finally floated in early November 1943 and moved by tugs into Drydock #2 some weeks later.
Righting such a huge capsized vessel with ashore machinery was a tremendous engineering feat, not repeated again until the recovery of the cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2014.
http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/archpdf/ah199112.pdf
http://www.soonerfans.com/archive/index.php/t-105094.html?s=240c5d8ea503ab3ec83bd7d3ddee80c4
When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment--Western U.S.Sep 1, 2004 by Joseph P. Schwieterman
http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/631/2/Salvage.pdf Salvage of the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, Lee P Morris, November 1947 Engineering and Science Monthly
http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/the-pearl-harbor-salvage-effort-keeping-navy-fighting/
I bet you didn't expect a Pearl Harbor naval salvage post today. .. but street car motors! Seriously, that is a surprise.
Thursday, August 04, 2016
Flywheel Festival: A festival of historic motoring, aviation and military endeavour.
Set against the backdrop of the UK's best preserved WW2 bomber station, Bicester Heritage in Oxfordshrie
the tank looks familiar, because I just posted it http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-first-m3-grant-tank-sent-the-uk-for.html a year ago
www.flywheelfestival.com/
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1058581990897806.1073741972.165669733522374&type=3
https://blog.autohouselondon.co.uk/2016/07/05/flywheel-festival-2016/
during WW2 there were several Navy guys who were train nuts, and took a lot of photos, it turns out their photos were collected and made into 4 books. That is pretty rare photography.
It wasn't easy shooting photographs in the islands during World War II, particularly if you were a serviceman. Loaded cameras weren't allowed on base, and camera clubs dried up. Film was scarce. Taking pictures of anything scenic ran the risk of accidentally including something sensitive or top-secret, and because the islands were one big staging area, that happened all the time. Transportation was particularly off-limits.
Trains hauled sugar, soldiers, supplies, pineapples, aircraft and everything else, and were often the only way to travel into Honolulu from faraway bases like Wheeler. But when the war ended, so did gas-rationing, and a new road system was created. The rise of the automobile meant the need for trains evaporated. The last passenger train ran in 1947.
Stationed at Pearl Harbor from 1943 to 1946, Norton captured the last glory days of the OR and L in exhausting detail. Then, he packed up his collection and returned home, and boxes of negatives went into storage. But unlike many other irreplaceable images moldering in the nation's attics, these pictures have been resurrected in a new book. Norton's pictures are given superb reproduction in "Hawaiian Railway Album -- WWII Photographs," the first of a projected three-volume set of classic Hawaiian railway images. The book's author is Gale E. Treiber of the Hawaiian Railway Society, another sailor stationed in the islands who was fascinated by trains, and the images literally fell into his hands.
Kent Cochrane was another photographer whose photos went into these books, and he was in the Coast Guard.
and check this out too https://www.jstor.org/journal/raillocohistsoci
during WW2 there were several Navy guys who were train nuts, and took a lot of photos, it turns out their photos were collected and made into 4 books. That is pretty rare photography.
It wasn't easy shooting photographs in the islands during World War II, particularly if you were a serviceman. Loaded cameras weren't allowed on base, and camera clubs dried up. Film was scarce. Taking pictures of anything scenic ran the risk of accidentally including something sensitive or top-secret, and because the islands were one big staging area, that happened all the time. Transportation was particularly off-limits.
Trains hauled sugar, soldiers, supplies, pineapples, aircraft and everything else, and were often the only way to travel into Honolulu from faraway bases like Wheeler. But when the war ended, so did gas-rationing, and a new road system was created. The rise of the automobile meant the need for trains evaporated. The last passenger train ran in 1947.
Stationed at Pearl Harbor from 1943 to 1946, Norton captured the last glory days of the OR and L in exhausting detail. Then, he packed up his collection and returned home, and boxes of negatives went into storage. But unlike many other irreplaceable images moldering in the nation's attics, these pictures have been resurrected in a new book. Norton's pictures are given superb reproduction in "Hawaiian Railway Album -- WWII Photographs," the first of a projected three-volume set of classic Hawaiian railway images. The book's author is Gale E. Treiber of the Hawaiian Railway Society, another sailor stationed in the islands who was fascinated by trains, and the images literally fell into his hands.
Kent Cochrane was another photographer whose photos went into these books, and he was in the Coast Guard.
new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica safety cameras see in all directions... very impressive
Front (above)
above / around and behind, and (below) wide screen view of behind the vehicle
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