Random Picture Thread

A former American WW2 spitfire pilot gets a reminder of the old days: not as short as most videos but worth watching -

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ie3SrjLlcUY

 

That was very enjoyable.

 

great find
brian

 

Great aircraft but possibly even a greater engine as all Lancaster, Mustang, and many allied PT boats captain well know. Just a wonderful piece of historical film. I actually sat in a Spitfire at one time. They had one at our Air Force boot camp, not much room in the cockpit. Great find--Thanks Terry.

 

This one moved me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8EkmyoG83Q

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident

 

Human compassion, actually a trait more common than one suspects intertwined with the cruelty of war. A common story from my neck of the woods relates to the wartime German U boat sinking of a Newfoundland schooner transporting dried cod to Europe. As standard the U boat surfaces and orders the crew into the dories and proceeded to sink their boat with the sub's deck gun. Many small craft were sunk in this manner. In this case they were some 300miles from the coast of Europe and true to his word the German sub Captain returned to visit the rowing fishermen on three more occasions to be sure they got safely to land.

 

I too was surprised to discover the Spitfire had been used for photo-recon, a role I associate more with the Mosquito - which also used the same engine series. Germany had an equally good engine with the advantage of fuel injection and indefinite inverted flight capability, but I understand its manufacturing capacity was limited so heavier engines with less power had to be used in many of their planes, limiting their performance.

The Hawker Hurricane shared the same basic Rolls-Royce engine or variants thereof. Although the Spitfire had the edge in performance the Hurricane was much cheaper to build and easier to repair, so it was built in considerably greater numbers. Another plane sharing the same engine was the Beaufighter, which was a twin engine night fighter with with awesome firepower and the carrying capacity to handle the heavy radar sets of the time - it was my personal favourite!

 

Thankyou AK. Dad is 92 and flew photo recon Mosquitos for the RAF in India, Thailand, and Burma. I also have a crate of super-8 he took out the cockpit, and some of the 8 x 10's from the nose cameras. He mainly did the Burma railway, and there are shots of all the bridges that form the basis of the Bridge over the river Kwai story. Dad never talked about the war, but I finally got him and mom hooked up to the internet a couple months ago, and one of the first things we did was hunt around for info on his old unit (nearly nothing). I learned more about his war experience in that hour than I had in the past fifty years. Like the fact that he would sometimes fly a derelict Beaufighter to Bangkok or Calcutta to get the film processed, usually when there was a boxing tournament, because dad was the unit's boxing guy. Afterwards, he said "I know what you can get me for Christmas - we used to sit around in Saigon and drink this anise liqueur. I haven't had any in fifty years - Buy me a bottle of anise-flavored liqueur." He also was tasked to document the first overland postwar travel from Saigon to Bangkok when his unit returned overland from Saigon. I have the report from that trip.

 

This stuff brings to mind a doco in which one Beaufighter pilot in SE Asian theatre recalled having on one occasion collected the pulley from a flagpole on one low-level raid, and imbedded it in the nose, on another mission he clipped trees and had leaves and branches clogging up the engine cowl on return to base. Sounds like the crew had as much to fear from the pilot as the enemy.

 

when words fail you

- from the oops files -

 

Oh, sorry . . . - - - ( . . . my sister . . . )​

Dutch beer brand, the tragic accident happened on december 6 - 2004* in the Netherlands on the N36 near Mariënberg . . :idea:

* sort of translation​

 

Could have been worse. They didn't all break.

 

One of my favourite imports!

 

Here's the builder's view . . .

What Is a Pinky Schooner Exactly?​

 

Damn, it looks like she's wearing Sven's shoes, see at 9 sec, and at 59 sec, and at 1 min 14 sec.

I am Sven Yrvind​

Looks like Sven got a new sponsor, or at least got his running shoes for free . .