Military History Monday!
Here’s something that is a little more contemporary than I’ve been posting: “SAC: The Global Shield” from 1980.
Bonus: Something older, but for good reason: “The Air Force Missile Mission”, from 1959. The good reason: this is yet another military propaganda film featuring Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart.
Military History Monday!
I have another doctor’s appointment early this afternoon, and didn’t have a chance to set this up yesterday, so I’m being shorter than usual today.
“Target Toyko”:
Extra bonus: the narrator is Ronald Reagan.
Bonus #1: “Position Firing”, an animated 1944 Army Air Corps film about hitting moving targets.
Extra bonus: “Trigger Joe” is voiced by Mel Blanc.
Bonus #2: “Arctic Mission”. This is yet another Bell System (actually Western Electric) propaganda film, but I think it more appropriately belongs here: it covers the construction of the DEW Line, and specifically deals with the difficulties of construction and transport above the Arctic Circle.
Today, some more fun bait for FotB RoadRich!
“Don’t Tell My Wife”. This is a promo film for Piper from sometime in the 1960s. The husband decides he wants to learn to fly…and so does his wife. But neither one wants the other to know.
Interestingly, Piper has a YouTube channel, but there’s not a whole lot of historical videos there.
Bonus #1: This is one of the few Piper historical videos: “The Classic Piper Cub”.
Bonus #2: This is a vintage Boeing promo film for the 707 Stratoliner, concentrating on the passenger cabin design.
A mock-up of the cabin (apparently built a bit roomier than the actual aircraft by designer TEAGUE) was unveiled in New York City in 1956. The mock-up appears throughout the film.
The cost of the mock-up was about $500,000, and included overhead service units, seatback trays, and target reading lights. The New York Times’ Richard Witkin compared the cabin to the “reception room of a high-stepping ad agency”.
Not surprisingly, the public’s fascination with the new jet was so intense that meals were even served to “passenger” visitors aboard the mock-up using the innovative meal trays.
Military History Monday!
Today’s videos go out to FotB RoadRich, as they involve two of his favorite things: planes and submarines.
This is an older documentary (about 1990) from Connecticut Public Television on the USS Nautilus.
Back in a previous life, when I was going to Rhode Island semi-frequently, I was lucky enough to visit the Submarine Force Museum in Groton twice. The first time I went, the Nautilus was closed for renovations. So I made a second trip a while later just to see the Nautilus. I really like the museum itself, and the Nautilus: once things open back up again, if you have the chance, I recommend visiting.
Bonus: “Saga of the Skyraider”, a short video about the Douglas A-1 Skyraider.
This is one of those planes that I think would be hella fun to fly as a civilian, and maybe not that expensive to run.
Bonus #2: Since that last one was short, I’ll throw one more in here: “Tactical Weapons Effects Tests”, a 1963 Air Force promo film featuring Century series fighters blowing stuff up.
Today’s my birthday, so I’m queuing this up in advance. I thought I’d try to do something a little different today, maybe go back to some things I haven’t done in a while.
Like trains.
“Last of the Giants”. This appears to be a Union Pacific documentary about their “Big Boy” steam locomotives, which they operated in “revenue service” until 1959. UP still operates one “Big Boy” and one “800 Series” locomotive for promotional purposes.
Interestingly, the “Big Boy” has actually been converted to run on oil:
Bonus: Do you like people speaking with Russian accents? Do you like Zippos? I like Zippos. Most of the time, I can take or leave Russian accents.
By way of “CrazyRussianHacker“, “7 Zippo Gadgets You Did NOT Know Exist”.
It doesn’t (generally) get that cold in Texas, but I kind of want one of those Zippo hand warmers anyway. I remember my dad used to have something similar kicking around, but he didn’t use it much in my memory, because it doesn’t (generally) get that cold in Texas. There have been some New Year’s Eve’s when we’ve been setting off fireworks, though…
Bonus #2: Here’s a bit of a time capsule for you. It could also fall under “Travel Thursday”, but I’m not putting it there for two reasons. One, this is different.
The “Museum of Automata” in York. Apparently, this was filmed sometime in the 1990s.
Reason number two is that, sadly, from what I’ve found on the Internet, the museum closed quite a while ago.
Bonus #3: I will freely admit, I am posting this one to tweak someone who says “‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ f–king ruled!” (My own personal opinion: the monster fight scenes were pretty good. Unfortunately, there was an excess of humans and human interaction in the movie, and I really didn’t like any of the humans. The kaiju film that would “f–king rule” for me would be the monster equivalent of “The Raid: Redemption”: maybe two minutes of introductory setup, two minutes of epilogue, and 116 minutes of giant monsters fighting.)
Anyway, C.W. Lemoine ruins the first fight scene from “Godzilla vs. Kong”.
To be honest, I thought the movie looked a lot better on the screen at the Alamo than it does in this video. Also, to be fair, it is just a TV show movie: I should really just relax.
Edited to add 4/20: Hand to God, I had no idea Lawrence was even working on this, much less planning to post it today.
Bonus #4: I see a lot of folks talking about minimizing their lifestyle, and stripping away almost everything to the point where they can live almost completely out of a van. (I see very few of these folks who have toilets in their vans: apparently, when they need a bathroom, they find one at a gym, gas station, store, or other place of public accommodation. But I digress.)
Have you ever listened to these folks talk, or read any of their praises for van life, and asked yourself, “Self, what do these people do when it is -20 degrees? -20 Communist Centigrade degrees, too, not -4 American Fahrenheit degrees.” (See, by converting from Centigrade to Fahrenheit, you’ve already made yourself feel warmer. If you go a step beyond and convert to 455 degrees Rankine, you’ll probably give yourself heat stroke.)
Well, here you go.
Bonus #5: Okay, I know I’m posting a lot of stuff today. Consider this a present on my birthday to you, my loyal readers.
Have you ever asked yourself, while stoned on your couch, “Self, what ever happened to all those paintings Bob Ross painted?”
I’m going to guess: probably not, because I don’t think most of you are stoners. But just in case, the NYT (who probably are a bunch of stoners, judging from some of the crazy (stuff) they publish these days) investigated. Here’s what they found.
Two quasi-general aviation themed videos today.
First up, from AVWeb: “Why Aircraft Engines Quit”.
Spoiler: I may just be naive, or not terribly smart, but I was frankly surprised that 29% of the time, the answer is “Dunno”.
This one is longer, but I wanted to put it up for two reasons: both McThag and I wrote about the Snowbirds accident when it happened, so I wanted to follow up here.
The second reason is, while the accident report has been released, the full report is apparently not available on the Internet: only the “Epilogue” to the report, which I am linking here.
C.W. Lemoine posted his analysis of the report, which is about 45 minutes long, and which I have not had a chance to watch all the way through yet. He did manage to get a copy of the full report.
If you want to skip to his summary of the findings, it starts at about 33:16.
I started out doing police training videos, but those have become thin on the ground. So when a new one shows up in my feed it is a cause for celebration.
Especially this one. I believe it is called “Out Numbered” and dates to 1968 according to the notes. Those same notes also point out that it features “Martin Milner of Adam 12 Fame”.
I want to point out that, while a lot of people knew Mr. Milner best from “Adam-12” (and I include myself in that category) he had a much broader and more interesting career beyond one cop show: “Route 66”, “Sweet Smell of Success”, both “Dragnet”s (the 1950s one and the late 1960s-early 1970s one)…
Bonus #1: totally unrelated to police work, but something I found kind of cool. This is a vintage (1969, maybe) promo film by Canadair for their CL-215 water bomber.
Bonus #2: “Testing a $600 survival tool”.
$600? At that price, not only should it include a tent, but it had better be setting up that tent for me automatically. And making me breakfast in the morning and dinner at night.
I thought today, for Military History Monday, I’d do a couple of videos at the intersection of survival and military history. For reasons.
Short-ish: Have you ever asked yourself, “Self, how do I escape from a sinking submarine?”
If so:
“Submarine Escape” from 1953.
Long: there are actually two versions of this on the ‘Tube. I’m picking the longer one because the shorter one seems to be cut off. The longer one seems to be a little chopped as well, but not as dramatically.
“Survival in the Arctic Tundra”. In which the crew of a C-119 bails out and has to survive…in the Arctic tundra.
The Saturday Night Movie Group recently watched “Island in the Sky“, one of William Wellman’s two great John Wayne aviation films. (The other is “The High and the Mighty“.) “Island” is in large part about the crew of a downed aircraft trying to survive in the Arctic, and in equally large part about the interpersonal relationships between transport pilots, and how everyone unites when a crew is in trouble.
Both movies get my thumbs-up seal of approval.
Also, I kind of like the C-119.
Science Sunday!
I’ve got another NASA film lined up today, but this isn’t space science.
“Flight to Tomorrow” is a 1967 film about NASA’s supersonic aircraft research, including the SST, hypersonic transports, and noise abatement.
Bonus #1: I thought it might be interesting to post this: “The M2-F2 Crash” from the Dark Footage folks.
Why? Well, some of you may recognize the M2-F2. Some more of you may recognize some of the footage in this documentary. Otherwise, stay to the end, when all will be revealed.
Bonus #2 and #3: The history of the M2-F2 and the NASA lifting bodies led me to this.
“Today, Tomorrow and Titan III”, part one of “Man In Space”. I know I’m sort of fudging here, but I really do view lifting bodies and supersonic/hypersonic transport as being a different category of science than the manned space missions.
Part 2: This also covers Bill Dana and the X-15.
Bonus #4: Just one more, because it is short. The Martin Marietta X-24B lifting body.
Time for some more true crime. Or “crime” in this first case.
At the end of WWII, some of Hitler’s SS men made off with an estimated $130 million in Nazi gold.
“SS Bank Heist – Berlin 1945”.
Bonus #1: Well, this is interesting. Somebody posted a full episode of the series “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories” (with Pernell Roberts) to the ‘Tube.
“The Hijacking of TWA Flight 541”. I picked up on this because it is one part of a story I find kind of interesting. Back in 1978, a 17-year-old girl named Robin Oswald hijacked a plane. Why? She was trying to get her mother’s boyfriend, Garrett Brock Trapnell, out of the Federal prison in Marion.
Why didn’t her mom do it? Because her mom was dead: Barbara Ann Oswald tried to break Trapnell out of Marion by hijacking a helicopter. When the chopper landed in the prison yard, the pilot grabbed the gun and killed Ms. Oswald.
The whole Garrett Trapnell story is really kind of crazy. Beyond the helicopter escape, he was a bank robber, con man, aircraft hijacker…and bigamist. There’s a book about him that I’d love to find: The Fox Is Crazy, Too (no affiliate link, because Amazon prices are insane).
(And for those of you concerned about me exploiting a 17-year-old: she was tried as a juvenile and did minimal time. Robin Oswald actually appears briefly in shadow talking about Trapnell’s hold over her, and how she was a dumb kid at the time: Roberts mentions that she’d led a “productive life” since then.)
I miss this series. It was tight and informative: I find “The FBI Files” to sometimes be a little on the long side. Somebody needs to release this series on DVD, or get streaming rights.
Bonus #2: I miss the series so much, how about another episode? This one is about one of those product tampering scares from the 1980s. But there’s a twist…
I’m just feeling very random today.
“Vintage Tiny Home on Wheels – 1976 GMC Motorhome Tour”.
I really like that form factor in a RV. I also like the fact that it has an internal shower and toilet. They don’t make these any more, but I think if i was going to adopt the RV lifestyle, I’d look for something similar to this.
Random related crankery: the GMC motorhome was also the basis for Mack Bolan’s “War Wagon” in the “Executioner” books.
Bonus #1: We did “Worker and Parasite” earlier. How about the American response?
“It’s Everybody’s Business”, a 1954 film from the US Chamber of Commerce.
Bonus #2: trolling, trolling, trolling, got to keep on trolling…
“Flugzeuge am Haken” from 1969, featuring the favorite plane of Lawrence, RoadRich, and WCD. (Yes, it is dangerously close to military history, and in German. But it’s less than three minutes long.)
Bonus #3: I swear that early in the life of this blog, I posted someone’s blog entry about their purchase of a fire truck, and what to look for when you’re buying a used fire truck. But I can’t find that post now.
“I BOUGHT A Legit FIRETRUCK From The Fire Department”.
You know, $3,000 is almost in my price range, if I wanted to mess around in a used fire truck. Then again, my local gun shop has a nice Colt Combat Commander modified by Clark Custom for $2,500, and I wouldn’t have to worry about parking the .45.
Military History Monday strikes again! And today I’ve got two kind of odd ones for you.
“The Small Boat Navy”, a 1968 Navy propaganda film about shallow water Navy ops in Vietnam. The odd part? This is narrated by Steve Martin Perry Mason Chief Ironside Raymond Burr.
Bonus: this is a little on the short side, and just has overlaid background music, but I wanted to include it for the odd factor. Video of test flights of the prototype two seat Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II trainer jet aircraft from the 1970s.
What’s odd about this? Two things: this is the only one of these aircraft ever built.
Thing #2: The guy flying in the second seat is…Barry Goldwater. Yes, the Senator from Arizona.
Travel Thursday!
Today, we journey to the Outer Limit.
Well, actually, not that one, though these folks did manage to control the horizontal and the vertical.
This is a vintage (1969) promo film from Boeing, “The Outer Limit”, about the flight testing and introduction of the 747.
I’m fudging the definition of travel a bit with that one, but it is short. The next one is, admittedly, long, but it lets me cross another state off the list, and it is a place I enjoy visiting.
“The City of Las Vegas, the Early Years”. This covers the period from 1905 to 1920. See? Who says Vegas doesn’t have a sense of history?
Bonus: I’ve griped before about the hard hat tour of Hoover Dam (which I was lucky enough to go on) and how it was shut down after 9/11. Well, here’s a video (a little over 30 minutes long) of the hard hat tour from March 2001.
“If you’re going home by plane, wear the hard hat on the plane. It scares the heck out of the other passengers.” Man, wasn’t that a simpler time?
I was talking with my brother about calculator watches recently, which reminded me of this video from Techmoan: “Hewlett Packard HP-01 1977’s Smartest Watch”.
As a HP geek, I would kind of like to have one of these: however, examples in good condition are expensive.
Bonus #1: I also thought it might be interesting to do some startup videos. Not tech startups, but starting up things. For example, an Airbus A320:
Bonus #2: Or a railroad locomotive.
Bonus #3: Or a DC-3.
Bonus #4: Or a tractor, “with a 12 guage shotgun shell”. I believe this gives new meaning to the term “shotgun start“.
I’ve been running behind on obits, so here’s a roundup.
Roger Mudd, CBS, NBC, and PBS anchorman and reporter. He was also a distant relative of Samuel Mudd (the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg).
Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth”.
Carla Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas. She was the last surviving child of Karl Wallenda.
By way of Lawrence, John “Bud” Cardos. IMDB describes him as a “B-movie Renaissance man“: he directed, acted, and did stunt work.
FotB RoadRich sent over some nice obits for Mike Collins. He sounds like a truly interesting guy: he worked for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) as technical editor and director of business operations. He was also a skilled photographer and amateur brewer.
Finally, Tony Hendra, “National Lampoon” and “Spy” guy, and “Ian Faith” in “This Is Spinal Tap”.