Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)
This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)
LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:
Since I was a little selfish yesterday, today’s videos go out to great and good FOTB RoadRich, and to the good folks at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum in Houston. May they re-open soon.
First up: “The 707 Astrojet”, a 1961 co-production of American Airlines and Pratt & Whitney Aircraft.
Bonus video #1: “The F-4 Phantom Joins the Fleet”, from 1962. From the YouTube description, for all you military aviation buffs: “The film features Fighter Squadron SEVEN FOUR (VF-74) aka Bedevilers flying from the nearly-new aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59) along with the rest of Carrier Air Wing EIGHT (CVW-8).”
I have a couple of those Willner tribute albums. “Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill” in particular is a swell album, and I wish someone would re-release that digitally.
Sort of a break today. These are kind of police-related videos, but they’re also directly relevant to my interests, and I hope to the interests of at least some of my readers.
First up: “The Fundamentals Of Double Action Revolver Shooting”. This has Air Force/DoD tags on it, but it looks like it was produced by the FBI and dates to 1961.
Bonus video #1: “Shooting for Survival”, a FBI video from sometime in the 1970s, back when they were still using revolvers.
Bonus video #2: Sometimes the short ones are the best. “Training With the Speedloader”, a 1988 Indiana State Police video on how to use the revolver speedloader. Those are Safariland speedloaders, which happen to be the ones I prefer.
Some people might find that the scenario at the start of this video reminds them of something else.
Robert Barth. He was a pioneering Navy diver: he was the only person involved with both the Genesis dry land test and all three iterations of the Sealab underwater habitats.
In no particular order of importance (and I may be a day or three behind on some of these):
Julie Bennett. She was primarily known as a voice actress: she did a lot of animated stuff, including voicing “Cindy Bear” in the “Yogi Bear Show”. (And “Aunt May” in “Spider-Man: The Animated Series”.) She also did guest shots on a few of my favorite shows: “Adam-12”, “Dragnet 1967”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, and “Get Smart”.
Forrest Compton. Another knock-around guy: he was most famous for playing “Mike Karr” on “The Edge of Night” soap, but he also was a semi-regular on “Gomer Pyle: USMC”, appeared multiple times in “Hogan’s’ Heros” and “The F.B.I”…
…and, yes, he did do a “Mannix”. (“One for the Lady”, season 4, episode 2. He was “Elgin Bonning”.)
Ed Biles, former coach of the Houston Oilers. He started out as a defensive coordinator:
Shirley Douglas, who seems to be consistently described as a “Canadian actor and activist”. Among other roles, she was in the original “Lolita”, the pilot of “The Hat Squad” TV series, the “Flash Gordon” TV series, and “Dead Ringers”.
She was also married to Donald Sutherland: Kiefer Sutherland is her son by Donald. (She also had a daughter, Rachel, with Donald, and another child with her second husband Timothy Emil Sicks.)
Al Kaline, All-Star outfielder for the Detroit Tigers.
It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit watch.
Honor Blackman, “Pussy Galore” in “Goldfinger”. She also preceded Diana Rigg as Patrick Macnee’s partner on “The Avengers”, but left the show for the “Goldfinger” role.
You know, Lawrence, when things get back to normal, “Cockneys vs. Zombies” might be worth putting on the list.
Speaking of Lawrence, he also tipped me to the death of actress Lee Fierro at the age of 91. She has three credits as an actress: two of those were “Mrs. Kintner” in “Jaws” and “Jaws: The Revenge”.
(“Mrs. Kintner” is the woman whose child is gobbled up by the shark in “Jaws” and then slaps Chief Brody.)
Mike the Musicologist pointed out to me the other day the most 70s thing ever, at least according to MeTV:
(That reminds me: Hi, Saturday Dining Conspiracy regular who shall remain anonymous but likes “Xanadu”! Hope you guys are doing okay!)
Now, I will concede that this is probably the high-water mark of the 1970s: as Hunter S. Thompson said about the 1960s, “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” But here’s another vintage slice of peak 70s for you.
If you’re unemployed, it might even help you find a job…selling cars to women.
On a historical note, this may explain why Chrysler needed that bail out…
Today’s bonus video, which actually might be suitable for those of you who are homeschooling your children: how does an oil refinery work?
Some reactions have to be run at very low temperatures. This is one of them. If you mix this stuff together at room temperature your internal organs would be found in several time zones.
tl,dr; Remdesivir is one of the more promising drugs for coronavirus. It is also a king hell b—h to synthesize.
You could do a lot worse than browse through some of Mr. Bloom’s other articles if you’re bored, especially the ones about meth chemistry and fentanyl. We’ve all heard of fentanyl and some of us have probably heard of carfentanil. But have you ever heard of ohmefentanyl?
(I know some of these are a couple of years old. I only discovered Mr. Bloom and the ACSH site over the weekend, when Hacker News linked to his Remdesivir article.)
Shifting gears here, since I brought everyone down earlier. These go out to great and good FOTB RoadRich, who is to submarines and aircraft what Lawrence is to tanks.
Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I wonder how I can get out of a submarine that’s under water?” Of course you have.
(I actually learned somewhat similar techniques when I was taking scuba training.)
Bonus video #1: I’m putting these next two in as bonus videos because they’re a bit longer than my 15 minute target. With our Saturday night movie group in lockdown, we’ve been reduced to watching broadcast TV. Interestingly, H&I is showing “12 O’Clock High” (the TV series) at 10 Central on Saturday nights. We watched the movie a little less than a year ago, and I thought it was an extraordinary film. I don’t have enough episodes under my belt to be able to judge the series yet.
Anyway: how do you fly a B-17?
Bonus video #2: how do you stop flying a B-17? For example, if you have to ditch at sea?
For those of you who don’t read the YouTube notes: both of these videos feature Arthur Kennedy, who played “Jackson Bentley” (the journalist based loosely on Lowell Thomas) in “Lawrence of Arabia”.
Okay, bonus video #3, which I just happened to stumble upon: for the moment, the pilot episode of “12 O’Clock High”, “Golden Boy Had 9 Black Sheep” is available on YouTube. Those of you who have seen the movie might recognize some similarities in plot.
On November 8, 1970, Mr. Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal on the last play of the game to beat the Detroit Lions 19-17. It was one of two wins for the Saints that year. It was also a NFL record which stood for 43 years: several other players tied it in that time, but it wasn’t until 2013 that Matt Prater of the Broncos kicked a 64 yard field goal in Denver.
According to the statement from his family, Mr. Dempsey died of corona virus complications. He was 73 years old and in a nursing home after being diagnosed with dementia in 2012.
Edited to add 4/6: as Lawrence points out, while YouTube will let you embed the videos, you can’t play them here because the NFL is a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I’ve left the embeds in place because you can click through and watch them on YouTube directly. Sorry about that: I should not have underestimated the stupidity of professional sports leagues.
Fifty years ago today, just before midnight on April 5, 1970, two California Highway Patrol officers, Walt Frago and Roger Gore, stopped a car with two men in it. There had been reports that a similar vehicle had been involved in a road rage incident a short time before.
The two men in the car, Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, were heavily armed criminals. They had been planning the theft of explosives from a construction site near where they were stopped. Davis had dropped Twinning off earlier in the evening to scope out the construction site (other sources say that they were testing walkie-talkies they planned to use in the robbery, and that Twinning was taking some target practice), made an illegal U-turn across a highway median, and brandished a firearm at a driver he nearly hit. The display of the firearm was what prompted the call to CHP: the responding officers had no knowledge of Twinning and Davis’s criminal past, their plan to steal explosives, or of the weapons they had in the car. As a matter of fact, the initial report stated that there was only one occupant in the car.
When they were stopped, the two men initially refused to exit the vehicle. Gore managed to clear Davis from the car and started to frisk him. But before they could get Twinning out of the car, he shot and killed Officer Frago. Officer Gore shot back at Twinning, but was shot by Davis at close range.
Two other officers, James Pence and George Alleyn, were nearby and responded as backup for Gore and Frago. They got to the scene just after Office Gore was killed and immediately came under fire from Twinning and Davis. Alleyn fired on Davis with his issue shotgun, but was unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of rounds. He then drew his issue sidearm and continued to fire on Davis, but was hit with multiple rounds of 00 buckshot from Davis’s sawed-off shotgun and killed.
A nearby citizen, Gary Kness, tried to help the officers, returning fire with Alleyn’s service revolver, but was also unable to score an incapacitating hit before running out of ammo.
Officer Pence emptied his revolver at Twinning and had to reload. CHP did not issue speed loaders at the time. He loaded six rounds and was closing the cylinder on his revolver when Twinning snuck up behind him and killed him.
Twinning and Davis fled as a third CHP unit arrived. Davis broke into a camper, pistol-whipped the occupant, and stole the vehicle. CHP was informed, stopped the camper, and Davis (who at this point had no loaded guns) surrendered. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. He apparently committed suicide in his cell in August of 2009.
Twinning broke into a house and took an occupant hostage. The house was surrounded by police, and after a several hour standoff, they deployed tear gas and stormed the house. Twinning killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from Officer Frago.
None of the officers had been with CHP for more than two years. Three out of the four probably would have survived if they had been wearing soft body armor, but this was 1970: bulletproof vests at the time were heavy and bulky, and Richard Davis didn’t design the first Second Chance vest until 1976.
This is one of those moments in history that justifies the use of the phrase “agonizing reappraisal”. After the incident, CHP authorized, and then started issuing, speed loaders. CHP also reevaluated their training, and shared their investigative findings widely. Ultimately, the Newhall incident was one of the events that kicked off the “officer survival” movement in the US.
Mr. Ayoob’s followup, “New Info On Newhall“, is available online at the AH website, as is a third article focusing on Gary Kness and Daniel Schwartz (the camper owner): “The Armed Citizens Of Newhall”.
I’ve been looking at California newspapers thinking there would be a retrospective, but I haven’t found one. If I do, I’ll add it here.
As best as I’ve been able to determine, Gary Kness is still alive (he’d be around 82 today). He was honored by CHP for his efforts to save the officers, and is regarded as a hero by the California Highway Patrol to this day.
If anybody has anything to add about this incident (hi, Karl!) please feel welcome to leave a comment. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, but some of the information out there is contradictory, incomplete, or inaccurate.
Back to real police work. While it wasn’t on my radar when I started this last week, it turns out that I am building up to a post tomorrow. (I’m not going to stop after tomorrow, though.)
Interestingly, there are two major events that took place in different years, but within a week of each other in April, that I want to make note of. There’s also a third event that took place in early May 40 years ago that I plan to note as well.
Bonus video #1: great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent me this one, and I already had it on the list. I’ve been a little hesitant to post it, because the quality isn’t all that great, but it has two things I can’t resist:
Bonus video #2: “Shotgun or Sidearm?”, another police training film explaining when it is appropriate to use each weapon. This might be educational for some of my readers who are not people of the gun.