Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
My comrades were more tense than I was. I realized that they had already had bad experiences on that path, so I stopped appreciating the natural beauty, having concentrated on the response to give in case any incidents arise.
We passed a new military camp, Onzo, the name I read again on the entrance sign. We didn't stop.
After a few hours of difficult and slow progression and having passed through several farms. In the distance, we saw a cluster of buildings of various kinds.
Due to the distance, they were still not very distinct, but as we approached, we started to see the huts in dry grass of the indigenous populations. Then, clearly highlighted and visible, a sign indicating the name of the place. Nambuangongo. It was a military barracks with some dimension.
The column stopped, we received orders to dismount and form the company. They distributed a zone for each platoon to have lunch and several announcements were made. We could not leave the area, because as soon as the vehicles were refilled with fuel, we would continue the journey.
My platoon was having lunch in an area behind a church. It was a very clean and well maintained cemetery. I was going to sit somewhere when a comrade said to me:
- Oh Ramon, this one was from your area. I went to the indicated tomb and confirmed that an army soldier was buried there, born in a parish in the neighboring county to mine.
He was seated at the foot of the grave that I ate part of my combat ration. In the end, I remember slapping the headstone and wishing the fellow to rest in peace.
We started by seeing in the distance, on the path from which we came, a cloud of dust advancing towards us, we realized that it would be a new military column.
It was a commando company that didn't stop in our area.
After refueling, our vehicles arrived. We are waiting for the shipment order.
The mere arrival of new troops at the barracks was a reason for pilgrimage for the army soldiers, who had been stationed at that end of the world for many months. Although it was a place of obligatory passage for those coming from Luanda and heading north.
They always found someone from their area and it was a joy. They were the ones who informed us that it must be a major operation, because since the day before, military columns had been passing by.
I'm going to take a little break from writing about my first time and tell an episode I experienced about three years later, already in the Metropolis and in my homeland.
In January 1973 I started working at the Ford Lusitana car assembly plant. I was put in the welding section to learn a certain job. The guy who was going to teach me was a boy four or five years older than me. He introduced himself, said his name and where he was from and how many years he had been working there. He explained the safety principles and started building the parts, asking me to pay attention.
He explained while doing the work because he had to feed the continuous assembly line. I was collaborating.
In the afternoon, I was already more comfortable in the construction of the piece, in conversation, the man asked which overseas province I had come from.
When he told him he had come from Angola, I remembered lunch in Nambuangongo sitting on a grave. As he had told me where he was from, I told him the episode because the soldier buried was from his land and might have known him.
I continued building the piece, but I realized that something was wrong because the man was crying.
I asked him what was going on, and he answered me in tears:
- "He was my only brother. He was the only soldier from my county who died there."
He asked me several questions about the cemetery and what the grave was like, then said he was going to tell his parents, his widowed sister-in-law and his nephew that he hadn't met his father.
It was an emotional moment and I was also moved by the comrade's reaction.
The man went to the bathroom to compose himself and I kept thinking that in life nothing happens by chance. Why is it that out of ten million people in our county, the first time I spoke about the situation I was going through, it had to be with my brother? It makes you think…
*By Joaquim Moreira
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^^^
"The Truculent Turtle"
The third production P2V-1 was chosen for a record-setting mission, ostensibly to test crew endurance and long-range navigation, but also for publicity purposes - showcasing the capabilities of the ultimate patrol bomber of the Navy. His nickname was "The Turtle", which was painted on the nose of the plane (along with a cartoon of a turtle smoking a pipe pedaling a device connected to a propeller). However, in press releases immediately before the flight, the Navy referred to it as "The Truculent Turtle."
Loaded with fuel in additional tanks installed in practically all the free spaces of the aircraft, "The Turtle" left Perth, Australia for the United States. With a crew of four (and a nine-month-old gray kangaroo, a gift from Australia to the Washington, DC Zoo), the plane took off on September 9, 1946 with a RATO (rocket-assisted take-off). Two and a half days (55h, 18m) later, "The Turtle" landed in Columbus, Ohio, 11,236.6 miles (18,083.6 km) from its starting point. It was the longest non-refueling flight flown to that point: 4,000 miles (6,400 km) longer than the USAF Boeing B-29 Superfortress record. This would stand as the outright record for distance without refueling until 1962 (beaten by a USAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress), and it would remain a piston-engined record until 1986 when #### Rutan's Voyager would break it in the process of circumnavigating the globe. "The Turtle" is preserved at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS
https://fdra.########.com/2021/07/ N..B. "########"= blog+spot
"The Truculent Turtle"
The third production P2V-1 was chosen for a record-setting mission, ostensibly to test crew endurance and long-range navigation, but also for publicity purposes - showcasing the capabilities of the ultimate patrol bomber of the Navy. His nickname was "The Turtle", which was painted on the nose of the plane (along with a cartoon of a turtle smoking a pipe pedaling a device connected to a propeller). However, in press releases immediately before the flight, the Navy referred to it as "The Truculent Turtle."
Loaded with fuel in additional tanks installed in practically all the free spaces of the aircraft, "The Turtle" left Perth, Australia for the United States. With a crew of four (and a nine-month-old gray kangaroo, a gift from Australia to the Washington, DC Zoo), the plane took off on September 9, 1946 with a RATO (rocket-assisted take-off). Two and a half days (55h, 18m) later, "The Turtle" landed in Columbus, Ohio, 11,236.6 miles (18,083.6 km) from its starting point. It was the longest non-refueling flight flown to that point: 4,000 miles (6,400 km) longer than the USAF Boeing B-29 Superfortress record. This would stand as the outright record for distance without refueling until 1962 (beaten by a USAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress), and it would remain a piston-engined record until 1986 when #### Rutan's Voyager would break it in the process of circumnavigating the globe. "The Turtle" is preserved at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS
https://fdra.########.com/2021/07/ N..B. "########"= blog+spot
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Cottage Hill Bill
CGN Regular
- Location
- Pensacola, FL USA
"The Turtle" is preserved at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola
Somewhere between February and June 1968, all of the A-12s were put into storage at Palmdale. They stayed in their climate-controlled environment until around 1984.
They when they were put outside.
This is where these amazing pictures came from. New homes were found for all of the A-12’s unfortunately, most of them are sitting outside in the elements.
The MD 21 found an amazing home at the Museum of flight in Seattle inside.The reason why the airplanes were put outside was to make room for a super secret airplane, but nobody knew about it until the Gulf war. The F117.
Thank you Kevin Westling for numbering the airplanes and Jim Goodall for taking the pictures.
Linda Sheffield Miller
https://www.facebook.com/LindaSheffieldMiller
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+1 on that recommendation. I actually have a copy of it in my office and shared it with other members of my executive team. In addition to the incredible stories of his time at the Skunk Works, the book offers amazing personal insight and advice from Ben Rich on leadership, management, salesmanship, production and dealing with Gov't contracts. I literally laughed out loud at the part where Lockheed sent him to Harvard Business School (HBS) and upon his return, he was requested to write a report on what he learned. He handed in a single sheet of paper with one line - 'HBS = BS'.
73 Brookwood
A bit of history. Shame Dan Brown didn't author a novel based on this.
On October 25, 1495, El-Rey Dom João II, one of the greatest kings of Portugal, died.
In honor of the 527th anniversary of the death of d'El-Rey D. João II, the "Perfect Prince", we recall here one of the most important events of his reign and our History.
THE TREATY OF TORDESILLAS
On his way back from his voyage to America, in 1493, Christopher Columbus made a stopover in Lisbon to visit King João II. The king hesitated between two actions to take:
· arrest Columbus;
· or claim rights over the discovered lands from the Pope.
This is the official version. However, there are also those who defend the hypothesis that Columbus, who was married to a Portuguese woman and traveled with our pilots, was secretly at the behest of D. João II, in order to divert attention from Spain to the west, thus leaving free to the Portuguese the route to the south that would lead to India.
This would explain why Columbus first landed in Lisbon to give first-hand news to the Portuguese king and receive directives from him, and only then went to Spain.
As the complaint of D. João II to the Pope was not answered, the Portuguese king decided to send the best cartographers and navigators of the Order of Christ, led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, to Tordesilhas, to try a definitive treaty with the Spaniards, having the Holy See by mediator.
The Spanish chronicler of the negotiations, Frei(Brother) Bartolomeu de las Casas, in the book "História de las Indias", wrote the following about the competence of the Portuguese side:
“As I judged, the Portuguese had more skill and more experience in those arts, at least in things of the sea, than our people.”
This advantage was given by the secret structure of the Order.
Portugal was successful in the agreement. By the bull Inter Caetera, the Spaniards had the right to the lands located more than 100 leagues to the west and south of the islands of the Azores and Cape Verde. By the agreement of Tordesilhas, the imaginary dividing line, which ran from the North Pole to the South Pole, was extended to 370 leagues, leaving everything east of this limit reserved for the Portuguese, including Brazil.
Until the mid-15th century, the Knights of Christ embarked on the maritime project without waiting for help from the Portuguese State. However, once the colonization of new lands was announced, they handed over the material dominion of the territories to the Crown, maintaining, however, spiritual control. The Court, interested in promoting the development of the production of wealth and commerce, was then responsible for consolidating the possession of what had been discovered.
in Eduardo Amarante, “Templars”, vol. 3
Consult: https://www.apeiron-edicoes.com/.../templarios-de.../
On October 25, 1495, El-Rey Dom João II, one of the greatest kings of Portugal, died.
In honor of the 527th anniversary of the death of d'El-Rey D. João II, the "Perfect Prince", we recall here one of the most important events of his reign and our History.
THE TREATY OF TORDESILLAS
On his way back from his voyage to America, in 1493, Christopher Columbus made a stopover in Lisbon to visit King João II. The king hesitated between two actions to take:
· arrest Columbus;
· or claim rights over the discovered lands from the Pope.
This is the official version. However, there are also those who defend the hypothesis that Columbus, who was married to a Portuguese woman and traveled with our pilots, was secretly at the behest of D. João II, in order to divert attention from Spain to the west, thus leaving free to the Portuguese the route to the south that would lead to India.
This would explain why Columbus first landed in Lisbon to give first-hand news to the Portuguese king and receive directives from him, and only then went to Spain.
As the complaint of D. João II to the Pope was not answered, the Portuguese king decided to send the best cartographers and navigators of the Order of Christ, led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, to Tordesilhas, to try a definitive treaty with the Spaniards, having the Holy See by mediator.
The Spanish chronicler of the negotiations, Frei(Brother) Bartolomeu de las Casas, in the book "História de las Indias", wrote the following about the competence of the Portuguese side:
“As I judged, the Portuguese had more skill and more experience in those arts, at least in things of the sea, than our people.”
This advantage was given by the secret structure of the Order.
Portugal was successful in the agreement. By the bull Inter Caetera, the Spaniards had the right to the lands located more than 100 leagues to the west and south of the islands of the Azores and Cape Verde. By the agreement of Tordesilhas, the imaginary dividing line, which ran from the North Pole to the South Pole, was extended to 370 leagues, leaving everything east of this limit reserved for the Portuguese, including Brazil.
Until the mid-15th century, the Knights of Christ embarked on the maritime project without waiting for help from the Portuguese State. However, once the colonization of new lands was announced, they handed over the material dominion of the territories to the Crown, maintaining, however, spiritual control. The Court, interested in promoting the development of the production of wealth and commerce, was then responsible for consolidating the possession of what had been discovered.
in Eduardo Amarante, “Templars”, vol. 3
Consult: https://www.apeiron-edicoes.com/.../templarios-de.../
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
That is about as slick as a big twin gets. What a lovely sleek thing.
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Gas prices getting you down? Run your Kubelwagen on "wood gas".
Works mit der Kafer as well!
Works mit der Kafer as well!
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Fueling up:
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
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"Put another man on a shovel. We're gonna pass this bus!"
Gas prices getting you down? Run your Kubelwagen on "wood gas".
Works mit der Kafer as well!
My grandfather told me he took special training to run these in late 44 early 45 while he was recovering from wounds
A bit of history. Shame Dan Brown didn't author a novel based on this.
On October 25, 1495, El-Rey Dom João II, one of the greatest kings of Portugal, died.
In honor of the 527th anniversary of the death of d'El-Rey D. João II, the "Perfect Prince", we recall here one of the most important events of his reign and our History.
THE TREATY OF TORDESILLAS
On his way back from his voyage to America, in 1493, Christopher Columbus made a stopover in Lisbon to visit King João II. The king hesitated between two actions to take:
· arrest Columbus;
· or claim rights over the discovered lands from the Pope.
This is the official version. However, there are also those who defend the hypothesis that Columbus, who was married to a Portuguese woman and traveled with our pilots, was secretly at the behest of D. João II, in order to divert attention from Spain to the west, thus leaving free to the Portuguese the route to the south that would lead to India.
This would explain why Columbus first landed in Lisbon to give first-hand news to the Portuguese king and receive directives from him, and only then went to Spain.
As the complaint of D. João II to the Pope was not answered, the Portuguese king decided to send the best cartographers and navigators of the Order of Christ, led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, to Tordesilhas, to try a definitive treaty with the Spaniards, having the Holy See by mediator.
The Spanish chronicler of the negotiations, Frei(Brother) Bartolomeu de las Casas, in the book "História de las Indias", wrote the following about the competence of the Portuguese side:
“As I judged, the Portuguese had more skill and more experience in those arts, at least in things of the sea, than our people.”
This advantage was given by the secret structure of the Order.
Portugal was successful in the agreement. By the bull Inter Caetera, the Spaniards had the right to the lands located more than 100 leagues to the west and south of the islands of the Azores and Cape Verde. By the agreement of Tordesilhas, the imaginary dividing line, which ran from the North Pole to the South Pole, was extended to 370 leagues, leaving everything east of this limit reserved for the Portuguese, including Brazil.
Until the mid-15th century, the Knights of Christ embarked on the maritime project without waiting for help from the Portuguese State. However, once the colonization of new lands was announced, they handed over the material dominion of the territories to the Crown, maintaining, however, spiritual control. The Court, interested in promoting the development of the production of wealth and commerce, was then responsible for consolidating the possession of what had been discovered.
in Eduardo Amarante, “Templars”, vol. 3
Consult: https://www.apeiron-edicoes.com/.../templarios-de.../
It paid to have Catholic connections in those days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
Grizz
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
Cessna Skymaster / O-2 of the Imperial Iranian Air Force:
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
The Bristol 133, competition to the Gloster Gladiator. A modern bird for its time:
Enclosed cockpit, retractable gear, stressedskin construction, and as svelte and graceful as a hippo.
She met her end via an accident:
The Gladiator won the contract and went on to be quite serviceable, despite being an obvious throwback.
Enclosed cockpit, retractable gear, stressedskin construction, and as svelte and graceful as a hippo.
She met her end via an accident:
The Gladiator won the contract and went on to be quite serviceable, despite being an obvious throwback.
