Picture of the day

[fat tony]

That nice guy Montgomery admitted to Dayan Wingate's death in a plane crash in 1944 was the best thing that happened to him. Let me see, is there another Allied leader of WWII that was considered a problem child?

As things are heading in the direction of horrible, it seems appropriate to talk about horrible things in small doses of course.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-charles-de-gaulle-rescued-france

Charles de Gaulle, Julian Jackson insists in the preface of his new biography, “De Gaulle” (Harvard), is “everywhere” in modern France, its undisputed hero. This claim, like some other confident statements in the book, may strike a reader as both narrowly true and what a French thinker might call metaphysically false. His name is certainly everywhere—on the great airport outside Paris; on the Place Charles de Gaulle, once called the Étoile, where traffic streams perpetually around the Arc de Triomphe—but his example seems remote. He is more a ceremonial than a controversial figure, his work now done. In forty years of passing in and out of France, I have almost never heard him pointed to as an exemplar useful in any way for today’s crises. His name having been placed on l’Étoile is apt: the traffic goes around all day but never stops for long.

If he lives anywhere, it is in the endless flow of books about the Second World War written by Americans and Brits, in which he emerges as the biggest pain in the ass in the history of the liberal order. By alphabetical accident, the heading “De Gaulle: Personal Characteristics” in Jackson’s index gives us, in sequence: arrogance, austerity, authoritarianism, cigarette smoking, coldness, contempt for human nature. It’s quite a list. Yet, as this classically composed and authoritative (if culturally somewhat shallow) book makes clear, he remains an amazing figure.

 

[Claven2]

View attachment 768443

In honour of the fact I saw a T Gewehr today at a gunshow, which was the first I saw in a while.

deactivated? I had thought they are prohib now by muzzle energy criteria and can't be legally brought to shows?

 

[Rod B]

I heard a story that Winston Churchill stated that his hardest cross to bear in WW11 was the "Cross of Lorraine". He was referring to deGaulle.

 

[x westie]

Survived 30 attempted assignations, including the assassins using sub machine guns on August 22, 1962, mainly by disgruntled French army and airforce officers over what happened in the French colony of Algeria

 

[fat tony]

I read somewhere the infamous assassination attempt by multiple OAS officers included the FM 24/29 LMG.

The French are serious about keeping secrets of Degaulle assassination attempts under wraps.

 

[*lawrence]

I very eccentric officer who would walk around with an onion around his neck , occasionally taking a bite out of the onion, having a O Group with Wingate standing in the nude, he had a alarm clock around his neck , when the alarm went off , the I Group was over , combing his pubic hair with a tooth brush

Field Marshal Montgomery told Moshe Dayan in 1966 that he considered Wingate to have "been mentally unbalanced and that the best thing he ever did was to get killed in a plane crash in 1944

 

[Rob]

 

[Dosing]

If you find yourself near Great Falls make note there are two air bases. Malstrom, which has a collection inside the perimeter, and the ANG who have a location two minutes off the interstate at the Great Falls airport. They have a Herc as a display piece, but also a couple gems, as any F106 is worth travelling to see, and it isnt just any old day you see an F89, which I will say I think is one of the ugliest planes, especially in the shadow of an F106, but an 89 with a genie, well ya, rare display.

 

[bush1]

^^^^^ Scorpion ^^^^^

The F-89 Scorpion was an occasional visitor to RCAF Stn Chatham NB in the mid 60’s. It was affectionately called the Polish Spitfire by many and yes it won the ugliest aircraft contest by a wide margin… USAF 102’s and 106’s were occasional visitors as well.

There was a F-86 Sabre bombing flight at Chatham at that time and 416 Sqn with the original model of CF-101 Voodoo to round out the flight line.

This pic of a 101 shows a pair of Aim4D practice missiles on the bottom side of the rotary door.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

deactivated? I had thought they are prohib now by muzzle energy criteria and can't be legally brought to shows?

It was definitely non functional. The receiver and bolt were crude replacements.

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

Yeah, the F-89 wasn't pretty. But there's always the Fairey Gannet...

Hideous from every angle, nausea-inducing from all aspects. Just gross. They can't all be F-106's, but this is just a whole new level...

 

[RRCo.]

That nice guy Montgomery admitted to Dayan Wingate's death in a plane crash in 1944 was the best thing that happened to him. Let me see, is there another Allied leader of WWII that was considered a problem child?

As things are heading in the direction of horrible, it seems appropriate to talk about horrible things in small doses of course.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-charles-de-gaulle-rescued-france

Try reading "Felled Oaks" by Henri Malreux(?) sometime. Ye gods, talk about pompous and ponderous.

The greatest mystery is the extent to which his personal and national grandiosity was an act or sincere delusion.

 

[CV32]

This pic of a 101 shows a pair of Aim4D practice missiles on the bottom side of the rotary door.

The AIM-4D turned out to be a horrible performer, scoring on less than ~10 percent of shots during the Vietnam war. (Of course, the AIM-7 and AIM-9 didn't impress at the time, either.)

 

[bush1]

The AIM-4D turned out to be a horrible performer, scoring on less than ~10 percent of shots during the Vietnam war. (Of course, the AIM-7 and AIM-9 didn't impress at the time, either.)

Agreed, but that’s all we had to go on the one side of the 101’s rotary door. We did have the nuke on the other side of the rotary door and I would presume that a much bigger bang would help in the accuracy department but we never fired one off in anger from what I’ve heard.

 

[CV32]

Agreed, but that’s all we had to go on the one side of the 101’s rotary door. We did have the nuke on the other side of the rotary door and I would presume that a much bigger bang would help in the accuracy department but we never fired one off in anger from what I’ve heard.

That would have been the AIR-2 Genie, and yeah, never fired in anger.

 

[AP]

Try reading "Felled Oaks" by Henri Malreux(?) sometime. Ye gods, talk about pompous and ponderous.

The greatest mystery is the extent to which his personal and national grandiosity was an act or sincere delusion.

my bet is on ‘grandiose’ delusional disorder. I believe the lay persons term is ‘effing idiot’

 

[fat tony]

There were vets who were difficult men. They did their bit, nobody was signing up to go in their place. It is not possible to say with absolute certainty if their service was inadequate due to whatever, because nobody went in their place.

^Ernest J. King

At the start of US involvement in World War II, commercial ships traveling the coastal waterways were not traveling under convoy. King's critics attribute the delay in implementing this measure not to strategic reasons or lack of material, but rather, to his Anglophobia, as the convoys and seaboard blackouts were British proposals, and King was supposedly loath to have the US Navy adopt any ideas from the Royal Navy. He also refused, until March 1942, the loan of British convoy escorts when the Americans had only a handful of suitable vessels.

 

[*lawrence]

#OTD in 1940, Egypt. An Indian rifleman with a SMLE (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield) Mark III

 

[Dosing]

Anti Tank rounds from early WW2, the Polish 8mm Maroshek, the German 8X94, and some Russian experimentals.





and not a pic, but video of a Maroshek rifle, with the wrong round for it, lol

 

[RRCo.]

There were vets who were difficult men. They did their bit, nobody was signing up to go in their place. It is not possible to say with absolute certainty if their service was inadequate due to whatever, because nobody went in their place.

^Ernest J. King

Read what Eisenhower had to say about him. Convoys? We don't need no stinkin' convoys.