Picture of the day

diopter said:
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Aircraft Carrier USS Leyte (CVA-32) in the foreground, beyond her are 18 escort carriers.
U.S. Navy’s 16th Reserve Fleet ships laid up at the south Boston annex, Boston Naval Shipyard, 25th of July 1953.
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In the late 1960s the US tried to give Canada 3 Midway class fleet carriers that had just been overhauled.

The Trudeau Gov't rejected them in favour of refitting the Bonaventure. Then scrapped it shortly after...
 
Lee Enfield said:
In the late 1960s the US tried to give Canada 3 Midway class fleet carriers that had just been overhauled.

The Trudeau Gov't rejected them in favour of refitting the Bonaventure. Then scrapped it shortly after...
Click to expand...

On the other hand, the Bonaventure probably had an armoured flight deck, whereas the US carriers did not(?) Kamikazes bounced off 3" thick steel decks; USN wooden decks they went right through.
 
In 1956, when Orenda was developing the Iroquois engine for the Avro CF-105 Arrow, USAF B-47 51-2059 was borrowed from the USAF to use as a test bed. For this program the B-47 was taken on RCAF strength as X059. Its first destination in Canada was Canadair at Cartierville, near Montreal, where the mods were installed to accommodate the 30-foot-long Orenda engine. This made X059 one of the rare 7-engine B-47s (a second was used to test fly the GE TF34). For Canadair purposes, the B-47 was designated the CL-52.

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X059 flying gear down near Malton during the Iroquois program. Test pilots Mike Cooper-Slipper of Avro Canada and Len Hobbs from the UK, and Avro flight test engineer, Johnny McLaughlin, spent 10 weeks training on the B-47 with the USAF in Wichita. This made the trio very exclusive airmen, since the B-47 was ultra-secret. It almost was anathema for the Americans to allow such “foreign aliens” to get so close to the B-47. However, it was in their interest, since the Iroquois was destined for the Arrow, which was to be a key NORAD fighter. Besides, along the way the Americans certainly would have gleaned some worthwhile technical “intel” about the Iroquois. There might even have been an information sharing agreement. Long ago Mike Cooper-Slipper told me about what a dicey plane this exotic test bed was to fly. It was a slide rule operation all the way. Landings were especially tricky, since the huge engine pod at the tail created its own ground effect just as the pilot flared to touch down. At the end of the test program (February 20, 1959, when the Arrow suddenly was cancelled) the B-47 was re-converted to standard configuration, then the Avro crew ferried the plane to Davis Monthan Air Force Base near Tuscon. “DM” was the USAF’s main storage and scrapping facility. There, X059 soon was unceremoniously chopped to pieces and melted down. History bites, right!

From: https://canavbooks.wordpress.com/tag/cae/

Side note, Cartierville base landing strip was only a few mile from my current home. Turned into condo developments and part was a defunct golf course.
 
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Great looking bird.

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Drone hauler!

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And all kinds of trouble to be had for tailgaters.

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Funny to think of all the brainpower, time, and money that went into that twin-20 tailgun arrangement - the planning, drafting, manufacture, installation, the sheetmetal bent to make it cleanly mounted, the hours spent in a dark part of the airplane watching the radar for blips requiring addressing - and they were never used for their intended purpose. There's something to be learned there.
 
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The NVI F.K.34 was a three-seat reconnaissance floatplane built in the Netherlands in 1925 as a private venture in the hope of a Dutch Naval Aviation Service order; two accidents during testing meant that it did not go into production.
 
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Three mock-ups showing the evolution of the various studies that would lead to the Boeing B-47, with the Model 424 in the background, the Model 448 in the center and the Final Model 450-2-2 in the foreground.
 
millwright said:
The guy on the right is how I pictured Bearhunter to look in his adventurous younger years
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That fellow is much taller/better looking/slenderer than I am/was and I could never grow a beard.

My Matabele's used to pick me up under my arm pits because I couldn't keep up to thier four foot long legs at full gallop.

I'm about as average looking as it gets, easy to disappear, even in small groups.

My gift is Tenacity, trustworthiness, loyalty and I keep my head during extremely stressful situations .

I did carry around an MG 34 for a few days. Lots of respect for that MG. The fellow in the pic has a 42, that likely has been modified to give a slower rate of fire.

8mm ammo for the WWII MGs such as the 34/42/Vickers was always hard to come by in useable quantities, but if you had it, it was very effective.
 
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