Picture of the day

fat tony said:
The first names on the Ottawa Memorial:



The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
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There they are.

Doan and Rennie were on a flight between Ottawa and Sydney, NS when their plane failed to make it. The wreckage was discovered in New Brunswick in 1958.

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The plane they were discovered in, Delta 673, in happier times:

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I'm in my second year of volunteering with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, tending 24 graves across 14 cemeteries. I've looked all my people up, and every story is sad as hell. A lot of Spanish Flu in 1918 and 1919. Plane crashes for three of my guys. A negligent shooting by a guard. A kid walked into a prop in Trenton six months before his brother was lost on ops in Bomber Command. Two young LAWs dead of ovarian cancer in their 20s. Leukemia. A drowning at RMC. An exceedingly suspicious drowning off Tofino. Hit by a car during a blizzard. An otherwise healthy 23 year old who died of a heart attack in the mess room. A man killed in a depressurization chamber during training.

Their files sometimes include correspondence from the parents. As a dad, the one thing that scares me about mortality is the thought of being in their shoes. Hard fvcking read, some of those.

Pray for peace, brothers. It's a steep bill if we screw that up.
 
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*lawrence said:
South African Olifant Mk.1A from 61 Mechanised Battalion Group, 20 Brigade passes an abandoned 130 mm M-46 gun.Angola, 1987-1988.View attachment 1166941
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None of that stuff was there during my time, 1969. Gift to Cuba from the Soviets.

Other than a few operatives, giving out aid to whichever org was in favor at the time, some of whom were just bush bandits, we hardly ever saw South African troops.

That very ugly civil war drew in a lot of different players, including mercs, Chinese, Cuban, Russian, German, surrounding nations and all sorts of entrepreneurs.
 
That Matilda II was the most efficient Japo remover before Nagasaki. 95 mm howitzer? Oh no the FROG. The Matilda II CS had the Ordnance QF 3 inch howitzer. Must have been a hell of a pairing for attacking fortifications.

The Kiwis had the Valentine and found it just the ticket for attacking the Japos in the Pacific - 'The Battle of the Green islands.'
 
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The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation CA-15. NOT a Mustang:

cac-ca-15-side1.jpg


Late war/early postwar Australian design based partly on the Mustang, but apparently with plenty of FW190 genetics too. Then they shifted gears and went with the RR Griffon. Good move.

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One built.

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Pranged and subsequently scrapped as jets were in development.

Late war props - the Grumman Tigercat and Bearcat, the Sea Fury, this - were the ultimate tail end of a line of development. They were very good aircraft, but other ideas worked better.
 
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