Picture of the day

Yep totally agree

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Shame, great looking girl. The saying that More men are killed by Booze than Bullets is true. And Miss Long was a rare woman who also fell victim.
 
So, you're German infatry, and you're tired of being teased by the other lads. "Track Grease" they call you. "Infantards." "Person of No Tactical Significance". The worst are the Arty people. The Gunners think they're so big.

If you had your own gun, they could feck arf and leave you alone and you'd never have to speak to them again. Well, soothe your aching ego. Thanks to the wise minds at Krupp, here's the 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18.

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Gives the lads on the ground a little immediate local thump power. Handy wee device.

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Any idea why they scalloped the edge of the glacis like this?

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^ Funny I was looking at the one at the CWM just yesterday. A long serving piece from the 1920s thru to the end of WWII. To bad the one at the CWM had been painted green over the original paint and the hand painted message on its frontal armour plate.
 
^ Funny I was looking at the one at the CWM just yesterday. A long serving piece from the 1920s thru to the end of WWII. To bad the one at the CWM had been painted green over the original paint and the hand painted message on its frontal armour plate.

We should be thankful the CWM even has one, that it's on display vs. storage, and that it hasn't been replaced with a piece of artwork decrying Canada's role in WW2 bombing of german cities.

[INSERT ROLLING EYE EMOJI HERE]

Don't even get me started on how they are building a GIANT holocaust memorial across the street from the CWM - from the looks of it, it will be larger, uglier and more expensive than the CWM itself. Definite design similarities - it's all angular concrete. The Holocuast was a human tragedy that deserves a monument... but why not in Europe where it happened? Canada was not a statistically significant part of that story.

A google search shows the only Canadian unit to liberate ANY German concentration camp was the second division that liberated Westerbork in Holland. In early April 1945 the Germans had abandoned the camp and Westerbork was liberated on April 12 by Canadian forces who found 876 inmates (read: victims) there. But the HC was not a big part of Canada's war.
 
^ Funny I was looking at the one at the CWM just yesterday. A long serving piece from the 1920s thru to the end of WWII. To bad the one at the CWM had been painted green over the original paint and the hand painted message on its frontal armour plate.

It would appear the CWM hires people with no sense of provenance, or (most unfortunate in museum staff) any apparent sense of history or preservation.

Where do such people come from? How did they get the gig? How can you work for a military museum and not have an appreciation of the need to keep artefacts in as original condition as possible?

"I'm a housepainter. I work at the Louvre. Did some touchup on that there Mona Liser thingamabob over yonder. I'll come back tomorrow and lay down a second coat."

Here's the piece in question back in 2010. Have they painted it since?
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Speaking of "Keeping Busy"...

The "Sturer Emil" - Only 2 ever built, based on the (cancelled) Henschel VK30.01 chassis and armed with a Rheinmetall 12.8 cm K L/61 gun.

One was destroyed, and the other finally captured in Stalingrad - with 31 kill marks on the barrel. Probably this one, from an earlier propaganda photo:

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Nasty, effective gun. Accurate, and could punch a very large hole in any armour the Soviets had.

And speaking of "crappy restoration/paint jobs" - Even the Russians are guilty of it. The captured gun currently resides in the Kubinka tank museum:

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During the afternoon of August 24, 1942, the Japanese attacked the U.S.S. Enterprise. As a third bomb exploded on the deck, Photographer Mate 3d Class Robert Fredric Read took this photo. He and several others died of injuries from the explosion.
 
The Japanese aircraft carrier Shokaku under attack during the Battle of the Coral Sea, 8 May 1942. Pic taken from a Douglas TBD Devastator from the USS Yorktown.

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It would appear the CWM hires people with no sense of provenance, or (most unfortunate in museum staff) any apparent sense of history or preservation.

Where do such people come from? How did they get the gig? How can you work for a military museum and not have an appreciation of the need to keep artefacts in as original condition as possible?

"I'm a housepainter. I work at the Louvre. Did some touchup on that there Mona Liser thingamabob over yonder. I'll come back tomorrow and lay down a second coat."

Here's the piece in question back in 2010. Have they painted it since?
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Nope, that is exactly as it looked yesterday, all goofy green, no doubt to "make it better" or some bull#### along those lines, even the Pak 35/36 wears a coat of green over the original wartime paint (and overpainted message it to wears). You can just see some of the hand painted info painted on the shield in this pic (on right hand of shield and on small shield above gun). I also noted some bright spark over the years had jazzed up the groovy can job on the German 60 Cm searchlight trailer (Sd.Ahn.51), even painting over the lens.

Honest question you ask about the people hired to attend to the artifacts. Even the current VIMY display was a bit of a sick joke when i walked out I was left wondering what a hodge podge of "stuff" out on display and what where they trying to get across, totally lacking in direction or meaning.
 
Write to the curators and ask them what they're playing at? Pretty easy with email.
Good luck with trying to turn around decades of wrong minded institutionalized mindset dedicated to preserving the status quo and 150+% resistant to change, fresh ideas, or different points of view with a simple email or two. The CWM is a "National level museum with a Regional museum attitude", as once told to me by a member of the CWM..........and I have no reason to doubt that observation.
 
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Nor have the New Zealanders. If I am not mistaken, ANZAC Day (April 25th) commemorates the landing of the Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli.
Just like our Remembrance Day, we will remember them.

Newfoundlanders still commemorate the battle at Beaumont Hamel (July 1). It adds a sombre note to Canada Day celebrations in that province.

Very true. New Zealand and Australia don't have Remembrance Day on November 11 they have ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp) on April 25, the Anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. Both New Zealand and Australia suffered huge casualty rates in the Battle of Gallipoli, mind you so did the Brits and Turks. But for Australia and New Zealand Gallipoli is a bit like Vimy Ridge only with much higher casualties and a negative outcome. Division wide casualty rates in excess of 50% were common. When you are a country like New Zealand with a population of M1 and only fielding one Division this was pretty horrendous. Pretty much the whole New Zealand and Australian Armies of 1915 where at Gallipoli. Even though Gallipoli wasn't much different to other WW1 battles it has a lot more significance to New Zealand and Australia.
 
Nope, that is exactly as it looked yesterday, all goofy green, no doubt to "make it better" or some bull#### along those lines, even the Pak 35/36 wears a coat of green over the original wartime paint (and overpainted message it to wears). You can just see some of the hand painted info painted on the shield in this pic (on right hand of shield and on small shield above gun). I also noted some bright spark over the years had jazzed up the groovy can job on the German 60 Cm searchlight trailer (Sd.Ahn.51), even painting over the lens.

Honest question you ask about the people hired to attend to the artifacts. Even the current VIMY display was a bit of a sick joke when i walked out I was left wondering what a hodge podge of "stuff" out on display and what where they trying to get across, totally lacking in direction or meaning.

While I feel the CWM butchered a lot of stuff, we also have to bear in mind that the practises today were probably not the norm in the 50's and 60's when most of the butchery occured, likely with good intentions. Also, the old CWM was tiny and some of these guns were likely displayed outdoors at some point.
 
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