Picture of the day

Gotta wonder what happened...

shredder said:
Yes, the PzIII with the 50mm gun was obsolete by 1943. It wasn't a bad tank, it was just wayyyyyyyy undergunned and couldn't be upgunned to deal with T-34's, KV-1's and II's, or even the Sherman!

I wonder how many of those men made it all the way through?
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Yes, but remember, many of those Mk III chassis were built/rebuilt to become the turretless StuG III with its long 75mm AT gun, one of the most deadly and prolific SP guns of the war. Production continued into '45.
The more I looked at those five faces I just couldn't help wondering what their fate had been. It's quite possible that at least a couple survived the war.
 
Kodachrome was great film.

It was a dye-transfer process in which the original negative had about 9 layers of emulsion, of which 4 were masks. On development, the silver was leached from each developed emulsion later in turn and replaced with dyes.

The result was a quality POSITIVE-IMAGE photograph with vivid colours and almost NO detectable grain.

Couple that with the popular 4x5 Speed Graphic so popular at the time (I am shooting a 1939 and they are incredible!) and you ended up with a photo which you could blow up to actual size of the airplane.... and it would STILL be sharp.

Still, Kodachrome was an expensive process but the Government could afford it. I'm shooting Black-and-White in my Graflex: only $2.50 a shot if I develop my own!
 
I have a Graphic View and a Linhof Technica, but have gotten too lazy to dust off my darkroom stuff.
Last time I looked, a digital 4x5 back cost more than my car, but Damn I'd love to have one to play with.
Years ago at work, as we were beginning to pick up digital, I recieved a fossil from our Vancouver office with the note that they'd already dumped their film cameras and their digital just couldn't seem to capture the spiral ammonite as depth of field was insufficient.
I backed off from filling the frame so I had about a 2x2 image on the ground glass, stopped down to f45 and shot it on Fp4.
I printed the requested 5x7, scanned it so I could include a digital image, and sent it all back along with a pin-sharp 16x20 print as an 'Xmas present' (early Dec. it was) - just because I could.
Result was an absolutely blown-away paleontologist !!
(Our digital camera at the time was a box w. lens cabled right to the computer with an ~ $10,000 program to run it.
(Must've been about 4 megapixels at the time) and a dye-sub printer to utilise it all. - Couldn't for the life of me get a decent B&W image out of it all whether new or a hundred year old neg.)

WU0u5Ud.jpg


jvLeJim.jpg


(The beastie I'm referring to.)
 
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XRCD011 said:
Because its a B25 Mitchell. The gal looks like Draculas girlfriend to me.
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By the way she is squinting and the hair I'd say it's pretty windy balancing on the top of the fuselage. She looks pretty good to me, the fact that she's doing a 'man's job' and yet you feel the need to critique her looks is rather hypocritical IMO
Just sayin'
 
tokguy said:
By the way she is squinting and the hair I'd say it's pretty windy balancing on the top of the fuselage. She looks pretty good to me, the fact that she's doing a 'man's job' and yet you feel the need to critique her looks is rather hypocritical IMO
Just sayin'
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She is not doing a "man's job". She is working as a pretty girl getting her picture taken with an airplane and some ammo.

The ammo is loaded on the inside of the plane, into an ammo box. No need to be on top, other than to clean the turret plexiglass.

It is an excellent picture, so she did her job well.
 
Just this morning I had a restored B-25 fly over the house on final into the Penticton airport. Still looks and sounds the same as the RCAF ones I used to see in the 1950s. The aircraft is going to be on display here for several days. You can purchase a ride with a donation to the sponsoring/owning organization.
 
Speaking of RCAF B-25s:

B2521.jpg


Lotta guns on a plane that size - one in the nose, two in the top turret, one in each waist position, two more in the stinger. That's only 4 fewer than a B17 of similar vintage, and a deficit remedied on later marks:

grumpy200776464.jpg
 
B25s were used in a lot of different roles, and armament was configured to suit the operation. Not every late B25 would have been sporting the nose annihilator of the one in your bottom photo.

Still, an awesome and incredibly versatile aircraft.
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Speaking of RCAF B-25s:

B2521.jpg


Lotta guns on a plane that size - one in the nose, two in the top turret, one in each waist position, two more in the stinger. That's only 4 fewer than a B17 of similar vintage, and a deficit remedied on later marks:


I have read somewhere the B17 carried a bomb load of four tons and one ton for the .50 machine guns.
You gotta loves those 50s.

^B24 Liberator at Duxford.

^Sperry ball turret
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North American B-25H (gunship variant) and its little friend the T13E1 75mm cannon this plane is also known as the PBJ-H1 (naval name for it)

B-25H_zps1ee6b082.jpg
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And in the next corner the Me-262 A1-U4 "pulkzerstoumlrer" sporting a Bordkanone 5 50mm rapid fire cannon

Pulkzerstoumlrer_zps71375d94.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
 
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They used to fly B-25s out of Edmonton RCAF Base, which was in what until recently was the "downtown" airport; it was on the edge of town when I was a kid. We lived in a veterans' housing development on 105th and the airport fronted 107th. No pervert paranoia back then, so we kids would walk over and stand along the fence and watch as these wonderful machines were towed out and then as they ran up and took off. They had Mustangs there at the same time, also a couple Harvards; the Packard Merlins and the radials had completely different sounds and that ungeared prop on the Harvards made a world of noise!

Then the jets came in and, even though they were faster and louder, something seemed to disappear. Saw a Vampire there once, flying, and the Sabres played at "Breaking the Sound Barrier" over the city for most of a year, first by intent, later by "accident" after it was forbidden. Whole CITY would shake when that "BOOOM!!!!" hit. But the Sabre was indeed a first-class Toy; you could shoot down a MiG with one of those and they were doing it every day in a place called Korea. When the Peace was signed at the end of that one, every church-bell, every siren, every air-raid siren in the city went off, all at once. Never forget it. Come to think on it, that was the same day one of my best friends, Bjarne Aasland, joined up to become a Lancaster airframe tech. Ozzie did 31 years in all, then had his military pension seized illegally by CCRA, based on figures they cooked up because he was still playing music. How our Government does love to kick our Veterans in the nuts, once they are too old to fight back!

BEST sort-of-non-combat B-25 book ever written: SHOOTING SCRIPT by Gavin Lyall. Book came out in 1966 and it has a good laugh on every second page, a teeth-on-edge every third page. Look for it at your local second-hand bookstore, buy it, take it home, treasure it and NEVER loan it out: you will never see it again! A first-class page-turner if ever there were one; it just makes you wish it were 800 pages longer! And it has Vampires and a very sick and elderly B-25 which is given a Mission.... and no bombs!

@ STEYR1: That is one SUPERB Ammonite! GREAT photos...... and I very much applaud your choice of films: FP4 is one of the truly GREATS.
 
Shane111 said:
North American B-25H (gunship variant) and its little friend the T13E1 75mm cannon this plane is also known as the PBJ-H1 (naval name for it)

B-25H_zps1ee6b082.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]



And in the next corner the Me-262 A1-U4 "pulkzerstoumlrer" sporting a Bordkanone 5 50mm rapid fire cannon




Pulkzerstoumlrer_zps71375d94.jpg
[/URL][/IMG][/QUOTE

The warthog's great grandfather...Neat
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Been dying to go to Oshkosh. The Hamilton air show was good two years ago they had a mossie and a crap load of Merlin's all flying at the same time. It was something special to see, I would die to see the Lancasters in England this fall.
 
Also in the days when there were still enough of these surplus birds around in flyable condition to film that live action.

Not just formation flying, but formation takeoff - all but the lead craft sucking everyone else's prop-wash.

XRCD011 said:
In the pre CGI days.
[youtube]nLMDIlxUa58[/youtube]
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From the same mind that made the rather smashingly beautiful Mosquito came the DeHavilland DH.91 Albatross:

DH91-Albatross.jpg


Here in wartime livery, as befitting a thread on WW2 pictures:

80-G-25115.jpg


I'm still not sure that any airplane is as beautiful as the Lockheed Constellation, but by God, that's coming close. What a pretty, pretty thing.
 
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