Picture of the day

Dark Alley Dan said:
So you have a certain Eurasian superpower to invade, but their roads turn to sticky goo every spring. Your scant few trucks can't manage it gracefully, and the men keep eating the horses. What's the solution?

The SdKfz 3 Maultier, of course.

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50% truck, 50% tractor, 100% awesome. The concept was executed using several different chassis, apparently.

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Is it slow? Oh, hell yes. But it beats walking.

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Neat rig.

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Or saddle up inside a RSO and rattle about Russia.




^ Crude and LOUD best describes a RSO ride
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
The SSS Horst Wessel.

She's still afloat. The Yanks named her USCGS Eagle, and she's the only active sailing ship on the US military register.

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She continues her mission as a training ship. She's been refitted twice. Tough old girl that she is, she may well sail on for decades to come. Not bad. :)

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Who would have thought that boat would still be sailing.

Horst Wessel was a pimp who supplied Hitler with baby faces. He was killed in a brawl over a whore in Berlin. A poem by a pimp became the hymn of Hitler's party.

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The story of Horst Wessel.

Horst Wessel was born September 9, 1907, in Bielefeld, Germany. The son of a pastor, Wessel dropped out of law school in 1926 and defied his mother by joining the Nazi Brownshirt paramilitary in the final days of the Weimar Republic. He soon caught the attention of Joseph Goebbels, who sent him to Vienna in 1928 to organize the Nazi youth movement there.

Intelligent and politically astute, Wessel was also extremely violent. Upon returning to Germany, he organized an attack on the local headquarters of the Communist Party in Friedrichshain, Berlin, during which four workers sustained serious injuries. This prompted Heinz Neumann, editor of the Communist Red Flag daily to call on party members to "Beat the fascists wherever you find them," exacerbating the already tense political situation.

On January 14, 1930, Wessel got into a heated argument with his landlady, the widow of a Communist Party member. Although the exact details of the argument are still debated, what is known is that: 1) she claimed Wessel refused to pay his rent — alternately, she may have tried to raise it and Wessel refused to pay the difference; 2) she claimed he threatened to beat her; 3) Wessel refused to pay rent for his girlfriend, a prostitute (according to some accounts, a former prostitute reformed by Wessel); since the landlady was herself subletting to Wessel, she feared she would lose the rights to her apartment because a prostitute was living there. Rather than approach the police, the landlady went to a local tavern frequented by Communists for help.

The Communists saw this as an ideal opportunity to avenge themselves on Wessel for the earlier attack. Two men, Ali Höhler, a tough with underworld connections, and Erwin Rückert, an active party member, went to Wessel's apartment. When he opened the door for them, Höhler shot him in the head. He died several weeks later from his injuries.

The shooting was immediately exploited by both the Nazis and the Communists to further their political aims. The Communists portrayed Wessel as a pimp, while the Nazis claimed he had actually saved his girlfriend from a life of prostitution by introducing her to the Nazi Party and its values. Goebbels organized a public funeral for the new "martyr" to the Nazi cause, and 30,000 people lined the streets of Berlin to see the procession. Goebbels delivered the eulogy in the presence of Hermann Göring and Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia. During the Nazi era, his life was glorified in memorials, books, and films.

Some months before he died, Wessel had written the verses to what would become the "Horst Wessel Lied" but it first gained popular currency when a choir of Stormtroopers performed it at his funeral. It was later recorded, and in 1931 it became the official anthem of the Nazi Party, played alongside Deutschland über Alles at all official occasions. The song celebrates the SA (whom Hitler would soon purge in the Night of the
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Holy cow, XRC - is that honker in Canada? There must be a hell of a backstory to that.

I imagine those tracks kick up 90% of the racket she makes, or perhaps the engine under the driver's right elbow? Wonder if she'd ride smoother with a load on...
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Holy cow, XRC - is that honker in Canada? There must be a hell of a backstory to that.

I imagine those tracks kick up 90% of the racket she makes, or perhaps the engine under the driver's right elbow? Wonder if she'd ride smoother with a load on...
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Nope certainly not in Canada and its down in the US, I had a opportunity to drive it about five years back and found it a great way to become hearing impaired. This RSO came out of Poland/Belgium and Czech Republic. Zero rubber on the road wheels and that dead, dry pin track makes an ungodly racket when turning over. Not for the faint of heart to take on this restoration and I feel the owner needs a hearty round of applause (he has a second wood bodied later version in the works).
 
XRCD011 said:
Nope certainly not in Canada and its down in the US, I had a opportunity to drive it about five years back and found it a great way to become hearing impaired. This RSO came out of Poland/Belgium and Czech Republic. Zero rubber on the road wheels and that dead, dry pin track makes an ungodly racket when turning over. Not for the faint of heart to take on this restoration and I feel the owner needs a hearty round of applause (he has a second wood bodied later version in the works).
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Just the thing for the man who wants what no one else has. :) Wonder if a guy couldn't upgrade a little with rubber road wheels and a bunch of grease between the pins and the links. Wouldn't be 100% historic at that point, but there's not much reason to clatter around deafening the neighbours and alarming the Harvard pilots that wander by...

That good ol' Ostfront mud. What magical goo it was.

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Dark Alley Dan said:
Just the thing for the man who wants what no one else has. :) Wonder if a guy couldn't upgrade a little with rubber road wheels and a bunch of grease between the pins and the links. Wouldn't be 100% historic at that point, but there's not much reason to clatter around deafening the neighbours and alarming the Harvard pilots that wander by...

That good ol' Ostfront mud. What magical goo it was.

That picture of a Demag D7 says it all about fighting in Russia.


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^ In less stressful times.

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One day she'll be surplus...

But today she set sail from Bath Iron Works (Maine) for Baltimore. She's completed sea trials and is set for commissioning on October 15th.

 
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