Picture of the day

DOOK said:
I read once that, when you were stationed on an Ammunition supply vessel, you slept well; knowing if you were hit, you would never make it to the water alive.
On any other supply vessel, you didn't sleep so well.
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Gov'tGrant said:
Same sort of thing if you were a merchant marine sailor shipping out on a gasoline tanker.
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Used to work with a semi-retired British Petroleum tanker captain. Well, he was retired from the shipping industry, just couldn't sit still so he kept working, well into his 70's, on barbwire crews on the prairies (of all things). It was a physically tough summer job in my 20's, and this salty old Brit could keep up with any of us.

Anyway, with hard work and the prairie sun baking our brains, every now and then work just sort of ceased to happen as we hydrated and swapped stories. The old captain talked about his stint with BP running tankers full of Napalm to Vietnam on the QT.

The US military was not keen on shipping Napalm bombs loaded up, so the canisters went on standard cargo ships, and the goo juice was delivered by BP. The thing about Napalm, is that it's jellied, not a liquid. To pump it on and off the ship, it had to be heated up and melted. The ship itself was customized with heating coils inside the tanker hold to accomplish this for offloading. As the ships's captain, he was bound by international customs law, and BP policy, to remain on-board to supervise both the loading and unloading of the ship.

For safety reasons, the US wouldn't let him actually dock in Vietnam - he would anchor offshore and load tenders who would shuttle smaller amounts to shore. The whole process would take a day and a half to two days to unload a topped up tanker.

I asked him how spooky it was, and he sort of shrugged, and said something along the lines of "If the sea wants to take you, she'll take you. And at least the weather in the South Pacific beat the hell out of the North Atlantic."

Vaguely related, I once asked him why he retired to an acreage on the Alberta prairie: "So I never have to see the ocean again."
 
Behold the Fabulous Italian Thoroughbred, the FIAT 2000:

EarlyTank-Italian-fiat2000-2.jpeg


Big as a house, and twice as slow.

rear-fiat-200-tank.jpg


With room for the tutti famiglia:

Fiat_2000_cutaway.jpg


Big even by WW1 standards:

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40 tons. Two built. Fates as follows:

In Libya, the FIAT tank proved capable of an average speed of 4 km/h, and so, after two months its career ended, being unable to keep up with rapid movement of the enemy. One remained in Tripoli and the other was sent to Italy in the spring of 1919, where it performed before the King at Rome Stadium. The tank put on a convincing display: it climbed a 1.1 m wall, then faced another 3.5 m wall, which it knocked down with its weight. Then a trench of 3 m width was successfully crossed and several trees were knocked down. This impressive performance failed to revive interest in the heavy tank and so it was abandoned.

The surviving FIAT 2000 at Rome was left in a depot for several years, until it was sent on the orders of Colonel Maltese to Forte Tiburtino, risking to catch fire during the travel. In 1934 it was seen again in a Campo Dux parade, having been repainted and even rearmed, with two 37/40 mm guns instead of the forward machine guns. It was later reportedly transformed into a monument at Bologna, after that its fate is unknown, like the other tank.
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Insert Italianate shrug here (like the Gallic shrug, but without the intensity).
 
All it needs is the Honeywell AGT1500 Gas turbine of the M1 Abrams with it's 1500 peak Horsepower. :)
1280px-AGT1500_engine_and_M1_tank.JPEG


Original Fiat 2000 Specs:
The layout of the FIAT 2000 differed to the other tanks then in use, especially the British ones. The engine was separated from the crew; not placed behind the crew compartment as modern tanks, but below it. The mechanical layout was also interesting and innovative, comprising a FIAT Aviazione A12, water-cooled 240 hp engine with 6 cylinders driving the tracks through a transverse transmission. The fuel capacity was 600 - 1,000 liters, but this gave only 75 km range on paved roads.

The tracks were longer than the hull, but were lower in comparison to the wrap-around type found on the British 'rhomboidal' tanks and thus lower in weight.

The armour was of clean design, being made of riveted steel plates. It was 15 mm thick on the sides and 20 mm on the front.

Armament originally consisted of the turret mounted gun and ten machineguns (three on each side and four in front), but this left the rear of the tank undefended and tended to contaminate the interior with propellant fumes, so it was decided to install a ventilator in the roof and alter the machinegun positions to two on each side, three at the rear, and two in front.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the tank's weaponry was the turret; apart from the Renault FT, this was the first tank to have a rotating turret mounted above the hull. The turret was made of four pieces rivetted together and had room enough for two crew members. Its weapon was a 65/17 howitzer (of 65mm caliber with a barrel 17 calibers long). Thanks to the tall turret and the space available beneath it, the gun's elevation was -10/+75°.

Type Heavy tank
Place of origin Italy
Service history
Wars Pacification of Libya
Production history
No. built 2
Specifications
Weight 40 t
Length 7.4 m (24 ft 3 in)
Width 3.1 m (10 ft 2 in)
Height 3.9 m (12 ft 10 in)
Crew 10
Armor Front/sides 20 mm (0.79 in)
Top 15 mm (0.59 in)
Main
armament
1 x 65 mm gun
Secondary
armament
6 x 6.5 mm Fiat-Revelli Mod. 1914 machine guns
Engine Fiat Aviazione A.12
water-cooled inline six cylinder (petrol)
240 hp
Power/weight 6 hp/t
Transmission 6 forward and 2 reverse ratios gearbox, low range
Suspension Leaf springs
Ground clearance 0.4 m (1 ft 4 in)
Fuel capacity 600 L (160 US gal; 130 imp gal)
Operational
range
75 km (47 mi)
Speed 7 km/h (4.3 mph)
 
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Ed Smurf said:
Who writes these headlines?...from BBC.
F6jOp5a.jpg
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The Beeb is not what it use to be. Run by the PC brigade and staffed by kids under 25 (sorry but I'm a old fart) who have done / seen little and work for even less. Although the same model seems to be here in Canada too, have you watched CTV or Global 'news' recently. All the news seems to have been ripped from social media............

Need I say more.

Candocad.
 
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Plane crash and bad landing. Isn't that an oxymoron ? :) Universal rule of plane crash investigations. If we can't figure out what the reason was,it's Pilot Error.

Grizz
 
Tanks underwent evolution, same as mammals. At one time, this was the standard:

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In the same way the planet used to have wolves the size of horses and bears the size of modern tanks. Then, evolution. Twenty years after the FIAT 2000 slowly churned along (so as to not upset the lads playing billiards in the drill hall - third floor, across from the sauna) Europe developed a perverse belief in the power of the Tankette. And so, as we now have wolf-sized wolves and bear-sized bears, in the 1930's we had teenly lil' cartoon two-man tank-like shoeboxes:

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polishtankette


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Not even a decent place to cook a roast or host a dinner party in there. What price progress?
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Carden-Loyd_Two-Man_Tankette%2C_1926._KID235.jpg


Not even a decent place to cook a roast or host a dinner party in there. What price progress?
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And back again (or still)... I know the Wiesel has been covered before, but they're just so darned cute that it's worth including them again.

The US Military keeps borrowing a few, off and on, for testing.

Big picture so you can get a sense of just how tiny they are:
german-rheinmetall-ag-wiesel-armored-weapons-carrier-isaf-4.jpg



Tank hunter version:
300px-Ozelot.jpg



Mortar version. This has a lo of possibilities, the mortar is an auto-loader. Beats the pants off a team of grunts having to haul that tube and ammo around...

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Need to get to that inconveniently placed Wadi in a hurry? "Get to the choppa!"

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There's a pile of variants of these nimble little things. And unlike earlier versions, you can pack a couple of lunches and a case of beer in the storage.
 
Ganderite said:
No hearing protection? I assume it would be quite LOUD.
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Anyone actually firing on the range that day was required to have hearing protection, either ear plugs or muffs.

If you look to the left side of the picture, on the table, near John's right arm, and directly in line of the photographer, is a live round (to give you an idea of the size of these things.)
 
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