Picture of the day

What happens when you startle a T-38?

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A concept. Never got off paper. But what a spectacular way to complicate what was a beautifully simple, clean design.
 
c/o "WW2 After WW2":

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German POWs in Belgium sort WWII small arms ammunition for recycling during the winter of 1945-1946. The ammunition was first baked in a furnace to “shoot” it, then after cooling the tumbler separated the lead bullets from the brass or steel casings.
 
The Tachikawa Ki-77, a Japanese experimental ultra-long-range transport.

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A lovely thing. Only two ever built. One was lost on a flight between Japan and a German base in the Crimea. The other set a long-distance record (10,212 miles), was captured, shipped ot the states, analyzed, and scrapped. Her eit is en route to its fate:

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Far more difficult to handle was surrendered chemical weapons. All combatant countries, both Axis and Allied, stockpiled chemical weapons for expected massive gas attacks which thankfully never came during WWII.
There were several methods employed to dispose of Germany’s massive stockpile. The safest, and most difficult and expensive, is shown above at St. Georgen, Germany in June 1946, a little over a year after Germany’s surrender. German workers in Luftwaffe-issue gas masks are pumping out mustard gas (HD in the modern US Army code) from Luftwaffe 500 lbs gas bombs. The mustard gas (which despite it’s name is actually a liquid misted at detonation) was then inerted by a specialist US Army team while the empty bombs were decontaminated and melted as scrap.

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A more common method is shown above in 1946. This was at a former Wehrmacht munitionsarbeitshäuser (ammunition facility, or MunA) at Feucht near Nuremberg in the American occupation zone. The US Army made this facility a centralized site for destroying chemical artillery shells and light bombs, done by building earthen crucibles as shown above and incinerating the ordnance. This was obviously dangerous (four German workers were killed) but a fast and cheap method of eliminating chemical weapons. The Feucht facility also handled regular dud aircraft bombs found inside Nuremberg, and small arms ammunition from the surrounding countryside.
 
Also from WW2 after WW2

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The situation in the Far East in 1945 was quite different. Japan’s chemical stockpile was smaller and less sophisticated than Germany’s; on the other hand, (along with Italy) Japan was one of two nations to use chemical weapons during WWII and by far and away the most prolific user. Japanese use of chemical weapons against China is well-documented (including actual photographic evidence during the occupation of Shanghai) and estimated to have cost China 10,000 casualties. Japan’s chemical warfare program was largely outside of the home islands, and centered at Unit 516 at Cicigar in the puppet nation of Manchukuo (today Qiqihar, China). Unit 516 was subordinate to Unit 731, the overall imperial special weapons outfit more famous for it’s gruesome biological warfare experiments.

The above drawing of a Japanese chemical bomb was prepared by the US Navy in 1945. The types of chemical weapons were lewisite (L in the modern US Army code), mustard gas (HD), phosgene (CG), and cyanide (AC) along with (actually, most commonly) an agent the imperial army called “yellow gas”, a cocktail of HD and L. Over 2 million bombs and artillery shells were manufactured.

On 9 August 1945, the same day as the Nagasaki atomic mission, the USSR invaded Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo and northern Korea. Some of the Japanese chemical stockpile was captured intact. Opposite their policy in Europe, the Soviets did not retain or study the Japanese chemical weapons. Initially, Stalin refused to transfer any to Mao’s communists and ordered it all destroyed. However years later, as the red army completed it’s pullout from Manchuria, some Soviet-made chemical weapons were transferred to Mao’s troops. During the 1980s the PRC army’s chemical weapons stockpile included modern Chinese manufacture, alongside aging WWII-era Soviet and Japanese ordnance, so either some was inadvertently transferred, or, the Chinese themselves recovered and refurbished some.

After the Emperor’s 15 August 1945 surrender announcement, orders were issued to forces on the Asian mainland to destroy in situ any and all chemical weapons in their possession. Some units in Manchukuo possessing chemical rounds were already in motion due to the Soviet attack. None were properly destroyed, many were thrown into Manchuria’s Nen river, others were buried wherever the possessing unit happened to be at the time. This led to a scattershot effect as small quantities (sometimes one or two individual shells) was buried along the side of a road, in a culvert, or wherever. By intent, none of the locations were marked.

When China’s building boom started in the 1980s this increasingly caused problems as workers in formerly rural areas struck long-buried chemical weapons. Due to the haphazard way Japan’s chemical warfare effort ended, these ranged in quantity from lone individual mortar rounds, up to (for example) a find in April 2001 of 193 artillery shells and four 55 gallon drums in one location.

Between 1999-2005, a total of 281 WWII Japanese chemical weapon items (artillery shells and bombs) were recovered in China at Japanese expense, in addition to those China itself had been storing, in some cases since the 1950s. By the end of 2013 about 50,000 items had been destroyed. In January 2017 another 2,500 items were destroyed. The estimate of what remains unaccounted for in 2017 is an item of dispute; Japan feels between 200,000 to 300,000 items while China has quoted figures as high as half a million.
 
The Kettering Bug:

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A ground-launched autonomous aerial drone from 1917. This from Wikipedia:

During World War I, the United States Army aircraft board asked Charles Kettering of Dayton, Ohio to design an unmanned "flying bomb" which could hit a target at a range of 64 kilometres (40 mi). Kettering's design, formally called the Kettering Aerial Torpedo but later known as the Kettering Bug, was built by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company. Orville Wright acted as an aeronautical consultant on the project, while Elmer Ambrose Sperry designed the control and guidance system. A piloted development aircraft was built as the Dayton-Wright Bug.

The aircraft was powered by one 4-cylinder, 40-horsepower De Palma engine. The engine was mass-produced by the Ford Motor Company for about $40 each.[3] The fuselage was constructed of wood laminates and papier-mâché, while the wings were made of cardboard. The "Bug" could fly at a speed of 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). The total cost of each Bug was $400.[1]

The Bug was launched using a dolly-and-track system, similar to the method used by the Wright Brothers when they made their first powered flights in 1903. Once launched, a small onboard gyroscope guided the aircraft to its destination. The control system used a pneumatic/vacuum system, an electric system and an aneroid barometer/altimeter.

To ensure the Bug hit its target, a mechanical system was devised that would track the aircraft's distance flown. Before takeoff, technicians determined the distance to be traveled relative to the air, taking into account wind speed and direction along the flight path. This was used to calculate the total number of engine revolutions needed for the Bug to reach its destination. When a total revolution counter reached this value a cam dropped down which shut off the engine and retracted the bolts attaching the wings, which fell off. The Bug began a ballistic trajectory into the target; the impact detonated the payload of 82 kilograms (180 lb) of explosives.

Pretty sophisticated for the time. I imagine the folks who gave the world the V1 did some reading on this critter...
 
The Kettering Bug:

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A ground-launched autonomous aerial drone from 1917. This from Wikipedia:



Pretty sophisticated for the time. I imagine the folks who gave the world the V1 did some reading on this critter...

Radio control, among other things was in it's infancy. A good idea before it's time.

Grizz
 
Some day,some one will build a replica of it 9of course it will be RC this time) just for fun of it.I wonder if original plans survived somewhere.

Meanwhile in France...

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Note how long the bag charges are, longer than the case which to only seal the rear of the chamber. Would be nice to know if the bag charges enter into a hollow rear section of the 80cm shell, perhaps to the white line mark. Makes the Battleship Yamota's 18 inch guns seem like popguns by comparison.
 
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