Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
popular name for that aircraft was the "stringbag" because of all the bracing wires.
It was believed the germans missed them because their computer directed guns wern't programmed to shoot at anything that SLOW!
actually, not b/c of the "wires" but b/c she could carry almost anything imaginable underneath the wings/fusulage- so says my volume of ww2 raf aircraft out of biggin hill museum- but you were right on the speed- their predictors couldn't compensate below 150 mph, and the stringbag top open unladen, was 127- down to about 80 laden
I see your HMS Hood, raise you with 38cm guns
Note the multipurpose/AA gun on the left side with the barrels elevated to about 100 degrees!
Another example of the war being lost for a horseshoe: a single lucky torpedo hit jams the rudders and it's all over.
Remember the Glowworm before you fuss over Bismarck though.
bdft
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Quite the crew and skipper. To turn and ram a German battleship after she has shot the #### out of you certainly shows character.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glowworm_(H92)
New day New picture
Cheers
Joe
They are kinda exposed!
How far we've come in such a short time really. Still room for improvement IMHO.
Cool bike. Harley?
Cool bike. Harley?
Harley-Davidson WLA, specially made for the US military. 45-degree V-twin L-head engine with all roller bearings, Ricardo-type heads made of silicon-aluminum alloy and sodium-filled exhaust valves, 739cc, dual-spark ignition (both cylinders sparked at the same time but only one fired; the other had an open valve). Engine had 2 cylinders and 4 camshafts and used the Harley Medium cams. The Sportster engine of today is a direct development from this engine, using the same 4-cam system, which is why the pushrods on a Sporty go straight up and the pushrods on a Knuck, Pan, Shovel or Blockhead go up at an angle: they use only a single camshaft.
Engine had a low-pressure recirculating oil system, just like an airplane. This is not surprising when you know that Al Feldmann, one of the designers of the mass-produced Wright radials, had worked for HD for a time. Thing ran beautifully on 4 to 6 pounds of pressure; excess oil was thrown off and snagged by the flywheel scraper, into the return pump and up into the oil tank to cool as fresh cool oil lubricated the engine. Great system! I ran mine at 12 pounds oil pressure, so it always had enough oil no matter what damfool thing I did.
Frames were heavy-gauge SAE 1018 tubing taper-fitted, then brazed, then pinned with chilled cross-pins into the vanadium-steel frame member forgings.
Good friend of mine, a master machinist and licensed Millwright, once said, "It was a Stone-age design built with Space-age materials; buggers will run forever if they are maintained." And he was right; Twosteam and I saw one putting along in Brandon, just 2 weeks ago. Mine is out in the garage, awaiting a more-or-less restoration.
Half a tank of gas and the thing weighed-in at 630 pounds (I weighed mine on a freight scale once), with a couple handfuls of tools in the bags. Three speeds, constant-mesh gearbox, hand shift and foot clutch. Bottom gear was LOW and it meant it, Second was your acceleration gear: from about 10 mph to 40 fast enough to make some of the modern guys sit up and take notice. You could go into top gear at 11 mph and accelerate smoothly to top speed. What is top speed? I don't know. Most which have been timed seem to run a bit over 70 mph with convoy gearing but if conditions are just perfect, with shaved heads and some carb work you can make 100 for a short stretch. Anything more than a short stretch will kill the engine.
Red line was 4600 rpm and the Manual said that they were to be run ONLY on high-octane gasoline: 74 or better! Personally, I have never seen gas THAT cruddy! (They really like AvGas 130, BTW!)
That was for GOING; STOPPING was another matter entirely. Drum brakes fore and aft, rear wide and foot-operated, front narrow and extremely difficult to use. No matter: front brake was a bad joke, put there to keep the cops from asking questions. Rear was something else: with that rigid frame, it would REALLY stop you in a hurry.
One point about them: they were immensely STABLE. Many times I have run off the pavement and onto gravel at speeds up to 70 mph and the old 45 didn't slip a touch.
Tires were 4:00x18 both wheels and the wheels interchanged. They tried to keep a Goodyear All-Weather (diamond tread) on the front and a Goodyear Grasshopper on the rear.
In all, I would call the Harley 45 one of the finest Motorcycles ever constructed.
Canada bought a number of very similar machines, but ours had specially-damped electrical systems because the Brits were using AM radios. The Americans, with their FM sets, did not have the static-interference problems from the ignition systems which our radios had. I do not know how many WLC machines were actually purchased, but I know that 23,222 were bought just by Order-in-Council. Serial number is on the LH crankcase just between the cylinder bases and it tells you what you need to know: 42WLC12551 (my machine) is a 1942 Model WLC (WL with Canadian mods and contract) and it is number 12551, starting from 1. Most of them were 1942s and 1943s.
They are marvellously easy to ride; it takes little time and the machine can almost think for itself. You can dance one through city traffic with ease, but they are much more fun on a dirt road, puttering along at 30 mph, looking at the ducks in the sloughs and watching the gophers run out of your way.
I have ridden a lot of motorcycles, but I can NOT say enough good about the WLC.
They are a CLASSIC...... and they were a Classic the day they were built.
What the poor things were put through in DR school would have killed ANY other machine made.
...................................................................
BTW, anybody notice the sign behind that proud MP? The US Army was segregated at that time. A black man (most of them are brown, anyway) was good enough to fight beside you and to die beside you, but he wasn't good enough to rate the same washroom, bar or jail cell.
What crap!
Best forgotten........
.....................................................................................................
.
Engine had a low-pressure recirculating oil system, just like an airplane. This is not surprising when you know that Al Feldmann, one of the designers of the mass-produced Wright radials, had worked for HD for a time. Thing ran beautifully on 4 to 6 pounds of pressure; excess oil was thrown off and snagged by the flywheel scraper, into the return pump and up into the oil tank to cool as fresh cool oil lubricated the engine. Great system! I ran mine at 12 pounds oil pressure, so it always had enough oil no matter what damfool thing I did.
Frames were heavy-gauge SAE 1018 tubing taper-fitted, then brazed, then pinned with chilled cross-pins into the vanadium-steel frame member forgings.
Good friend of mine, a master machinist and licensed Millwright, once said, "It was a Stone-age design built with Space-age materials; buggers will run forever if they are maintained." And he was right; Twosteam and I saw one putting along in Brandon, just 2 weeks ago. Mine is out in the garage, awaiting a more-or-less restoration.
Half a tank of gas and the thing weighed-in at 630 pounds (I weighed mine on a freight scale once), with a couple handfuls of tools in the bags. Three speeds, constant-mesh gearbox, hand shift and foot clutch. Bottom gear was LOW and it meant it, Second was your acceleration gear: from about 10 mph to 40 fast enough to make some of the modern guys sit up and take notice. You could go into top gear at 11 mph and accelerate smoothly to top speed. What is top speed? I don't know. Most which have been timed seem to run a bit over 70 mph with convoy gearing but if conditions are just perfect, with shaved heads and some carb work you can make 100 for a short stretch. Anything more than a short stretch will kill the engine.
Red line was 4600 rpm and the Manual said that they were to be run ONLY on high-octane gasoline: 74 or better! Personally, I have never seen gas THAT cruddy! (They really like AvGas 130, BTW!)
That was for GOING; STOPPING was another matter entirely. Drum brakes fore and aft, rear wide and foot-operated, front narrow and extremely difficult to use. No matter: front brake was a bad joke, put there to keep the cops from asking questions. Rear was something else: with that rigid frame, it would REALLY stop you in a hurry.
One point about them: they were immensely STABLE. Many times I have run off the pavement and onto gravel at speeds up to 70 mph and the old 45 didn't slip a touch.
Tires were 4:00x18 both wheels and the wheels interchanged. They tried to keep a Goodyear All-Weather (diamond tread) on the front and a Goodyear Grasshopper on the rear.
In all, I would call the Harley 45 one of the finest Motorcycles ever constructed.
Canada bought a number of very similar machines, but ours had specially-damped electrical systems because the Brits were using AM radios. The Americans, with their FM sets, did not have the static-interference problems from the ignition systems which our radios had. I do not know how many WLC machines were actually purchased, but I know that 23,222 were bought just by Order-in-Council. Serial number is on the LH crankcase just between the cylinder bases and it tells you what you need to know: 42WLC12551 (my machine) is a 1942 Model WLC (WL with Canadian mods and contract) and it is number 12551, starting from 1. Most of them were 1942s and 1943s.
They are marvellously easy to ride; it takes little time and the machine can almost think for itself. You can dance one through city traffic with ease, but they are much more fun on a dirt road, puttering along at 30 mph, looking at the ducks in the sloughs and watching the gophers run out of your way.
I have ridden a lot of motorcycles, but I can NOT say enough good about the WLC.
They are a CLASSIC...... and they were a Classic the day they were built.
What the poor things were put through in DR school would have killed ANY other machine made.
...................................................................
BTW, anybody notice the sign behind that proud MP? The US Army was segregated at that time. A black man (most of them are brown, anyway) was good enough to fight beside you and to die beside you, but he wasn't good enough to rate the same washroom, bar or jail cell.
What crap!
Best forgotten........
.....................................................................................................
.
Last edited:
Thompson 1928A1s with Type C mags: 100 rounds apiece.
Looks like the 1942 gas mask.
You do not want these guys p*ssed at you: loaded up, that thing weighed about 17 pounds. They just could be looking for an opportunity to lighten it a couple pounds!
.
Looks like the 1942 gas mask.
You do not want these guys p*ssed at you: loaded up, that thing weighed about 17 pounds. They just could be looking for an opportunity to lighten it a couple pounds!
.
Smellie; thanks for the Harley information
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Yea; 100 rds of .45acp x3 = a clear line of sight (nobody in their right mind would stand in front)
.....................................................
Yea; 100 rds of .45acp x3 = a clear line of sight (nobody in their right mind would stand in front)
