Echoes of the Cold War
Ten Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs (eight F-105Ds and two F-105Fs) of the U.S. Air Force Reserve 465th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 507th Tactical Fighter Group on the flight line at Tinker Air Force Base, OK. 1 June 1978.
Echoes of the Cold War
Ten Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs (eight F-105Ds and two F-105Fs) of the U.S. Air Force Reserve 465th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 507th Tactical Fighter Group on the flight line at Tinker Air Force Base, OK. 1 June 1978.
Identify the Mystery Aircraft
The answer is at the bottom of this blog….were you close?
What is Girardoni’s Windbüchse
The Girardoni air rifle, also known by its German name the Windbüchse, was a military air gun designed in Vienna by Italian inventor Bartolomeo Girardoni c.1779. It was issued to the ‘Imperial-Royal’ army of the Holy Roman Empire between 1780 to 1815, but only used for a few years during that time period.
As its name suggests, and unlike a firearm, the Windbüchse utilized compressed air stored in a tank to propel its otherwise unremarkable lead bullets. The air tank was made of riveted and soldered sheet iron fitted with a brass threaded collar and check valve, covered with leather, offering enough pressure for up to thirty shots and doubling as the rifle’s buttstock. The bullets were contained in a tubular hopper with room for 20 and some shots, with a loading gate towards the muzzle and a spring-loaded piece transferring individual rounds from the magazine to the gun’s chamber. The rifle featured a hammer, in reality a cocking lever, similar to contemporaneous flintlock mechanism. Rather than striking a spark with a flint however, it simply triggered a pin in the stock to push onto the air tank’s valve to release a consistent burst of compressed air. The superficial similarity in operation to a firelock might have been achieved on purpose to help soldiers better get used to the weapon. The barrel was rifled, which coupled with the tight tolerance of the bullets it fired permitted by it being a breech-loader made it fairly accurate, limited only by the inefficiency of air compared to gunpowder as a propellant.
A better look at the magazine’s spring-loaded sliding block in its resting position. When the rifle was pointed up, you could slide the transfer block, connected to a leaf spring, and align its opening with the gun’s magazine. Releasing it would take it and a ball back in line with the barrel.
Although there may have been plans to issue Girardoni’s air rifle to Austrian line infantry, it did not see much use outside of light infantry and Jäger units due to its complexity. The gun was issued with its own proprietary webbing, the pouch pictured above. It contained two extra air tanks, four tube-shaped speedloaders of 20 lead balls each, a complete bullet casting toolkit and a hand pump. The extra tanks were particularly important, as refilling them was the weapon’s main weakness. To achieve the 800-850psi/6000~kPa pressure inside the tank, the user had to rely on the small hand pump and a lot of elbow grease. If no specialized cart-mounted larger pump was in sight, they were in for about 1500 strokes to get their weapon to full capacity and effectiveness. The pump looked like your average bike pump, except the air tank was screwed directly onto the upper portion, while the bottom part was connected to a crossbar for the soldier to step on. Raising the tank up and down would work the pump and refill it. The metalworking techniques of the time did not allow for particularly robust, airtight reservoirs, which caused them to rupture often and prohibited the gun from seeing a wider and longer service life.
Overall the Girardoni rifle was an extremely advanced weapon for its time, being the first breechloading and repeating gun issued to a military, along with making used of an early example of what would become tubular magazines more than fifty years later, providing its user with unseen firepower at the time. It was smokeless back when a sniper’s position could be given away by a puff of blackpowder, and although it was far from being silent it was moreso than any other musket.
Girardoni 1779 system pistol manufactured by S.H. Staudenmeyer in London c.1810, with an 8-round capacity hopper and a curved air tank as a grip.
For many Americans the Windbüchse entered popular consciousness when learning about the Lewis & Clarke expedition, when in the weapon’s later service years it was introduced to the civilian market and found its way into Meriweather Lewis who took the opportunity of charting the Louisiana purchase to flex on the locals.
The Olmec Legacy
Maybe it’s worth a view? Youtube
The Olmec were the first great civilization of Mesoamerica. Despite being latecomers, they bloomed with incredible speed and left an enduring legacy across all of Central America.
The Value of a Lager
Improvised camp made by French soldiers by parking vehicles in a circle, a la settlers in the Wild West. — Mali
Renault FT Tanks bivouacked in the Atlas Mountains. Northern Morocco, spring 1930.
Answer to: Identify the Mystery Aircraft
Antonov An-225 Mriya
I would hunt for the perfect fish, offer the squid and the kids hauled them to the surface. They took turns. They thought that’s what fishing was all about.
Find your own road
What Are Men Thinking?
2024 Campaign Launch
President Donald Trump could announce his 2024 plans as soon as Inauguration Day, if his legal battle over the presidential election falls short, according to a published report. …more here
It would be a reason for Republicans (with the exception of Mitt) to boycott the inauguration and go to the big rally.
Nose Art (Danger – Politically Incorrect)
The last of the nose art on display at the EAA Museum, Oshkosh, WI, a collection of roughly 3 dozen pieces saved at the last minute from being melted down as scrap.
Vietnam
Originally it was Annam, Tonkin and Cochin China before the French united them as Vietnam. Then it was part of French Indochina. Then the Japanese came (allied with Vichy France, run by the Nazis). Then the French came back (Free French) and then the Americans and then they left. Then the Vietnamese and they tossed out the ethnic Chinese (boat people). The Chinese tried to invade and had their asses kicked. I may have missed a step or two. The Red Chinese still want to rule the place.
(bove) Japanese troops, part of the first contingent of reinforcements sent under the Franco-Japanese Joint Defense Protocol, await orders to advance into Saigon, Vietnam. 1 October 1941.
Personal Aside: I’m an avid collector of French Indochinese Currency.
Fun with Maps
Plague Maps
Non Plague Maps
Where you can grow palm trees in the United States
UK population distribution if the UK was the US, which it is not, but you get the drift.
I like both banana bread and carrot cake.
Vaccine?
Bill Gates likes it.
The terrorist, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov was among the maximum 50,000 people allowed into the U.S. every year under the State Department diversity visa program.
Gitmo was designed from the outset to keep foreign terrorists outside of the territorial USA where (once in the country) they would be tried under the US Criminal Code (Title 18, etc.). So Saipov won’t be going there. He’ll be tried for homicide and whatever else the New York penal code has to offer.
The first military operation by the forces from the Group of Five (G5) Sahel states, Operation Hawbi, was conducted on the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
A colonel from France’s anti-jihadist Operation Barkhane said that several hundred soldiers participated in a show of strength and presence. He commented that the French role is to provide advice and air and artillery support to Operation Hawbi.
The area of the operation is not far from the village where four US military personnel were killed on 4 October. A French-language Belgian news service described the area as a hotbed for extremist groups.
The G5 Sahel force is a new regional counterterrorism force composed of units from Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania. The leaders of the five countries plan to field a force of up to 5 000 military, police and civilian personnel by March 2018.
The 5,000 will comprise two battalions each from Mali and Niger and one each from Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania.
On 30 October, the United States said it would pledge $60 million to support the force.
Unicorn Hunting (the video)
Don’t miss LSP’s UNICORN HUNT.
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She wasn’t wrong. |
A reckoning is what we’ve been asking for and it’s coming. It always works the same way with conspirators. The key is the grand jury. It’s a secret proceeding with only the prosector, the witness and the jury. There is no Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination and there is no right to have your attorney present. In fact, if you’re a conspirator — can you trust your attorney? Who does your attorney know, who will THEY tell?
Subpoenas will go out very soon if they have not been sent out already.
Adulterers Supervisory Special Agent Peter Strzok, FBI and FBI Counsel Lisa Page are blaming Loretta Lynch for the rigging of the Hillary investigation and her server and obstruction of justice.
Loretta Lynch was leaned on by former President Bill Clinton on behalf of Candidate Hillary Clinton to obstruct justice in the e-mail scandal then plaguing his wife. She’ll blame Bill.
Bill Clinton, can not take the Fifth and must testify against his wife. Bill Clinton knows a lot about perjury…once bitten, twice shy?
Hillary Clinton — may not be called to testify, but she may get a target letter, which is common practice. (lock-her-up — see above)
Bruce Ohr now blames DOJ and FBI officials for ignoring his warning about Christopher Steele and the dossier. Will he throw his wife, an employee of Fusion GPS, under the bus?
Fired FBI chief James Comey is bashing Strzok, Page and Rod Rosenstein on national TV.
Rod Rosenstein is firing back at Comey.
Brennan and Clapper are buddies, but in a grand jury, Clapper will flip like a pancake on his old friend. Then where will Brennan be? Is there a target letter in the mailbox?
Andrew McCabe is attacking all of them.
Susan Rice isn’t saying too much but she unmasked Trump campaign officials to implicate them in the phone Russian spy hoax. Will she roll on Barack?
Will Barack Hussein Obama get a target letter or will they throw him into the grand jury?
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Clinton/Westworld – a second debate highlight |
What should we expect? I thought I’d delve.
I can’t help but wonder if we won’t see more flies on Hillary at the third debate. Maybe they’ll crawl across her eyeball in a tribute to the new HBO series, “Westworld” (remake). (here) (more here) It makes perfect sense if she is possessed by a demon, as some exorcists suggest.
I wouldn’t rule a seizure out on the part of Slick Willy. He didn’t seem any too pleased when Trump brought in the women that he’d abused and/or raped.
“Clinton Ground Game”
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Slick Willy – a second debate highlight. |
The media foamed at the mouth and recoiled in great horror when Trump suggested that if he won, he’d appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of Hillary’s evil and criminal behavior. However you KNOW that Barack is in it as well, so the Dems are not just fighting for their political futures, they are also fighting to keep from being held to account.
Would Barack be given exile rights in Kenya? From the news reports, he’s not all that popular back home, largely due to his advocacy for homosexuality. He’d have to find some country that would shelter him from the consequences of his actions. Maybe Barack and Hillary would end up in Russia living on the same floor of the same building as Snowden is? Would Putin grant sanctuary or would he allow them to be hauled back to the dock (in chains) and held to answer before a jury of their peers? While Barack is in exile in Russia, would he be compelled to take his mother-in-law (who now lives in the White House) with him?
We know that the People’s Republic of China is unlikely to give Barack and Hillary sanctuary. The same is true of Israel…however the North Koreans could put them to work in the pea fields. It would be the first honest work that either of them ever did.
Will Director Comey, the corrupt leader of the FBI, be paraded into the debate this time and placed front and center to look into Hillary’s reptilian eyes? I realize that he’s not a rape victim (or maybe he is and we don’t know), but Hillary doesn’t trust law enforcement and she might think that he cut a deal with Trump? It would be great theater. It could only be better if Hillary went into a grand mal seizure…but I don’t think that America is that lucky.
UPDATE: Maybe Sec. Clinton will be asked about the secret arms deal that she participated in in Libya? That would be worth the price of a bag of Cheetos.
Cory Lambert is a Wyoming wildlife officer/game warden, who finds the body of an 18-year-old woman on an American Indian reservation in snowy Wyoming. Because it appears to be a murder, the tribal police are obliged to call the FBI. Jane Banner, an inexperienced FBI special agent arrives to run the investigation and they learn that the victim was raped at the postmortem. Teaming up with Lambert as a guide, the duo soon find that their lives are in danger while trying to solve the mystery of the teen’s death.
I’ll let you decide which is which.
Before
The attack
Rebuilding
On September 12, 2001, what would you have given in the way of odds that President George W. Bush would be succeeded by a Muslim-affiliated, half negro, sexually ambiguous, child of communists from Chicago, that he’d do two terms and be followed into office by Donald J. Trump?
Some say that Barack Obama wasn’t a Muslim, though he was raised as one – for a while, anyway. He had a definite affinity toward Iran. But that he’d follow the 9/11 attack and take office during the Global War on Terror is one of the political paradoxes of our time.
Congress authorized CIA to engage in war against Islamic terror groups and then ruthlessly crushed that effort when Barack swept into office with Democrat majorities in the legislature.
The cause and effect of political turmoil (and international intrigue) in America is one of trying to maintain a republic in the face of serious enemies in the infrastructure.
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I remember when Barack wanted to change the 9/11 Memorial Date to a celebration of community agitators (like himself) rather than recalling radical Islam.
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Moving on
While reading a list of statistics from his teleprompter, Biden announced, “Military COVID infected, 118,984, military COVID deaths, 6,114.”
Those numbers do not match the official statistics from the Department of Defense, which show just over 40,000 U.S. military personnel have been infected, and only 7 have died.
Biden could issue a retraction blaming his handlers for the misstatement of facts, but then his handlers would be blaming themselves because Biden can only say what he’s told to say.
Thoughts on the Taliban
Are the Taliban insurgents? Insurgency is a chronic condition that reflects a basic equation of manpower and resources between the combatants.
“Starting today the large-scale anti-terror operation in the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is coming to an end,” Poroshenko said. “Now we are starting a military operation led by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to ensure protection of territorial integrity.”
The Right to Free Speech ->