John Kettler

Now that we have Amateur Hour out of the way, let me show you a DIORAMA. I used all caps to differentiate it from both this and the Gallipoli piece. https://mymodernmet.com/scale-model-ancient-rome/?fbclid=IwAR22Hbm6E6gKcKFv0eB-8oTnY2QbMkDvh5y4FKQqHO_HoBIFF7PGck7sip4 Here's a more recent digital reconstruction. Mind, this is not the Rome most of us know, but is much later. https://sputniknews.com/art_living/201603051035839184-ancient-rome-video/ Regards, John Kettler

Want to build dioramas? Here's a great short course. Probably best water representations I recall seeing, too. Regards, John Kettler

This child appeared in a Tumblr piece in a list of black child prodigies, and I was blown away by what he's done so far, never mind where he's going! Carson Huey-You The 11-year-old is the youngest student ever to attend Texas Christian University. Carson, who plans to become a quantum physicist, is taking calculus, physics, history and religion in his first semester. Given that he was devouring chapter books by age 2 and attending high school by age 5, the boy genius might reach his goal of attaining a doctorate degree before age 20. Regards, John Kettler

Sublime, Be sure to watch World War I From Above over on my Omnibus Post. Has some great material on the battle. Shall have to look at the book. Might I suggest John Keegan's The Face of Battle as a great read? A substantial part of the book is specifically devoted to what the Somme was like for the British troops, in all the phases, and the descriptions are harrowing. Keegan came up with a juicy and salient bit of grog chrome regarding the fearsome barrage and the intended barbed wire destruction, too, and the discovery is highly significant in understanding what happened and why. The book you recommended seems like a wonderful read and great resource. Thanks! Regards, John Kettler

Got the head's up on this incredible doc from a couple of my brothers. This is likely one of the post important WW I docs ever made--from a bunch of perspectives, too. The imagery verges on incredible in terms of content and insights provided, and there are tons of segments providing context for many major battles. World War I from Above Regards, John Kettler

Andy, Always thought the Vulcan was one of the prettiest jets ever and that the Victor looked like something from bad 50s SF. Thought the guy on the Tannoy in the fist video would never shut ut, but thankfully, he did, so got to hear the engines. The second video was wrenching to watch, akin, I imagine to when the last Space Shuttle was retired. Had no idea so many UK people were mad about this Vulcan! Loved the several teases before landing. Which air museum will receive her? Regards, John Kettler

General Jack Ripper, The article was okay, but the comments were quite the read. Regards, John Kettler

Erwin, Those aren't dolls in the sense you'd think of. The doll is high fashion model in a presumably expensive shoot designed to convey that idea. Have found some nine more such "dolls" on Tumblr, and blown up images of individual ones make it clear these are real women. As for Marilyn Monroe, if she was that underwhelming, why has she been copied who knows how many times by modern women desperate to have her allure and looks? There are pics of her back when she was Norma Jean, and even pre-Hollywood, as a wholesome American girl, she commanded a calendar feature shot. She wasn't plastic, even after Hollywood glammed her up. Michael Emrys, A worthy research project if ever I heard of one! You should submit a research grant proposal forthwith. Title could be: A Morphological Assessment of the Gluteal Proportions of V. Dugan As Measured Against Heterosexual Male Standards for the Callipygous Heterosexual Female Then, and in the Succeeding Decades, with a Foreword by Sir Mixalot. Looks like a slam dunk to me! Now, where should you submit it? Regards, John Kettler

Erwin, My first thought was they reminded me of LifeSavers™ candy, because the chair is dead on for cherry. Didn't know what to make of this when I came across it, but Barbie's appeared in all sorts of fancy duds over the decades, so I suppose the super luxe dolls were inevitable, but are these them? Regards, John Kettler

Believe this thing should be called a Face Plant Inducer, for that's the thought about it which immediately came to mind when I first saw the scary ingenious exercise device. Imagine if you could put solid metal spheres of various weights in the far end of that thing and work up from what you see to, say, a shot put ball. What fantastic condition you'd be in from doing that! Look! They just bought their first furniture set together and invited close friends over to show it off. Regards, John Kettler

Erwin, What do you make of Russians goose stepping? My vague recollection is that the Russians modeled the Tsarist (?) army on the Germans, who were thought of as the sine qua non military, so that's how it came to be. As for the headgear, to me, it reads India and a reimagined coxcomb. Now for a pic! Am not at all sure what I'm looking at here, though my suspicions run to some amalgamation of several electromechanical devices, but it reads steam punk. The woman's name is Vicky Dugan--for those able to tear their eyes away from the marvelous contraption on the table! Regards, John Kettler

Returning to Bazooka Charlie, back in my military aerospace days, part of my work was CAS analysis for Maverick. Consequently, things like flight envelopes, missile performance, initial altitude, flight profile, release altitude and such were all essential info. Wonder whether similar data still exists for his attacks, especially dive angle, open fire slant range to target, number of rockets launched per pass and from what stations and intervals, convergence distance for launchers (presuming the techniques used for aligning MGs and cannon were used) and number of passes per sortie. Can absolutely guarantee both his altitude and slant ranges were small fractions of Tiffies, Thunderbolts, etc. His airspeed was likely something around a third of those planes, too, and his pullout altitude could easily have been under 100'. In fact, I found a great book excerpt taken from Robert Dorr's Hell Hawks showing that during BoB, P-47s were pulverizing the Panzers with delayed action bombs dropped from 100'! Extreme flying caused by very low cloud cover and US forces in extremis. Recall, too, that Patton had ordered that 3rd Army soldiers, because the bazooka was so inaccurate, not fire at over 60 yard range. Don't know the P-47 rocket launch range yet, but the footage is still useful. Does anyone have that book devoted to tankbusting aircraft and has lots of diagrams, attack profiles and such? If so, please see if you can find out (and tell us) what the typical rocket attack profile and launch range were for 4.5 inch rockets armed P-47s, P-38s and P-51s. Thanks! Regards, John Kettler

What a fine review, and how great of Peter Jackson to restore all 100 hours of film despite using only some presumably much smaller part of it! Thanks for sharing this. Regards, John Kettler

RockinHarry, My fear of artillery would've ceased to be a Weapons Tight issue at the point where a vehicle was either near missed or hit by a bazooka rocket or rockets. In my world, active threats have absolute priority over potential threats. Am surprised that after the first attack merely having the plane in a ground attack flight profile wouldn't have been enough to go Weapons Free. "Alarm! Jabo ! Alles Waffen. Feuer!" or something similar, since I winged it on the German. If vehicles, would expect a clock reference and if infantry, unit's front, left, right, or rear for orientation. Frankly, I'm still processing what this man was able to achieve with his highly effective field expedient ground attack system. The truth of the matter is that his individual performance outshone by leaps and bounds the known overall historical effectiveness of CAS rocket attacks vs armor. Moreover, I seriously doubt there was a pilot in IX TAF who ever got as many kills, maybe even absolutely, as Carpenter obtained in a handful of sorties. Does anyone here have any data on Allied tank buster aces who got their AFV kills with rockets? If so, am dying to see it. Regards, John Kettler

Came across this, and thought many here would enjoy seeing it. I'm a big fan of war art, and these are but a few pics from soldier Victor Lundy's set of eight sketchbooks he donated to the Library of Congress. Internal link will take you to everything that was in them. The sampler covers many sketches of things he saw while recovering after being wounded at age 20 in Normandy. https://mymodernmet.com/victor-lundy-wwii-sketchbooks?fbclid=IwAR3k3b3lrmj9_LhXpEps1NO4KycCVxs2mdCfLCsckvdlgQzYN_AwKMuBZiw Regards, John Kettler

MikeyD, You should see the US 75mm vs the Panther 75mm. It's of roughly the order of the difference between .22 LR and the current US 5.56 mm cartridge. Yes, they're both practically identical in bore, but after that forget it. Regards, John Kettler

The below is a first rate piece of brand new (2018) work combining military history, doctrinal analysis, technical analysis and several modeling methodologies to fill in penetration tables against an array of German tanks at specified common ranges and aspect angles and to provide the proper context for understanding the performance of the 76 MM Gun in battle. These tables were never completed during WW II. The study is both readable and super technical for those wishing to so engage in either the ballistic analyses or the intricacies of the modeling methods. a juicy tidbit I came across describes an American analog to the British Sherman that rammed a King Tiger. A 75 mm Sherman came around the corner and found itself a few tens of meters from a Panther with its turret not yet pointing at them, so the TC ordered the driver to ram so the Panther couldn't get the gun positioned to fire. Great was the consternation when the Sherman fired at zero range into the turret side of the Panther and got no penetrations. The impacts did stun the crewmen, who were Tommy gunned as they exited their steed, dazed. Why didn't those shots penetrate? Projectiles shattered under excessive impact forces. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1045347.pdf UNCLASSIFIED Technical Report ARMET-TR-17002 THE 76-MM GUN M1A1 AND M1A2: AN ANALYSIS OF U.S. ANTI-TANK CAPABILITIES DURING WORLD WAR II Jose Cosme Jeff Ranu Shawn Spickert-Fulton January 2018 AD AD-E403 980 U.S. ARMY ARMAMENT RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ENGINEERING CENTER Munitions Engineering Technology Center Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey UNCLASSIFIED Regards, John Kettler

A guy in my local game group (minis) posted this. It's all about "Bazooka Charlie," is the most information I've ever encountered on him and what turns out to be the astounding damage he did with not supposed to be armed bird. The doc has marvelous footage (including new to me shots of the Puma) of German armor at Arracourt, and the damage this man did to the Panzers verges on incredible, yet was officially credited. Essentially, he destroyed or immobilized an entire company equivalent by himself! Tiger 1s and Panthers. A comment says that Carpenter became a history teacher after the war, and that his bird, after a time as a civilian plane after the war, was found, identified as his aerial steed and is being restored by the Collings Foundation, whose specialty is antique aircraft! Regards, John Kettler

The Ministry of Strange Walks has nothing on these people. The video is kind of long, but what a treat. Not my fault if I find yourself changing the way you talk as a result of listening the NCO bawl out what I believe are commands. Regards, John Kettler

Frenchy56, Thinking about it now, I know that plate was discussed in describing the 45 mm ATGs, but I picked up on it here based on the similarity to the one the PaK40 has. As for the other, strange and mysterious are the ways of the Brain in a Jar™. Regards, John Kettler

Frenchy56, Had forgotten the fold down feature, but I see it's also got a dropdown armor plate that goes between the wheels. JoMc67, If you read the accounts of having to leave the guns, the Russian crews would take the sights with them and hide the firing mechanism somewhere nearby the gun. Allies did much the same, from what I've read. Drabkin's book was clear that going back to get the firing mechanism was essential after action, else the Special Section might well charge sabotage! What the current engine doesn't permit is the stationing of the crew in shelter near the gun during artillery fire, then emerging to crew the guns, whose delicate sights they've had with them. Have several times also described Russian practice of having only one man on a ATG at a time, after early war wholesale losses of trained crews, but while having plenty of guns, forced a fundamental change. The Germans did the same sort of thing when it came to sheltering a crew. The dashing of gun crews to man the guns after the enemy's barrage is shown in this clip from Brigada Tankova, but not installing the sights. The same situation obtains for things like HMGs. Allied practices weren't all that different in terms of disabling a weapon, but it's not the same as spiking an old muzzle loading cannon. There, a spike could take hours to drill out. Regards, John Kettler

Michael Emrys, For those who don't know of him, Boyd was the god of ACM (Air Combat Maneuvering) aka dogfighting and had figured it out top to bottom. Forget where, but I recently read he slipped a copy of the classified report to an Israeli pilot he knew. We used to talk about the energy egg back when I was at Hughes and involved in the Operations Analysis of the then in development AMRAAM. Boyd and company tried to get a US MIG-21 equivalent built, but the Air Force kept tacking on requirement after requirement, including nuclear weapon delivery, which drove up weight, size and hugely, cost and complexity. As built, it's radar was grossly inferior to that fitted on the F-14, F-15 and F-18, all of which Hughes built. A lot of the problem stemmed from the tiny antenna, but I understand the current radar is much better, though I don't have any data to hand. AMRAAM had a dogfight mode, too, in which the seeker could be locked on directly using the missile's own radar seeker, just like a AIM-9 series Sidewinder. Because the AMRAAM was explicitly designed to fit a Sidewinder rail and met all the weight, sixe and interface constraints, Hughes was in the fabulous position of being able to potentially market to any qualified country operating the AIM-9. Ought to know, for I wrote that report in which I cataloged every single aircraft with a Sidewinder rail fitted. What a pain! Regards, John Kettler

Andy, A bit of frayed nerves or maybe fun at the Belarus desk at DIA. Back when, that would certainly have commanded my attention as a Soviet Threat Analyst. What a nasty toy for Belarus SOF and, by extension, Russian SOF! Take a few behind enemy lines and cause wholesale havoc without exposing anyone directly! Strong argument for drone countermeasures. Regards, John Kettler

Speaking of the ZIS-3 gun shield angle issue, know of no ATG with a variable angle shield, but the Soviet antitank gunners on the 45 mm ATGs could and did remove the shield altogether in order to reduce the vertical profile as much as possible to aid gun concealment. If memory serves, they might also remove the wheels, too. These things are described in Artem Drabkin's Panzer Killers, in the section on the 45 mm Destroyer units. Would further observe that the relevant portion of the book makes clear that the guns go into position at night, are camouflaged, then fight the entire antitank battle without ever displacing. The dray horse is nearby, in cover, but the gun stays until the action is concluded. Then and only then might it swap firing positions by hand or be towed elsewhere. Regards, John Kettler

Artkin, Now you know why I said "early delivery" in the OP. Don't know how that happened. Maybe all the other PPShs were tied up on another film project at the time, but the film had to go forward? After all, I've see non-VISMOD T62s in a Soviet-produced GPW Panzer attack sequence I'm sure you know. It's the one where everyone sings "Sacred War." Regards, John Kettler