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As the United States continues to deal with controversy over foreign interference and disinformation in the 2016 presidential election, concerns are growing that elections in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and elsewhere could be similarly influenced by so-called “fake news.” How real is this threat in Latin America and what can be done about it? Are technology companies responding adequately or is regulation required? What are the implications for freedom of expression if governments or corporations decide what is real and what is “fake”?
Please join us for a timely conversation that separates fact from rumor, assesses the threat to upcoming Latin American elections from deliberate disinformation in social media, and looks rigorously at potential policy responses both from the technology sector and governments.
Notting Hill Carnival 2022, Canon P, Industar 55mm F2.8; FP4
Claudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch (21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) , was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. Upon arriving in the UK, she immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and would remain a member for the rest of her life. She then founded Britain's first major black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, in 1958, and played a central role in founding the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.
A cardboard army of Mark Zuckerbergs at the Capitol, part of a protest by Avaaz.
"Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg's Senate hearing on Tuesday, advocacy group, Avaaz, takes an army of 100 life-sized Zuckerberg cutouts wearing 'Fix Facebook' t-shirts to the Capitol lawn. The event intends to call attention to the hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook. The group is calling on the CEO to ban all bots, alert the public any and every time users see fake or disinformation, fund fact checkers around the world, and submit to an independent audit to review the scale and scope of fake news."
Brian Stelter, Fellow, Media and Democracy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, USA speaking in the The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 17 January. Congress Centre - Spotlight. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Faruk Pinjo
5 July to 28 July 2019
White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB
In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”.
rorschachaudio.com/2019/04/22/international-lawns-rca-dis...
Special thanks to Domo Baal.
From left to right: Lisa Guernsey, Deputy Director, Education Policy Program, New America, Director, Learning Technologies Project, New America;
Aleksander Dardeli, Senior Vice President, IREX;
An-Me Chung, Senior Fellow, Mozilla Foundation;
Alan Page, Government teacher, Oklahoma City Public Schools
Involved with Generation Citizen;
Patricia Hunt, Government teacher, Arlington County Public Schools, Involved with the News Literacy Project
Photo of “National Grid” - the electromagnetic sound installation by the art project Disinformation, in the basement of the Museum of Installation [art gallery], London, in July 1997. The “Soundproofs” exhibition featured installations by Joe Banks, David Clegg, Bruce Gilbert (from the band Wire) and Javier Marchán, performances by Joe Banks, Martin Creed and Keiko Owada, Bruce Gilbert, and Hayley Newman, plus a panel discussion chaired by Robert Worby (from BBC Radio 3) and the late Paul Burwell. “National Grid” was sponsored by Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers (who also sponsored the Disinformation solo exhibition at Fabrica in 2001). This photo appears on page 157 of “Installation Art in the New Millennium” by MOI curators Nicolas de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, published by Thames & Hudson in 2003, and on page 25 of the magazine “Musica Falsa”, published in Paris in 1997 (photo by Edward Woodman and courtesy of the MOI). The opening event was attended by the artist Gustav Metzger, and by Mika Vainio (of the electronic music group Panasonic).
The “Installation Art in the New Millennium” book describes how “in his work for Soundproofs the British sound artist Joe Banks used the live frequency of the national electricity grid”, and how “the resulting compression of sound was amplified through a series of sensitive nodes [antennas] and produced a loud tremor, which vibrated through the building”. David Clegg claimed that vibrations from “National Grid” triggered car alarms in the street outside and caused masonry to fall from the front of the building.
The text from the original exhibition proposal reads as follows…
“This installation involves setting up a specially adapted shortwave radio to intercept the sine-wave radiated into the VLF radio band by alternating-current electrical supply, at its resonant frequency of 50Hz, interpret this signal, and amplify the results into a live acoustic mass via loudspeakers. National Grid manifests a genuine geomagnetic phenomenon – the electromagnetic signature of the built environment. National Grid is the ultimate realisation of Futurist noise mechanics – drawing not on a stylised simulation of industrial processes, as precedent dictates, but directly upon electricity itself as both a real and metaphorical source of creative energy.”
“Cette installation nécessite l’utilisation d’une radio onde-courtes conçue de manière à intercepter les ondes-sinus émises dans la bande très basse fréquence par le courant électrique alternatif fourni à sa fréquence résonnante de 50Hz, à l’interpréter, et à amplifier le résultat en une masse acoustique projetée dans des haut parleurs. National Grid met au jour un pur et simple phénomène géomagnétique - la signature électromagnétique d’une construction ou d’une bâtiment. National Grid est la réalisation ultimes des mécaniques sonores Futurist- élèves non sur la simulation stylisée d’un process industriel, comme le veut tradition, mais directement sur l’électricité elle-même en tant qu’elle est le sources la fois réelle et métaphorique de l’énergie créatrice” [translation as printed in “Musica Falsa”].
“National Grid” was first published on LP in 1996, and has been exhibited and performed nearly 40 times since…
Angry emoji greets Facebook’s CTO, calling on MPs to defend democracy from disinformation. Photographer : Rob Pinney
Brian Stelter, Fellow, Media and Democracy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, USA speaking in the The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 17 January. Congress Centre - Spotlight. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Faruk Pinjo
The Postcard
A Salmon Cameracolour postcard that was published by J. Salmon Ltd. of Sevenoaks. The card was printed in England.
The card was posted in Sussex on Wednesday the 24th. September 1986 to:
Mrs. Stephens,
29, Valetta Park,
Emsworth,
Hants.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Steyning.
Behind the Seven Sisters -
chalk.
Very warm and sunny.
M."
M's idea of the location of Steyning somewhat awry - Steyning is about 25 miles (40 km) north-west of the Seven Sisters, a series of chalk cliffs just west of Eastbourne in East Sussex.
Steyning is a small rural town in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It is located at the north end of the River Adur gap in the South Downs, four miles (6.4 km) north of Shoreham-by-Sea.
The registration number of the car on the left was issued after January 1967, therefore the photograph was taken after this date.
J. Salmon Ltd.
Alas, J. Salmon no longer produce postcards. Having churned out small coloured rectangles of card from its factory in Kent for more than 100 years, the company stopped publishing postcards in 2017.
The fifth-generation brothers who still ran the company sent a letter to their clients in the autumn of 2017, advising them that the presses would cease printing at the end of 2017, with their remaining stock being sold off throughout the following year.
The firm’s story began in 1880, when the original J. Salmon acquired a printing business on Sevenoaks high street, and produced a collection of twelve black and white scenes of the town.
In 1912, the business broke through into the big time by commissioning the artist Alfred Robert Quinton (1853 - 1934), who produced 2,300 scenes of British life for them up until his death.
From Redruth to King’s Lynn, his softly coloured, highly detailed watercolours of rosy milkmaids, bucolic pumphouses and picturesque harbour towns earned him a place in the hearts of the public, despite references to Alfred's 'chocolate-box art' by some art critics.
J. Salmon also produced photographs and cheery oils of seaside imagery captioned with a garrulous enthusiasm: “Eat More Chips!”, “Sun, Sand & Sea”, “We’re Going Camping!”
It commissioned the comic artist Reg Maurice (who often worked under the pseudonym Vera Paterson), to produce pictures of comically bulbous children with cutesy captions, alongside the usual stock images of British towns.
It was this century’s changing habits – and technology – that did for Salmon. Co-managing director Charles Salmon noted:
“People are going for shorter breaks,
not for a fortnight, so you’re back home
before your postcards have arrived."
He barely needed to say that Instagram and Facebook had made their product all but redundant, almost wiping out the entire industry in a decade.
Michelle Abadie, co-director of the John Hinde Collection, said:
“When I heard the news, I was
actually surprised they still existed."
John Hinde was once J Salmon’s biggest rival; it sold 50-60 million postcards a year at its peak in the 1960's, but it, too, shuttered four years previously. The licensing for its rich archive of images was sold off, and repurposed in art books.
However, in one sense, the death of the postcard is overstated. Like vinyl records, our fetish for the physical objects we left behind is already making its presence felt.
Michelle Abadie points out:
“If you go into Waterstones now, they
sell lots of postcards of book covers.
The idea itself isn’t dead – as a
decorative object, people still want
them.”
Adolf Tolkachev
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 24th. September 1986 was not a good day for Adolf Georgievich Tolkachev, because he was executed on that day.
Adolf, who was born in Kazakhstan on the 6th. January 1927, was a Soviet electronic engineer who provided key documents to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1979 and 1985.
Working at the Soviet radar design bureau Phazotron as one of the chief designers, Tolkachev gave the CIA complete detailed information about such projects as the R-23, R-24, R-33, R-27, and R-60; also fighter-interceptor aircraft radars used on the MiG-29, MiG-31, and Su-27 and other avionics.
Adolf Tolkachev's Career
Tolkachev claimed his distrust of the Soviet government arose from the persecution of his wife's parents who had suffered under Joseph Stalin. He told the CIA he was inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.
From January 1977 to February 1978, Tolkachev attempted on five occasions to approach cars with U.S. diplomatic licence plates in Moscow, coincidentally approaching the CIA Moscow bureau chief Gardner Hathaway at a gas station, but the CIA was wary of counterintelligence operations by the KGB.
On his fifth attempt, the CIA assigned a Russian-speaking officer named John Guilsher to make contact with him. Eventually Tolkachev established his bona fides with intelligence data that proved to be of "incalculable" value to US experts.
The U.S. Air Force completely reversed direction on a $70 million electronics package for the F-15 Eagle as a result of Tolkachev's intelligence, although historian Benjamin B. Fischer says that this was the projected overall cost, rather than an actual cost saving.
Tolkachev resisted the use of traditional CIA methods including dead drops and radios. He preferred personal meetings, as he enjoyed meeting with agents. He was given medicine and medical check-ups during visits. A KGB-linked newspaper later wrote that the CIA showed a great deal of care for Tolkachev, and that the way they treated him was "touching".
Tolkachev found that many of the procedures provided by the CIA were ineffective, and risked giving him away. Tolkachev developed many different ways to bypass Soviet security, despite routine changes which interfered with his activities.
He repeatedly found holes in security, finding ways to check out documents without leaving a record, as well as finding ways to take documents home or to areas of the facility where he had access to better light and more privacy.
When the cameras provided by the CIA failed to work as expected, Tolkachev devised a way to use a civilian camera instead. He developed his own procedures that greatly increased the output and quality of his work. In one meeting alone he provided almost 200 rolls of film, and over 150 rolls in another meeting. He also included detailed notes and explanations of the information within the photos to assist understanding of the documents.
Tolkachev initially refused any payments for his service, knowing they would draw suspicion. He requested art supplies, music, and other items for his son. Because he would not take payments himself, token payments were deposited in an overseas account as a sign of gratitude.
Tolkachev refused to leave the Soviet Union because his wife believed she would become homesick. However he did eventually request that the interest from his accounts be paid to him in roubles, so that he could attempt to bribe any co-workers who might discover his activities.
In case he could not bribe his way out of a situation, Tolkachev requested poison pills in order to commit suicide in case he was captured, and to limit the information the KGB could acquire from interrogating him.
Payments were made to Adolf despite him knowing that he would never be able to access the remaining funds. He went beyond anything required by his payment agreement, and provided information any time it became available to him, not only when he was scheduled to receive compensation or care.
The Compromise and Arrest of Adolf Tolkachev
In 1985 Tolkachev was compromised. While attempting to meet with Tolkachev, a CIA officer was arrested and questioned at the Lubyanka KGB headquarters and prison, and incriminating materials, including spy equipment such as cameras, were seized from him.
The source of the exposure is believed to have been Edward Lee Howard, an ex-CIA officer who fled to Moscow to avoid treason charges. Aldrich Ames apparently also passed his name to the Soviets.
Tolkachev was arrested by the KGB while returning to Moscow from the countryside, and was later put on trial and executed at the age of 59. With much planning over the years, Tolkachev had carefully compartmentalised his spy work from his family, helping his family avoid punishment as well. His son Oleg Tolkachev is now an architect.
The KGB kept Tolkachev's arrest secret in order to feed the CIA disinformation over the course of 10 months.
Legacy of Adolf Tolkachev
A painting of Tolkachev by Kathy Krantz Fieramosca hangs in the CIA's Langley headquarters.
Scepticism Surrounding the Tolkachev Case
Fischer, the former chief historian of the CIA, has presented a contrary view of the Tolkachev case. He argues that:
- Since Tolkachev made several attempts to contact the CIA, including senior CIA officials, it is implausible that the KGB did not detect him.
- Tolkachev claimed that he took documents home to photograph them during lunch, but traveling by means of public transit would have taken about an hour. However this ignores the fact that Tolkachev was unable to continue using his home to collect intelligence, instead finding bathrooms and other locations in the facility where he could take pictures in privacy.
- Since Tolkachev claimed to be asking for documents that were outside his area of work or security clearance, then he would not be able to obtain them without arousing suspicion in the secure, KGB-guarded facility. However this ignores the fact that no system existed for the KGB to filter document withdrawals by subject.
- Fischer also questions the value of the intelligence furnished by Tolkachev, asserting that Tolkachev cannot be credited with saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
Fischer concludes that Tolkachev was a "dangle" agent run by the KGB to obtain CIA technical equipment such as spy cameras, project a false image of Soviet military and economic vitality, and absorb the CIA in a resource- and time-consuming operation.
However, contradicting Fischer's assertions, the Soviet Politburo announced on the day after Tolkachev's execution that he was caught with two million roubles, and that he handed over very important military-technical secrets to the enemy.
Historian Nicholas Dujmovic criticized Fischer's article as "speculative," saying that he makes "few factual statements".
Hoffman also rebutted Fischer's theory, re-asserting that Tolkachev furnished genuine technical information.
Brian Stelter, Fellow, Media and Democracy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, USA speaking in the The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 17 January. Congress Centre - Spotlight. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Faruk Pinjo
Mission Statement of Missouri Botanical Garden: "To discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment." As part of this year's annual holiday light show, strings of lights were suspended over the reflecting pools. I haven't discovered how this light show (and particular the type of installation in the photo) shares knowledge about plants and their environment. I think it sends a very different message about what the Botanical Garden thinks is important and about how they think we should relate to plants in our environment. Saint Louis, Missouri.
Millions of dollars are spent on disinformation campaigns in keeping Americans ignorant of the truth about the healthcare robbery taking place, words like Socialize medicine (whatever that means) now pops up frequently in the news. Millions more are spent hiding the truth regarding the alternatives to this terrible situation and to prevent us for knowing what the Canadians have and we don't. It is time American wake up to this corporate scam which is strangling the American industry and the wellness of the American population. Having health insurance in American should not give any one comfort that the best is provided. Losing your job equals loosing your health insurance, except you are very wealthy. The fact remains that 45 million Americans have no health Insurance and that's a crime in the wealthiest county on the planet. How could those with healthcare find comfort that many of their countrymen go without this basic human safeguard.
Healthcare Propaganda how they are keep Single-payer off the table.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo-BdY432vg
FRONT LINE INTERVIEW NURSES IN CANADA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwx_QFFdrvo&NR=1
www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/elections/canada/
Canada Healthcare:
The health care system in Canada is funded by a mix of public (70%) and private (30%) funding, with most services delivered by private (both for-profit and not-for-profit) providers.
Through all entities in its public-private system, the U.S. spends more per capita than any other nation in the world, but is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal health care.
Health care costs in both countries are rising faster than inflation. As both countries consider changes to their systems, there is debate over whether resources should be added to the public or private sector. Although Canadians and Americans have each looked to the other for ways to improve their respective health care systems, there exists a substantial amount of conflicting information regarding the relative merits of the two systems. In Canada, the United States is used as a model and as a warning against increasing private sector involvement in financing health care. In the U.S., meanwhile, Canada's mostly monopsonistic health system is seen by different sides of the ideological spectrum as either a model to be followed or avoided.
Canada and the United States had similar health care systems in the early 1960s, but now have a different mix of funding mechanisms. Canada's universal single-payer health care system covers about 70% of expenditures, and the Canada Health Act requires that all insured persons be fully insured, without co-payments or user fees, for all medically necessary hospital and physician care. About 91% of hospital expenditures and 99% of total physician services are financed by the public sector. Ophthalmology and dental services account for a lot of the private expenditures in Canada. In the United States, with its mixed public-private system, 16% or 45 million Americans are uninsured at any one time. The U.S. is one of three OECD countries not to have some form of universal health coverage; the other two being Turkey and Mexico.
Please a couple of good testimonial on the single payer canadian system.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESRaElMPkrc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKdfpbqB9hk&feature=related
Wikipedia
Please, Please do add your comments and Information on this topic, what ever your vies are. The More People know the better they can demand this.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
In the Brezhnev era USSR, much attention was paid to this Nazi crime, possibly with the intention of diverting attention from the Katyn massacre of Polish officers. According to Norman Davies, of Wolfson College, Oxford, the village was chosen and the memorial created by the Soviet authorities in a calculated policy of disinformation.
Stuff we found while yardsaleing on 20100501 - full list at: clintjcl.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/
Got this for a mere dime! Isn't it hilarious how his shirt is an ambulance?
This page is full of classic prohibitionist disinformation from the 1970s, such as claiming LSD use will alter your chromosones. A hilarious collector's relic from the failed War On Drugs! There is one copy of this book available online for $30, so I got it for %0.333 of its value :)
Walter.
laying, overdosing.
ambulance, drugs, kid, syringe.
upstairs, Clint and Carolyn's house, Alexandria, Virginia.
May 1, 2010.
... Read my blog at ClintJCL.wordpress.com
... Read Carolyn's blog at CarolynCASL.wordpress.com
... Read my yard sale-related blogposts at clintjcl.wordpress.com/category/yard-sales/
So many lies in so few words....
The Russian government's various Twitter accounts are among the biggest liars on social media, and some of the biggest lies they re-tell almost every year relate to the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in 1939. This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone....
In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin's propagandists denied that Russia was doing anything of the kind while the invasion was actually happening, so lying about an invasion that took place a few decades ago must be a piece of cake in comparison. In Russia, it's a legal requirement to refer to the war against Ukraine as a "Special Military Operation" so maybe we should refer to Stalin dividing up Poland with Hitler in 1939 as a "Special Nazi Collaboration Operation". It's amazing to think that Russian citizens have been arrested, charged and imprisoned for telling the truth about both these events.
The above tweets were posted on 17th September 2021....
According to the first tweet, the USSR somehow "entered" Poland without actually invading - which is a crazy thing to say, given that two Red Army groups (consisting of 25 rifle divisions, 16 cavalry divisions and 12 tank brigades with a total of half a million men) stormed into Poland's sovereign territory in the early hours of 17th September 1939 in a simultaneous offensive that was launched along the entire length of Poland's border with the USSR, aiming to occupy the eastern half of the country. This was achieved after 19 days of fighting between the Red Army and the outnumbered and outgunned Polish army (which had already been fighting against the German invaders since 1st September). That sounds like an invasion to me....
www.flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/15512590631
It's also worth mentioning that the Soviets were breaking the following treaties and agreements when they invaded Poland:
1. The Peace Treaty between Poland, Russia and the Ukraine signed in Riga on 18th March 1921, in which the eastern frontier of Poland was defined.
2. The Protocol between Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Rumania and the USSR regarding renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy, signed in Moscow on 9th February 1929.
3. The Non-Aggression Treaty between Poland and the USSR signed in Moscow on 25th July 1932.
4. The Convention for the Definition of Aggression signed in London on 3rd July 1933, signed by Estonia, Latvia, Rumania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and the USSR.
5. The Protocol signed in Moscow on 5th May 1934 between Poland and the USSR, extending until 31st December 1945, the Non-Aggression Treaty of July 25th 1932.
6. The agreement resulting from the notes exchanged in Moscow on 10th September 1934 between the Polish government and the Soviet government, in connection with the entry of the USSR into the League of Nations. This agreement emphasised that the relations between the countries would, in every respect, continue on the basis of all existing agreements between them, including the Treaty of Non-Aggression and the Convention for the Definition of Aggression.
7. The Covenant of the League of Nations, to which the USSR acceded on 17th September 1934.
8. The joint Communique issued in Moscow on 26th November 1938, by the Polish and Soviet governments, which confirmed that relations between them were, and would continue to be, based on all the existing agreements, including the Non-Aggression Treaty dated 25th July 1932, and extended on 5th May 1934.
TL;DR - Russia is lying as usual.
The next claim in the first tweet is that the Polish territory which the Soviet Union invaded and occupied in 1939 didn't really belong to Poland and had only been part of Poland since 1920.
But this is also a lie.
Back in the real world, much of what is now western Ukraine has been periodically incorporated into the Polish state ever since the beginning of the 11th century, at the time of the Kievan Rus - the first East Slavic state.
Today's Russian propagandists like to claim that Belarus, Ukraine and Russia have always been one nation, but the reality is that although all three had common origins in the Kievan Rus, they subsequently underwent hundreds of years of separate development before Belarus and Ukraine were incorporated into the Russian empire and subjected to prolonged periods of forced Russification.
Almost all of the Kievan Rus was conquered by the Mongols early in the 13th century. A hundred years later, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gradually pushed the Mongols back, expanding its territory to the east and south, until it included all of modern Belarus, almost all of Ukraine and a substantial chunk of western Russia.
At the end of the 14th century a dynastic union was established between Lithuania and Poland, and in 1569, the Union of Lublin formally created a unified state, known as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. All of Belarus and most of Ukraine remained under Lithuanian and Polish rule until the end of the 18th century.
Today's Russia grew out of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and first gained a foothold in eastern Ukraine in the middle of the 17th century when the Commonwealth began to decline. Russia subsequently stole most of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century when it conspired with Prussia and Austria to wipe the Commonwealth off the map. As well as some of present day Poland, Russia acquired all of Lithuania and Belarus and more of Ukraine. The area of western Ukraine that was re-claimed by Poland after the First World War became part of Austria and was therefore never in Russia.
Uprisings against Russian rule during the 19th century - notably in 1830 and 1863 - were supported by all parts of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were savagely suppressed by Russia.
In Belarus, a particularly brutal campaign of Russification was carried out after the second of these uprisings by the Governor General of Vilna, Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky. One of the executed leaders of the uprising was a Belarusian called Kastuś Kalinoŭski, who is still regarded as a national hero by many Belarusians today. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Belarusian volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side formed a battalion that was named in his honour, which later became a regiment.
In 1917, following the February revolution, the provisional government acknowledged the right of self-determination for the non-Russian nationalities in the Tsarist empire. When the Bolsheviks took over they renounced all Russia's territorial claims to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, most of Belarus, and Ukraine - and ceded these lands to Germany in the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, when most of the territories in question were under German occupation. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, part of Russia or the USSR at this point - just as there is nothing chiselled in stone to state that whoever rules in Moscow also gets to rule over Belarus and Ukraine.
As things turned out, a newly independent Poland and the newly formed Soviet state ended up dividing Belarus and Ukraine between them. The Treaty of Riga, which was signed in 1921 after the Polish-Soviet war, defined Poland's eastern border about half way between where the Polish-Russian border had been prior to the partitions of Poland and where it is today. Poland basically managed to reclaim some of what it had previously lost. The Soviets once again renounced their claims to all territory to the west of the new border, but nevertheless they invaded and occupied it two decades later in 1939.
TL;DR - Russia is lying as usual.
The first tweet also falsely claims that Poland was already defeated when the Soviet Union invaded and that the Polish government had already fled the country, despite the fact that Poland was far from defeated and the Polish government had not yet crossed the border into Romania. In any case, these lies ignore the rather pertinent fact that the invasion had already been pre-arranged with the Nazis, during and after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23rd August 1939, which had defined the "spheres of influence" agreed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, ie the territories that each of the signatories could invade without having to worry about retaliation from the other.....
How do we know this?
After the Second World War, the diplomatic communications between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that had been stored in the archives of the German Foreign Office were translated into English and published in a book called "Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-41". The complete collection can now be found online.
www.ibiblio.org/pha/nsr/nsr-preface.html
The records of the correspondence and meetings that took place between August and October 1939 clearly demonstrate how the two tyrannies planned and executed their mutual invasion of Poland. Documents like these are not only fascinating from a historical perspective, but also valuable in that they contradict some of the lies of the Kremlin's post-war propagandists (past and present) and their attempts to rewrite history by downplaying or denying the fact that the Nazis and Soviets were in bed together from August 1939 to June 1941. The archives clearly demonstrate how the Soviets cooperated, coordinated and collaborated with their Nazi allies over and over again during this period.
It's true that there was a gap of 16 days between the German invasion (1st September 1939) and the Soviet invasion (17th September 1939), but there were several reasons for the delay, for example:
1. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, was still preoccupied with his undeclared war against Japan, which was only concluded on 15th September.
2. He also wanted to see if the British and French would fulfill their treaty obligations to Poland and attack Germany's undefended western frontier. French mobilisation had begun on 2nd September and their offensive should have started no later than the 17th.
3. It took time to mobilise the Red Army.
4. There were a few minor disagreements between the Soviets and the Nazis.
5. Stalin also had to invent an excuse - ie the propaganda that would justify the invasion of a peaceful neighbour by the world's only communist state, in alliance with a fascist state.
This is what actually happened in roughly chronological order....
Following the German invasion of Poland the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, sent a telegram to the German Ambassador in Moscow which included the following request: "We definitely expect to have beaten the Polish Army decisively in a few weeks. We would then keep the area that was established as German sphere of interest at Moscow under military occupation. We would naturally, however, for military reasons, also have to proceed further against such Polish military forces as are at that time located in the Polish area belonging to the Russian sphere of interest. Please discuss this at once with Molotov and see if the Soviet Union does not consider it desirable for Russian forces to move at the proper time against Polish forces in the Russian sphere of interest and, for their part, to occupy this territory. In our estimation this would be not only a relief for us, but also, in the sense of the Moscow agreements, in the Soviet interest as well. In this connection please determine whether we may discuss this matter with the officers who have just arrived here and what the Soviet Government intends their position to be".
The Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, responded with a telegram to the German ambassador on 5th September, which stated that: "....we agree with you that at a suitable time it will be absolutely necessary for us to start concrete action".
Soviet mobilisation began on 6th September.
On 9th September, Molotov sent a telegram to Ribbentrop, to inform him that Soviet military intervention "....would take place within the next few days".
On 10th September, the Soviet press was full of "in depth analysis" of the situation in Poland, stressing that German victory was imminent.
The Soviet ambassador left Poland on 11th September.
The next day the Soviet press launched a strident propaganda campaign of fake news about the treatment of the Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities in Poland (which was remarkably similar to the propaganda campaign of fake news the German press had launched about the treatment of the ethnic Germans living in Poland to justify the Nazi invasion), along with claims that the Polish army was scarcely fighting at all. And - of course - as the Polish state was disintegrating, it was imperative for the Red Army to prepare to rush to the aid of their Belarusian and Ukrainian "brothers" (this campaign also had more than a few things in common with the Kremlin’s campaign to justify Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in which it claimed to be defending "oppressed" ethnic Russians)....
On 14th September Molotov explained to the Germans that although the Red Army was ready to invade Poland, in order to justify the invasion politically: "....it was of the greatest importance not to take action until the governmental centre of Poland, the city of Warsaw, had fallen". Molotov therefore asked to be informed as soon as possible when the Germans expected to capture Warsaw.
Polish government officials had begun to leave the capital on 7th September to escape the city's imminent encirclement by the German forces, which was complete by 16th September. The government initially relocated to Nałęczów, 85 miles south-east of Warsaw, then to Krzemieniec - under continual attack by the German airforce. They had to keep moving to avoid being captured by the advancing Germans, and followed retreating Polish forces who were forming a bridgehead in south-eastern Poland in the forlorn hope that the promised French advance by 17th September would actually take place. Here, with their back to two friendly nations, Romania and Hungary, the Polish army intended to make a last ditch stand - and if overwhelmed, to cross the border into Romania and make their way to the west to continue the fight from there. The government relocated to Zaleszczyki near the Romanian border on 14th September. When the town was bombed by the Luftwaffe, they relocated to nearby Kuty (the Polish GHQ was now also nearby in Kolomyja), while some of the various foreign ambassadors and their staff crossed the border into Romania.
Ribbentrop sent Molotov a message on 15th September which stated that: "The destruction of the Polish Army is rapidly approaching its conclusion, as appears from the review of the military situation of September 14 which has already been communicated to you. We count on the occupation of Warsaw in the next few days". This was premature (Warsaw actually held out until 27th September), but inspired an immediate response from Molotov. According to the German Ambassador in Moscow, Molotov told him that: "....military intervention by the Soviet Union was imminent - perhaps even tomorrow or the day after. Stalin was at present in consultation with the military leaders and he would this very night, in the presence of Molotov, give me the day and hour of the Soviet advance".
The USSR then put its invasion plans into action without delay.
In the early hours of 17th September a telegram from the German ambassador to the German Foreign Office confirmed the news that the Nazis had been eagerly anticipating: "Stalin received me at 2 o'clock at night in the presence of Molotov and Voroshilov and declared that the Red Army would cross the Soviet border this morning at 6 o'clock along the whole line from Polozk to Kamenetz-Podolsk. In order to avoid incidents, Stalin urgently requested that we see to it that German planes as of today do not fly east of the Bialystok-Brest-Litovsk-Lemberg Line. Soviet planes would begin today to bomb the district east of Lemberg. I promised to do my best with regard to informing the German Air Force but asked in view of the little time left that Soviet planes not approach the above-mentioned line too closely today. The Soviet commission will arrive in Bialystok tomorrow or day after tomorrow at the latest. Stalin read me a note that is to be handed to the Polish Ambassador tonight, to be sent in copy to all the missions in the course of the day and then published. The note contains a justification for the Soviet action. The draft read to me contained three points unacceptable to us. In answer to my objections, Stalin with the utmost readiness so altered the text that the note now seems satisfactory for us".
The Nazi and Soviet allies were also squabbling over the wording of a joint declaration to justify the USSR's invasion of Poland. Stalin wanted to use the already prepared excuse that they were going to "protect" the Belarusians and Ukrainians threatened by the German advance, which didn't please the Germans.
Even more farcical was the attempt to give the aforementioned note signed by Molotov to the Polish ambassador in Moscow at 3AM on 17th September. The Polish ambassador was first summoned by deputy foreign minister Potemkin but refused to accept the note on behalf of his government. When he returned to his office he found a messenger waiting at the door who attempted to hand him the note, but once again he refused to accept it.
The note tried to justify the Soviet invasion on the grounds that the Polish government and Poland itself had ceased to exist, and thus so had all the non-aggression treaties between the two countries. This claim was entirely false - and in any case, the note had been prepared several days before.
Stalin kept his word to the Germans about when the Soviet invasion would begin - 6AM - and at the appointed time, Soviet troops invaded Poland. Fortunately for them, there weren't many troops defending Poland's eastern border. The Polish army's south-eastern bridgehead was also rapidly destroyed by the combined pressure of the German and Soviet armies, although nearly 100,000 soldiers did escape before Soviet forces prevented any further troops from crossing into Romania. Many more were captured and deported to the east, including 15,000 officers who were murdered by the NKVD a few months later in what became known as the Katyn Massacre.
stillunusual.tumblr.com/post/747637177234718720/katyn
Nevertheless, the Soviet invasion did face some resistance from Poland's Border Guard Corps, and units of the Polish army continued to fight against both invaders until 6th October 1939. For example, the Soviets captured Grodno on 21st September after two days of combat in which the Soviet army lost several dozen tanks and several hundred soldiers. In retaliation, the Soviets committed mass murders of the Polish population and prisoners of war (something that will also seem depressingly familiar to anyone who followed the news during Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022).
Meanwhile, the Polish government held a cabinet meeting at 4PM on 17th September, in full knowledge that Soviet forces were rapidly advancing towards them. It was concluded that they should leave for Romania, and from there go on to France. Most of Poland's highest government officials managed to cross the border on the night of 17th-18th September. Marshall Rydz-Śmigły and his GHQ staff crossed the border the next day. No orders for a general surrender of the Polish army were ever given and no general surrender ever took place. The remnants of the Polish army that managed to avoid capture immediately commenced an underground war against both occupiers.
Unfortunately for the Polish government, the Romanians, under extreme pressure from the German government, interned all the most senior Polish leaders. But this did not mean that the Polish state ceased to exist. Using Article 24 of the Polish Constitution of April 1935, Polish President Mościcki, who was interned on 18th September - transferred his presidential powers to Władysław Rackiewicz in Paris as soon as he was able - on 29th September - and Władysław Sikorski, who had avoided internment and succeeded in reaching France, was appointed Prime Minister the next day (he had already taken command of all Polish forces that had succeeded in reaching France, on 25th September). Poland had a fully functioning government again within days, and the lasting significance of Romania's internment of Poland's pre-war leadership was that the new government consisted almost entirely of members of the pre-war opposition.
The joint declaration by Nazi Germany and the USSR was issued on 18th September. And funnily enough it did not mention the Belarusians or Ukrainians - just more lies about Poland ceasing to exist and so on....
On 20th September, Nazi and Soviet military leaders discussed coordinating the actions of the Wehrmacht and Red Army during their mutual invasion of Poland.
www.flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/54795737145
www.flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/54795404531
www.flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/54795737150
On 22nd September, a Nazi–Soviet military parade took place in Brest-Litovsk (in Polish: Brześć nad Bugiem or Brześć Litewski).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military_para...
A Friendship and Border treaty was signed by Nazi Germany and the USSR on 28th September 1939, along with a secret protocol establishing the border between the two countries. Three additional protocols were added to the agreement, the third of which stated that: "Both parties will tolerate no Polish agitation in their territories which affects the territories of the other party. They will suppress in their territories all beginnings of such agitation and inform each other concerning suitable measures for this purpose".
The signing of the treaty was accompanied by an announcement stating that both parties wanted an end to the war between Germany, Britain and France - and that if Britain and France refused to stop the war, "....the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures".
According to Molotov: "....it is not only absurd, it is criminal to wage a war to 'smash Hitlerism' under the false slogan of a war for democracy". At a session of the Supreme Soviet on 31st October, he bragged about the USSR's military partnership with Germany: "....it was proved enough for Poland to be dealt one swift blow, first by the German army and then by the Red Army, to wipe out all remains of this monstrous bastard offspring of the Versailles Treaty".
However, Molotov was wrong (as well as being dumb enough to trust the Nazis). Little did he know that a few decades later it would be the Soviet Union that ceased to exist, and that Poland would play a prominent role in its downfall....
TL;DR - Russia is lying as usual.
The second tweet repeats the lie about the Polish state ceasing to exist and also makes the ludicrous claim that the USSR cared so much about the Belarusians and Ukrainians living in eastern Poland that it had to rush to their rescue and protect them. As described above, "protecting" the Belarusians and Ukrainians is how the backstabbing invasion of Poland was presented to the Soviet public by Stalin's propaganda machine.
But here's the thing - Stalin couldn't give a fuck about the welfare of the Belarusians and Ukrainians. Otherwise he wouldn't have spent the previous few years subjecting the USSR's Belarusian and Ukrainian populations to dekulakisation, forced collectivisation and the Yezhovshchina (purges), brutally suppressing their culture as well as their religious and community life, and sending lots of them to the gulags. There's also the small matter of how millions of Ukrainians on the Soviet side of the border somehow managed to starve to death despite living in the breadbasket of Europe.
The people of Soviet Belarus and Ukraine lived in a state of poverty and backwardness compared to the Belarusians and Ukrainians who lived in Poland and this difference in living standards was something that Soviet soldiers couldn't fail to notice after crossing the Polish border (which also helps to explain why they spent so much of their time stealing anything that was removable). There are many accounts of how the invaders reacted to the realisation that the people they'd been sent to "protect" were more prosperous, but this one is as good as any: ...."as we moved ahead we saw that [Polish] people were much better off, both in military life and in everyday life", says Georgy Dragunov, who was astonished to witness the disparity in wealth between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist Poland. "We saw beautifully furnished houses - even peasant houses. [Even] their poorest people were better off than our people - their furniture was polished. Only later did we start to furnish our apartments with similar sorts of furniture. Each Polish peasant [in eastern Poland] had no less than two horses and every household had three or four cows and a lot of poultry. This was so unexpected for us because of the propaganda - which was [now] wasted on us because we could see electricity in the peasants' houses whereas in Soviet Belarus we didn't have electricity".... (quoted in "World War 2 Behind Closed Doors" by Laurence Rees, first edition, 2008, p25).
What Stalin actually cared about was the fact that on the Polish side of the border there were Belarusians and Ukrainians who were beyond his control. It made perfect sense from his perspective to strike a deal with the Nazis to carve up Poland between them (sweet revenge for defeat in the Polish-Soviet war 20 years earlier) and the added bonus was that it enabled him to incorporate all Belarusians and Ukrainians into the USSR, thus making it easier to keep in check any moves towards a genuinely free and independent Belarus or Ukraine.
And as already mentioned above, when the Nazi and Soviet allies issued their joint declaration about the invasion and occupation of Poland, it didn't include a single word about the Belarusians or Ukrainians.
TL;DR - Russia is lying as usual.
In the year of thirty nine
Hitler and Stalin had a dine
"You take East - West be mine?"
Stalin nodded: "sounds mighty fine!"
They signed a deal (as allies do)
And then they started World War 2
But friends will come and friends will go
As Stalin later came to know....
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
Renee DiResta, Anil Dash, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Zeynep Tufekci and Leni Robredo participate in a panel discussion, “Tackling Disinformation, Protecting Democracy” during the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum in New York on November 17, 2022.
Please credit “The Obama Foundation.” The photographs may not be manipulated in any way, and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by the Foundation, President Obama, or Mrs. Obama without the Foundation’s prior written consent.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
Might "The Wall" by Pink Floyd have been inspired by "Five Screens With Computer" by Gustav Metzger? Follow this link...
rorschachaudio.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/pink-floyd-the-wa...
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
House of Commons, Feb 3rd, 2022 Ottawa Canada - Trudeau and Singh quickly take sides, make judgements, and immediately express personal opinions in Question Period as they label the truckers freedom protest as hate ? Being that both Government Leaders are proclaiming this Protest to be hate,, then if Bill C-63 had been enacted at this time then all participants in this protest could be subject to a maximum criminal sentence of life in prison ..
It had been the very first weekend of the new Truckers' freedom protest now forming on Parliament Hill. But this time it's different ? This civil protest brings an immediate reaction from the 2 Leaders in Parliament ? Such a quick reaction and immediate taking of sides is unlike those taken in previous protests like the BLM rioting, the string of Christian Church burnings, the lawless vandalism of historic artifacts and statues, and the First nation pipeline and railway blockades ? There was no such judgement given nor any such condemnation voiced nor any taking of sides, nor was there even any official statements issued for weeks ?
Feb 3rd, 2022 Ottawa Canada - While the trucks, the truckers and Ottawa citizens were gathering on Parliament Hill to begin the freedom convoy protest,, And after the violence, the damage to public property, and the criminal acts perpetrated last Spring and Summer during the BLM protests, and after arsonists had burned, or damaged over 100 historic Canadian Christian Churches in hate and arson crimes committed in and around the time of 2021 Canada Day celebrations, And after violent mobs tore down and mutilated historic statues in Cities all across Canada, And also after the intense and volatile confrontations with First Nations over both past and present issues that saw the throwing of fire at moving trains, rumor's of on-site military-style assault weapons, and the lengthy occupation and blockade of pipelines, roads and railways, and then after Trudeau and Singh had waited weeks before commenting on these violent protests and then when finally making a statement, doing so in a delicate, careful, diplomatic and conciliatory tone while never taking sides, this time both the NDP leader and the Liberal leader are eager to quickly jump right in and immediately take sides before voicing harsh personal judgments ?
House of Commons Question Period - Feb 3rd, 2022 - After Trudeau and Singh waited for a relatively lengthy period of time before even commenting or issuing official statements on the violence and property damage that took place during the many lawless protests last year, and when finally officially recognizing and then when issuing their comments doing so in a diplomatic, soft, understanding, compassionate and keep-the-peace conciliatory way using terms such as : 'meaningful negotiations are needed" or " we must continue working to move forward', or, 'we must all work together', or, 'this behavior is inappropriate ', or ' this is unacceptable but understandable when considering past treatment', or, 'we're all in this together', or 'we must focus on inclusion reconciliation and diversity', and then after a horrific racial incident that took place down in the United States, to bend and go down on knees to publicly show respect and support for the BLM protesters, and to then show further support by granting hundreds of millions in business loans in Toronto to support the black Canadian community, and then also, after refusing to celebrate Canada Day as historic Christian Churches were being burnt to the ground by arson, it seems that Trudeau and Singh don't hesitate this time to instantly condemn the truckers on the very first days of the protest ? And this time both leaders are quick to express their personal opinions using strong negative descriptions such as : 'hate', "occupation', 'terrorism', 'vandalism', 'stealing food from a food bank', 'desecrating historic statues', 'dishonoring Terry Fox and the war heroes', 'flying hate flags', 'spreading hate ' etc etc, , ( and this is just the first few days of the protest )
10 days later,,
Feb 13 th 2022 - the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor Ontario - Police successfully clear the Ambassador bridge to traffic,, this week-long protest and sometimes total blockage is over. The Canada Border Services Agency says the Ambassador Bridge border crossing between Windsor, Ont. and Detroit reopened late Sunday Feb 13th.
Feb 14th, 2022 - Coutts Alberta - Arrests are made and Protesters are dispersed without incident on Feb. 14, and traffic is moving again. That same day, the federal government also invoked the Emergencies Act but Coutts Mayor Willett said it didn’t have much impact, saying he believed local police action was responsible for dissipating the blockade.
Feb 14, 2022 (Valentine's Day) - THE EMERGENCY MEASURES ACT - Although Trudeau's closest security advisors Jody Thomas National Security and Intelligence, Minister of Safety Marco Mendicino, and Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair , are all fully aware that the bridges have been cleared without incident by local forces , Trudeau invokes the never before used last hope nuclear option Emergency Measures Act for the first time ever in Canada .
Feb 19, 2022, Saturday - The truckers (and everyone else) are cleared off the property by a large Police riot squad and a massive heavily-armed military force. Thankfully no one was injured. It's the End of the Truckers Protest .. The peaceful sociable love in, the speakers corner and the nightly music dancing street party atmosphere on the Hill are also over.. Everyone has left and gone home - goodbye and good luck to all.
Feb 21st, 2002 House of Commons ,, Ottawa Ontario
" Yawn,, It's been a long protest and the MP's are feeling a bit tired tonight,, why not just take a quick vote,, end Canada's democracy, make the P.M. a supreme ruler., and then we can all go home ? "
Feb 21st, 2002 - The Ambassador bridge and Coutts border crossing are clear and open to traffic once again Both were actually already cleared even before Trudeau initiated the start of The wartime Emergency Measures Act ? Two days ago a rather large contingent of extra heavily-armed riot police and a well equipped military force that had vastly outnumbered the few remaining civilian pedestrian protesters had little trouble in persuading them all that the time had come to exit the Hill and to just go back home, NOW ! And so everyone had left this past week-end without incident. A few of the remaining incapacitated trucks had to be towed but those able just voluntarily packed up and left peacefully on their own accord. The 3 week trucker's freedom protest was over and the nightly Parliamentary Hill love-in, hot dog roast, dance party and guest speeches on the Hill are no more. However, although the drastic wartime Emergency Measures Act may never have been necessary in the first place and is definitely no longer needed now, for some reason the Liberals and the NDP don't want to let it go ? Following the weekend conclusion of the Truckers Protest, for some reason when Parliament resumes on the following week the Liberals make strong claims that there still exists a clear and present danger to the Nation so heinous, extreme, and powerful that it still requires all of the antidemocratic, freedom removing and one-sided extreme policing powers that were allowed under the Emergency Measures Act to remain active, alive and fully enforced upon 36 million Canadian coast to coast to coast ? s-s-s Singh and the NDP argue that the Truckers are racists and internal terrorists full of hate for Canada and willing to use violent means to overthrow the Government, (but they offer no proof or evidence of such a claim ),, and in a convincing speech Kody bull sh@t Blois, MP Kings Hants, says the Truckers have seized and occupy many major Canadian Airports, (but he also offers no proof or evidence of the allegation) ? Trudeau's closest and most trusted security advisors including Marco master manipulator Mendicino Public Safety, Jody the juggler Thomas National Security and Intelligence, and Bill the bullet Blair Emergency Preparedness, who all get their daily briefings and receive more intel than anyone else must be fully aware the bridges were cleared without resistance by the local police and that traffic is once again moving normally ? And surely they must be fully aware by now, that as of now the truckers have all packed up on the weekend and left peacefully, and surely they would also have witnessed the peaceful, amicable, polite and respectful social atmosphere each night across from Parliament while police officers stood around chatting with nothing to do ? But they do not testify to this in Parliament, but instead the 3 most trusted of security advisors to the P.M. continue to encourage and promote an alarming picture of an unparalleled extreme danger to the nation that is so threatening and perilous that it cannot be handled in the normal ways by Canadian law enforcement ? All 3 advisors insist that the entire nation must remain bound under the Emergency Measures Act, however, all 3 offer no proof or evidence of any such danger ? Trudeau himself makes a lengthy, passionate and convincing speech in Parliament voicing his own sincere personal belief of the existence of extreme peril and imminent National danger at the borders, on the bridges, in the cities, on the highways, in the banking system, and at the Airports, (but he also offers no proof or evidence of any of this) ? And so, late in the evening of Feb 21, 2022, 2 days after the end of the protest and after the last protestors were cleared from the Hill this past Saturday, Trudeau, Singh and each and every loyal job-securing NDP Liberal MP's use the Canadian Parliament to end Canada's currently installed democracy and replace it with a totally non-democratic system that is ruled under the dark conditions of the Emergency Measures Act ? This loss of democracy will be imposed on 36 million Canadian citizens for at least a 30-day time period ? And there was only 1 man on the planet that can stop this ?
This had all been accomplished by a handful of civil servants in Ottawa without any consultation, permission, discussion, referendum or vote ever offered to the affected 36 million Canadian citizens ?
You have to wonder how such a monumental decision that means the loss of Canada's currently installed and duly elected democratic system and the loss of rights and freedoms for 36 million Canadians could ever be conducted and decided in such a hasty, careless, confused, frivolous, disrespectful, matter-of-fact and patronizing way, ending with a quick vote based on unproven, hypothetical, exaggerated and one-sided gossip like opinions given in one late night session of Parliament ? And now that the vote to maintain the Emergency Measures Act is passed for 30 days, once this imposition period ends, then this exact same process could quite easily be done all over again by those in power for another 30, and then for another 30, and then another and another, all the way to the next Federal election. Does this not seem to be about as close as you can get to a form of coup d'é·tat ?
Oh my God ! We've just lost our Democracy !
Oh my God ! We just lost Democracy,
And so what started out to be a perfectly legal protest held by the truckers has now escalated into an extremely precarious situation for about 36 million innocent Canadians who have nothing to do with it ? And it looks to them like a handful of nervous people who work across the street from the protest site have been allowed to selfishly snatch a duly elected and installed cherished democratic system away from Canadians, and now 36 million people have been brought under the same dark Governing powers and loss of civil liberties and the special rule of law enforcement and added extreme police powers that can be legally used against the very worst feared and dangerous national security, terrorist, or military threats ? We are none of these ?
How can it be that a few salaried civil servants in Ottawa can take democracy away from 36 million innocent Canadian citizens without even bothering to ask them first ? '
Feb 23, 2022, 08:02 - * International News Update* State of Emergency - the Russia Army has invaded the Ukraine - For a perfectly VALID reason, the Ukraine security council has called for a 30-day nationwide State of Emergency to be invoked after it was invaded by the most powerful military country in the World and were now at War.
What many see as an extremely dangerous and precarious situation is now debated in the Canadian Senate :
Feb 23, 2022 3 P.M. The Senate is now well into day 3 of a heated debate with all Liberal, NDP and independent Senators speaking highly in favor of the recent passing of a 30-day cessation to Canada's normal democratic rule. Suddenly these deliberations are interrupted right in the middle of Senator Plett's speech and everyone present is caught totally off guard and absolutely stunned by the unexpected announcement that the PM has announced over his CBC that he is going to revoke the Act rather than continue to impose this new form of Governance recently enacted in Parliament ?
And so, what some Canadians viewed as the kidnapping of a Country and the holding of that Country hostage until such time as the kidnapper chose to release his kidnapped Country back to its rightful owners, appears to be over ? And one of the darkest periods in our history, where all normal democratic rule in Canada was lost after a single hasty late night debate that appeared based mainly on gossip, false hypothetical, imaginary and made-up scenarios with no evidence offered, social media hype, presentations of the 'what if' or 'what might be possible' scenarios, along with some personal paranoia after some voting members may have felt the influence of posturing or coercion ?
Many accusations were made against the truckers that included : Conducting a siege and takeover, occupation of the city of Ottawa, internal terrorism, promoting terrorism, displaying Nazi and Rebel hate flags, hate and the spreading of hate, foreign espionage, international smuggling, possession of contraband including firearms hidden in trucks, sponsoring a white only protest, stealing from a food bank, the illegal occupation of first nations territory, desecrating honorary historic Canadian statues, dishonoring wartime veterans, disrespecting Terry Fox when placing LBGQT flags on his statue, the seizing, takeover and occupation of Canadian Airports, blocking bridges and border crossings, threatening international trade, lowering the GDP, heavy losses on the stock market, forcing many Ottawa businesses into financial ruin, internal and external money laundering, conspiracy to plan and to execute a violent attack on a sitting Parliament similar to the recent Jan 6th Trump attack on the USA Congress, planning to take over Government, islamaphobia, smoking in public, illegal parking, racism gender-ism and sexism, harassment, violating a local noise ordinance, breaking City fire prevention bylaws, and there was even one unsubstantiated rumor that the Truckers may be in possession of a dirty bomb with plans to incinerate the entire nation of Canada coast to coast to coast ?
whew, that was a close one,, (for now ).
( O Canada, We will always stand on guard for thee..)
.
Feb 28th, Mar 1st 2022 Question Period - As Parliament reconvenes the following week, Liberal members dodge and refuse direct answers to the Opposition questions on this issue,
Apr 25th, 2002 A public inquiry is required by Law to explain the event and the reasoning behind the extreme and drastic measure of enacting a twin brother to the War Measures Act and never ever before-used Emergency Measures Act. This must be done within 60 days of the revocation that took place back on Feb 23, 2002 ? The Government waited until the very last minute to finally do so on April 25th, 2002.
.
relevant news clippings,,
Debate on the Emergencies Act (February 21st, 2022)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzDWQ2a3SEs&t=114s
Emergencies Act regulations ban protests except for Indigenous or refugees .
torontosun.com/news/national/emergencies-act-regulations-....
Jan thru March 2020 , The First Nation cross Canada railway blockades - VIA Rail cancels all service across Canada on Feb 14th, 2020 , CN shuts down network east of Toronto
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpGi4sknSRE&t=50s
Feb 2022 - the Truckers Strike - Singh calls hate and internal terrorism while every sitting NDP member votes to install the Emergency measures Act . www.flickr.com/photos/74039487@N02/51864639114/
May 10,2022 - RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki testifies to the Commission that the RCMP had never asked for the Emergencies Act to be invoked,
nationalpost.com/news/politics/rcmp-didnt-ask-for-emergen...
Chrystia Freeland acting PM refuses to answer questions at the inquiry,,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-PFtYb2fDI
Jun 8, 2023, Ottawa Parliament Hill - the LGBTQ2 community flag takes center stage and raised higher than the Canadian red maple leaf flag at an official ceremony led by Marci Ien the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and P.M. Justin Trudeau , www.youtube.com/watch?v=16u4HWY6BWw
Russia-Ukraine crisis: Ukraine security council calls for nationwide state of emergency after invaded by a Superpower :
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-new...
Trudeau finally announces the Emergencies Measures Act inquiry :
calgaryherald.com/news/canada/trudeau-announces-emergenci...
Ottawa Canada - So many police just standing around every night with nothing to do ? Everyone is friendly sociable and respectful A happy party like atmosphere .. See for yourself on Ottawawalks, war campaign, walkers Reality TV UTube unedited nightly live broadcasts directly from the Parliament hill protest site :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQEjhLX-4n0&list=RDCMUC6hoYJj...
What powers can the Emergencies Act give Trudeau :
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60381096
Trudeau knew about convoy talks but wanted an “emergency” anyway
twitter.com/AndrewLawton/status/1558475567007252481?cxt=H...
Cabinet was told of a possible 'breakthrough' with protesters on the night before but Trudeau refused to listen and he still invoked the Emergencies Act,,
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-cabinet-justin-trudeau-fr...
Ottawa police officer charged for allegedly donating $50 to Freedom Convoy:
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-freedom-convo...
RCMP head told Federal Government that police had not used 'all available tools' hours before the Emergencies Act was invoked :www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lucki-email-emergencies-act-not-...
Canada loses its democracy when an Emergencies Measures Act extension passes in Parliament despite protests fro opposition :
www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-mp-two-canadas-trucking-pr...
"the Emergencies Measures Act order specifically exempts Indians, refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers and ‘protected temporary residents and Ethnic minorities in its ban on protests ’."
yournews.com/2022/02/18/2301822/trudeaus-prohibition-on-p...
Ambassador Bridge reopens after police clear protesters without incident,
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-ambassador-bridge-...
" Let Me Be Clear " Chrystia Freeland non answer to questions pertaining to CBC reporting misinformation on the Protest ?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOfDsN49EXs
Trudeau gives hundreds of millions to the BLM protesters but puts Truckers freedom protesters in jail ? Toronto, Sept 9, 2020 - Participants in a violent BLM protest are rewarded ? Trudeau announces a new Canadian multi-million dollar Liberal Government program specifically aimed for Black Canadians following the American George Floyd racial incident that took place in a different country, "We've heard very clearly from the Black community" ,,
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-black-entrepreneurs-1.57...
Was it Justin Trudeau who picked a fight with the Truckists ?
www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/terry-glavin-it-was-justin-...
Hold The Line: My story from the heart of the Freedom Convoywww.amazon.ca/Hold-Line-story-Freedom-Convoy/dp/199058303...
Chrystia Freeland says Financial institutions have started freezing protesters’ bank accounts based on RCMP information,
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-financial-instit...
Emergencies Measures Act directs financial institutions to cut ties with some people ! What new powers do the banks have under the Emergencies Act ?
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-pro...?
Freeland said at a news conference that without obtaining a court order or fear of being sued Banks are now temporarily allowed to freeze personal and business bank accounts suspected of being used to further the blockades , These measures will also allow police, the Liberal Government agencies and the banks to share “relevant information ?
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-emergencies-act-...
Is Marco Mendicino Canada's master manipulator and minister of misinformation or is he just plain Stupid ? nationalpost.com/opinion/marco-mendicino-canadas-minister...
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Tammy Peterson, and Tamara Lich break down the events leading up to, during, and after the internationally recognized Canadian Freedom Convoy,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm7lLihEKvQ&t=5587s
Church burnings - Justin Trudeau says anger towards the Catholic Church is understandable:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxKMNTMPhhs&t=0s
Sep 04, 2023 Judge-alone trial for Tamara Lich, Chris Barber should last at least 16 days,, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/convoy-leaders-trial-will-s...
On being a White Christian male in Canada ? A Lawyer wonders if heavier sentences are now being imposed on certain Canadian citizens because of their race religion and gender ? www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4S2H3L-vjU&t=41s
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH_Bx_U8odk&t=334s
Caste system Convention ? 2023 NDP National Convention - Can this really be Canada ? NDP appear to be using a caste system, (like the one they have in India) where attendees are given yellow or white tags ? National convention M.C. instructs those who declare themselves as being white and male gender to go to the back of the line ?
'White tags are distributed to anyone identifying themselves as white Christian male and these select individuals are given less priority and must go to the back of the line ? Those identifying as others are given yellow tags, and allowed to go to the front of the line and speak first ?
www.reddit.com/r/CanadianConservative/comments/17a0qh2/ho...
Nov 11, 2023 - Veterans insulted after Canada's Military is ordered by the Liberal Government not to use or recite Christian prayers like the Lords Prayer in Remembrance Day ceremonies ?
www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/gunter-we-will-always-pray-f...
" no end to the Wokeism " "Extremely disrespectful to all Canadians": O' Canada in Punjabi at Jets vs Avalanche leaves NHL fans in awe ? www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/wokeism-has-no-end-extremely...
Freedom Convoy protesters struggling to get seized items back from police :
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/freedom-convoy-protesters-s...
Jan 23, 2024 - Federal court rules that the Emergencie Measures Act invocation was 'not justified' ? Freeland will appeal ?
www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-court-rules-emergencies-a...
Jan 23, 2024 - Federal Court finds Emergencies Measures Act violated the Charter,, globalnews.ca/news/10244673/emergencies-act-convoy-federa...
Aug 3, 2024 - A jury has found the remaining two defendants of the Coutts Four, Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert, not guilty. The men were charged with conspiracy to murder charges as a result of their participation in the non-violent Truckers Freedom Convoy in February 2022, and held in custody ever since and denied bail in spite of no history of violence or criminal records.www.newsweek.com/political-trial-unfolds-canada-coutts-fo...
Sept 5th, 2024 - Trudeau may be stacking the Senate with radical anti-Christian and LGBT activists,
thebridgehead.ca/2024/09/05/trudeau-is-stacking-the-senat...
The 2024 Paris Olympics - For the first time ever, CBC includes gambling in their coverage of Olympic Games ?
It seems that CBC has partnered with Ontario based online Casino BetRivers and running sports parlor betting ads during Olympic events ? Is the inclusion of a Casino or a Sports betting parlor and the running of betting ads appropriate to the principles and high moral standards traditionally exemplified by the Olympic Games ?
frontofficesports.com/ins-and-outs-of-betting-on-paris-ol...
Nov 17th, 2024 - once again CBC snubs the nation binding Grey Cup ?
www.flickr.com/photos/74039487@N02/54147303159/in/datepos...
Sept 19, 2007 - The residential Schools full settlement,, The Steven Harper Government apology, agreement and settlement with First Nations over Indian Residential Schools.
www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1571581687074
Residential schools. After three years of searching for bodies, at the cost to taxpayers of $216.5 million, not a single set of human remains have been found.
thecatholicherald.com/article/failure-to-find-bodies-ends...
Lost in Space________Episode # 1_______Death to Deniers !
Danger - Will Robinson, Danger !
No one is denying the existence of residential schools. And so why are people like Leah Gazan (NDP) , Lindsay Mathyssen (NDP), Nahanni Fontaine (NDP) and Kimberley Murray (Liberal Government investigator) still so unsatisfied and why are they all arrogantly trying to force personal viewpoints on everyone else ? Why do they want you to think the same way that they think, believe in the same way that they believe, and be forced to accept their ego-driven self motivated, self-centered and self-serving narrative (that they all get paid for) on others as being Gods' truth or else you will be called a hater or a denier and could be sent to jail for up to life in prison ?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZU7NEzs3Gk
Nov 22, 2024 - following a lengthy trial costing millions, accused convoy leader Pat King has been found guilty of 5 charges for his role 3 years ago in the Freedom Convoy Truckers protest ? Nothing yet on the BLM rioters and vigilantes that destroyed and vandalized civic property and historic artifacts, nor, on any of the arsonists that terrorized 20 million Christians when they burned down a total of 40 different historic Churches across Canada, nor, on any of the blockade perpetrators who held the Country hostage for over a Month when they shut down the Nation's Railway ?
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/pat-king-freedom-convoy-202...
www.msn.com/en-ca/video/news/freedom-convoy-organizer-pat...
Jan 06, 2025 - Trudeau resigns as prime minister,, Prorogues Parliament until March 24 2025,,
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-news-conference-1.7423680
Apr 03, 2025 - Chris Barber, Tamara Lich not guilty on most charges for roles in 2022 convoy protests.. All told, Barber was found guilty of two charges, not guilty of four and had a seventh stayed. Lich was found guilty of one, not guilty of four and had a sixth stayed. both found guilty of counseling others to commit mischief
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-chris-barber-fr...
Apr 16th 2025 Montreal - Scrum following the French-language leaders' debate - NDP leader Jagmeet Singh refuses to address questions on Christian church arson in Canada ? He dismisses this particular subject as misinformation and disinformation, and the person asking such an outrageous question as being a right wing extremist ? He refuses to answer the question ?
nowtoronto.com/news/canadians-react-to-ndp-leader-jagmeet...
Election 2025 - Jack may be rolling over in his grave after his NDP was annihilated - NDP now not even an official Canadian party ? After crashing the NDP , Singh takes a lifetime pension and runs ? winnipegsun.com/opinion/gold-singh-crashes-ndp-party-and-...
Dec 3rd 2025, Is the University of Victoria B.C. brainwashing young minds ? open and individual free thinking and freedom of speech is denied to students by the same people who teach that Sir John A MacDonald is a vtllain ? ? Asking questions that might challenge the status quo or offering forward your own opinion is not allowed in this B.C. University and so called institute of higher learning - It can get the Police called in to take you to jail ? www.youtube.com/watch?v=u53G5WBpVmc
CGI 2025 Annual Meeting
Mainstage: Beyond the Narrative
Culture is shaped every day—through stories, media, and shared values. As the world faces disinformation, shifting priorities, and rising polarization, cultural leaders are shaping how we understand the present and imagine the future. This session brings together global voices from entertainment, media, technology, and social impact who are using multi-media storytelling and art to build empathy, shift narratives, and inspire action. Together, we’ll explore how culture can cut through crisis, connect communities, and drive meaningful change across borders.
Participants
- Wendy Abrams Co-Founder and CEO, Eleven Eleven Foundation
- Rima Al Mokarrab Chair, Tamkeen
- Chelsea Clinton Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation
- Misty Copeland Ballerina and Founder, Misty Copeland Foundation
- Matt Damon Co-Founder, Water.org & WaterEquity
- Ryan Gellert CEO, Patagonia
- Bill Ready CEO, Pinterest
- Jessica Sibley CEO, TIME
- Malaika Vaz CEO, Untamed Planet
- Cyrus Veyssi Host, Writer, and Content Creator
Photo Credit: Erika Kapin for the Clinton Foundation
+++
2025_0925_CGIAM24_Erika_Kapin_10_22_13_0817
Review by Joe Banks of the book “Experimental Sound & Radio” and “Voice Tears” CD, edited by Allen Weiss, MIT Press, 2001. The review appears on page 47 of Art Monthly magazine, issue 250, October 2001 (the 25th anniversary issue of Art Monthly). As regards “Experimental Sound & Radio”, the review says (among other things) that research of the quality represented by this anthology “may well keep less erudite sound artists in funding proposals for years”.
As regards contextual statements, the review asserts that “sound art is an area in which mainstream critical taste is trailing behind the avant-garde of popular culture by decades”, that “in human culture, sound is the primal medium for the formulation and transmission of concepts”, and that “the codes which embody digital information are recombinations of visual symbols, which, to paraphrase Aristotle… are indivisible recombinations of sounds”. The review also states that “rather than being a marginal art form, sound art encompasses not only radio production, sound installation and record publishing, but also music, spoken language, theatrical dialogue, and literature, poetry and all multimedia, product and cinematic sound design”.
As such, the review served as a testing ground for ideas that re-appeared in the “Rorschach Audio” book, particularly for the assertions that since “written language is based on symbolic visual representations of indivisible sounds - therefore firstly… all literature and poetry are forms of sound art, and secondly the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language” (“Rorschach Audio” book, pages 95 to 96).
See also - rorschachaudio.com/2013/12/18/stealing-my-thunder/
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
As the United States continues to deal with controversy over foreign interference and disinformation in the 2016 presidential election, concerns are growing that elections in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and elsewhere could be similarly influenced by so-called “fake news.” How real is this threat in Latin America and what can be done about it? Are technology companies responding adequately or is regulation required? What are the implications for freedom of expression if governments or corporations decide what is real and what is “fake”?
Please join us for a timely conversation that separates fact from rumor, assesses the threat to upcoming Latin American elections from deliberate disinformation in social media, and looks rigorously at potential policy responses both from the technology sector and governments.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Bell XP-68A owed its existence to the manufacturer’s rather disappointing outcome of its first jet fighter design, the XP-59A Airacomet. The Airacomet was a twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, designed and built during World War II after Major General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold became aware of the United Kingdom's jet program when he attended a demonstration of the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941. He requested, and was given, the plans for the aircraft's powerplant, the Power Jets W.1, which he took back to the U.S. He also arranged for an example of the engine, the Whittle W.1X turbojet, to be flown to the U.S., along with drawings for the more powerful W.2B/23 engine and a small team of Power Jets engineers. On 4 September 1941, he offered the U.S. company General Electric a contract to produce an American version of the engine, which subsequently became the General Electric I-A. On the following day, he approached Lawrence Dale Bell, head of Bell Aircraft Corporation, to build a fighter to utilize it. As a disinformation tactic, the USAAF gave the project the designation "P-59A", to suggest it was a development of the unrelated, canceled Bell XP-59 fighter project. The P-59A was the first design fighter to have its turbojet engine and air inlet nacelles integrated within the main fuselage. The jet aircraft’s design was finalized on 9 January 1942 and the first prototype flew in October of the same year.
The following 13 service test YP-59As had a more powerful engine than their predecessor, the General Electric J31, but the improvement in performance was negligible, with top speed increased by only 5 mph and a slight reduction in the time they could be used before an overhaul was needed. One of these aircraft, the third YP-59A, was supplied to the Royal Air Force, in exchange for the first production Gloster Meteor I for evaluation and flight-offs with domestic alternatives.
British pilots found that the YP-59A compared very unfavorably with the jets that they were already flying. The United States Army Air Forces were not impressed by its performance either and cancelled the contract when fewer than half of the originally ordered aircraft had been produced. No P-59s entered combat, but the type paved the way for the next design generation of U.S. turbojet-powered aircraft and helped to develop appropriate maintenance structures and procedures.
In the meantime, a new, more powerful jet engine had been developed in Great Britain, the Halford H-1, which became later better known as the De Havilland Goblin. It was another centrifugal compressor design, but it produced almost twice as much thrust as the XP-59A’s J31 engines. Impressed by the British Gloster Meteor during the USAAF tests at Muroc Dry Lake - performance-wise as well as by the aircraft’s simplicity and ruggedness - Bell reacted promptly and proposed an alternative fighter with wing-mounted engine nacelles, since the XP-59A’s layout had proven to be aerodynamically sub-optimal and unsuited for the installation of H-1 engines. In order to save development time and because the aircraft was rather regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstrator instead of a true fighter prototype, the new aircraft was structurally based on Bell’s current piston-engine P-63 “Kingcobra”. The proposal was accepted and, in order to maintain secrecy, the new jet aircraft inherited once more a designation of a recently cancelled project, this time from the Vultee XP-68 “Tornado” fighter. Similar to the Airacomet two years before, just a simple “A” suffix was added.
Bell’s development contract covered only three XP-68A aircraft. The H-1 units were directly imported from Great Britain in secrecy, suspended in the bomb bays of B-24 Liberator bombers. A pair of these engines was mounted in mid-wing nacelles, very similar to the Gloster Meteor’s arrangement. The tailplane was given a 5° dihedral to move it out of the engine exhaust. In order to bear the new engines and their power, the wing main spars were strengthened and the main landing gear wells were moved towards the aircraft’s centerline, effectively narrowing track width. The landing gear wells now occupied the space of the former radiator ducts for the P-63’s omitted Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V12 engine. Its former compartment behind the cockpit was used for a new fuel tank and test equipment. Having lost the propeller and its long drive shaft, the nose section was also redesigned: the front fuselage became deeper and the additional space there was used for another fuel tank in front of the cockpit and a bigger weapon bay. Different armament arrangements were envisioned, one of each was to be tested on the three prototypes: one machine would be armed with six 0.5” machine guns, another with four 20mm Hispano M2 cannon, and the third with two 37mm M10 cannon and two 0.5” machine guns. Provisions for a ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb were made, but this was never fitted on any of the prototypes. Additional hardpoints under the outer wings for smaller bombs or unguided missiles followed the same fate.
The three XP-68As were built at Bell’s Atlanta plant in the course of early 1944 and semi-officially christened “Airagator”. After their clandestine transfer to Muroc Dry Lake for flight tests and evaluations, the machines were quickly nicknamed “Barrelcobra” by the test staff – not only because of the characteristic shape of the engine nacelles, but also due to the sheer weight of the machines and their resulting sluggish handling on the ground and in the air. “Cadillac” was another nickname, due to the very soft acceleration through the new jet engines and the lack of vibrations that were typical for piston-engine- and propeller-driven aircraft.
Due to the structural reinforcements and modifications, the XP-68A had become a heavy aircraft with an empty weight of 4 tons and a MTOW of almost 8 tons – the same as the big P-47 Thunderbolt piston fighter, while the P-63 had an MTOW of only 10,700 lb (4,900 kg). The result was, among other flaws, a very long take-off distance, especially in the hot desert climate of the Mojave Desert (which precluded any external ordnance) and an inherent unwillingness to change direction, its turning radius was immense. More than once the brakes overheated during landing, so that extra water cooling for the main landing gear was retrofitted.
Once in the air, the aircraft proved to be quite fast – as long as it was flying in a straight line, though. Only the roll characteristics were acceptable, but flying the XP-68A remained hazardous, esp. after the loss of one of the H-1s engines: This resulted in heavily asymmetrical propulsion, making the XP-68A hard to control at all and prone to spin in level flight.
After trials and direct comparison, the XP-68A turned out not to be as fast and, even worse, much less agile than the Meteor Mk III (the RAF’s then current, operational fighter version), which even had weaker Derwent engines. The operational range was insufficient, too, esp. in regard of the planned Pacific theatre of operations, and the high overall weight precluded any considerable external load like drop tanks.
However, compared with the XP-59A, the XP-68A was a considerable step forward, but it had become quickly clear that the XP-68A and its outfit-a-propeller-design-with jet-engines approach did not bear the potential for any service fighter development: it was already outdated when the prototypes were starting their test program. No further XP-68A was ordered or built, and the three prototypes fulfilled their test and evaluation program until May 1945. During these tests, the first prototype was lost on the ground due to an engine fire. After the program’s completion, the two remaining machines were handed over to the US Navy and used for research at the NATC Patuxent River Test Centre, where they were operated until 1949 and finally scrapped.
General characteristics.
Crew: 1
Length: 33 ft 9 in (10.36 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 4 in (11.7 m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96 m)
Wing area: 248 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,799 lb (3,995 kg)
Loaded weight: 15,138 lb (6,873 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 17,246 lb (7,830 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Halford H-1 (De Havilland Goblin) turbojets, rated at 3,500 lbf (15.6 kN) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 559 mph (900 km/h)
Range: 500 mi (444 nmi, 805 km)
Service ceiling: 37,565 ft (11,450 m)
Rate of climb: 3.930 ft/min (20 m/s)
Wing loading: 44.9 lb/ft² (218.97 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.45
Time to altitude: 5.0 min to 30,000 ft (9,145 m)
Armament:
4× Hispano M2 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds
One ventral hardpoint for a single drop tank or a 1.000 lb (550 kg) bomb
6× 60 lb (30 kg) rockets or 2× 500 lb (227 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This whiffy Kingcobra conversion was spawned by a post by fellow user nighthunter in January 2019 at whatifmodelers.com about a potential jet-powered variant. In found the idea charming, since the XP-59 had turned out to be a dud and the Gloster Meteor had been tested by the USAAF. Why not combine both into a fictional, late WWII Bell prototype?
The basic idea was simple: take a P-63 and add a Meteor’s engine nacelles, while keeping the Kingcobra’s original proportions. This sounds pretty easy but was more challenging than the first look at the outcome might suggest.
The donor kits are a vintage Airfix 1:72 Gloster Meteor Mk.III, since it has the proper, small nacelles, and an Eastern Express P-63 Kingcobra. The latter looked promising, since this kit comes with very good surface and cockpit details (even with a clear dashboard) as well as parts for several P-63 variants, including the A, C and even the exotic “pinball” manned target version. However, anything comes at a price, and the kit’s low price point is compensated by soft plastic (which turned out to be hard to sand), some flash and mediocre fit of any of the major components like fuselage halves, the wings or the clear parts. It feels a lot like a typical short-run kit. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to build another one in a more conventional fashion some day.
Work started with the H-1 nacelles, which had to be cut out from the Meteor wings. Since they come OOB only with a well-visible vertical plate and a main wing spar dummy in the air intake, I added some fine mesh to the plate – normally, you can see directly onto the engine behind the wing spar. Another issue was the fact that the Meteor’s wings are much thicker and deeper than the P-63s, so that lots of PSR work was necessary.
Simply cutting the P-63 OOB wings up and inserting the Meteor nacelles was also not possible: the P-63 has a very wide main landing gear, due to the ventral radiators and oil coolers, which were originally buried in the wing roots and under the piston engine. The only solution: move the complete landing gear (including the wells) inward, so that the nacelles could be placed as close as possible to the fuselage in a mid-span position. Furthermore, the - now useless - radiator openings had to disappear, resulting in a major redesign of the wing root sections. All of this became a major surgery task, followed by similarly messy work on the outer wings during the integration of the Meteor nacelles. LOTS of PSR, even though the outcome looks surprisingly plausible and balanced.
Work on the fuselage started in parallel. It was built mainly OOB, using the optional ventral fin for a P-63C. The exhaust stubs as well as the dorsal carburetor intake had to disappear (the latter made easy thanks to suitable optional parts for the manned target version). Since the P-63 had a conventional low stabilizer arrangement (unlike the Meteor with its cruciform tail), I gave them a slight dihedral to move them out of the engine efflux, a trick Sukhoi engineers did on the Su-11 prototype with afterburner engines in 1947, too.
Furthermore, the whole nose ahead of the cockpit was heavily re-designed, because I wanted the “new” aircraft to lose its propeller heritage and the P-63’s round and rather pointed nose. Somewhat inspired by the P-59 and the P-80, I omitted the propeller parts altogether and re-sculpted the nose with 2C putty, creating a deeper shape with a tall, oval diameter, so that the lower fuselage line was horizontally extended forward. In a profile view the aircraft now looks much more massive and P-80esque. The front landing gear was retained, just its side walls were extended downwards with the help of 0.5mm styrene sheet material, so that the original stance could be kept. Lots of lead in the nose ensured that the model would properly stand on its three wheels.
Once the rhinoplasty was done I drilled four holes into the nose and used hollow steel needles as gun barrels, with a look reminiscent of the Douglas A-20G.
Adding the (perfectly) clear parts of the canopy as a final assembly step also turned out to be a major fight against the elements.
Painting and markings:
With an USAAF WWII prototype in mind, there were only two options: either an NMF machine, or a camouflage in Olive Drab and Neutral Grey. I went for the latter and used Tamiya XF-62 for the upper surfaces and Humbrol 156 (Dark Camouflage Grey) underneath. The kit received a light black ink wash and some post shading in order to emphasize panels. A little dry-brushing with silver around the leading edges and the cockpit was done, too.
The cockpit interior became chromate green (I used Humbrol 150, Forest Green) while the landing gear wells were painted with zinc chromate yellow (Humbrol 81). The landing gear itself was painted in aluminum (Humbrol 56).
Markings/decals became minimal, puzzled together from various sources – only some “Stars and Bars” insignia and the serial number.
Somehow this conversion ended up looking a lot like the contemporary Soviet Sukhoi Su-9 and -11 (Samolyet K and LK) jet fighter prototype – unintentionally, though. But I am happy with the outcome – the P-63 ancestry is there, and the Meteor engines are recognizable, too. But everything blends into each other well, the whole affair looks very balanced and believable. This is IMHO furthermore emphasized by the simple paint scheme. A jet-powered Kingcobra? Why not…?
As part of the “Festival of the Unconscious” exhibition, the Freud Museum presents “The Portrait of Jean Genet” by Disinformation. “The Portrait of Jean Genet” is a potentially infinite sound and video installation, based on the final interview given by the French burglar, prostitute and playwright Jean Genet, shortly before Genet’s own death. As a vivid articulation of the psychoanalytic concepts of Eros and Thanatos, Genet mishears the interviewer Nigel Williams, asking “Vous avez dit, L’Amour?” (“Did you say… Love”), because “J’ai entendu La Mort” (“I heard… Death”). In terms of “Rorschach Audio” type mishearings, the terms “L’Amour” and “La Mort” sound essentially identical, and are disambiguated by understanding their use in context. “The Portrait of Jean Genet” draws an analogy between the way in which listeners disambiguate perceptions of so-called “homophonic” sounds, and the way viewers project contradictory interpretations onto ambiguous visual figures, such as the spontaneously-reversing cube discovered by the Swiss crystallographer and geographer Louis Albert Necker.
“The Portrait of Jean Genet” is based on a static artwork of the same name, first published on Flickr in 2011, then re-published in the book “Rorschach Audio” in 2012. “The Portrait of Jean Genet” video has been screened at PoetryFilm events at The ICA (London, 2014) & CCCB (Barcelona, 2015), and is exhibited with thanks to Alex Hammond, James Register, Claire Craig and MOT International.
The Festival of the Unconscious
24 June to 4 October 2015
The Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens
London NW3 5SX
Two journalists, Clément Di Roma and Carol Valade, have been awarded the 2022 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for their documentary “The Central African Republic under Russian influence”
This documentary is a Découpages/Arte G.E.I.E co-production, initially broadcast on Arte Reportage in French, German and English. It was also broadcast on France 24 and published in the French newspaper Le Monde.
Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, Pina Picierno, Vice-President responsible for the Prize, and Anthony Bellanger, Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists and representative of the 29 members of the independent European-wide Jury, opened the award ceremony held in the Daphne Caruana Galizia Press Room of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
President Metsola said: "The Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism sends a strong message. The European Parliament is on the side of truth and justice, of independent journalism.
A strong democracy needs a strong press. And there is no democracy without freedom of the press. In Europe, rights and liberties are goals we fight for, not obstacles."
Between the 3rd May and 1st August 2022, more than 200 journalists from the 27 EU countries submitted their stories for consideration. 11 of these submissions were shortlisted by the jury before the overall winner was decided.
About the winning story
This film is Clément Di Roma and Carol Valade’s first documentary and the culmination of their work as correspondents in the Central African Republic in 2020. The country was going through a wave of violence and abuses triggered by a new rebellion, partly fought by Wagner, a shadow army serving the Kremlin's interests. They investigated, filmed and continued their correspondence for several international media despite the surveillance of Russian mercenaries and the prevailing hostility against the French media. It was also a question of continuing the work of their three Russian colleagues, Orhan Djemal, Kirill Radchenko, and Alexander Rasstorguyev, murdered in the Central African Republic while investigating Wagner in 2018. Their main concern has been the protection of their sources, especially those who denounce the crimes of mercenaries, in a country where disappearances of opponents are common. After several months of investigation, they gained the trust of Russian propaganda actors in the Central African Republic. Their voices had never been heard before. Without bias, their documentary gives a voice to the victims of the mercenaries, but also to their supporters, to better understand the methods of this takeover, facilitated by a resentment towards France. They wanted to make all voices heard in this other front of the conflict with Russia that is now spreading to the Sahel on both military and disinformation fields.
Read more: www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221017IPR4370...
This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license CC-BY-4.0 and must be credited: "CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2022– Source: EP". (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) No model release form if applicable. For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects.
The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.
Project MKULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms' destruction order.
Although the CIA insists that MKULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MKULTRA was abandoned a "cover story.
Engagement 900+
2 0 2 1 "Clown World"
I spotted this official looking poster whilst out for my Covid Constitutional Walk. This Covid anti-vaccine scaremongering propaganda. if it were take 5 out of 10 who were to be gullible enough to believe such bullshot we could be in trouble
These posters are cropping up around my local area recently , is it a crime to spout misinformation or disinformation publically I wonder?
In 2024's Britain , one would probably be under arrest for spreading "malicious content' causing Public Alarm
Renee DiResta, Anil Dash, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Zeynep Tufekci and Leni Robredo participate in a panel discussion, “Tackling Disinformation, Protecting Democracy” during the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum in New York on November 17, 2022.
Please credit “The Obama Foundation.” The photographs may not be manipulated in any way, and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by the Foundation, President Obama, or Mrs. Obama without the Foundation’s prior written consent.
Copyright photo.
Modern architecture of Abu Dhabi, UAE. 2012.
The new Grand Zayed Mosque.
Capital Gate Tower.
Etihad towers.
Yas Island Hotel.
Last of the "Abu Dhabi - 2012" Set.
Enlarge:
1. Simply click the upper-right diagonal arrows.
2. Further enlarge: Then press F11 on a PC, or Fullscreen. Allow re-focus.
Or
Click flickr's + cursor and mouse-explore detail.
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Concluding note at the end of "More Travel Notes with an Architectural Eye":
Some sort of summary:
Exploring the hillside community villages of Saorge, Touët, or Ste Agnès in the south of France, or enjoying the naturally-expressive forms of oast houses in Kent, we’ve valued characteristics of vernacular (local speak) architecture. Always with a strong sense of Place, often hands-on involvement, they’re telling and human. But what we’re not advocating is some kind of imitation now, from another time, from the other side of the world. Yet they remind us of fundamentals easily forgotten today — what is our time and Place? Can our development be as responsive in its values? As human, as lasting? Our “Place” has changed from static to a network of associations — no less important for that. Indeed, more interesting as our travels have shown.
And with great historic architecture such as King’s College Chapel or Ely Cathedral, we recognise the deep sense of ethics from centuries ago — pinnacles of human qualities in aspirations, vision, and skills. The best historic examples are essential enrichment to society, reminding us of values and possibilities. Rarely to be backward-preserved, and not artificially, but to be cherished into the long-term future, within changing context.
Further, we’ve seen again and again the importance of relationships, of setting; and the frequent failure of individualistic self-posturing blind to the context. Context has been fundamental to architecture for thousands of years.
The people of ancient Greek society, for example, had a genius for Place. They showed us that the interaction of architecture with its site is crucial as it speaks of the associations between people, their values, and the natural state. Traditional Greeks had a deep regard for their landscape and built assembled to human scale with a feeling of belonging, married to landform. Perhaps the supreme example was the Acropolis which taught us the importance of relation to sky and land, serial vision of approach, grouped unity, the importance of sequential spaces between buildings, human considerations, perception of forms in light, sculptural qualities and feel for crafted materials, but all in unified composition of architectural awareness. Fused in mind and response.
Twenty years ago Richard Economakis and the CCAM worked on the essential architectural-with-multi-discipline-support nature vital to conserving the Acropolis. They emphasized the multi-perspective in their report.
I don’t know what happened, perhaps political, but it seems it was handed over to academic archeologists. Latest reports are pleasing to see progress, skilled archeological details, but an apparent loss of the broad architectural vision that created it in the first place. Myopic. Self-posturing dogma details of restoration break the unity. They should have learnt from the Delphi Tholos.
If an historic building is architecturally conceived in the first place, then that skill/mentality should be of the essence in restoration/conservation.
For forward development, most important are the “human values” no matter how hard to define. Too often missing today.
With the rapid development of media technology, we’re living in an “environmental soup of disinformation”. Propaganda, conflation, and distortion become damaging. As Joe Bennett bluntly but tellingly puts it — bullshit. Not just ignorant or insolent, but constantly destructive; a collective shortcoming of that two-legged latecomer species — us. We should confine that, at most, to marketeers, media, and politicians — propagandists by nature if not necessity.
But as we’ve seen on our travels, that disease has crept into architecture too, reflecting our culture. We noted examples where disproportionate money for rapid development has resulted in architecture as meaningless advertising of the moment, fashion-designed by iconic starchitects from the other side of the world. Don’t those clichés make you cringe.
Architecture can be so telling of the best of our society. It’s a major investment of built setting which lasts for decades or centuries enhancing the quality of our lives. It’s an art which of essence should be humanly involved, not imposed from afar.
And these notes are secondary to go hand-in hand with the photos which together try to tell a meaningful story with visual communication. Not pretty pictures in themselves. We see in the supermarkets eye-catching glossies, dramatised, spectacular, visual marketeering, communication awry. Technically-skilled serious disinformation. Photoshop-created bubble-gum-wrapper pretending architecture. Well, I hope you won’t find too much of that among my photos of this trip — I don’t have the knowledge, software, or more importantly, intention. Better a meaningful fuzzy photo from an architect’s eye.
We also remember seeing examples of civilisations’ great modern architecture on this trip. The best of today fits closer to us and creatively inspires for the future — skilled, imaginative, meaningful. Sustaining and sustainable. Life-affirming. A triptych encapsulated three interiors for instance: the British Museum’s Great Court, resolved in concept, materials, and scale, the outside coming in; the uplifting grace and human detailing in the British Library; the crisply elegant top-lit composition of the new Ashmolean. All time-layering, all lasting, avoiding gimmicks and fashion, all human and civilised. Wonderful. Moreover, all are (free) public spaces!
www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/7330985050/
Remember to scroll down and click on View Larger.
The theme of this trip might be called cultural architecture, though like most important things that’s not single-issue, quantifiable, or definable. You may like to plan a trip about Mansfield in Menton, look for Leerie’s ladder in London, or enjoy your own explorations of civilisation’s built art, human and creative.
Enjoy!
Collage of some modern architecture, Abu Dhabi,, UAE.
Top left: The Grand Sheikh Zayed Mosque is a major national religious abd educational complex, built for the people of the Emirate by their ruler. Large and impressive, but lacks forward thinking.
Including Halcrow Group architects, and Spatium architects.
Top Right: Capital Gate Tower:
Leans 18 deg in elegant curved form - it has the shape of a moulded, honed handle -- a flowing landmark. Distinctive. Hotel and offices.
RMJM Architects.
Bottom left: Etihad towers. A luxury multi-functional development consisting of five elegant towers played on a multi-level podium. The tallest tower is 77 storeys, over 300m in height. Three of the towers are residential with a total of 885 apartments. Also conference centre, restaurants, and offices. Australian-based architects DBI Design. AECOM Architects.
My shot from the Emirates Palace Hotel, west Corniche Rd.
Bottom right: Yas Island Hotel. The Yas (Viceroy) Hotel was designed by American Asymptote Architects.
The hotel is the world's first building designed to span a Grand Prix race circuit. The Formula 1 event was the largest sporting event ever held in the UAE and the Yas Hotel was designed to be its centerpiece, helping transform Abu Dhabi into a cultural destination.
The Hotel offers 500 luxuriously appointed guest rooms, international cuisine in 8 restaurants and pioneering architectural design. Spirited modern flow with light and outlook.
If these links are not showing blue(alive) for you, copy complete and paste into your browser:
Dubai: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157630212596670/
Alpes-Maritimes: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157630755648788/
London: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157631491308168/
South of London: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157631661538623/
Red House Bexleyheath: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157631741103851/
North of London: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157631970837864/
Ruislip and Amersham: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157631987670910/
West of London: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157632103713172/
Abu Dhabi: www.flickr.com/photos/peteshep/sets/72157632108208479/
Peter Shep :-)
Two journalists, Clément Di Roma and Carol Valade, have been awarded the 2022 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for their documentary “The Central African Republic under Russian influence”
This documentary is a Découpages/Arte G.E.I.E co-production, initially broadcast on Arte Reportage in French, German and English. It was also broadcast on France 24 and published in the French newspaper Le Monde.
Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, Pina Picierno, Vice-President responsible for the Prize, and Anthony Bellanger, Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists and representative of the 29 members of the independent European-wide Jury, opened the award ceremony held in the Daphne Caruana Galizia Press Room of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
President Metsola said: "The Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism sends a strong message. The European Parliament is on the side of truth and justice, of independent journalism.
A strong democracy needs a strong press. And there is no democracy without freedom of the press. In Europe, rights and liberties are goals we fight for, not obstacles."
Between the 3rd May and 1st August 2022, more than 200 journalists from the 27 EU countries submitted their stories for consideration. 11 of these submissions were shortlisted by the jury before the overall winner was decided.
About the winning story
This film is Clément Di Roma and Carol Valade’s first documentary and the culmination of their work as correspondents in the Central African Republic in 2020. The country was going through a wave of violence and abuses triggered by a new rebellion, partly fought by Wagner, a shadow army serving the Kremlin's interests. They investigated, filmed and continued their correspondence for several international media despite the surveillance of Russian mercenaries and the prevailing hostility against the French media. It was also a question of continuing the work of their three Russian colleagues, Orhan Djemal, Kirill Radchenko, and Alexander Rasstorguyev, murdered in the Central African Republic while investigating Wagner in 2018. Their main concern has been the protection of their sources, especially those who denounce the crimes of mercenaries, in a country where disappearances of opponents are common. After several months of investigation, they gained the trust of Russian propaganda actors in the Central African Republic. Their voices had never been heard before. Without bias, their documentary gives a voice to the victims of the mercenaries, but also to their supporters, to better understand the methods of this takeover, facilitated by a resentment towards France. They wanted to make all voices heard in this other front of the conflict with Russia that is now spreading to the Sahel on both military and disinformation fields.
Read more: www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221017IPR4370...
This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license CC-BY-4.0 and must be credited: "CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2022– Source: EP". (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) No model release form if applicable. For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu
Electromagnetic sound art in virtual exhibition space...
Disinformation – “Antithesis”
Virtual exhibition for Schemata Art
Hosted by New Art City + Corsica Studios
March 2022 onwards (indefinite exhibition)
Full description + user guide – rorschachaudio.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/disinformation...
3D view – newart.city/show/schemata-disinformation-antithesis
Catalogue view - newart.city/catalog/schemata-disinformation-antithesis
Curated and designed by Alice Hoffmann-Fuller, the latest exhibition in Schemata, Corsica Studios’ new experimental arts platform, takes place in a 3D digital rendering of Corsica Studios, hosted by on-line gallery platform New Art City. The “Antithesis” exhibition features brand new and archival work by the highly innovative and influential audio-kinetic art project Disinformation.
The Disinformation project’s exhibition for Schemata is in part inspired by the close proximity of Corsica Studios to the Brutalist architect Rodney Gordon’s iconic memorial to the electrical scientist Michael Faraday, installed, close to Corsica Studios, at the Elephant & Castle in 1961. The Disinformation sound artwork “National Grid” was first released on LP and performed live in 1996, and first exhibited as an art gallery sound installation in 1997. “National Grid” uses electromagnetic noise from live mains electricity to create a monolithic and immersive sound installation, which is conceived as a musical tribute to “the (creative) genius of electrification” [1]. The Michael Faraday memorial itself contains an electrical substation, which feeds high-voltage power to the London Underground; and it is consistent with the assertion that “art is not necessarily science, but science is always art” [2] that the original design for the Michael Faraday memorial envisaged this important work of public art as being a glass container (not, as it stands at present, a highly reflective steel box). On this basis, and in terms that are equally antithetical to the conventional wisdom of mainstream contemporary art, it can be argued that the true purpose of the architect’s original design was to enable members of the public to view what can be seen as the “real” work of art - meaning to view the electrical infrastructure.
[1] Hull Time Based Arts TOOT Festival Programme, Mute Magazine (special supplement) Oct 1999
[2] Joe Banks “The Rumble” (catalogue) Royal Society of Sculptors, March 2001
“Virtually all the physical phenomena we experience, such as light, chemical reactions, the properties of materials, and the transmission of signals along nerve fibres, are electrical in nature. In fact, the only non-electrical force we experience every day is the force of gravity.” – Harris Benson “University Physics” Wiley 1991
See also - www.flickr.com/disinfo/31910925141/
I. Drawing/sketch- Title - Fire from the Source. - "One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Jung.
Dimensions- 18" x 24.5" acid free paper & ebony pencil.
I will try to upload a much better image soon, ebony pencil reflects light & this is a large- & very detailed drawing. I had to photograph it a bit dark so that the ebony would not make a sheen to completely wipe out detail.. When it's framed it will be much easier to photograph.
This is a large study/drawing, Assange/Wikileakers of the organization Wikileaks ( wikileaks.org ) uses 'matches from sources' to disclose US gov secrecy ( behind large black curtains ) & to also finally bring some much needed attention & closure to some of these revelations ( set ablaze ).
More Wikileaks Series studies, &* drawings/etc leading to other/more work soon. Ongoing.
"War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford." -
Hannah Arendt
War Diary - wardiary.wikileaks.org/ Timeline: wartimeline.haineault.com/
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"Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them." - Julian Assange, editor & founder of Wikileaks
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"WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on the 'War Logs- ; ''I Enjoy Crushing Bastards" www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708518,00.html
- ( !! Yessssssssssssss.. Enough of bastards... )
( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology )
"This is but one isolated example, but it is a symptom of the main reason these leaks are important: in order to form an opinion on the war, we need to be able to trust the official information coming from the field. The leaks suggest that we cannot always do so. This in turn erodes populations' trust in what their military establishments tell them. "
www.huffingtonpost.com/azeem-ibrahim/dont-let-anyone-fool...
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"The leak of tens of thousands of Afghanistan war-related documents tells us more than the sum total of many official communiqués about the war. On balance, more disclosure is a good thing, but the leaking of raw military intelligence is a special case that requires a careful, rather than a cavalier, approach.
There is not enough information about the war, and much official information is misleading. In Canada, the federal government's quarterly reports contain a few updates based on its goals in Kandahar, but little else that informs. The government has already shown itself to be an unreliable source on issues relating to Afghan detainees.
The situation is now too dangerous for the most trustworthy chroniclers – journalists, UN personnel – to go outside NATO-protected areas.
So reliable, independent information is lacking. The circumstances in this war make such information even more necessary."
www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/we-neede...
"The first phase was chilling, in part because the banter of the soldiers was so far beyond the boundaries of civilian discourse. “Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em, just open ’em up,” one of them said. The crew members of the Apache came upon about a dozen men ambling down a street, a block or so from American troops, and reported that five or six of the men were armed with AK-47s; as the Apache maneuvered into position to fire at them, the crew saw one of the Reuters journalists, who were mixed in among the other men, and mistook a long-lensed camera for an RPG. The Apaches fired on the men for twenty-five seconds, killing nearly all of them instantly."
Read more www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khat...
"JA: We have to be careful there. Remember, this is a civil war. Everyone says Taliban, but in fact, the Taliban are Afghans. This is a civil war that is going on. And Taliban are a part of the will of the Afghan people. They are also part, probably, of the Pakistani secret intelligence service, and maybe, of course, part of the will of Saudi Arabia, who is giving some money to this. But in terms of the bodies on the ground, people are actually doing their work. The Taliban is part of the will of the Afghan people. And the United States and the allied forces need to recognize and understand that it’s part of the Afghan people and if you are shooting Taliban, you are shooting the Afghan people.
That does not mean they do not have blood on their hands.
This material does not paint the behaviors of any military groups in a nice light – there is blood on all sides."
rt.com/Politics/2010-08-01/taliban-wikileaks-afghan-assan...
Samantha Power - Development and Democracy - "Samantha Power discusses the political challenges facing democracy promotion and the practical needs of effective democratization." www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUOO5cCNVg
"Instead, many eyes will now pore over this data from many different directions, looking for patterns and attempting to eliminate the noise, disinformation and fog of war.
Many will look to it to criticise and condemn the US presence in Afghanistan, but if those on the other side – those who support such military incursions – have any sense, they too will use it to understand better the war in which they find themselves and adapt their counsel to fit more accurately the facts on the ground.
That’s the benefit, usually, of an open society. We get to triangulate on the truth by gathering facts in the public space, then providing them to all sides to chew over. We use this against our own illusions and those of more closed societies who can only view the world through one narrow perspective.": www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/0730/1224275801...
"Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté." www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/is-the-war-in-afghanist...
“To a personal injury plaintiffs lawyer, those are all potential clients in a tort suit against a contractor,” she said.
”So, for the ambulance chasers of the battlefield, the WikiLeaks database is a goldmine.” blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/07/lawyer_wikileaks...
"We journalists should be delighted that WikiLeaks exists because our central task has always been one of disclosure, of revealing public interest material that others believe wish to be kept secret.The website deserves our praise and needs to be defended against the reactionary forces that seek to avoid exposure."
edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/29/wikileaks.roy.greensla...
"With the release of the WikiLeaks documents, Arab media may finally feel vindicated, as Western media finally start to give greater prominence to civilian casualties." newamericamedia.org/2010/07/wikileaks-documents-validate-...
"How to read the Afghanistan war logs: video tutorial
David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor, explains the online tools we have created to help you understand the secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan": www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/video/2010/jul/25/afgha...
"Jonathan Foreman, writing for the right of center National Review's Corner blog, hopes the documents will force America to deal with the possible deceptions being made by ally Pakistan. "It is possible that the publication of documents that provide actual evidence — rather than rumors — of the role of ISI personnel in Taliban planning, logistics, and strategy will give the West greater leverage in dealing with Islamabad and might force Pakistan’s political elite to confront the reality of the ISI’s secret activities. If so, that would be a silver lining to what is otherwise a military disaster abetted by the U.S. and British media."
www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/NATL-The-Importance-o...
"Wikileaks confirmed: A plan to kill American geologist with poison beer
The Wikileaks documents contain a claim that Pakistan and Afghanistan insurgents were working to poison alcoholic drinks in Afghanistan. While that's unproven, one US adviser in Afghanistan tells the Monitor he was almost poisoned that way in 2007." : www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0728/Wiki...
"This is duplicitous only if you close your eyes to the Pakistani reality, which the Americans never did. There was ample evidence, as the WikiLeaks show, of covert ISI ties to the Taliban. The Americans knew they couldn't break those ties. They settled for what support Pakistan could give them while constantly pressing them harder and harder until genuine fears in Washington emerged that Pakistan could destabilize altogether. Since a stable Pakistan is more important to the United States than a victory in Afghanistan—which it wasn't going to get anyway—the United States released pressure and increased aid. If Pakistan collapsed, then India would be the sole regional power, not something the United States wants."
www.billoreilly.com/site/rd?satype=13&said=12&url...
A War Without End: www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
"Julian Assange on the Afghanistan war logs: 'They show the true nature of this war'
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, explains why he decided to publish thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan Afghanistan war logs expose truth of occupation": www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/jul/25/julian-assange...
The history of US leaks: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10769495
Freedom of Information Act: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_...
"A long-delayed Afghanistan war funding bill, stripped of billions for teachers and black farmers, is back before the House and walking now into the storm over the Internet leak of battlefield reports stirring old doubts about U.S. policy and relations with Pakistan.": www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40254.html & www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40251.html
This ongoing series is dedicated to everyone who has needlessly had their lives destroyed, been injured or die in this almost past decade of war. For the sources, journalists & average citizens who risk their lives to inform us.
Reuters reporters Namir Eldeen, Saeed Chmagh & the good samaritan ( father ) who died trying to save them & of course his two surviving small children who will forever be impacted by the brutality of war for decades to come.
Please help Private Bradley Manning- www.bradleymanning.org/
"One surprising consequence of the war in Iraq is the surrender of postmodernism to a victorious modernism. This has been largely overlooked in North America.
In reaction to the U.S. intervention in Iraq, Jacques Derrida, a famous postmodernist, signed on as co-author of an article drafted by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, previously an opponent of his, in an unmistakable endorsement of modernist Enlightenment principles. Derrida, the apostle of deconstructionism, is now advocating some decidedly constructive and Eurocentric activism.
The article appeared simultaneously in two newspapers on May 31, in German in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "After the War: The Rebirth of Europe," and in French in Libération, less triumphantly, as "A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy: The demonstrations of Feb. 15 against the war in Iraq designed a new European public space."
Other famous intellectuals joined in with supportive newspaper articles of their own: Umberto Eco (of The Name of the Rose) and Gianni Vattimo in Italy and an American philosopher, Richard Rorty. This provoked much discussion in Europe, but only a few comments so far in North America, the Boston Globe and the Village Voice being rare exceptions.
This week in Montreal, there was an anti-globalization riot in which windows were broken in protest against a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. But the Habermas-Derrida declaration praises the WTO and even the International Monetary Fund as part of Weltinnenpolitik: maddeningly hard to translate, but something like "global domestic policy" or "external internal policy."
Yet it is not much of a stretch to claim the young anti-globalists as disciples of postmodernism and Derrida, who has hitherto been a foe of "logocentrism" (putting reason at the centre), "phallologocentrism" (reason is an erect male organ and, as such, damnably central) and Eurocentrism (the old, old West is the homeland of all of the above).
Derrida added a note to the article, observing most people would recognize Habermas's style and thinking in the piece, and that he hadn't had time to write a separate piece. But notwithstanding his "past confrontations" with Habermas (Derrida had objected to being called a "Judaistic mystic," for one thing), he agreed with the article he had signed, which calls for new European responsibilities "beyond all Eurocentrism" and the strengthening of international law and international institutions."
More: www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000361.php
"In early 2003, both Habermas and Derrida were very active in opposing the coming Iraq War, and called for in a manifesto that later became the book Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe for a tighter union of the states of the European Union in order to provide a power capable of opposing American foreign policy. Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration of February 2003, "February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe,” in Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe which was a reaction to the Bush administration demands upon European nations for support for the coming Iraq War[25]. Habermas has offered further context for this declaration in an interview."
More: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%c3%bcrgen_Habermas#Habermas_and_D...
Habermas: ”The asymmetry between the concentrated destructive power of the electronically controlled clusters of elegant and versatile missiles in the air and the archaic ferocity of the swarms of bearded warriors outfitted with Kalashnikovs on the ground remains a morally obscene sight
I consider Bush' s decision to call for a "war against terrorism" a serious mistake, both normatively and pragmatically. Normatively, he is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies; and pragmatically, one cannot lead a war against a "network" if the term "war" is to retain any definite meaning.”
Derrida: “To say it all too quickly and in passing, to amplify and clarify just a bit what I said earlier about an absolute threat whose origin is anonymous and not related to any state, such "terrorist" attacks already no longer need planes, bombs, or kamikazes: it is enough to infiltrate a strategically important computer system and introduce a virus or some other disruptive element to paralyze the economic, military, and political resources of an entire country or continent. And this can be attempted from just about anywhere on earth, at very little expense and with minimal means. The relationship between earth, terra territory, and terror has changed, and it is necessary to know that this is because of knowledge, that is, because of technoscience.
It is technoscience that blurs the distinction between war and terrorism. In this regard, when compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that are in reserve, for the future, in the computerized networks of the world, "September 11" is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One will be able to do even worse tomorrow, invisibly, in silence, more quickly and without any bloodshed, by attacking the computer and informational networks on which the entire life (social, economic, military, and so on) of a "great nation," of the greatest power on earth, depends.”
www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000361.php
I am incredibly- delighted at all the vital discussions about the war & US gov that are FINALLY taking place- & on a mass scale- as a result of this leak .. Simply miraculous..
FREEDOM & PEACE ( transparency, diplomacy & the evolution of such ) FOR ALL WAR NATIONS.
( WARNING - link ( after excerpt ) is NOT for sensitive viewers- ) "Wikileaks have released over 150 surpressed images. This is the tip of the iceberg, keep looking, keep publishing.In the last week Wikileaks has released over 150 censored photos and videos of the Tibet uprising and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the Chinese internet censorship regime — the so called “Great Firewall of China”The transparency group’s move comes as a response to the the Chinese Public Security Bureau’s carte-blanche censorship of youtube, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and other sites carrying video footage of the Tibetan people’s recent heroic stand against the inhumane Chinese occupation of Tibet."
fortuzero.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/tibet-western-media-sa...
-
The Blue Mask - Lou Reed - www.goear.com/listen/9960779/the-blue-mask-lou-reed ( & O Superman ) www.goear.com/listen/02cf55d/o-superman-(for-massenet)-la...
Lou Reed The Blue Mask
Lyrics:
They tied his arms behind
his back to teach him how to
swim They put
blood in his coffee and milk
in his gin They stood over the
soldier in
the midst of the squalor
There was war in his body and
it caused his
brain to holler
Make the sacrifice
mutilate my face
If you need someone to kill
I'm a man without a will
Wash the razor in the rain
Let me luxuriate in pain
Please don't set me free
Death means a lot to me
The pain was lean and it made
him scream he knew he was alive
They put a
pin through the nipples on his chest
He thought he was a saint
I've made love to my mother,
killed my father and my brother
What am I
to do
When a sin goes too far, it's
like a runaway car It cannot
be controlled
Spit upon his face and scream
There's no Oedipus today
This is no play you're thinking you
are in What will you say
Take the blue mask down from my face and
look me in the eye I get a
thrill from punishment
I've always been that way
I loathe and despise repentance
You are permanently stained
Your weakness buys indifference
and indiscretion in the streets
Dirty's what you are and clean is what
you're not You deserve to be
soundly beat
Make the sacrifice
Take it all the way
There's no won't high enough
To stop this desperate day
Don't take death away
Cut the finger at the joint
Cut the stallion at his mount
And stuff it in his mouth
---
-
* The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.
The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913)
* This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
* The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)
* Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Psychological Aspects of the Modern Archetype (1938)
* No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness.
Paracelsus the Physician (1942)
* The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."
The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364 (1953)
* Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!
The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (1954)
* Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more the unity is strengthened in the depths.
Civilization in Transition (1964)
* One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.
Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post (1977)
* That higher and "complete" man is begotten by the "unknown" father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus—"vultu mutabilis albus et ater"—represents our totality, which transcends consciousness. It was this boy into whom Faust had to change, abandoning his inflated onesidedness which saw the devil only outside. Christ's "Except ye become as little children" is a prefiguration of this, for in them the opposites lie close together; but what is meant is the boy who is born from the maturity of the adult man, and not the unconscious child we would like to remain.
Answer to Job, R. Hull, trans. (1984), pp. 157-158
-
But life is long. And it is the long run that balances the short flare of interest and passion. -
I am too pure for you or anyone. -
Is there no way out of the mind? -
all by, Sylvia Plath
Brian Eno - Golden Hours www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh9VdRQO2i4
"It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most "familiarity" is meditated and delusive.
Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.
One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.
Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se. "
"And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar.. in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." - All by David Foster Wallace
-
"the aim of those who had created these techniques was not to liberate people but to control them" From: The Century of Self, by Adam Curtis part 4: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036#
IMAGINE THE HAPPINESS & GREAT WORK AHEAD OF US WE COULD HAVE AT THE END OF THE WARS!!!!!!!!!
www.goear.com/listen/48d6016/hora-de-la-mehedinti-romania...
NO MORE WAR & FREEDOM FOR ALL WAR NATIONS!!!!!!!!!
Peace.
Contemporary Electronic Music In The Context Of Art
2 CD + Booklet In Special Sealed Food Packaging :
New Forms
Contemporary Electronic Music In The Context Of Art
Galerie Fuer Zeitgenoessische Kunst Leipzig
Raster - Noton . Archiv Für Ton Und Nichtton
RNLTD06
Released at the occasion of the exhibition at Galerie Fuer Zeitgenoessische Kunst in Leipzig in 1999
Curated by Carsten Nicolai
Produced by Raster - Noton . Archiv Für Ton Und Nichtton
Disinformation / Scanner / Thomas Brinkmann / Ritchie Hawtin / Frank Bretschneider / Kim Cascone / Goem / Ryoji Ikeda + Noto / Byetone / Pan Sonic / William Basinski / Signal / COH / Pomassl / Marc Behrens / Francisco Lopez / General Magic
Use Hearing Protection
GMA
Nazi Germany's most produced fully Tracked Armoured Fighting Vehicle of World War Two was the Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III) Assault Gun and also the second-most produced Nazi German Armoured Combat Vehicle of any type after the Sd.Kfz. 251 Half-Track, it was built on a slightly modified Panzer III chassis, replacing the Turret with an Armoured fixed superstructure mounting a more powerful Gun. Initially intended as a Mobile Assault Gun for Direct-Fire Support for Infantry, the StuG III was continually modified, and much like the later Jagdpanzer vehicles, was employed as a ''Tank Destroyer''.
The Sturmgeschütz originated from German experiences in World War I, when it was discovered that, during the Offensives on the Western Front, the Infantry lacked the means to effectively Engage Fortifications. The Artillery of the time was heavy and not mobile enough to keep up with the advancing Infantry to destroy Bunkers, Pillboxes, and other minor Fortifications with Direct Fire. Although the problem was well known in the German Army, it was General Erich von Manstein who is considered the father of the 'Sturmartillerie' (Assault Artillery). The initial proposal was from von Manstein and submitted to General Ludwig Beck in 1935, suggesting that Sturmartillerie units should be used in a Direct-Fire Support role for Infantry Divisions.
On 15th June 1936, Daimler-Benz AG received an order to develop an Armoured Infantry Support Vehicle capable of mounting 75cm calibre Artillery Piece. The Gun mount's fixed, fully integrated casemate superstructure was to allow a limited traverse of a minimum of 25° and provide overhead protection for the Crew, the height of the vehicle was not to exceed that of the average Soldier. Daimler-Benz AG used the chassis and running gear of its recent Panzer III Medium Tank as a basis for the new vehicle. Prototype manufacture was passed over to Alkett, which produced five prototypes in 1937 on Panzer III Ausf. B chassis. These prototypes featured a mild steel superstructure and a Krupp Short-Barrelled, 'Howitzer-Like' in appearance, 7.5cm StuK 37 L/24 Cannon. Production vehicles with this Gun were known as Gepanzerte Selbstfahrlafette für Sturmgeschütz 7.5cm Kanone Ausführung A bis D (Sd.Kfz.142).
While the StuG was considered to be Self-Propelled Artillery, it was not clear which Land Combat Arm of the German Army would handle the new Weapon. The Panzerwaffe (Armoured Corps) was the natural user of Tracked Fighting Vehicles, had no resources to spare for the formation of StuG Units and neither did the Infantry. It was agreed that it would best be employed as part of the Artillery Arm. The StuG's were organized into Battalions (later renamed ''Brigades'' for disinformation purposes) and followed their own doctrine. Infantry support using direct fire was its intended role. Later, there was also a strong emphasis on its use as an Anti-Tank Gun.
As the StuG was designed to fill an Infantry Close Support Combat role, early models were fitted with a Howitzer-Pattern, Low-Velocity 7.5cm StuK 37 L/24 Gun, much as the earliest versions of the fully Turreted Panzer IV were. Low-Velocity Shells are lightly built of thin steel and carry a large charge of explosive, to destroy 'Soft-Skin Targets' and blast Fortifications. Such Shells do not penetrate armour well. After the Germans encountered the Soviet KV-1 and T-34 Tanks, the StuG was first equipped with a High-Velocity 7.5cm StuK 40 L/43 Main Gun (spring 1942) and in the autumn of 1942 with the slightly longer 7.5cm StuK 40 L/48 Gun. These High-Velocity Guns were the same as those mounted on the Panzer IV for Anti-Tank use but the heavy steel wall High-Velocity Shells carried much less explosive and had a lower blast effect for use against Infantry or Field Fortifications. These versions were known as the 7.5cm Sturmgeschütz 40 Ausf.F, Ausf. F/8 and Ausf. G (Sd.Kfz.142/1).
▪︎Type: Assault Gun
▪︎Place of Origin: Nazi Germany
▪︎In Service: 1940 to 1945 (German service) / Syrian StuG IIIs were in use until the Six-Day ▪︎War (1967), possibly later
▪︎Wars: World War Two / Six-Day War
▪︎Designer: Alkett
▪︎Manufacturer: Alkett, MIAG
▪︎Unit Cost: 82,500 Reichmark
▪︎Number Built: c. 10,086 StuG III / c. 1,299 StuH 42
▪︎Mass: 23.9 tonnes
▪︎Length: 22ft 6in / Width: 9ft 8in / Height: 7ft 1in
▪︎Crew: 4 (Driver / Commander / Gunner / Loader
▪︎Armour: 0.62in to 3.15in
▪︎Main Armament: 1 x 7.5cm StuK 40 L/48 Main Gun, 54 rounds
▪︎Secondary Armament: 1 x 7.92mm MG34 or MG42 Machine Gun, 600 rounds / 1 x coaxial 7.92mm MG34 Machine Gun firing from hole in Gun Mantle (from 1944 on) 600 rounds
▪︎Powerplant: Maybach HL120 TRM V-12 gasoline engine driving six-speed transmission 296hp
▪︎Power / Weight: 12 PS (9.2 kW) / tonne
▪︎Suspension: torsion bar
▪︎Operational Range: 96 miles (1.1 mpg‑imp) at 22mph (59 Imperial gallons fuel)
▪︎Maximum Speed: 25mph.
Disinformation – “The Rapture” - live video + sound installation
Exhibition dates - 7 June to 31 July 2022
NB: visits by appointment only
Contact - info@cable-depot.com
Cable Depot
Off Warspite Road
Woolwich
London SE18 5NX
“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is as strong as death, and jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which burn with a vehement flame” – “The Song of Solomon” – chapter 8, verse 6
Full text - cable-depot.com/disinformation
“Drawing attention to the near homonym by which fire (Nār) and light (Nur) “are audio-visually very similar”, the Iranian art historians Somayeh Ramezanmahi and Hasan Bolkhari Ghehi state in their discourse on 'The Manifestation of Fire and Light in the Icons of Mir-Heidar’s Miraj Nameh'”:
“Fire and heat remind always of immortal memories saved in human being’s mind, they have become to a brilliant phenomenon for the exploitation of many ideas, feelings, and thoughts of human. Fire has not only a personal, individual, and internal aspect, but also agential, comprehensive, and general characteristics. It exists in human’s heart, and heaven, blazes from inside, manifested in form of love, and burns inside human… Among all phenomena, fire is indeed the only one that is involved to this extent in the life, thoughts, believes, vision, and feelings of people”.
Photomontage by Disinformation © Joe Banks 1997-2022
Climate Change
Action - Agriculture - Adaptation - ADP - Ambition - Aviation - Bali Action Plan - Biodiversity - Binding - Capacity-Building, Carbon - Carbon Capture - Carbon Dioxide - Carbon Footprint - Carbon Tax - Change - City - Clean Power Plan - Climate - Climate Action - Climate Change - Climate Finance - Coal - Coasts - Collaboration - Communication - Compliance - Consent - Consensus - Convention - Copenhagen - COP21 - Decarbonization - Development - Disinformation - Drought - Emissions - Encyclical - Energy - Ethics - Extreme Weather - Finance - Flood - Footprint - Foreseeable Future - Forests - Fossil Fuels - Fossil Fuel Subsidy - Framework - Future Fit - Future Generations - Geoengineering - Geothermal - Glacier - Green Economy - Green Growth - Green Goal - Green Jobs - Greenhouse Gases - Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - Inaction - Innovation - International Framework - KP - Kyoto - LDC - Long Haul - Low Carbon - Methane - Mitigation - Mobilise - Momentum - Monitoring - National Reporting - Ocean - Ocean Acidification - Offsetting - Outcome - Paleoclimatology - Paris - Paris Outcome - Parks - Pledge - Power Plants - Protocol - Psychology - Rapidification - REDD - Reefs - Regulations - Renewable - Resilience - Risk - Road Map - Severe Weather - Soil - Solar - Smart - Sustainable Practices - Target - Tax - Technology Threat Multiplier - Transfer - Transparency - Trending Topics - Vision - Warming - Water
24 March 2009. Westward view along Factory Lane, towards High Road, Tottenham.
_________________________
"If Haringey Council makes a mistake let’s be candid and honest about it; accept responsibility and accountability; apologise with genuine contrition; and correct the error as quickly as possible. In other words, let’s behave like a reputable business instead of someone flogging dodgy DVDs at a car-boot sale."
— My suggestion to Dr Ita O'Donovan, then Haringey's Chief Executive, on 29 March 2009.
_________________________
Lines, Signs and Chasing Fines
On 19 March 2009 Dr Ita O'Donovan emailed me. Listing "Factory Road" as one of the streets in the Tottenham Hale Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ). She was mistaken - and not just about the name of the street.
Dr O'Donovan was told that the CPZ in Factory Lane complied with Statutory Regulations and that parking enforcement was taking place. As my photo shows, there weren't any CPZ bays in this street. At its western end Factory Lane was entirely marked with double yellow lines: meaning no parking at any time. And the restriction was not being enforced when I took this photo.
These elementary errors were not the only glaring
mistakes in the information in Dr Ita O'Donovan's
emails to me during March 2009 about the roads
within and just outside the Tottenham Hale CPZ.
I'd written to her as part of my ongoing attempts since June 2008 to establish that Haringey needed to correct many hundreds of mistakes in parking lines across the borough.
I worked closely on this with Ray Dodds, former Labour councillor for Bruce Grove ward. Another councillor, LibDem Martin Newton, was also raising these issues and finding similar reluctance by the Urban Environment Department even to to admit, let alone correct its numerous mistakes.
Of course, as one of the Tottenham Hale ward councillors at that time, I realised that a Chief Executive cannot micro-manage services across a whole Borough. Nor be familiar with parking lines and signs in each back street. Unfortunately Dr Ita O'Donovan chose to rely on information supplied by staff in Haringey Urban Environment Department - the same people who were responsible for the mistakes and who - at that time - were still denying them.
Naturally I made my best efforts to help Dr O'Donovan by supplying her with detailed and accurate information - including the evidence of my photos posted on Flickr. I illustrated that what she had been told was comical gobbledegook.
Am I exaggerating? Judge for yourself
from the email sequence below.
It begins with my Councillor's Enquiry and Freedom of Information Act request on 13 March 2009. It ends with my email to Dr O'Donovan on 29 March 2009. And - after a reminder from me - her polite but minimal acknowledgement on 19 April 2009 that she had received my email.
═══════════════════════════════════
From : Alan Stanton Tottenham Hale ward councillor
Sent : 13 March 2009 13:39
To : Ita O'Donovan, Chief Executive, Haringey Council
Cc : Cllr Claire Kober (Council Leader); Cllr Lorna Reith (Deputy Leader) ; Cllr Ray Dodds
Subject: Tottenham Hale Controlled Parking Zone.
Freedom of Information Act Request & Member Inquiry
Dear Dr O'Donovan,
Could I please ask you to read the [previous] emails. As you'll see, the reply to my email on 4 March ignored my detailed questions and - as is usual in my inquiries about this area of the Council's service - made unhelpful general statements instead.
I therefore wish to restate my questions:
(1) As a Freedom of Information Act Inquiry; as well as
(2) Repeating the questions as a formal Member Inquiry under the Council's Constitution.
Could I please request your help to facilitate my receiving full and proper answers; and if possible to ensure that I am not required to wait a further 28 days for this information.
As you will appreciate, for many months there has been a clear pattern of delays, denial, obfuscation and supplying partial information about Parking and Lines & Signs issues, experienced by me, Cllr Dodds and Cllr Newton.
Therefore can I make an additional request to you: to discover who made the decision to ignore my detailed questions and supply this vague reply; and their reasons for doing so. Though signed by Ms Hancox, I assume the draft reply would have been considered by more senior officers.
As well as the above could I please make the suggestion that urgent arrangements are put in hand for Mr Niall Bolger and his colleagues to receive training on:
• the general issue of the need for transparency and openness as good practice by local authorities.
• the general law and provisions of the Haringey Constitution regarding councillors' Access to Information
I also wish to make it clear that should I encounter any similar difficulties when making reasonable requests from this Service or Department in response to a future Member Inquiry, I intend
(a) Repeating my Member Inquiry as a formal Freedom of Information Request and,
(b) If necessary referring the matter to the Information Commissioner.
I look forward to your reply,
----- Original Message -----
From : Ita O'Donovan
To : Cllr Stanton Alan
Sent : Thursday, March 19, 2009 6:47 PM
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Councillor Stanton,
Thank you for your e-mail raising your concerns about the response you received to your enquiry about the enforcement of the Tottenham Hale CPZ. I understand that, unfortunately, there has been a misunderstanding as we were dealing with two inquiries from you on this issue at the same time, one a phone inquiry and one by e-mail.
Your phone inquiry on 2nd March to the Parking Service asked for clarification on whether the streets within the Tottenham Hale CPZ were being enforced. This inquiry, reference LBH60474, was the one responded to by Joan Hancox on the 13th March 2009, and cleared by her manager, Beverley Taylor.
On the 4th March you e-mailed Frontline Members with more specific questions on this topic. This inquiry was allocated the reference LBH60583 and an acknowledgement was sent to you on the 9th March saying that a full response will be sent to you by the 18th March 2009. Unfortunately, due to an administrative error, a connection was not made between the two inquiries. I have raised this with senior managers in the service who have taken steps to make sure that this does not happen in future.
I would like to reassure you that there was no intention by officers to provide you with a less than full response to the issues you raised and these answers are now provided below. I understand that we have provided you with a number of detailed responses on the issue of parking lines and signs in the past, as you mention. If you are dissatisfied with these responses, as you suggest, it would be helpful for me to have specific details.
In response to your enquiry LBH 60583 please find below an answer to each of the questions you raise.
• Is the Tottenham Hale CPZ currently being enforced or not?
Response
Part is being enforced, please see the list of roads below.
• If not, when did enforcement cease?
Response
Enforcement ceased on the roads listed below in the 14th October 2008.
• If it is being enforced, is this on every road within the CPZ? Or only those roads and for cars parked on lines which comply with the law?
Response
Enforcement is taking place on roads where all signs and lines are compliant.
List of streets where enforcement is not taking place in Tottenham Hale CPZ N17
• Holcombe Road • Dawlish Road • Mitchley Road • Junction Road • • Devon close Road • Scales Road • Malvern Road • Park View Road.
List of street where enforcement is taking place in Tottenham Hale CPZ N17
• Dowsett Road • Kimberley Road • Ladysmith Road • Carew Road • Mafeking Road • Buller Road • Circular Road • Factory Road • Reform Row • Reed Road • Stoneleigh Road
• On what dates is it planned to begin correcting non-compliant parking lines and signs within the Tottenham Hale CPZ; and on what date will the work be complete?
Response
We are currently undertaking inventory surveys to identify the extent of works required and envisage that compliance works will be completed by the end of May.
• If it is being enforced, could you please tell me how many PCNs were issued in Tottenham Hale CPZ in January 2009 and in February 2009.
Response
In January we issued 208 PCNs in the Tottenham Hale CPZ, and in February, 87.
I trust that this now answers your inquiry and clarifies any misunderstanding. However, as you have also requested that this enquiry be treated as an FOI, should you have any further queries, or are unhappy with how we have dealt with your request and wish to make a complaint, please contact the Feedback and Information Team as below. [Address and contact details given].
Yours sincerely
Dr Ita O'Donovan
Chief Executive
----- Original Message -----
From : Alan Stanton
To : Ita O'Donovan
Cc: Cllrs Ray Dodds ; Claire Kober ; Lorna Reith
Sent : Friday, March 20, 2009 3:43 PM
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Dr O'Donovan,
My thanks for your rapid response.
Reading your email, my initial thought was: 'Welcome to the club'. Plainly, whoever in the Urban Environment Department drafted, authorised and checked this reply approached their task with a similar lack of care and concern as they do with an enquiry from me.
The information you have been supplied is factually incorrect in most respects. Before I go on to explain why, let me add my second thought. 'If that's how they respond to the Chief Executive, heaven help residents who write in'.
Recent Changes
I realise that information about signs-and-lines can quickly become out-of-date as errors are corrected. And, as you will appreciate, I have not had time today to do more than re-check a few roads within Tottenham Hale CPZ.
As far as I can tell from my own observations and a quick limited re-check this morning, the only recent changes have been:
(1) Ladysmith Road N17 was resurfaced last year. The lines and signs were completely repainted and - as far as I am aware - are compliant with the Statutory Regulations. (But see 2.)
(2) Many roads within the CPZ have had traffic calming measures; including entry 'cushions' and corner build-outs. In a few cases these obliterated parking lines or part of the lines. Plainly, inspection of these works should have spotted this problem with minor rectification taking place without delay. Of course, it's possible that such works are already in process. (But were I a betting man, I would not put money on it. Nor, I imagine would you.)
(3) A number of parking lines are badly fading. So it could be doubtful if they are compliant. In my view, monitoring and refreshing lines and signs should be a priority call on the parking income. Not - as appears in Haringey - an afterthought.
(4) One aspect I've not raised before is the lack of T-bars on single and double-yellow lines. In one case a Parking Adjudicator ruled this was de minimis. However, I am told there is now a Review pending in the High Court which seeks to challenge that ruling. I assume your colleagues in Urban Environment are aware of this.
Inventory Survey
You said that last October officers in Urban Environment ceased enforcement in roads within the Tottenham Hale CPZ. So I find it mystifying that they are only now "undertaking inventory surveys to identify the extent of works required".
I'm surprised that you have not found it equally perplexing that officers compile a list (albeit a grossly inaccurate one) of roads within the CPZ, saying which ones are or are not compliant and which they are currently enforcing; but without having first carried out an accurate survey.
Frankly, Tottenham Hale CPZ does not cover a large area or many streets. It is perfectly feasible for someone with the necessary expertise and of reasonable intelligence to survey it using a camera and a notebook. My guess is that no more than 2-3 days would be needed for walking round and then producing a comprehensive and reliable report.
The fact that corrective works will not be completed until the end of May I regard as maladministration. Unless I can be given some reasonable explanation for this delay, I am considering taking up the matter with the District Auditor (re loss of income to the Council) and the Ombudsman on behalf of residents in my ward who are paying for a service they do not receive.
Roads within Tottenham Hale CPZ
Below is an alphabetical list of roads in Tottenham Hale CPZ. For some reason not all of them are in the list you were given; and there are also roads in your list which are not within the CPZ.
I have added [original] where a road was in the original CPZ area; and [extension] for roads in the extension. Your email sets out the roads "where all signs and lines are compliant" and enforcement is taking place. I've added my comments below each street where I disagree with this list; giving my reasons why.
As officers in Urban Environment are aware, for many months I have posted photos on my Flickr pages for most of the streets in this CPZ; with comments about the compliance (or otherwise) of the lines. These are part of a group of sixty photos - including from other parts of Haringey and elsewhere. You can find them here.
Buller Road [Extension added to the CPZ] My two photos show the bays are non-compliant. Not compliant as listed in your email.
Burbridge Way [Extension] This road was omitted altogether from the list in your email. Two photos posted - bays are non-compliant.
Carew Road [Extension] Three photos - bays are non-compliant. Not as listed in your email.
Chesnut Grove [Original CPZ] This street was omitted from your email. My three photos show bays non-compliant. However, like many roads in the original CPZ, this one had double white lines wrongly painted at the ends of the street with the correct single white lines in the middle. This elegant variation on the Statutory Regulations means those end bays are non-compliant.
Circular Road [Original] Shown as compliant in your email. This street has pavement parking and I don't know whether or not the existing signage is compliant as I am told the regulations changed since these lines and signs were installed.
Dawlish Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. Three photos posted showing the lines at both ends of the road are wrongly painted with a double white line. Otherwise the bays are compliant.
Devon Close [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. Pavement parking allowed. The signs and lines appear to be the same as the adjacent Circular Road - which is shown as compliant.
Dowsett Road [Extension] Shown as compliant in your email. My four photos show specific non-compliant bays. Some of the bays in this road may be compliant.
Factory Lane [including Palm Tree Court]. [Extension] This is wrongly shown in your list as 'Factory Road'. It's also shown as compliant. I haven't checked today, but as I recall, is not actually in the CPZ but marked entirely with yellow lines. Which should of course, be enforced.
Holcombe Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. My two posted photos show that two bays at the Park View Road end of Holcombe Road are indeed wrongly painted with a double white line. (And no T-bars). But apart from this improvisation, all other bays in this street are compliant and should be enforced.
Junction Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. However, my one photo shows only the two bays at the Scales Road end of Junction Road are wrongly painted with a double white line. Otherwise the bays are compliant.
Kimberley Road [Extension] Shown as compliant in your email. On the contrary, my seven photos show that every bay in this street was wrongly painted with a double white end line - and therefore entirely non-compliant. The end lines at the Dowsett Road junction have been obliterated by the new build-out.
Last week I re-checked all the lines in this street as I have taken-up the case of a resident who was refused a refund of her PCN. Hopefully, this refund will now be forthcoming; either from Haringey or via a complaint to the Ombudsman.
Ladysmith Road [Extension] This is shown in your email as compliant; with enforcement taking place. As I mentioned, this street was resurfaced and re-lined. Although lines obliterated by a new build-out are now needed. Otherwise I agree with your email.
Malvern Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. However my two photos show the same pattern as in other roads in the original CPZ. The end lines of both pairs of end bays were wrongly given two white lines and are non-compliant. However, the middle bays are okay.
Mafeking Road [Extension] Shown as compliant in your email and enforcement taking place. However my three photos show that the parking bays are in fact non-compliant.
Mitchley Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. One photo indicates the same pattern as in Malvern Road above. Apart from the end lines on the end bays, the others are compliant.
Park View Road This was partly in the original CPZ and partly in the extension.
It is shown as non-compliant in your email. My one photo shows a single bay near the corner with Dowsett Road which has double white transverse lines at the north end of the bay. Apart from this bay, other parking bay lines (on the western side of this street) appear correctly marked. The eastern side of Park View Road is a double yellow line and should be enforced.
Reed Road [Extension] Shown as compliant in your email. However my photo shows non-compliant lines.
Scales Road [Original] Shown as non-compliant in your email. My photo shows one end of the end bay wrongly marked - the same pattern as in the adjoining Malvern Road and Mitchley above. Other bays are compliant.
Stoneleigh Road [Original] Shown as compliant in your email. I posted one photo. In my view, all the bays appear to be non-compliant
Wilson's Avenue This street was omitted from your list. I am unclear whether or not this was properly included in the Statutory Order which authorised the CPZ. It has a parking bay which is wrongly marked. This street is also outside the area demarcated by the CPZ signage. I raised this several years ago and was assured it made no difference. But that is not my reading of the Regulations.
Reform Row. This street was included in your list as compliant and being enforced. As far as I am aware Reform Row is not and has never been in the Tottenham Hale CPZ.
Officers' Intentions
We will have to agree to differ on the matter of officers' intentions. When I send an email requesting full and detailed information, I expect a full and detailed answer. However, I am always willing to discuss with officers whether my request is reasonable and constructive; and if it requires an unfeasible amount of work. What I am no longer willing to accept is being fobbed-off.
I very much regret to say that my experience does not lead to me to draw the conclusion that these officers are committed to transparency. (Although I also realise that this may not be entirely within their control.)
Whatever the reasons, I have - as you put it - frequently been dissatisfied with responses I received. If you would like details, could I please invite you to read my public comments posted on my Flickr photoblog. A search for 'tags' such as: CPZ, PCN, parking; yellow box; should take you to the relevant pages.
My thanks for your help.
Alan Stanton
Tottenham Hale ward councillor
----- Original Message -----
From : Alan Stanton
Sent : 26 March 2009 13:46
To : Ita O'Donovan
Cc : Cllr Ray Dodds Ray; Cllr Claire Kober (Leader of the Council); Cllr Lorna Reith
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Dr O'Donovan,
A brief update to my email [above].
As I mentioned, in response to your email last Friday I took new photos of a few streets within Tottenham Hale CPZ. This week I checked two other locations: Wilson's Avenue and Factory Lane.
I couldn't spot any corrections to non-compliant CPZ or yellow lines. In some streets the only change was that markings are more faded than before. In others, traffic calming measures had covered over some lines - which had not yet been repainted.
All my CPZ photos are collected in a Flickr 'set' which you can access using this 'guest pass' link.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Alan Stanton
Tottenham Hale ward councillor
----- Original Message -----
From : Ita O'Donovan
To : Cllr Alan Stanton
Cc : Cllr Ray Dodds ; Cllr Claire Kober (Leader of the Council) ; Cllr Lorna Reith
Sent : Saturday, March 28, 2009 1:03 PM
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Cllr Stanton,
Thank you for your further detailed email on the enforcement situation in Tottenham Hale CPZ. You obviously have a real concern about these matters.
In essence these concerns focus on two main issues: firstly, the quality of the responses that you are receiving from Urban Environment and the accuracy of the information which is being supplied to you. Secondly, you are concerned about the length of time it is taking to rectify compliance issues in this area and feel that the end of May is not acceptable.
On the first issue, I understand that you feel that the response mainly addressed the questions that you raised but did not go into sufficient detail to satisfy your concerns about the compliance of lines and signs and our reasons for enforcing or not enforcing.
In response to your question “If it is being enforced, is this every road within the CPZ? Or is it only those roads and for cars parked on lines which comply with the law?”, the response should have explained that enforcement is taking place in locations in the listed roads where signs are compliant as well as where restrictions are not CPZ specific, for example, footway parking and double yellow lines.
I would also confirm that the Council has not ceased enforcement due to the double white line bay markings as it is still clear to drivers where there are bays, irrespective of whether the bay end is marked with a single or a double bay marking. These will of course be addressed as part of our compliance work as will any faded or worn lines.
I apologise that there was an error in the roads within the zone. Two roads were included which are just outside as they are on the same parking enforcement beat. I have stressed to Urban Environment officers the need for accuracy in responding to Member Enquiries.
On the second issue, you may be aware that the compliance work that is being carried out in Tottenham Hale CPZ is part of an ongoing programme to improve compliance of lines and signs. This work has started with Finsbury Park CPZ and Seven Sisters CPZ and a great deal of this has already been completed. The work on Tottenham Hale CPZ is part of this ongoing programme. I do not feel that the timescales for completing this work are unreasonable given the scale of all the compliance work being undertaken.
Thank you for the very detailed information you have provided on the compliance issues within the CPZ. I have asked officers to ensure that this is fed into our work and to invite you to accompany them on a walk around the area, once the compliance work has been completed, to make sure that all of your concerns are fully addressed.
Sincerely
Ita O’Donovan
----- Original Message -----
From : Alan Stanton
To: Ita O'Donovan
Cc : Cllr Ray Dodds ; Cllr Claire Kober (Leader of the Council) ; Cllr Lorna Reith
Sent : Sunday, March 29, 2009 1:43 PM
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Dr O’Donovan,
Thanks for your email yesterday 28 March.
I assume someone else wrote this comical gobbledegook for you. But I’d really appreciate your reading something before it's sent in your name.
But perhaps you did read it? In which case you've apparently failed to grasp any of the key issues for which – to use your words – I have “a real concern”. Nor, it seems, have you the slightest inkling that whoever advised on yesterday's email put you in the invidious position of writing almost precisely the opposite to what you wrote before.
You are correct of course that I have “concerns” about the accuracy of the information supplied to me by the Urban Environment Department.
It is also correct that I am critical about the length of time it has taken to recognise, acknowledge and correct simple errors.
But it may be helpful if I make clear that my main “concerns” are not:
• About officers responding to councillors.
• Nor about my “feeling” that officers have not given me enough detail.
• Nor is all this some anorak-issue of single or double white lines or whether or not yellow lines on roads have T-bars.
There are far more important public issues involved which are at the heart of the relationship between local councils and their residents. These are issues of trust and confidence; openness and accountability.
I asked simple questions. Do the signs and lines in one CPZ comply with the Law of the Land – the Statutory Regulations? Are they being enforced as such?
In response to my formal enquiry and Freedom of Information Act request and an enquiry from you as the Chief Executive, we get the answers:
"No". "Yes". "Here’s a list." "Well, what we meant to say was not these bays and not these lines." "Oops, sorry, the list is wrong." "It's an ongoing programme." "We are about to do a survey." "We’ll walk round with you at the end of May."
It’s like wading through porridge. And if it wasn’t serious it would be hilarious.
But it is serious. And not just because we're taking people’s money for permits and fines. We are breaking an implied agreement with our residents. They buy permits; they are entitled to expect and trust us to put in legally correct lines and signs. We enforce these; and they are entitled to expect and have confidence in us to follow the legal rules.
If local authorities behave as if they are above the law that is corrosive of the trust and confidence in these councils, in council staff, and in elected councillors.
Openness and Accountability.
Local government is now fond of referring to ‘customers’; and to ‘business units’, ‘business plans’, delivery', and ‘service offers’. So let’s take an example from a real business.
Suppose Waitrose were to overcharge you because their scanning equipment was faulty. You would no doubt be outraged. You would insist they apologised to you and all the other customers; immediately stopped using the faulty equipment and fixed it; and refunded any overcharges. As they are a reputable trader they would do so. And without delay, obfuscation, disinformation; and using weasel-words like “addressing the problem”. I would expect them to be candid and open; because they value the trust and goodwill of their customers.
So if Haringey Council makes a mistake let’s be candid and honest about it; accept responsibility and accountability; apologise with genuine contrition; and correct the error as quickly as possible. In other words, let’s behave like a reputable business instead of someone flogging dodgy DVDs at a car-boot sale.
Sincerely,
Alan Stanton
Councillor Tottenham Hale ward
----- Original Message -----
From : Alan Stanton, Tottenham Hale ward councillor
Sent : 09 April 2009 13:45
To : Ita O'Donovan
Cc : Cllr Claire Kober ; Cllr Lorna Reith; Cllr Ray Dodds
Subject : LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Dr O'Donovan,
I would be grateful if you would let me know if and when I am likely to receive a reply to my email below.
Yours sincerely,
Alan Stanton
----- Original Message -----
From : Ita O'Donovan
To : Cllr Alan Stanton
Cc : Cllr Claire Kober (Leader of the Council); Cllr Lorna Reith ; Cllr Ray Dodds
Sent : Sunday, April 19, 2009 7:37 PM
Subject : RE: LBH 60583 [not 60474] - Tottenham Hale + FOI Request ref 81000153
Dear Cllr Stanton
I am confirming that I received and read your email of the 29th March.
Sincerely,
Ita O’Donovan