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Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.
Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.
Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
The thing that always annoyed me about this setup is that so much space is used up, I can hardly put a book and some papers on the desk to work with. So I was wondering what took up the most space, and it is most definitely the laptop. If it wasn't there I have a lot more space that I can use. Also the model is quite old, more than 3 years old. It isn't that well supported by the new OS versions anymore, and the battery life is nonexistent. Another thing that annoyed me where all those cables that I always had to plug in and out. I used to have an USB hub, but the old laptop/OS had problems with that - it wouldn't wake up after hibernation if the USB hub was connected....
So I was looking for some better way of setting up my desktop, and after A LOT of thinking, fiddling around, more thinking, going to hardware shops (e.g. media market and medimax hardware discounters) and thinking about what to buy, more thinking and annoying my friends, I finally came up with something (don't laugh, it actually took me half a year of thinking this through - but for now I am pretty happy with the result).
An article by Paul Schubert, titled “Montana’s Tourist Wilderness,” first appeared in the April 30, 1960 issue of “The Saturday Evening Post.” The article included a photo of Many Glacier Hotel, one of four lodges in Glacier National Park (and the basis for the image above). Years later the article led me to seek out that Montana wilderness. The view of those staggering peaks across Swiftcurrent Lake hasn’t changed a bit since Paul Schubert’s article went to print – it’s still one of the most famous landscapes in the U.S National Park System.
The horses and the trails are still there. While a few things have evolved since April 1960, the tradition of exploring the Many Glacier valley from the saddle remains alive and well. Today, the exclusive horseback riding concessionaire inside the park is Swan Mountain Outfitters. Their Many Glacier Corral is located just up the hill from the hotel, right at the back of the main parking lot, and operates seasonally, typically from mid-June through mid-September.
It is worth noting that Many Glacier Hotel intentionally preserves its historic feel—meaning no television or air conditioning in the rooms, and Wi-Fi is largely nonexistent. It encourages everyone to spend their evenings down in the expansive, fire-lit lobby or out on the deck.
Nature morte à la tête de mouton
"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.
The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience." A.H.
O mañana de domingo, tarde de jueves.
Louvre, 2010
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
Weteringschans 16/01/2013 15h33
Officially the name Weteringcircuit is nonexistent but everyone in Amsterdam knows where it is. Since 2002 tramline 25 makes a strange twist through Amsterdam due to the important contruction works of the Noord-Zuid métro line in the Ferdinand Bolstraat. This Combino is coming from Frederiksplein and instead of turning immediately right from Weteringschans to Vijzelgracht and Vijzelstraat it has to make a loop around the square because there is no direct right turn. It is still (2013) not sure when the normal route will be reset for service.
More information about tramline 25:
Wikipedia - Tramline 25 (Dutch)
Amsterdamse Trams - Lijn 25 (Cor Fijma, Dutch)
Zephyr is worried. The severe storm season has been been very mild - almost nonexistent - so far. But she knows that one certain group of Midwest storm devas far too well. They're just biding their time, waiting for the right moment.....
Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.
Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.
Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
Though personalized art appeared during World War I, and occasionally grew to incorporate the entire aircraft, most pilots carried a saying or a slogan, or a family crest, or squadron symbol. Some were named, but nose art was not common. During World War II, nose art not only saw its true beginnings, but its heyday.
No one knows exactly who started nose art first--it appeared with both the British and the Germans around the first time, with RAF pilots painting Hitler being kicked or skulls and crossbones on their aircraft, while German nose art was usually a personal symbol, named for a girlfriend or adopting a mascot (such as Adolf Galland using Mickey Mouse, something Walt Disney likely didn't approve of). It would be with the Americans, and a lesser extent the Canadians, that nose art truly became common--and started including its most famous forms, which was usually half-naked or completely naked women. This was not always true, but it often was.
The quality of nose art depended on the squadron or wing artist. Some of it was rather crude, while others were equal to the finest pinup artists in the United States, such as Alberto Vargas. For men thousands of miles away from home and lonely, a curvaceous blonde on a B-17 or a P-51 made that loneliness a bit easier. Others thought naked women were a little crude, and just limited themselves to names, or depicted animals, cartoon characters, or patriotic emblems, or caricatures of the Axis dictators they were fighting.
Generally speaking, there was little censorship, with squadron and group commanders rarely intervening on names or pictures; the pilots themselves practiced self-censorship, with profanity almost unknown, and full-frontal nudity nearly nonexistent. After the loss of a B-17 named "Murder Inc.," which the Germans captured and used to make propaganda, the 8th Air Force, at least, set up a nose art committee that reviewed the nose art of aircraft--but even it rarely wielded its veto. For the most part, nose art was limited only by the crew's imagination and the artist's ability. The British tended to stay away from the lurid nudes of the Americans, though the Canadians adopted them as well. (The Axis also did not use nose art in this fashion, and neither did the Soviets, who usually confined themselves to patriotic slogans on their aircraft, such as "For Stalin!" or "In the Spirit of the Motherland!")
When World War II ended, so did nose art, for the most part. In the peacetime, postwar armed forces, the idea of having naked women were wives and children could see it was not something the postwar USAF or Navy wanted, and when it wasn't scrapped, it was painted over. A few units (especially those away from home and family) still allowed it, but it would take Korea to begin a renaissance of nose art.
Though P-39N 42-18814 served in New Guinea, it is unknown if it served with "Girlie's" actual unit, the 71st Reconnaissance Group at Tadji, New Guinea. The real "Girlie" was a different P-39, but 42-18814 was painted as her to give one of Pima's World War II aircraft some nose art--or in this case, door art. This is a faithful recreation of "Girlie," showing the skill of some of the artists during the war. Surprisingly, both the real and recreated "Girlie" is wearing a swimsuit, rather than nude. This P-39, as mentioned, is on display at the Pima Air and Space Museum.
Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.
Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.
Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
Inspired by Klaksvík and Vardø. Two fjords nearly meet; the isthmus in between and two safe harbours create perfect place for a city. 2011.
The city of Klamme, also entirely hand-drawn. The city is situated in an unlikely geographic setting: One part on a cliff, uptown, and a part on the cliff's base where the river flows. 2010.
This is one of those items that, in another reality, I would have totally taken from this abandonment and put it in my nonexistent trophy case.
This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!
I took these photos in December 2019.
China doing the dirty work for U.S. allies who have been angered by the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) but too scared to speak up.
www.globaltimes.cn/page/202211/1280528.shtml
China slams US industrial subsidies, export controls that ‘may violate WTO rules’
Washington’s policies disrupt global trade, threaten world economy
The US' discriminatory and distorted industrial subsidy provisions in its Inflation Reduction Act as well as policies that have disrupted global semiconductor industrial and supply chains are suspected of violating WTO rules and have led to serious distortions to global trade and investment in relevant sectors, Chinese representatives said at a meeting of the WTO, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.
While Chinese officials have long repeatedly slammed US actions that violate WTO rules and disrupt global industrial and value chains, the latest criticism made at a closely watched meeting of the WTO in Switzerland is particularly significant, as many other WTO members have also stepped up their pushback against the US policies.
The Chinese side reiterated that these discriminatory provisions are suspected of violating the WTO principles of most-favored-nation treatment and national treatment as well as the WTO's ban on import substitution subsidies and trade-related investment restrictions, and have led to serious distortions in relevant sectors' trade and investment globally, Xinhua reported.
"While the US repeatedly accuses other economies of distorting WTO rules, the US moves of granting subsidies and imposing export controls violate the rules of the WTO, whose core is open and non-discriminatory trade," He Weiwen, an executive council member of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, told the Global Times on Sunday.
US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August. It is expected to provide up to $369 billion in subsidies to support manufacturing and investment in electric vehicles (EV), key minerals, clean energy and power generation facilities, granting nine tax credits on the condition of final assembly in the US or North America.
"The act is a typical example of the US' attempts to wreck the rules-based international trade order by putting its domestic law above international law and sticking to the 'America First' policy. China not only stands up for WTO rules but for other economies, as the acts by the US threaten industrial security in countries and regions including Europe and South Korea," Li Yong, senior fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Sunday.
At the WTO meeting, the Swiss delegation agreed with the Chinese representatives' review. Trade policies play an important role in the treatment of global climate change and Switzerland expresses concern over the US' discriminatory behavior against other WTO members' products, said Switzerland's representatives, stressing that trade-related policies must be non-discriminatory and consistent with WTO rules, according to Xinhua.
Ever since it became law in the US, the Inflation Reduction Act has caused widespread concern and criticism from governments and industrial communities around the world, including its allies in Europe and Asia.
Yonhap News Agency reported on November 17 that six major South Korean business lobbies have urged the US to revise the act on EVs in a way that doesn't discriminate against South Korean automakers and battery producers, as they fear South Korean companies could lose ground in the US without equal subsidies.
In addition to the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act, the US also sought to maintain technological hegemony and suppress competitors by signing the CHIPS and Science Act into law, announcing semiconductor export restrictions on China and constantly stepping up crackdowns on Chinese tech firms.
On Friday (US time), the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned five Chinese firms, including Huawei, ZTE and Hytera Communications, from selling communications equipment in the US, citing the catch-all excuse of "national security."
The US not only overstretches the concept of national security and abuses export restrictions, but it also engages in long-arm jurisdiction to force other WTO members to follow its policies, pushing unilateralism to its utmost. Its move seriously violates the principle of sovereignty under international law and is typical of hegemony and a cold war mentality, Xinhua reported.
The Chinese side said the US measures would result in a decoupled and broken global semiconductor industrial chain as well as long-term harm to global trade and economic growth.
It takes more than 1,000 processes and 70 instances of cross-border cooperation for a chip to reach its end-users, Li said, noting that the intricate yet balanced global supply chain, formed through decades of international collaboration, benefits all parties involved.
"However, the US' selfish move will harm the professional division of labor, countries and companies will be unable to give full play to their comparative advantages, and manufacturing costs will rise accordingly," he said.
The Chinese side urges the US to comply with WTO rules, remove the discriminatory and distorted content in the act, and earnestly carry out the G20 Bali Leaders' Declaration, which stresses that trade and climate and environmental policies should be mutually supportive and WTO-consistent, Xinhua reported.
The WTO now faces its biggest crisis over the past 70 years because of the selfish US policies, He said, calling on WTO members to join hands to resist the US' political mistakes, for example, by lodging appeals to the WTO.
americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/the-inflation-reductio...
The Inflation Reduction Act Sparks Trade Disputes: What Next?
By Charles Benoit
For hundreds of years, friendly nations have agreed among each other to use tariffs, and not domestic income or sales taxes, to favor domestically made products over imported versions. Unfortunately, American tariffs have atrophied to almost zero since 1934, when Congress handed the State Department authority to cut tariffs via international agreements. As producers offshored production away from our domestic market, the demonization of tariffs increased in lockstep to secure access to imports.
So perhaps it was inevitable that, when President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August, the other shoe dropped. Rather than use tariffs to promote the purchase of domestic goods, the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act modified parts of the Internal Revenue Code to favor domestically made cars, solar panels, and other products over imported ones.
By choosing consumer tax credits over tariffs, Democrats violated—in a flagrant manner—a central commitment of U.S. trade agreements going back to our 1778 Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France. That commitment is the principle of National Treatment. In short, the principle says that once an importer has paid the tariff to import a widget, that widget should be subject to the same internal taxes and regulations as if it had been made domestically.
Have you ever gone to a store, anywhere in the world, and discovered that the sales tax on a product differed depending on the product’s country of origin? Why doesn’t Michigan—or Germany, Korea, or Japan for that matter—charge higher registration fees for imported cars versus domestic cars? The reason you don’t see this is because the principle of National Treatment is something every country honors, at least in highly visible areas like taxation.
To be clear: Democrats should be congratulated for taking meaningful action that will lead to more things being made in America. This is wonderful. But using the income tax code instead of tariffs imposes confusion and compliance difficulties on citizens and businesses. And it upsets allies far more than tariffs would. In international relations, tariffs are fair game; every nation uses them. But income or sales taxes are not employed in this way.
And even if you don’t care what other nations think, National Treatment is still a good principle. Internal market taxes tied to a product’s country of origin shifts compliance costs from an importer to everyone. This in turn undermines political support for promoting domestic manufacturing. Tariffs are elegant; income tax credits are not.
Frustration in Asia and Europe is white-hot and will continue to escalate. On September 21, 2022, the president of South Korea was caught on a hot mic referring to the law’s drafters in Congress as “idiots.” “What an embarrassment for Biden,” he said.
This article makes the case for tariffs and respecting National Treatment for friendly nations. My goal is to suggest a proactive response that the United States should take: namely, shifting from the acrimony-inducing tax credits to righting our tariff policy on the grounds that we have the lowest bound tariff average of any nation in the multilateral trading system. A restored tariff schedule would enable us to pivot from idealistic “rules-based” trade to a more realistic “managed trade,” through which we can more pragmatically and straightforwardly pursue the goals that motivated the Inflation Reduction Act.
What Is “National Treatment”?
National Treatment is the principle that once an importer has paid the tariff to lawfully introduce foreign goods into the recipient nation, the importers and their goods will face no further untoward government interference. This principle makes sense, as it has the benefit of keeping the domestic market liquid and dynamic. No domestic auditing is needed. There is no need to police factories to scrutinize where inputs are made. Hardware stores are not worried about separate bins to segregate parts based on their country of origin. Imported goods must pass through our ports; it makes much more sense to tax them there.
Prior to the twentieth century, National Treatment was codified in treaties alongside another, better-known principle of trade, “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) status. MFN is the commitment to grant a trade partner the lowest tariff rates that the nation extends to any other. National Treatment, as a corollary principle to MFN, deals with the treatment of foreign goods after the tariff is paid.
In and of themselves, neither MFN nor National Treatment prevent a country from having high tariffs. From 1816 until 1934, America was committed to MFN and National Treatment, yet maintained high tariffs for both revenue and the protection of multiple industries. In other words, there is no inherent contradiction between MFN, National Treatment, and higher-than-average tariffs. In fact, during this period, we grew the greatest economy in the world and trade was a trivial part of our economy.
Well into the twentieth century, the principles of MFN and National Treatment were codified in international agreements styled as “Treaties of Amity and Commerce” or, later, “Treaties of Friendship, Navigation, and Commerce.” The State Department’s repository of international agreements signed by the United States contains scores of these agreements, some still in force, going back to the early nineteenth century. Importantly, these older commerce treaties were not like modern trade agreements, as they did not commit to specific tariff rates on every product.
In living memory, National Treatment has largely been taken for granted. But in earlier times, when taxing the movement of goods was the main revenue source for sovereigns, it was given more attention. Four months prior to even ratifying the Constitution, the United States agreed to grant National Treatment to France as the law of the land. Even earlier, on February 6, 1778, Benjamin Franklin signed not only the famous military Treaty of Alliance with France but also a separate Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The preamble to that treaty stated that its purpose was to “fix in an equitable and permanent manner, the rules which ought to be followed relative to the correspondence and commerce which the two parties desire to establish . . . by carefully avoiding all those burthensome preferences which are usually sources of debate, embarrassment and discontent.”
Articles III and IV of the U.S.-French treaty guaranteed MFN and National Treatment between the United States and France, so that their merchants would have “all the rights, liberties, privileges, immunities, and exemptions in trade, navigation, and commerce” as they traded in the markets of the other. The treaty commanded that “This liberty of navigation and commerce shall extend to all kinds of merchandizes, excepting those only which are distinguished by the name of contraband.” These treaties of amity and commerce were proper treaties under the U.S. Constitution, meaning the obligations were considered federal law and superseded state law.
America’s Extension of National Treatment through the “Multilateral Trading System”
America’s amity-and-commerce-treaty era began to subside after Congress delegated authority to the president in 1934 to enter binding tariff agreements with other nations. The 1934 law also gave the president the power to cut tariffs as part of those agreements.
Using this power, FDR’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull, an anti-tariff zealot, entered thirty tariff agreements with foreign nations during his tenure. This is when our MFN obligations became problematic, because every time he cut tariffs in a new agreement, it cut our tariff rate for every nation with whom we had an MFN obligation.
For example, Hull signed a free trade agreement with Mexico in 1943. He cut our tariffs on shrimp to 0 percent in that deal. Under the MFN principle, every nation we had a deal with got the 0 percent rate on shrimp. That rate remains today, almost eighty years later, and now most of our shrimp comes from Asia. During his eleven-year tenure, Hull took our average tariff from over 40 percent down to 14 percent.
Following World War II, on October 30, 1947, America’s thirty tariff agreements were collapsed into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with twenty-seven other nations. This was the genesis of something called “Normal Trade Relations,” although that name did not appear until decades later. In actual implementation, beginning with the GATT, our tariff schedule was bifurcated into two categories: Column 1 and Column 2. Column 1 included countries’ previously covered by our MFN tariffs, and now Normal Trade Relations tariffs. Column 1 tariffs are all the haphazard result of decades of closed-door dealmaking. Diplomats and economists would assign a dollar value to every proposed tariff cut in a negotiation, and exchange cuts accordingly. That is why Column 1 looks like a dog’s breakfast, with endless tariffs expressed as fractions of percentages (but most now 0 percent), and no seeming pattern. Column 2 is the holdover of the last congressionally written tariff schedule, the Tariff Act of 1930, more commonly known as the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, only Cuba and North Korea were in Column 2. Congress added Russia and Belarus to Column 2 shortly after the invasion (“punishment” was the overwhelming driver here; any understanding that tariffs could help us become more resilient did not come through in the legislation).
Bound tariff rates are like a price ceiling: a promise that you won’t charge more for a given product. Of the 164 WTO Members, U.S. tariff rates have the lowest average cap, a paltry 3.4 percent. All of these nations joined the GATT/WTO without the United States ever expecting tariff reciprocity. This is at the center of our deindustrialization. While National Treatment for friendly nations is a good policy, when combined with nonexistent or ultralow tariffs, as is the case in the United States, it becomes an economic suicide pact.
The GATT era led to the phrase “the multilateral trading system.” This phrase now refers not only to the GATT but also to a separate agreement on intellectual property, called trips, as well as several dozen other lesser agreements. These agreements are administered by the WTO in Geneva and constitute a “single undertaking,” meaning the agreements are a package deal: a nation must agree to all the responsibilities of all the agreements to get the benefits (chiefly, ultralow tariffs to developed-nation markets via the GATT).
A quick note about the creation of the WTO in 1995: it wasn’t a big deal. The GATT’s substance—locking in the tariff rates countries committed to under their schedules—operated in the same way before the WTO was created. The creation of the WTO was a superficial change; instead of administrative staff being “borrowed” from the UN, they have their own charter. True, there were some tweaks to dispute settlement under the GATT, along with other trivia, but these should not distract those of us concerned about American deindustrialization.
The real bamboozle of the “Uruguay Round” of GATT negotiations during the late 1980s and early 1990s, which involved the creation of the WTO, was to marry the GATT to a new global intellectual property agreement, trips, or trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. Here, Western leaders intentionally chose to prioritize income from intellectual property rents over domestic manufacturing. Instead of pushing for something approximating tariff reciprocity in GATT schedules, Western leaders told developing nations that if they wanted to continue to enjoy their high tariffs and our low tariffs, then they had to take on trips commitments. Trips requires all nations to enforce twenty‑year patent terms and fifty-year copyright terms, among many other rules.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s Tax Credits Violate
National Treatment
Before we get to the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, it is worth taking a moment to look at the text of our GATT obligations. Below, reproduced in full, and with emphasis added, is the first paragraph of the first article of the GATT, the “Most Favored Nation” obligation:
With respect to customs duties and charges of any kind imposed on or in connection with importation or exportation or imposed on the international transfer of payments for imports or exports, and with respect to the method of levying such duties and charges, and with respect to all rules and formalities in connection with importation and exportation, and with respect to all matters referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 of Article III, any advantage, favour, privilege or immunity granted by any contracting party to any product originating in or destined for any other country shall be accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product originating in or destined for the territories of all other contracting parties.
The GATT’s Article III, incorporated in the above, is the GATT’s National Treatment obligation and explicitly commands that WTO members’ tax codes “should not be applied to imported or domestic products so as to afford protection to domestic production.” An important distinction that confuses many people here: tax credits to subsidize building a factory (as opposed to buying a domestic product) do not run afoul of National Treatment, because they do not directly prejudice an imported widget versus a similar domestic product. Also, for those curious, “Buy American” laws were always allowed. Procurement is the one notable exception to the GATT’s National Treatment, because in procurement the government acts as a buyer in the market, not a regulator.
Now, looking to the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits, we see plainly that they do precisely what the GATT commands shall not be done: use the tax code to afford protection to domestic production. The Act amends existing clean energy tax credits, codified in Section 45 and 48 of the Internal Revenue Code, to include domestic content “bonuses.” An additional two clean energy credits are created with similar domestic content bonuses.
The changes to the Section 48 investment tax credit are instructive: Previously, consumers received a 26 percent tax credit for the installation of a rooftop solar system. Now, consumers receive a 30 percent tax credit for the installation of a rooftop solar system and an additional 10 percent (for a 40 percent total credit) if the solar panels consist of at least 40 percent domestic content.
So if you have $20,000 you want to put toward rooftop solar, the IRS will give you a tax credit of $6,000 if the solar panels are imported, or $8,000 if the solar panels meet domestic content requirements. Put differently, the long-standing Section 48 credit now poses an effective 10 percent tariff on solar module imports, but in a far more complicated and cumbersome manner.
Electric Vehicle Tax Credit
First legislated in 2008, Section 30D of the internal revenue code entitled consumers to a $7,500 tax credit from the IRS after purchasing an electric vehicle. Like all our domestic taxes and tax credits, it didn’t matter where the car was made—until President Biden signed the IRA, that is.
The previous extension of 30D credits to every electric vehicle regardless of origin may well have proved a death blow to our domestic automobile industry. While President Trump’s additional China tariffs mostly held off the invasion of gas cars from China, the 30D credit offset the tariff for made-in-China EVs. And so it was that the made-in-China Polestar 2 electric car, from China’s Geely Group, began deliveries to the United States in 2021. Polestar scaled up rapidly in 2022, enjoying access to the credit while Tesla and GM’s allotments had run out. Polestar cars became a regular sight in many U.S. metros; Polestar even signed a commitment to provide Hertz with 65,000 cars over the next five years. We were subsidizing the displacement of our own auto sector.
To end this madness, the Inflation Reduction Act violates National Treatment. Now, to get the full $7,500 credit, a car has to (1) have final assembly in North America to be at all eligible; (2) meet battery component manufacturing criteria to earn the first $3,750; and (3) source 40 percent of the critical minerals in the battery from the United States, or one of the twenty countries with whom we have an FTA, to earn the second $3,750. This 40 percent increases to 50 percent in 2024, 60 percent in 2025, 70 percent in 2026, and 80 percent in 2027.
The Treasury Department published more details alongside President Biden’s signing of the Act, but as of early October 2022, it is unclear which, if any, cars will qualify come January 2023. The Department of Energy published a guesstimate of 2023 model cars that “may” (emphasis theirs) qualify, not exactly inspiring consumer confidence. Reddit’s electric vehicles subreddit is onto a second “US Inflation Reduction Act Megathread,” each with over a thousand comments, trying to crowdsource an understanding of how this revised credit may work.
With tariffs, it is possible to control the amount of imports without creating compliance costs for the internal market. Filing tax returns is already complicated, and trying to incentivize domestic production with tax credits adds further complexity. For vehicles, it may prove workable, because every single car has a unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). Indeed, Treasury is making a VIN lookup tool so that consumers can verify whether a particular car satisfies the requirement. Without this, it would be impossible for consumers to know, as the same model of vehicle is often made here and elsewhere. The Ram pickup truck, for example, is made in both Michigan and Mexico.
The Inflation Reduction Act should be celebrated for ending the economic suicide of handing out $7,500 checks to electric vehicles imported from our chief adversary. But it would have been better policy to phase in a tariff on imported cars, followed by phase-in tariffs on batteries and then minerals. Tariffs are more straightforward and efficient. President Lyndon Johnson, following a dispute with Europe, imposed a 25 percent tariff on light trucks that we enjoy to this day, and which has been instrumental in preserving domestic vehicle assembly.
From a trade lawyer’s perspective, the Inflation Reduction Act’s preservation of National Treatment on vehicle assembly for Canada and Mexico, and the critical minerals requirement for other U.S. free trade agreement nations—but not for WTO Members—is an explicit rejection of the core of the multilateral system. This is most welcome, and will hopefully lead to a reconsideration of our membership in a nonreciprocal tariff agreement with essentially the whole world. Raising our GATT tariffs is far less of a bomb than cavalierly violating National Treatment.
Surprising Support and Expected Retaliation
The Business Roundtable is an association of the biggest corporations in America. Historically, it has staunchly supported strengthening the multilateral system. Thus it was surprising to hear its current chair, Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, come out in support of the Inflation Reduction Act. Autoblog noted the development with an article titled “Biden Bill Compels Barra to Put GM before Business Roundtable.” Ford also supported the law. It is noteworthy, too, that General Motors has exited Europe. Chinese consumers appear to be ditching Western carmakers in droves, preferring new indigenous car companies focused exclusively on EVs. Between 2020 and so far in 2022, international automakers fell from 61 percent to 49 percent of the total auto market in China. GM and Ford are now far less invested in the multilateral trading system than at any time this century.
It was also noteworthy that the government of Canada expressed enthusiasm for the new domestic content criteria. This may seem unsurprising, given that Canada will continue to have all trade obligations honored under both the WTO and usmca, but it nonetheless marks a major shift in Canadian federal policy, which for decades has been a staunch defender of the multilateral trade system. Simply remaining silent on the new credit would have been the traditionally expected response. Instead, Canada offered active celebration.
In contrast, European Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer protested as the bill advanced this summer: “We continue to urge the United States to remove these discriminatory elements from the bill and ensure that it is fully compliant with the WTO.” South Korea’s trade minister Ahn Duk-geun immediately joined in the criticism, as did Japanese officials. South Korea called the law a “betrayal.” Surprisingly, Politco reported that USTR “shrugged off” criticism, and Ambassador Tai celebrated the legislation that her office will now be defending from our allies.
In the near future, expect a WTO complaint filed by Europe, Korea, and Japan. These countries’ auto companies have undoubtedly been prejudiced. For example, among the top ten electric vehicles by sales in the United States are the Audi e-Tron, Porsche Taycan, and Hyundai Kona EV, all of which are assembled in Europe (for the American market). All of these vehicles will lose their current eligibility for the $7,500 credit on January 1, 2023.
On September 30, 2022, Bloomberg published details of European deliberation, quoting Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for the internal market, as saying that companies are telling him they actively plan to move investment from Europe to the United States if the credits remain. Breton reportedly said a WTO action was needed, or direct retaliation to create “a level playing-field.” Bloomberg also reported that Europe is “wary of a move that could affect mid-term U.S. elections.”
Europe will almost certainly win its WTO lawsuit. Although the WTO appellate body remains defunct as the United States won’t sign off on necessary appointments to establish a quorum, WTO dispute panels are still convening and issuing judgments (“panel reports”). With a victory in hand—assuming Europe waits that long—they will implement retaliatory tariffs. (When a WTO country wins a WTO lawsuit and the respondent country doesn’t comply, the WTO authorizes the complainant country to issue retaliatory tariffs.)
The United States and Europe have previously imposed WTO-authorized retaliatory tariffs against each other as they each won and lost, in part, a long-standing Airbus-Boeing WTO dispute. And in June 2018, in response to President Trump’s national security tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, the EU imposed retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. agricultural products, including whiskies, corn, and processed fruits and vegetables.
President Biden had sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor on trade by emphasizing his respect for allies and enthusiasm to work collectively with them on shared problems. So trade policy observers did not expect a fresh trade war with Europe from this administration. Ambassador Tai, in her first year in the role, had resolved both of the abovementioned trade fights with Europe.
America’s Options to Respond to Retaliation
The administration has three “reactive” options and one proactive option to respond to seemingly inevitable retaliation. The first reactive option is to do nothing: the United States could simply accept retaliatory tariffs. But this seems unlikely, as other nations will design their retaliatory tariffs to inflict maximum pain by targeting politically influential U.S. exporters.
The second reactive option would be to just exit the WTO. Even without congressional action, the president has authority to withdraw from the WTO on six months’ notice. But this too seems politically unlikely. And for Korea, we have a separate bilateral trade agreement with them that also requires National Treatment.
The third reactive option is also the politically easiest route: remove the domestic content requirements from the tax credits. Doing so on a multilateral basis, however—honoring GATT National Treatment—would guarantee that China rapidly displaced our domestic auto industry, and would be an unconscionable economic and geopolitical disaster. Unfortunately, it is also precisely the type of policy “correction” traditionally promoted by groups like the Business Roundtable. Democrats may seek to amend the tax credits so that Europe, Japan, Korea, and possibly other allies are no longer excluded. But then we would miss an opportunity to address the fact that the United States only has a 2.5 percent tariff on cars while Europe enjoys a 10 percent tariff.
Thus far, it is encouraging that Senator Warnock of Georgia, whose state is the beneficiary of a new $5.5 billion Hyundai factory only just beginning construction outside of Savannah, has not called for repealing the domestic content requirements. Despite Hyundai being very unhappy, the bill he introduced to accommodate them would only push domestic content requirements out one year.
Assymetric GATT tariffs offer a pivot to a proactive, superior option to fend off retaliatory measures: the president should direct USTR to renegotiate tariffs pursuant to GATT Article xxviii. Invoking an Article xxviii negotiation shifts the conversation from our National Treatment violation to the question of why Europe’s GATT tariffs on cars are four times the rate of ours. The United States should at a minimum raise tariff rates from the current 3.4 percent, perhaps to our historically successful 40–50 percent average, and encourage others to follow.
Many factors make this approach a no-brainer. First, we already have bilateral FTAs with most of our significant trade partners. Europe and China are the big exceptions. FTA countries need not be immediately affected by raising GATT tariff bindings, as our FTAs contain their own independent set of tariff commitments. Moreover, the United States and China have mutually ignored their tariff obligations since 2018. The WTO has held both the United States and China in violation of its tariff commitments ever since President Trump initiated the Section 301 process and China retaliated. So that trade relationship is already outside the WTO orbit.
Second, GATT Article xxviii rules for renegotiation play to our favor. The rules do not force renegotiation with all 163 other WTO members. Rather, for each product, you negotiate chiefly with the country that is currently your largest supplier of that product, and the GATT/WTO country with whom you initially negotiated that tariff concession. Overwhelmingly, then, our counterparties will either be (1) a country with whom we have an FTA, (2) China, or (3) Europe.
Countries with whom we have an FTA should not complain in Geneva during this renegotiation: the value of their FTA with the United States will increase exponentially. They should accept or even celebrate it, much as Canada has done with the Inflation Reduction Act’s modification of the EV tax credit, making it an effective $7,500 tariff on Asian and European cars. As for Europe, we could negotiate a parallel tariff agreement (essentially an FTA, but we need not seek to reduce tariffs further; it could even be a status quo tariff agreement).
If a counterparty nation isn’t Europe, China, or an existing FTA country, then it’s likely a beneficiary of one of our trade preference programs that cover 120+ developing nations. In these programs (primarily, the Generalized System of Preferences), we unilaterally waive tariffs, ostensibly to help the other country develop. Powerhouse nations like Brazil, Indonesia, and Thailand are current beneficiaries. These nations are thus not well positioned to complain in Geneva against raising our bound tariff rates, as we are free to terminate their tariff preference beneficiary status at any time. Most importantly, having the negotiation in Geneva to raise bound rates does not automatically change our Column 1 tariffs domestically; it merely signals to business that such a change is likely. This gives the market time to prepare.
Understanding that free trade should not be a goal in itself is liberating, because we need not badger other countries to match our low tariffs or inflame relations by calling them cheaters. The GATT negotiation should be easy: encourage our allies to raise their own tariffs along with ours.
Freed from GATT Shackles, Pivot to Managed Trade
In an October 2021 interview, Ambassador Tai succinctly described why America is increasingly looking to “managed” trade:
I think that when you talk about managed trade, just to break it down, it is a different model for managing a trade relationship than the model that we’ve pursued before, which has been . . . let’s seek market access and then, you know, let the chips fall where they may.
“Market access” is how trade lawyers refer to tariff commitments. Tai’s phrase “letting the chips fall where they may” is exactly correct: we’d lower tariffs, and then accept the results of subsequent shifts in production under some ideological notion that we can or should “compete” with countries where workers make one-tenth or less of the wages of workers here.
“Rules-based” trade, while sounding nice in theory, actually creates and exacerbates international tension. As America inevitably lost jobs and factories, our leaders would accuse other nations of “cheating.” Undoubtedly, “cheating” occurs, but rules-based trade both inhibits practical solutions and encourages ongoing acrimony.
Rules-based trade has produced antagonism even among allied, developed democracies. When we signed the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (“KorUS”) in 2007, the perception was that U.S.-made cars, which had bigger engines than Korean cars, did not sell well in Korea due to that country’s taxes on engine size. So in KorUS’s National Treatment chapter, we wrote in a unilateral obligation on Korea to relax their engine displacement taxes (Article 2.12). That didn’t work, however. Korea continued to send us more than ten cars for every one car we sent them.
Dissatisfied, the Trump administration acted to preserve our 25 percent tariff on trucks until 2041 to limit further damage to domestic production capacity. Korea also promised that at least fifty thousand U.S.-made vehicles annually could skip Korean safety standards and use American standards instead. The 2018 KorUS renegotiation additionally included a further loosening of Korean environmental regulations in the hopes of accommodating more U.S. exports. (After all these concessions, Korea is surely owed some understanding when their leadership says they’ve been betrayed by the IRA.)
Yet none of these adjustments worked. Korea still sends us more than ten times the number of cars we send them. In 2021, the United States imported 831,090 passenger vehicles from Korea, which in turn imported only 77,515 passenger vehicles from the United States.
In light of this history, it’s not rules standing in the way of a balanced trade relationship. But even if you’re convinced that Korea surreptitiously implemented other maneuvers to offset their concessions and to thwart U.S. exports, what then? Are we going to keep calling them cheaters while we lose domestic market share year after year? Perhaps Koreans just support their home brands more than Americans do.
With managed trade, we avoid this mess. We set expectations on volumes, like sovereigns that mutually respect each other, and go from there. No name-calling, no insinuations. Here’s an example of how it could work: fifty thousand vehicles tariff-free each way. Both countries’ OEMs could test whether there’s a viable market for a particular vehicle. If so, they could then make the investments necessary to supply the other country’s market from within. We get all the benefits of competition, without the downsides of hollowing out our domestic base. These agreements set clear expectations on volumes and balance without purporting to rewrite signatories’ domestic laws.
Hopefully, Ambassador Tai can get the support she needs from the Biden administration to fully embrace the switch to managed trade: renegotiating WTO Article xxviii and signing new, managed trade agreements with Europe, Korea, and Japan. This approach would more straightforwardly—and less controversially—achieve the goals sought by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Charles Benoit is trade counsel at the Coalition for a Prosperous America.
For groups fgr, happy sundays, funny faces, ugly underwear group and things you may not know about me.
The things you may not know are added as notes.
Testimonals to tiny wings and gooner-licious.
Uhm.. only two.. but that is because I only have two contacts in fgr so far.. =tom= I hope you will forgive me for that..
I noticed a parking lot wall painted with a mural of a cityscape on Toronto’s Queen Street West. I noted that it would make an interesting background with a touch of color and wondered briefly how I would position myself and a subject. The direction of the light on this overcast day dictated that I would have to stand pretty much exactly where a car was parked to complete the image that was in my mind.
Just then a man standing at the nearby streetcar stop gestured to my camera and asked if I was going to take his picture. He wasn’t that compatible with the background but since he had basically volunteered I shifted gears to tell him I would like to take his photo for a project I am doing. With that he abruptly announced “No projects. I hate projects!” He turned his back and stepped into the street to look for the nonexistent streetcar. Not sure if he was pulling my leg, I waited for him to turn around and said “So, how about it?” He repeated his dislike of projects and said no. I thanked him for hearing me out (he hadn’t) and wished him a good day.
I think all of us on this project have learned that a negative experience seems to open the door for a positive experience and that’s what happened next. This man and his girlfriend came down the street and I thought he would be an excellent subject for the parking lot wall. He was game and I gave him my contact card as we walked a few paces down the street to the parking lot and his friend Kristie said she’d be glad to wait. Meet Jason.
My first photo of Jason was of him holding his coffee cup but when I realized his eyes needed brightening, I asked if he could hand the coffee cup to Kristie so that he could handle the reflector for me. I guess I could have recruited her to hold the reflector but I have a small reflector and I think it and the coffee cup would have needed to be in the same space.
I was still trying to deal with the car being right where I wanted to be. Imagine someone being so inconsiderate as to park their car in the middle of my studio! I felt the photo would be better balanced and have better impact if I could gain a slightly higher perspective. I stood on a concrete ledge by the car’s front bumper and leaned back over the wet hood of the car (it was now starting to rain again). I switched the image from the electronic viewfinder to the LCD and held the camera over my head to create this portrait. I was pleased with the result.
We exchanged information and I found out that Jason is a 23 year old tattoo artist who works from his home. Kristie chimed in “And he’s really good at it.” I would have loved to see some of his work or even see him plying his artistry. I had hoped that if he worked in a shop I might be able to visit it firsthand and see how tattooing is done.
Thank you Jason (and Kristie) for your participation in 100 Strangers. You are Stranger #657 in Round 7 of my project.
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by the other photographers in our group at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.
My Beautiful Darling Eva- Killed on the Michigan Central R.R. at Jackson Mich. Oct 10, 1879.
Here is a link to an article about the rail road crash that killed darling Eva:
books.google.com/books?id=S7t8DW4iYDMC&pg=PA49&lp...
Here is a reprint of the original article:
EXPRESS TRAIN RUNS INTO SWITCH ENGINE: JACKSON, MICHIGAN - OCTOBER 10, 1879 - 25 DEAD
Criminal negligence and human blunders were again blamed for a fatal railroad accident. A serious rail collision occurred at Jackson, Michigan during the early morning hours of 10 October 1879 when a Michigan Central express train ran full speed on the mainline tracks into a switching engine, killing 25 persons and maiming 30 others. The Pacific express had left Detroit fifty minutes late, bound west, on the evening of 9 October. The train was made up of seven Wagner sleepers, four day coaches, and mail and baggage cars. The collision impact telescoped the locomotive tender into the baggage car about half it's length. The baggage car, in turn, battered the mail car which smashed into the first passenger coach. Most of the French Canadian immigrants riding the train were killed or seriously injured. None of the Wagner sleeping car occupants were hurt. Railroad officers and surgeons from Jackson and Detroit were engaged along with a large number of rail employees and citizens of Jackson, in the sickening job of extracting the injured and dead from the wreckage. The engineer and fireman of the express train were literally torn to pieces; the switch-engine crew escaped injury by jumping off before the collision.
Early investigations indicated the accident was caused by the irresponsibility of the yard switchman, who was making up a freight train at Jackson Junction and who, in the process, unsafely occupied the mainline track with the engine and caboose; their telegraphic understanding was that the Pacific express was considerably delayed affording secure use of this trackage. Studies showed the express had made up most of it's lost time. Consequently, the safety and time-clearance that the switching crew depended on was nonexistent.
On 11 October survivors of the Jackson disaster were transported to Chicago in a special train furnished by Michigan Central. Unfortunately a large part of the baggage car and its contents were destroyed, and the rail company expressed it intention to make restitution for such losses. There were countless stories appearing in the newspapers of the experiences related by survivors of the wreck. By this time the injured in a Jackson hospital were all reported in satisfactory condition. An investigation by a coroner's jury composed of Jackson's leading citizens commenced, taking evidence from railway officers and employees. Testimony by the yard master, various switchmen, and the engineer of the switch engine seemed to indicate all were more or less guilty of bad judgment and the violation of the company rules.
On 13 October 1879 special funeral services were held in Jackson for Milton Gilbert, engineer of the ill-fated Pacific express train, who was an esteemed citizen of that community. All other dead were sent to relatives or friends. Most of the injured passengers had recovered sufficiently to continue on to their destinations.
On 17 of October the coroner's jury completed its hearings and rendered its verdict, which is quoted in part as follows:
E.T. Colwell, yard-master at Jackson Junction, was criminally negligent in his duties in ordering the switch-engine upon the main track at a time when the Pacific express was liable to arrive within 10 minutes, as he had ample time of ascertaining, and that if he was deceived as to the time, it was his own miscalculations or want of calculation. That Joseph Sawyer, a switchman in charge of the switch-engine, knowing that Colwell had made mistakes on previous occasions, is sensurable for permitting the switch-engine to go upon the main track in the face of admitted danger without a decided protest. That Robert Jones, engineer of the switch-engine, is sensurable for moving his engine upon the main track when he knew by an examination of his own watch he could not do so without violating the rules and orders of the company.
Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.
Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.
Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.
Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.
Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
© branko
youtube channel: www.youtube.com/a2b1
NY Times, Dec. 4 2011
Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.
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Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.
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Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.
In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.
Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.
The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.
The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.
At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.
“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.
The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.
“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.
But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.
“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”
Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.
The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.
“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”
Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.
Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.
“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”
Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.
In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”
Everyone knows of Superman. The American icon began his life as a unique comic book character in 1938. Penned and written by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics' first issue and has been overwhelmingly popular ever since. Almost 60 years later, Superman is still an American favorite, appearing in everything from comic books to television shows, movies and cartoons. So it should come as no surprise that the figure described as "faster than a speeding bullet," has raced to a Nintendo 64 near you. Unfortunately for Nintendo 64 owners though, the Titus Software-developed game is executed so poorly that it actually serves to butcher the reputation of the prominent action hero.
The Facts
•Play as Superman through 14 alternating indoor/outdoor levels.
•Use the Man of Steel's special abilities for flight, heat vision, freezing breath, super-strength and X-ray vision.
•Pick up and use objects as weapons.
•Battle on land, underwater and in the sky against such villains as Metallo, The Parasite, Darkseid and Lex Luthor's minions.
•Four-player compatible modes.
•Game comes with "collector's edition Superman comic book."
The history behind Titus' 3D polygonal Superman is long and filled with setbacks. The game was originally scheduled to debut close to a year ago, but was pushed back due to a less than stellar reaction from Electronics Entertainment Expo '98 showgoers. With concerns ranging from gameplay hindering framerates to unforgivably unresponsive controls, it was certainly a wise decision on Titus' part to hold back the title. The problem is that the recently released finished product still has these flaws, bugs and oversights. In fact, the game is practically drowning in them. Perhaps the biggest problem of all, though, is that the game just isn't very fun.
As far as storyline goes, straight from the game's instruction booklet we are informed that, "Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen have disappeared -- they've been kidnapped by the malevolent powers of Lex Luthor and Braniac, who have brought them into a virtual reality version of Metropolis." Not exactly an epic tale, but it sure beats Titus' previous explanation for the game's graphic flaws -- namely that a thick screen of fog present in the title was in fact "Kryptonite fog" deployed by Lex Luthor himself to destroy Superman.
Right.
Imagine if all developers explained their game's visual limitations in storyline. "No, no -- those are not jumpy framerates you are seeing. Superman is merely drunk, which also blurs his vision considerably."
Or maybe, "You've got it all wrong, that is not clipping. Superman is simply using his X-Ray vision to look through the walls." While it would certainly make for some interesting story additions, it would most likely also rapidly ruin the gaming industry. Gamers take control of Superman through 14 missions that range in size and difficulty. Some levels see the Man of Steel racing through the skies of Metropolis, picking up automobiles (and other objects) and hurling them across the city at enemies, while others take place deep underground or even underwater. Each level begins with an objective that must be accomplished by everyone's favorite superhero. In some cases this can be as simple (in theory) as flying through rings (much more difficult than it sounds thanks to unbearable controls), while later levels put forward more difficult tasks such as retrieving access cards and/or disarming bombs.
Superman is manipulated with the analog stick. The Z button works to send the superhero soaring into the air or, if players are already airborne, to land. Because controls are so clumsy, it often takes six or seven taps of the Z button before Superman will do anything other than stutter around retardedly. Once airborne, controlling the Man of Steel is a whole other adventure altogether. Strangely, he seems to be neither faster than a speeding bullet nor more powerful than a locomotive. Actually, the sluggish polygonal mutant Titus has created moves more like a hovering couch. Turning around can take five or six seconds, while landing and taking off sometimes feel as if they're completely up to chance.
"Hello! I pressed the damn Z button. Is he going to do anything?" The answer, more often than not, is no.
The method by which objects are picked up (or not) in Superman is reason enough to think twice about the game. Though it says in the instruction booklet that "flying into an object automatically picks it up," we found this to be completely untrue on multiple occasions. Rather, flying into an object resulted in Superman convulsing and flying around it or, even better, picking it up for a split second and then flying on without it. The training mission is a perfect example of this. In it, Superman must pick up a car on the street before Lex Luthor's minions can blow it up. Worse yet, the Man of Steel has only a few seconds to execute the act before a timer runs out and the player loses. Okay, this seems like a fair goal, right? Not always. Sometimes the level starts and Lex Luthor's minions blow up the car right off the bat, long before Superman can ever reach it. How is that fair? Supposing the AI gives players a chance the next time around, it's often so difficult to pick up the vehicle before the computer-controlled characters blow it to smithereens that it's just not worth the effort.
And then we come to the various bugs of the game. After 10 minutes of play, we found a neat little feature that let us clip through all of the walls in Superman's universe. At first we thought it was X-Ray vision, but when we reappeared in the regular world only to be knee-deep in floor, well, something seemed a bit out of place. Pathetically, we found ourselves having more fun walking through walls than we did playing the working game. Other fun "features" include sometimes nonexistent collision detection and worthless AI that automatically shoots above Superman's shoulder. Imagine controlling multiple versions of Superman with friends. Imagine soaring to the tops of skyscrapers, circling around, shooting off your X-Ray vision and then freezing an opponent with your breath. While that certainly might have been a good idea, Titus has taken another approach entirely. Rather than using Superman in the game's multiplayer mode, players control one of Lex Luthor's minions and flying through levels is done via spaceships. Makes perfect sense if your absolutely insane.
The multiplayer feature, which supports up to four people, can be played in battle or race mode. Battle mode plays very much like a poor man's version of Forsaken. Dumbed down graphics, tunnel-like levels (minus one wide-open city arena) and one gun animation. Though multiple different weapons are obtainable, they are only represented with a change of sound. Instead of bleep, players get bloop. Woo-hoo! The one good thing about this mode is its smooth framerates -- something not even the single-player game can achieve.
Race mode, on the other hand, is completely baffling. Not only do players control more spaceships (why?), but rings shoot from the backside of one opponent. We played with this mode for a short while before giving up in utter confusion. Later we cried and decided never to speak of the so-called "race" again. Unfortunately, Superman is not saved by its eye-popping graphics. The game has this very rushed, careless feel about it that overflows into its visuals. In a smothering field of fog sits Metropolis. Superman can fly up into fog or down into fog. Straight ahead, meanwhile, awaits more fog and behind, good old fog. Amazingly enough, all of this fog does little to tame the title's jittery, sometimes slideshow-like framerates. Honestly, there are occasions where the framerates drop so low that the game becomes nearly unplayable.
And it's not as if all of Nintendo 64's power has gone to animation routines. Superman and friends feature an estimated 20 frames of animation between them. Punching is done with two or three frames, while flying eats up four or five. Everything -- and we do mean everything -- looks very robotic and unconvincing. The animated series of which this game is based on will never be known for its top-quality animation, but compared to the game it looks like a multi-million dollar Disney feature film.
Clipping also plays a major part in this "virtual Metropolis." Maybe it's because Superman is in a virtual reality world, but everything from trees to buildings and enemies clips, especially when the Man of Steel is up close and personal. Top everything off with the fact that the game runs in constant letterbox mode and we think we have a winner -- er, loser. This is not a visually striking game. The only thing moderately good we can think to note about it is that it's not blurry. The sound samples in Superman are actually very well done. The problem is that there are only a handful of them. In the beginning of the game we hear Lex Luthor say, "In short time your fate will be sealed, Superman." The level begins and Superman says, "Then there is no time to waste." That sounded pretty good, we say to ourselves. Then the next level kicks in and Superman says, "Then there is no time to waste." It's at this point that we begin to wonder what the hell is going on. The next area kicks in and the Man of Steel says -- you guessed it -- "Then there is no time to waste." This also happens whenever a player dies. Flying up to the limits of the sky, on the other hand, gives us a whole new sound sample of Lex Luthor laughing. This is meant to mean that Superman cannot escape the virtual reality world, no doubt.
The music in the game is doable, though it does become more and more repetitive as levels progress. It's obvious that sound effects and music were not one of Titus' main priorities for Superman. Now that we think about it, though, we're not sure if the developer put forth any priorities for this title other than to finish it. Having grown up with the Man of Steel, Superman for Nintendo 64 is a huge, whopping disappointment for me. In fact, the game is so all-around poorly executed that it's downright offending to people like myself who have enjoyed the comic books, movies, television shows and more based upon the America icon. Not only is this sub-par effort one of Nintendo 64's worst games, it serves as even more proof that it takes more than a solid license to make a solid game.
With horrible control, unforgivable framerates and more bugs than can be counted, Titus should be absolutely ashamed of this awful game, and the company should be doubly ashamed for pissing all over such a beloved license.
Do not buy this piece of garbage.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
the local cineplex had a life size replica of the Silver Surfer.....I just couldn't resist.
there are probably quite a few self portraits in there....if you could only find them...
And the right side of the background was nonexistent so it was photoshopped in.
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
Faith McAllister, "Inside the Flames", Sony Digital Camera, Faith McAllister_JFD Collection, Jasper GA
This picture is of the inside of an actual residential structure fire. In honor of the Privacy Act, the exact location, nor the names of the homeowners may be disclosed to any non-personnel. The house caught fire one night and was extinguished and preserved by Jasper Fire and Rescue Station 1, Pickens County Fire Station 11, and Talking Rock Volunteer Fire Station 7. Several volunteers also responded to this call. The owners of the home decided to rebuild and donated the structure to be used as a controlled burn, also known as a training fire. The inside of a structure fire, depending on the type of materials being burned and gasses being omitted, is about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit after only 3-1/2 minutes of engulfment! The inside of other rooms that are not even on fire yet can reach over 300 degrees, which is hot enough to melt plastic without flames. The inside of the house will be completely dark within only 4 minutes, regardless of the lighting. A single-wide trailer can burn to the ground in only 7 short minutes.
Imagine such a horrendous fire happening on a night over 100 years ago, when fire apparatus and training wasn't nearly as advanced as it is now...Catastrophic. Well, they did happen back in 1871, and changed the way that America fights fire today. On Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, The Great Chicago Fire and the Preshtigo fire raged on the same night, just 262 miles apart from one another.
In 1871, Chicago was considered a "boom town" with around 60,000 buildings. 40,000 of those then magnificent buildings were constructed of wood, and had roofs made of either felt, wood, or wooden shingles. The construction laws were extremely lax, and fire codes were practically nonexistent. Chicago was extremely dry that night due to lack of rain for the three weeks prior. The Great Chicago Fire was rumored to have been started by a cow kicking over a lantern in a barn. Ignition did occur in a barn on the west side of the city; however, I'm convinced that the cow should remain innocent since she was never proven guilty!
The boys of the Chicago Fire Department were exhausted from fighting a fire earlier that day that spanned four blocks. Their response time to what is now known as The Great Chicago Fire was delayed due to errors in judgement of the location of the fire and in signaling the alarm. The fire fighters were first sent to the wrong neighborhood, causing the loss of precious time. Upon their arrival, the fire was already spreading out of control to the east and north and was consuming EVERYTHING in it's path. Private homes and mansions, as well as commercial buildings were all raging out of control--fueling the flames of Chicago's Hell. With limited equipment and personnel, the Chicago Fire Department seemed to be meeting it's match! The Great Chicago fire raged on relentlessly for 3 days and was finally extinguished by Mother Nature as the rain finally began to fall on the morning of October 10, 1871. The entire central business and heart of the city was completely leveled to ash and smouldering rubble. More than 2,000 acres and 17,000 homes were destroyed, leaving upwards of 100,000 people homeless. The city suffered more than $200 million in damages, and at least 300 people were killed.
On that same fateful October day, (10/08/1871) the under-publicized Preshtigo Fire occurred, just 262 miles north of Chicago. Preshtigo, Wisconsin had been the host to a large logging operation, which left the forest floor carpeted with pine branches and sawdust. Clearing projects at the time used a "slash and burn" method, in which tiny, controlled fires were used to dispose of the refuse. The city was under drought-like conditions for the entire summer of 1871 and was severely dry by the fall. Several of the "slash and burn" fires caught wind and were swept up into a huge cyclonic fire storm. This "tornado of fire" quickly grew to more than 1,000 feet high and 5 miles wide. The Preshtigo Fire Company consisted of a single, horse-drawn steam pumper and was NO match for a forest fire of this magnitude--their efforts were hopeless. The Preshtigo Fire blazed on destroying more than 2,400 square miles of forest, as well as several small communities. It claimed the lives of more than 2,200 settlers. It then became a firestorm and actually jumped the Green Bay-which was about 60 miles wide. It then went on to completely burn and destroy several hundred more miles of land and settlements on the northeast peninsula of Wisconsin.
In the light of these two tragic fires, America began to enact strict building and fire codes. Improvements in communications are still constantly being made. Advances in firefighting equipment as a whole were set in force then to ensure that these such tragedies do not recur. The Preshtigo Fire is still known as the biggest forest fire in North American History today.
Jones and Bartlett. "Fundamentals of Fire Fighter Skills, Second Edition" (10-12) Print
"Hot Facts About House Fires". www.ok.gov/health/documents/house_fires.pdf . Retrieved July 28, 2011.
"The Great Chicago Fire". www.chicagohs.org/history/fire.html . Retrieved July 28, 2011.
"The Great Preshtigo Fire of 1871". www.preshtigofire.info/ . Retrieved June 27, 2011.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire
Now that I have HBO NOW, I pretty much have all of the television I need, along with Netflix and Hulu. Ah, good times. But, I'm not talking about good times today, because this show GIRLS has taken a considerable dive since it debuted a few years ago. I was a big fan and championing it when it first came out, I loved it.
I just watched the last episode of the 4th season. I feel like this show has just become too cynical, these characters don't grow in any way, they keep making the same stupid mistakes, and the writers aren't taking them as seriously as they probably should.
My main gripe with this show is that Lena Dunham has completely taken center stage and and writes Hannah as oblivious and an asshole and then rewards her, doesn't punish her. We don't even get to see what everybody else is doing six months later, just Hannah's bitch ass.
I can only vouch for the 1st and 2nd season, which I really liked, then it started to lose me on the 3rd season. It was just too much Hannah, not enough character growth. The only things that seem to be going on, are relationships and Hannah's future. That's it. Everything else is just pushed off to the side. And I can't watch another season of these vapid, lost white girls constantly making the same mistakes over and over. They don't punish these characters for being assholes, they punish the good and innocent characters and mock them and laugh at them. I can't stand that.
The show never gave me enough Marnie, Jessa or Shoshanna. In every season. They're also getting the short end of the stick in terms of the progression of their characters - which is pretty nonexistent. And this sequence with Adam's sister naked in the tub about to give birth...was just too much.
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+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
Answers About the Empire State Building, Part 3
By The New York Times
Mark KingwellMark Kingwell
Following is the final set of answers from Mark Kingwell, the author of “Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams.” This week he is answering selected readers’ questions about the history, significance and architecture of the Empire State Building. We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.
Question:
How did it get built so quickly?
— Posted by Mark Curiale
Answer:
Starrett Brothers, the general contractors, executed one of the most impressive construction schedules in history, in large measure because they adopted then cutting-edge time-motion ideas developed by Taylor and Ford. Materials and labor were matched according to rigid guidelines and variance was not tolerated. Workers were supported with food,and other resources high above the ground — for example, lunch stations serving hot meals so they would not need to descend to ground level.
There are a number of good sources that detail this construction, but to me the most interesting are (1) “Building the Empire State,” which is a reproduction of the original notebooks, pages of graph paper painstakingly typed, that guided the site; and (2) Rem Koolhaas’s brilliant book about Manhattan and Coney Island, “Delirious New York,” which is partly preoccupied with the mechanical relentlessness of the schedules creating the building.
Such feats of fast construction still occur, but not in North America. In Shanghai during the last decade, and in Dubai now, one can observe the same unearthly speed. These are, of course, places were labor is cheap and regulation either nonexistent or easily pliable.
Question:
I am interested in any retrofitting the Emp is getting or planning on getting with regards to energy generation and green building techniques. The age and size of the building leads me to believe it must be a massive energy hog and the electrical and HVAC systems outdated and inefficient.
— Posted by Jackson
Answer:
The new renovation is being done to current code, but there is no sign that it is particularly green. But the changes, especially to electrical, should make the building cleaner and more efficient. The changes are also driven by the new target tenants. For years, companies who had elaborate electrical needs, especially with respect to computer equipment and systems unimagined at the time of the building’s construction, were not inclined to consider the building as a home. The new infrastructure is meant to change that.
Question:
The vast majority of landmark buildings seem to be identified by their main tenants or developers — Woolworth’s, The N.Y. Times, Seagrams, AT&T, Hearst, Time Warner, etc., etc. I don’t really know of any flagship tenants in the E.S.B. now or then — who occupies the building now, and what occupants of note have there been in the past?
— Posted by PJ
Answer:
The building has seen every kind of tenant, from actual private eyes in the Philip Marlowe mode and small garment and jewelry companies to insurance firms and charities. One of my favorite tenants, in part because a friend of mine works there, is the New York Foundation, which endows money to city-based projects. Visiting their office one day, I was shown a faded ink record of a $10,000 grant made to Dr. Albert Einstein on Feb. 23, 1934. That was one reason I included in my book a photo of Einstein, taken on the Observation Deck, him gazing upward quizzically. It might have been the day he got his check!
But you’re right that there has never been a signature tenant, nor one who occupied any significant chunk of the available space. The Times recently ran this story about changes resulting from the refitting.
As highlighted there, some of the shiny new tenants, leasing a whole floor or more, are: BBG-BBGM, an architectural firm; Taylor, a public relations firm; Funaro, accountants; and Skanska, a Swedish engineering company. The perfume company Coty Inc. has taken almost two floors.
Question:
My grandfather purportedly maintained an office in the building that was replaced by the E.S.B. Do you know where I could obtain a photo of the E.S.B. predecessor?
— Posted by Bill
Answer:
The photo archive where you can view this was linked in another question. The Empire State’s immediate predecessor was the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which was re-established on Park Avenue in Midtown. The Fifth Avenue site had been owned by the Astor family, and the Waldorf-Astoria was the combination of two separate hotels opened by rival interests within the family. I detail some of this history in my book: contestation over the site, and family conflicts about whether to stay or demolish and move the hotel to a more impressive location, were enabling conditions of the Empire State going up. The present Waldorf-Astoria, itself a grand 47-story Art Deco pile completed in 1931, was a sort of by-product of the Empire State.
Thus, a very New York story. All cities witness change on their various sites, individual buildings coming and going. But the combined forces of money, ambition and population, constrained and forced by the limits of small, gridded Manhattan, make for a superheated architectural atmosphere. It was those conditions, plus the new developments in steel and concrete, that generated the skyscraper as a form: the first vertebrate, rather than crustacean, buildings, as one critic phrased it.
The Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who had imagined sleek towers, was disappointed when he first visited New York: the tall buildings were less gleaming spires than a dark forest. But the Empire State, in part because of its formal beauty and relative isolation from rivals, but also because of its gathering resonances of Americanness, cannot be dismissed so easily. The title of my book, taken from the Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr weepie “An Affair to Remember,” suggests we can’t get any nearer to heaven than at its summit. I’m not sure about that, but I am sure it is my favorite building in the world.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.
Abandone Benelux -
The field of industrial archaeology incorporates a range of disciplines including archaeology, architecture, construction, engineering, historic preservation, museology, technology, urban planning and other specialties, in order to piece together the history of past industrial activities. The scientific interpretation of material evidence is often necessary, as the written record of many industrial techniques is often incomplete or nonexistent. Industrial archaeology includes both the examination of standing structures and sites that must be studied by an excavation.
The Kentucky & Indiana Terminal Bridge is a railroad bridge connecting the Louisville, Kentucky, area to New Albany, Indiana. Constructed from 1881 to 1885 by the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company, it opened in 1886. Originally, it included a single standard gauge track and two wagon ways, allowing wagons and other animal powered vehicles to cross the Ohio River by a method other than ferry for the first time. At the time motorized vehicles were virtually nonexistent. The K&I Bridge company also owned a ferry boat operation during both the 1st and 2nd bridge, eventually that operation was sold as the bridge's success largely outmoded boat usage.
joe mangrum
washington square park
© branko
youtube channel: www.youtube.com/a2b1
NY Times, Dec. 4 2011
Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.
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Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.
Enlarge This Image
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.
In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.
Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.
The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.
The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.
At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.
“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.
The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.
“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.
But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.
“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”
Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.
The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.
“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”
Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.
Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.
“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”
Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.
In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.
On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.
During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.
French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.
The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.
Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.
When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.
While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.
In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.
On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.
On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.
Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.
Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)
Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)
Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)
Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with
619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,
driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance:
Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)
Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps
135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power
Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)
Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)
Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds
9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds
Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)
Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)
Armament:
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub
2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings
The kit and its assembly:
This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.
The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.
The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.
Painting and markings:
My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.
As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.
The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.
The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.