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

www.a2b1.com

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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Enlarge This Image

 

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.

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.

 

View On Black

 

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.

Related articles across the webADL slams Lena Dunham's New Yorker pieceFat Jewess Lena Dunham Angers Foxman by Comparing a Jewish Boyfriend to a DogWhat If Michael Bay Directed Girls?Adam Driver: 'Lots of things have been said about my face'YouTube's rumored subscription service will reportedly launch this year smj12.com/?p=1481

+++ 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.

Nicole Porter and Abbey Rekis

www.facebook.com/pages/Annika-Ekstrom-Photography/2484229...

+++ 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.

by meghanfdenton ift.tt/1R95BPS

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

www.a2b1.com

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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Enlarge This Image

 

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.

San Francisco. California. USA

 

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Novoslobodskaya (Russian: Новослобо́дская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Tverskoy District of the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya Line, between Belorusskaya and Prospekt Mira stations. Novoslobodskaya was opened on 30 January 1952. From 21 November 2020 to 4 March 2022, the entrance of the station was closed for reconstruction.

 

Architecture and art

Alexey Dushkin, the station's architect, has long wished to utilise stained glass in decoration of a metro station, and the first drawings date to pre–World War II times. In 1948, with the aid of a young architect Alexander Strelkov, Dushkin came across the artist Pavel Korin, who agreed to compose the artworks for the panels. The rest of the station was designed around the glass panels.

 

It is best known for its 32 stained glass panels, which are the work of Latvian artists E. Veylandan, E. Krests, and M. Ryskin. Each panel, surrounded by an elaborate brass border, is set into one of the station's pylons and illuminated from within. Both the pylons and the pointed arches between them are faced with pinkish Ural marble and edged with brass molding. At the end of the platform is a mosaic by Pavel Korin entitled "Peace Throughout the World."

 

Transfers

From this station it is possible to transfer to Mendeleyevskaya station on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line.

 

The Moscow Metro is a metro system serving the Russian capital of Moscow as well as the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935 with one 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union.

 

As of 2023, the Moscow Metro, excluding the Moscow Central Circle, the Moscow Central Diameters and the Moscow Monorail, had 294 stations and 514.5 km (319.7 mi) of route length, excluding light rail Monorail, making it the 8th-longest in the world and the longest outside China. It is the third metro system in the world (after Madrid and Beijing), which has two ring lines. The system is mostly underground, with the deepest section 84 metres (276 ft) underground at the Park Pobedy station, one of the world's deepest underground stations. It is the busiest metro system in Europe, the busiest in the world outside Asia, and is considered a tourist attraction in itself.

 

The Moscow Metro is a world leader in the frequency of train traffic—intervals during peak hours do not exceed 90 seconds. In February 2023, Moscow was the first in the world to reduce the intervals of metro trains to 80 seconds.

 

Name

The full legal name of the metro has been "Moscow Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor V.I. Lenin Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина и ордена Трудового Красного Знамени метрополитен имени В.И. Ленина) since 1955. This is usually shortened to V.I. Lenin Metro (Метрополитен им. В.И. Ленина). This shorter official name appears on many stations. Although there were proposals to remove Lenin from the official name, it still stands. During the 1990s and 2000s, Lenin's name was excluded from the signage on newly built and reconstructed stations. In 2016, the authorities promised to return the official name of the metro to all the stations' signage.

 

The first official name of the metro was L. M. Kaganovich Metro (Метрополитен им. Л.М. Кагановича) after Lazar Kaganovich. (see History section). However, when the Metro was awarded the Order of Lenin, it was officially renamed "Moscow Order of Lenin L. M. Kaganovich Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина Метрополитен им. Л. М. Кагановича) in 1947. And when the metro was renamed in 1955, Kaganovich was "given a consolation prize" by renaming the Okhotny Ryad station to "Imeni Kaganovicha". Yet in a matter of only two years, the original Okhotny Ryad name of the station was reinstated.

 

Logo

The first line of the Moscow Metro was launched in 1935, complete with the first logo, the capital M paired with the text "МЕТРО". There is no accurate information about the author of the logo, so it is often attributed to the architects of the first stations – Samuil Kravets, Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova. At the opening in 1935, the M letter on the logo had no definite shape.

 

Today, with at least ten different variations of the shape in use, Moscow Metro still does not have clear brand or logo guidelines. An attempt was made in October 2013 to launch a nationwide brand image competition, only to be closed several hours after its announcement. A similar contest, held independently later that year by the design crowdsourcing company DesignContest, yielded better results, though none were officially accepted by the Metro officials.

 

Operations

The Moscow Metro, a state-owned enterprise, is 449 km (279 mi) long and consists of 15 lines and 263 stations organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow to the outlying areas. The Koltsevaya Line (line 5) forms a 20-kilometre (12 mi) long circle which enables passenger travel between these diameters, and the new Moscow Central Circle (line 14) and even newer Bolshaya Koltsevaya line (line 11) form a 54-kilometre (34 mi) and 57-kilometre (35 mi) long circles respectively that serve a similar purpose on middle periphery. Most stations and lines are underground, but some lines have at-grade and elevated sections; the Filyovskaya Line, Butovskaya Line and the Central Circle Line are the three lines that are at grade or mostly at grade.

 

The Moscow Metro uses 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) Russian gauge, like other Russian railways, and an underrunning third rail with a supply of 825 Volts DC, except lines 13 and 14, the former being a monorail, and the latter being directly connected to the mainlines with 3000V DC overhead lines, as is typical. The average distance between stations is 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi); the shortest (502 metres (1,647 ft) long) section is between Vystavochnaya and Mezhdunarodnaya, and the longest (6.62 kilometres (4.11 mi) long) is between Krylatskoye and Strogino. Long distances between stations have the positive effect of a high cruising speed of 41.7 kilometres per hour (25.9 mph).

 

The Moscow Metro opens at 05:25 and closes at 01:00. The exact opening time varies at different stations according to the arrival of the first train, but all stations simultaneously close their entrances at 01:00 for maintenance, and so do transfer corridors. The minimum interval between trains is 90 seconds during the morning and evening rush hours.

 

As of 2017, the system had an average daily ridership of 6.99 million passengers. Peak daily ridership of 9.71 million was recorded on 26 December 2014.

 

Free Wi-Fi has been available on all lines of the Moscow Metro since 2 December 2014.

 

Lines

A Moscow Metro train passes through Sokolnicheskaya and Koltsevaya lines. View from the driver's cabin

Each line is identified by a name, an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number, and sometimes a letter suffix), and a colour. The colour assigned to each line for display on maps and signs is its colloquial identifier, except for the nondescript greens and blues assigned to the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, the Zamoskvoretskaya, the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya, and Butovskaya lines (lines, 11, 2, 10, and 12, respectively).[citation needed] The upcoming station is announced by a male voice on inbound trains to the city center (on the Circle line, the clockwise trains), and by a female voice on outbound trains (anti-clockwise trains on the Circle line).

 

The metro has a connection to the Moscow Monorail, a 4.7-kilometre (2.9 mi), six-station monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh which opened in January 2008. Prior to the official opening, the monorail had operated in "excursion mode" since 2004.

 

Also, from 11 August 1969 to 26 October 2019, the Moscow Metro included Kakhovskaya line 3.3 km long with 3 stations, which closed for a long reconstruction. On 7 December 2021, Kakhovskaya is reopened after reconstruction as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The renewed Varshavskaya and Kashirskaya stations reopened as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line, which became fully functional on 1 March 2023. Its new stations included Pechatniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and Klenovy Bulvar.

 

Renamed lines

Sokolnicheskaya line was previously named Kirovsko-Fruzenskaya

Zamoskvoretskaya line was previously named Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya.

Filyovskaya line was previously named Arbatsko-Filyovskaya.

Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line was previously named Zhdanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya

 

History

The first plans for a metro system in Moscow date back to the Russian Empire but were postponed by World War I, the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways. It carried out preliminary studies, and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. At the same time, an offer was made to the German company Siemens Bauunion to submit its own project for the same route. In June 1931, the decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1932 the plan for the first lines was approved, and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet government approved a plan for 10 lines with a total route length of 80 km (50 mi).

 

The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich, along with his project managers (notably Ivan M. Kuznetsov and, later, Isaac Y. Segal) in the 1930s–1950s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 (Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha). The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system, in 1936: British architect Charles Holden and administrator Frank Pick had been working on the station developments of the Piccadilly Line extension, and Soviet delegates to London were impressed by Holden's thoroughly modern redeployment of classical elements and use of high-quality materials for the circular ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus, and so engaged Pick and Holden as advisors to Moscow's metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station, which was completed in 1947, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station. Indeed, Holden's homage to Moscow has been described as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's helpful role in The Second World War.

 

Soviet workers did the labour and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from London Underground. The British called for tunnelling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, the routes and the design of the rolling stock. The paranoia of the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage because they gained an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (Metrovick) were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.

 

First four stages of construction

The first line was opened to the public on 15 May 1935 at 07:00 am. It was 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) long and included 13 stations. The day was celebrated as a technological and ideological victory for socialism (and, by extension, Stalinism). An estimated 285,000 people rode the Metro at its debut, and its design was greeted with pride; street celebrations included parades, plays and concerts. The Bolshoi Theatre presented a choral performance by 2,200 Metro workers; 55,000 colored posters (lauding the Metro as the busiest and fastest in the world) and 25,000 copies of "Songs of the Joyous Metro Conquerors" were distributed. The Moscow Metro averaged 47 km/h (29 mph) and had a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). In comparison, New York City Subway trains averaged a slower 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) and had a top speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). While the celebration was an expression of popular joy it was also an effective propaganda display, legitimizing the Metro and declaring it a success.

 

The initial line connected Sokolniki to Okhotny Ryad then branching to Park Kultury and Smolenskaya. The latter branch was extended westwards to a new station (Kiyevskaya) in March 1937, the first Metro line crossing the Moskva River over the Smolensky Metro Bridge.

 

The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938, the Arbatskaya branch was split and extended to the Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938, the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on that of the most popular stations in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya); while following the popular art-deco style, it was merged with socialist themes. The first deep-level column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.

 

Building work on the third stage was delayed (but not interrupted) during World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service; Teatralnaya–Avtozavodskaya (three stations, crossing the Moskva River through a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya–Partizanskaya (four stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of these stations. During the Siege of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, Metro stations were used as air-raid shelters; the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the Mayakovskaya platforms, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. The Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off, and the headquarters of the Air Defence established there.

 

After the war ended in 1945, construction began on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line, a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya during the early 1950s. The decoration and design characteristic of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its zenith in these stations. The Koltsevaya Line was first planned as a line running under the Garden Ring, a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line – from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) – follows this avenue. Plans were later changed and the northern part of the ring line runs 1–1.5 kilometres (0.62–0.93 mi) outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for seven (out of nine) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya Line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya–Belorusskaya), and in 1954 the ring line was completed.

 

Stalinist ideals in Metro's history

When the Metro opened in 1935, it immediately became the centrepiece of the transportation system (as opposed to horse-carried barrows still widely used in 1930s Moscow). It also became the prototype, the vision for future Soviet large-scale technologies. The artwork of the 13 original stations became nationally and internationally famous. For example, the Sverdlov Square subway station featured porcelain bas-reliefs depicting the daily life of the Soviet peoples, and the bas-reliefs at the Dynamo Stadium sports complex glorified sports and physical prowess on the powerful new "Homo Sovieticus" (Soviet man). The metro was touted as the symbol of the new social order – a sort of Communist cathedral of engineering modernity.

 

The Metro was also iconic for showcasing Socialist Realism in public art. The method was influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Lenin's favorite 19th-century nihilist, who stated that "art is no useful unless it serves politics". This maxim sums up the reasons why the stations combined aesthetics, technology and ideology: any plan which did not incorporate all three areas cohesively was rejected.

 

Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilization as they rode. Without this cohesion, the Metro would not reflect Socialist Realism. If the Metro did not utilize Socialist Realism, it would fail to illustrate Stalinist values and transform Soviet citizens into socialists. Anything less than Socialist Realism's grand artistic complexity would fail to inspire a long-lasting, nationalistic attachment to Stalin's new society.

Socialist Realism was in fact a method, not exactly a style.[31]

Bright future and literal brightness in the Metro of Moscow

The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR's most ambitious architectural projects. The metro's artists and architects worked to design a structure that embodied svet (literally "light", figuratively "radiance" or "brilliance") and svetloe budushchee (a well-lit/radiant/bright future). With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grand chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an "artificial underground sun".

 

This palatial underground environment reminded Metro users their taxes were spent on materializing bright future; also, the design was useful for demonstrating the extra structural strength of the underground works (as in Metro doubling as bunkers, bomb shelters).

 

The chief lighting engineer was Abram Damsky, a graduate of the Higher State Art-Technical Institute in Moscow. By 1930 he was a chief designer in Moscow's Elektrosvet Factory, and during World War II was sent to the Metrostroi (Metro Construction) Factory as head of the lighting shop.[33] Damsky recognized the importance of efficiency, as well as the potential for light as an expressive form. His team experimented with different materials (most often cast bronze, aluminum, sheet brass, steel, and milk glass) and methods to optimize the technology. Damsky's discourse on "Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950" describes in detail the epic chandeliers installed in the Taganskaya Station and the Kaluzhskaia station (Oktyabrskaya nowadays, not to be confused with contemporary "Kaluzhskaya" station on line 6). The work of Abram Damsky further publicized these ideas hoping people would associate the party with the idea of bright future.

 

The Kaluzhskaya Station was designed by the architect [Leonid] Poliakov. Poliakov's decision to base his design on a reinterpretation of Russian classical architecture clearly influenced the concept of the lamps, some of which I planned in collaboration with the architect himself. The shape of the lamps was a torch – the torch of victory, as Polyakov put it... The artistic quality and stylistic unity of all the lamps throughout the station's interior made them perhaps the most successful element of the architectural composition. All were made of cast aluminum decorated in a black and gold anodized coating, a technique which the Metrostroi factory had only just mastered.

 

The Taganskaia Metro Station on the Ring Line was designed in...quite another style by the architects K.S. Ryzhkov and A. Medvedev... Their subject matter dealt with images of war and victory...The overall effect was one of ceremony ... In the platform halls the blue ceramic bodies of the chandeliers played a more modest role, but still emphasised the overall expressiveness of the lamp.

 

— Abram Damsky, Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950

Industrialization

 

Stalin's first five-year plan (1928–1932) facilitated rapid industrialization to build a socialist motherland. The plan was ambitious, seeking to reorient an agrarian society towards industrialism. It was Stalin's fanatical energy, large-scale planning, and resource distribution that kept up the pace of industrialization. The first five-year plan was instrumental in the completion of the Moscow Metro; without industrialization, the Soviet Union would not have had the raw materials necessary for the project. For example, steel was a main component of many subway stations. Before industrialization, it would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to produce enough steel to incorporate it into the metro's design; in addition, a steel shortage would have limited the size of the subway system and its technological advancement.

 

The Moscow Metro furthered the construction of a socialist Soviet Union because the project accorded with Stalin's second five-year plan. The Second Plan focused on urbanization and the development of social services. The Moscow Metro was necessary to cope with the influx of peasants who migrated to the city during the 1930s; Moscow's population had grown from 2.16 million in 1928 to 3.6 million in 1933. The Metro also bolstered Moscow's shaky infrastructure and its communal services, which hitherto were nearly nonexistent.

 

Mobilization

The Communist Party had the power to mobilize; because the party was a single source of control, it could focus its resources. The most notable example of mobilization in the Soviet Union occurred during World War II. The country also mobilized in order to complete the Moscow Metro with unprecedented speed. One of the main motivation factors of the mobilization was to overtake the West and prove that a socialist metro could surpass capitalist designs. It was especially important to the Soviet Union that socialism succeed industrially, technologically, and artistically in the 1930s, since capitalism was at a low ebb during the Great Depression.

 

The person in charge of Metro mobilization was Lazar Kaganovich. A prominent Party member, he assumed control of the project as chief overseer. Kaganovich was nicknamed the "Iron Commissar"; he shared Stalin's fanatical energy, dramatic oratory flare, and ability to keep workers building quickly with threats and punishment. He was determined to realise the Moscow Metro, regardless of cost. Without Kaganovich's managerial ability, the Moscow Metro might have met the same fate as the Palace of the Soviets: failure.

 

This was a comprehensive mobilization; the project drew resources and workers from the entire Soviet Union. In his article, archeologist Mike O'Mahoney describes the scope of the Metro mobilization:

 

A specialist workforce had been drawn from many different regions, including miners from the Ukrainian and Siberian coalfields and construction workers from the iron and steel mills of Magnitogorsk, the Dniepr hydroelectric power station, and the Turkestan-Siberian railway... materials used in the construction of the metro included iron from Siberian Kuznetsk, timber from northern Russia, cement from the Volga region and the northern Caucasus, bitumen from Baku, and marble and granite from quarries in Karelia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Soviet Far East

 

— Mike O'Mahoney, Archeological Fantasies: Constructing History on the Moscow Metro

Skilled engineers were scarce, and unskilled workers were instrumental to the realization of the metro. The Metrostroi (the organization responsible for the Metro's construction) conducted massive recruitment campaigns. It printed 15,000 copies of Udarnik metrostroia (Metrostroi Shock Worker, its daily newspaper) and 700 other newsletters (some in different languages) to attract unskilled laborers. Kaganovich was closely involved in the recruitment campaign, targeting the Komsomol generation because of its strength and youth.

 

Later Soviet stations

"Fifth stage" set of stations

The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep section of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. The stations on this line were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953 the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Kiyevskaya were closed, and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. The stations, too, were supplied with tight gates and life-sustenance systems to function as proper nuclear shelters.

 

In the further development of the Metro the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957–1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".

 

During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the architectural extravagance of new Metro stations was decisively rejected on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. He had a preference for a utilitarian "minimalism"-like approach to design, similar to Brutalism style. The idea behind the rejection was similar to one used to create Khrushchyovkas: cheap yet easily mass-produced buildings. Stations of his era, as well as most 1970s stations, were simple in design and style, with walls covered with identical square ceramic tiles. Even decorations at the Metro stations almost finished at the time of the ban (such as VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya) got their final decors simplified: VDNKh's arcs/portals, for example, got plain green paint to contrast with well-detailed decorations and pannos around them.

 

A typical layout of the cheap shallow-dug metro station (which quickly became known as Sorokonozhka – "centipede", from early designs with 40 concrete columns in two rows) was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most stations were built with simpler, cheap technology; this resulted in utilitarian design being flawed in some ways. Some stations such as adjacent Rechnoi Vokzal and Vodny Stadion or sequiential Leninsky Prospect, Akadmicheskaya, Profsoyuznaya and Novye Cheryomushki would have a similar look due to the extensive use of same-sized white or off-white ceramic tiles with hard-to-feel differences.

 

Walls with cheap ceramic tiles were susceptible to train-related vibration: some tiles would eventually fall off and break. It was not always possible to replace the missing tiles with the ones of the exact color and tone, which eventually led to variegated parts of the walls.

 

Metro stations of late USSR

The contrasting style gap between the powerfully decorated stations of Moscow's center and the spartan-looking stations of the 1960s was eventually filled. In the mid-1970s the architectural extravagance was partially restored. However, the newer design of shallow "centipede" stations (now with 26 columns, more widely spaced) continued to dominate. For example, Kaluzhskaya "centipede" station from 1974 (adjacent to Novye Cheryomushki station) features non-flat tiles (with 3D effect utilized), and Medvedkovo from 1978 features complex decorations.

 

1971 station Kitay-Gorod ("Ploshchad Nogina" at the time) features cross-platform interchange (Line 6 and line 7). Although built without "centipede" design or cheap ceramic tiles, the station utilizes near-grayscale selection of colors. It is to note the "southbound" and "northbound" halls of the station have identical look.

 

Babushkinskaya station from 1978 is a no-column station (similar to Biblioteka Imeni Lenina from 1935). 1983 Chertanovskaya station has resemblance to Kropotkinskaya (from 1935). Some stations, such as the deep-dug Shabolovskaya (1980), have the near-tunnel walls decorated with metal sheets, not tiles. Tyoply Stan features a theme related to the name and the location of the station ("Tyoply Stan" used to literally mean warm area): its walls are covered in brick-colored ribbed panes, which look like radiators).

 

Downtown area got such stations as Borovitskaya (1986), with uncovered red bricks and gray, concrete-like colors accompanying a single gold-plated decorative pane known as "Tree of peoples' of USSR" or additional station hall for Tretyakovskaya to house cross-platform interchange system between line 6 and line 8. To this day, Tretyakovskaya metro station consists of two contrasting halls: brutalism-like 1971 hall and custom design hall reminiscent of Tretyakovskaya Galereya from 1986.

 

Post-USSR stations of the modern Russian Federation

Metro stations of the 1990s and 2000s vary in style, but some of the stations seem to have their own themes:

 

Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya station used to feature thick orange neon lamp-like sodium lights instead of regular white lights.

Park Pobedy, the deepest station of the Moscow Metro, was built in 2003; it features extensive use of dark orange polished granite.

Slavyansky Bulvar station utilizes a plant-inspired theme (similar to "bionic style").

The sleek variant of aforementioned bionic style is somewhat represented in various Line 10 stations.

Sretensky Bulvar station of line 10 is decorated with paintings of nearby memorials and locations.

Strogino station has a theme of huge eye-shaped boundaries for lights; with "eyes" occupying the station's ceiling.

Troparyovo (2014) features trees made of polished metal. The trees hold the station's diamond-shaped lights. The station, however, is noticeably dim-lit.

Delovoy Tsentr (2016, MCC, overground station) has green tint.

Lomonosovsky Prospekt (Line 8A) is decorated with various equations.

Olkhovaya (2019) uses other plant-inspired themes (ольха noun means alder) with autumn/winter inspired colours.

Kosino (2019) uses high-tech style with the addition of thin LED lights.

Some bleak, bland-looking "centipedes" like Akademicheskaya and Yugo-Zapadnaya have undergone renovations in the 21st century (new blue-striped white walls on Akademicheskaya, aqualine glassy, shiny walls on Yugo-Zapadnaya).

 

Moscow Central Circle urban railway (Line 14)

A new circle metro line in Moscow was relatively quickly made in the 2010s. The Moscow Central Circle line (Line 14) was opened for use in September 2016 by re-purposing and upgrading the Maloe ZheleznoDorozhnoe Kol'tso. A proposal to convert that freight line into a metropolitan railway with frequent passenger service was announced in 2012. The original tracks had been built in pre-revolutionary Moscow decades before the creation of Moscow Metro; the tracks remained in place in one piece as a non-electrified line until the 21st century. Yet the circle route was never abandoned or cut. New track (along the existing one) was laid and all-new stations were built between 2014 and 2016. MCC's stations got such amenities as vending machines and free water closets.

 

Line 14 is operated by Russian Railways and uses full-sized trains (an idea, somewhat similar to S-Train). The extra resemblance to an S-Train line is, the 1908 line now connects modern northern residential districts to western and southern downtown area, with a station adjacent to Moscow International Business Center.

 

There is a noticeable relief of congestion, decrease in usage of formerly overcrowded Koltsevaya line since the introduction of MCC. To make line 14 attractive to frequent Koltsevaya line interchanges users, upgrades over regular comfort of Moscow Metro were made. Use of small laptops/portable video playing devices and food consumption from tupperwares and tubs was also improved for Line 14: the trains have small folding tables in the back of nearly every seat, while the seats are facing one direction like in planes or intercity buses - unlike side-against-side sofas typical for Metro.

 

Unlike MCD lines (D1, D2 etc.) MCC line accepts "unified" tickets and "Troika" cards just like Moscow Metro and buses of Moscow do. Free transfers are permitted between the MCC and the Moscow Metro if the trip before the transfer is less than 90 minutes. It's made possible by using same "Ediny", literally "unified" tickets instead of printing "paper tickets" used at railroads.

 

To interchange to line 14 for free, passenger must keep their freshly used ticket after entering Moscow Metro to apply it upon entering any line 14 station (and vice versa, keep their "fresh" ticket to enter underground Metro line after leaving Line 14 for an interchange).

 

MCD (D lines)

In 2019, new lines of Russian Railways got included in the map of Metro as "line D1" and "line D2". Unlike Line 14, the MCD lines actually form S-Train lines, bypassing the "vokzals", terminus stations of respective intercity railways. Line D3 is planned to be launched in August 2023, while D4 will be launched in September of that year. The schedule for the development of the infrastructure of the Central Transport Hub in 2023 was signed by the Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the head of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov in December 2022.

 

As for the fees, MCD accepts Moscow's "Troika" cards. Also, every MCD station has printers which print "station X – station Y" tickets on paper. Users of the D lines must keep their tickets until exiting their destination stations: their exit terminals require a valid "... to station Y" ticket's barcode.

 

Big Circle Line (line 11)

After upgrading the railway from 1908 to a proper Metro line, the development of another circle route was re-launched, now adjusted for the pear-shaped circle route of line #14.

 

Throughout the late 2010s, Line 11 was extended from short, tiny Kakhovskaya line to a half-circle (from Kakhovskaya to Savyolovskaya). In early 2023, the circle was finished.

 

Similarly made Shelepikha, Khoroshovskaya, CSKA and Petrovsky Park stations have lots of polished granite and shiny surfaces, in contrast to Soviet "centipedes". Throughout 2018–2021, these stations were connected to line 8A.

Narodnoye Opolcheniye (2021) features lots of straight edges and linear decorations (such as uninterrupted "three stripes" style of the ceiling lights and rectangular columns).

As for the spring of 2023, the whole circle route line is up and running, forming a circle stretching to the southern near-MKAD residential parts of the city (Prospekt Vernadskogo, Tekstilshchiki) as opposed to the MCC's stretching towards the northern districts of Moscow. In other words, it "mirrors" Line 14 rather than forming a perfect circle around the city centre. While being 70 km long, the line is now the longest subway line in the world, 13 kilometres ahead of the previous record holder - the line 10 of Beijing Subway.

 

Expansions

GIF-animated scheme of Moscow Metro growth (1935-2019)

Since the turn of the 2nd millennium several projects have been completed, and more are underway. The first was the Annino-Butovo extension, which extended the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line from Prazhskaya to Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya in 2000, Annino in 2001 and Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo in 2002. Its continuation, an elevated Butovskaya Line, was inaugurated in 2003. Vorobyovy Gory station, which initially opened in 1959 and was forced to close in 1983 after the concrete used to build the bridge was found to be defective, was rebuilt and reopened after many years in 2002. Another recent project included building a branch off the Filyovskaya Line to the Moscow International Business Center. This included Vystavochnaya (opened in 2005) and Mezhdunarodnaya (opened in 2006).

 

The Strogino–Mitino extension began with Park Pobedy in 2003. Its first stations (an expanded Kuntsevskaya and Strogino) opened in January 2008, and Slavyansky Bulvar followed in September. Myakinino, Volokolamskaya and Mitino opened in December 2009. Myakinino station was built by a state-private financial partnership, unique in Moscow Metro history. A new terminus, Pyatnitskoye Shosse, was completed in December 2012.

 

After many years of construction, the long-awaited Lyublinskaya Line extension was inaugurated with Trubnaya in August 2007 and Sretensky Bulvar in December of that year. In June 2010, it was extended northwards with the Dostoyevskaya and Maryina Roscha stations. In December 2011, the Lyublinskaya Line was expanded southwards by three stations and connected to the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, with the Alma-Atinskaya station opening on the latter in December 2012. The Kalininskaya Line was extended past the Moscow Ring Road in August 2012 with Novokosino station.

 

In 2011, works began on the Third Interchange Contour that is set to take the pressure off the Koltsevaya Line. Eventually the new line will attain a shape of the second ring with connections to all lines (except Koltsevaya and Butovskaya).

 

In 2013, the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line was extended after several delays to the south-eastern districts of Moscow outside the Ring Road with the opening of Zhulebino and Lermontovsky Prospekt stations. Originally scheduled for 2013, a new segment of the Kalininskaya Line between Park Pobedy and Delovoy Tsentr (separate from the main part) was opened in January 2014, while the underground extension of Butovskaya Line northwards to offer a transfer to the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line was completed in February. Spartak, a station on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line that remained unfinished for forty years, was finally opened in August 2014. The first stage of the southern extension of the Sokolnicheskaya Line, the Troparyovo station, opened in December 2014.

 

Current plans

In addition to major metro expansion the Moscow Government and Russian Railways plans to upgrade more commuter railways to a metro-style service, similar to the MCC. New tracks and stations are planned to be built in order to achieve this.

 

Stations

The deep stations comprise 55 triple-vaulted pylon stations, 19 triple-vaulted column stations, and one single-vault station. The shallow stations comprise 79 spanned column stations (a large portion of them following the "centipede" design), 33 single-vaulted stations (Kharkov technology), and four single-spanned stations. In addition, there are 12 ground-level stations, four elevated stations, and one station (Vorobyovy Gory) on a bridge. Two stations have three tracks, and one has double halls. Seven of the stations have side platforms (only one of which is subterranean). In addition, there were two temporary stations within rail yards.

 

The stations being constructed under Stalin's regime, in the style of socialist classicism, were meant as underground "palaces of the people". Stations such as Komsomolskaya, Kiyevskaya or Mayakovskaya and others built after 1935 in the second phase of the evolution of the network are tourist landmarks: their photogenic architecture, large chandeliers and detailed decoration are unusual for an urban transport system of the twentieth century.

 

The stations opened in the 21st century are influenced by an international and more neutral style with improved technical quality.

 

Rolling stock

Since the beginning, platforms have been at least 155 metres (509 ft) long to accommodate eight-car trains. The only exceptions are on the Filyovskaya Line: Vystavochnaya, Mezhdunarodnaya, Studencheskaya, Kutuzovskaya, Fili, Bagrationovskaya, Filyovsky Park and Pionerskaya, which only allows six-car trains (note that this list includes all ground-level stations on the line, except Kuntsevskaya, which allows normal length trains).

 

Trains on the Zamoskvoretskaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Solntsevskaya, Bolshaya Koltsevaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya, Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya and Nekrasovskaya lines have eight cars, on the Sokolnicheskaya line seven or eight cars, on the original Koltsevaya line seven cars, and on the Filyovskaya line six cars. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line also once ran seven-car 81-717 size trains, but now use five-car trains of another type. Butovskaya line uses three-car trains of another type.

 

Dimensions have varied subtly, but for the most cars fit into the ranges of 19–20 metres (62 ft 4 in – 65 ft 7 in) long and 2.65–2.7 metres (8 ft 8+3⁄8 in – 8 ft 10+1⁄4 in) wide with 4 doors per side. The 81-740/741 Rusich deviates greatly from this, with a 3-car Rusich being roughly 4 normal cars and a 5-car Rusich being 7 normal cars.

 

Trains in operation

Currently, the Metro only operates 81-style trains.

 

Rolling stock on several lines was replaced with articulated 81-740/741 Rusich trains, which were originally designed for light rail subway lines. The Butovskaya Line was designed by different standards, and has shorter (96-metre (315 ft) long) platforms. It employs articulated 81-740/741 trains, which consist of three cars (although the line can also use traditional four-car trains).

 

On the Moscow Monorail, Intamin P30 trains are used, consisting of six short cars. On the Moscow Central Circle, which is a route on the conventional railway line, ES2G Lastochka trains are used, consisting of five cars.

 

Ticketing

Moscow Metro underground has neither "point A – point B" tariffs nor "zone" tariffs. Instead, it has a fee for a "ride", e.g. for a single-time entry without time or range limit. The exceptions "only confirm the rule": the "diameters" (Dx lines) and the Moscow Central Circle (Line 14) are Russian Railways' lines hence the shared yet not unified tariff system.

 

As for October 2021, one ride costs 60 rubles (approx. 1 US dollar). Discounts (up to 33%) for individual rides are available upon buying rides "in bulk" (buying multiple-trip tickets (such as twenty-trip or sixty-trip ones)), and children under age seven can travel free (with their parents). Troika "wallet" (a card, similar to Japanese Suica card) also offers some discounts for using the card instead of queueing a line for a ticket. "Rides" on the tickets available for a fixed number of trips, regardless of distance traveled or number of transfers.

 

An exception in case of MCC e.g. Line 14: for a free interchange, one should interchange to it/from it within 90 minutes after entering the Metro. However, one can ride it for hours and use its amenities without leaving it.

There are tickets without "rides" as well: – a 24-hour "unified" ticket (265 rub in 2022), a 72-hour ticket, a month-long ticket, and a year-long ticket.

 

Fare enforcement takes place at the points of entry. Once a passenger has entered the Metro system, there are no further ticket checks – one can ride to any number of stations and make transfers within the system freely. Transfers to other public-transport systems (such as bus, tram, trolleybus/"electrobus") are not covered by the very ride used to enter Metro. Transfer to monorail and MCC is a free addition to the ride (available up to 90 minutes after entering a metro station).

 

In modern Metro, turnstiles accept designated plastic cards ("Troika", "social cards") or disposable-in-design RFID chip cardboard cards. Unlimited cards are also available for students at reduced price (as of 2017, 415 rubles—or about $US6—for a calendar month of unlimited usage) for a one-time cost of 70 rubles. Transport Cards impose a delay for each consecutive use; i.e. the card can not be used for 7 minutes after the user has passed a turnstile.

 

History of smart ticketing

Soviet era turnstiles simply accepted N kopeck coins.

 

In the early years of Russian Federation (and with the start of a hyperinflation) plastic tokens were used. Disposable magnetic stripe cards were introduced in 1993 on a trial basis, and used as unlimited monthly tickets between 1996 and 1998. The sale of tokens ended on 1 January 1999, and they stopped being accepted in February 1999; from that time, magnetic cards were used as tickets with a fixed number of rides.

 

On 1 September 1998, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in Europe to fully implement "contactless" smart cards, known as Transport Cards. Transport Cards were the card to have unlimited amount of trips for 30, 90 or 365 days, its active lifetime was projected as 3½ years. Defective cards were to be exchanged at no extra cost.

 

In August 2004, the city government launched the Muscovite's Social Card program. Social Cards are free smart cards issued for the elderly and other groups of citizens officially registered as residents of Moscow or the Moscow region; they offer discounts in shops and pharmacies, and double as credit cards issued by the Bank of Moscow. Social Cards can be used for unlimited free access to the city's public-transport system, including the Moscow Metro; while they do not feature the time delay, they include a photograph and are non-transferable.

Since 2006, several banks have issued credit cards which double as Ultralight cards and are accepted at turnstiles. The fare is passed to the bank and the payment is withdrawn from the owner's bank account at the end of the calendar month, using a discount rate based on the number of trips that month (for up to 70 trips, the cost of each trip is prorated from current Ultralight rates; each additional trip costs 24.14 rubles). Partner banks include the Bank of Moscow, CitiBank, Rosbank, Alfa-Bank and Avangard Bank.

In January 2007, Moscow Metro began replacing limited magnetic cards with contactless disposable tickets based on NXP's MIFARE Ultralight technology. Ultralight tickets are available for a fixed number of trips in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 60-trip denominations (valid for 5 or 90 days from the day of purchase) and as a monthly ticket, only valid for a selected calendar month and limited to 70 trips. The sale of magnetic cards ended on 16 January 2008 and magnetic cards ceased to be accepted in late 2008, making the Moscow metro the world's first major public-transport system to run exclusively on a contactless automatic fare-collection system.

 

On 2 April 2013, Moscow Transport Department introduced a smartcard-based transport electronic wallet, named Troika. Three more smart cards have been launched:

 

Ediniy's RFID-chip card, a "disposable"-design cardboard card for all city-owned public transport operated by Mosgortrans and Moscow Metro;

90 minutes card, an unlimited "90-minute" card

and TAT card for surface public transport operated by Mosgortrans.

One can "record" N-ride Ediniy ticket on Troika card as well in order to avoid carrying the easily frayed cardboard card of Ediniy for weeks (e.g. to use Troika's advanced chip). The turnstiles of Moscow Metro have monochrome screens which show such data as "money left" (if Troika is used as a "wallet"), "valid till DD.MM.YYYY" (if a social card is used) or "rides left" (if Ediniy tariff ticket is used).

 

Along with the tickets, new vending machines were built to sell tickets (1 or 2 rides) and put payments on Troika cards. At that time, the machines were not accepting contactless pay. The same machines now have tiny terminals with keypads for contactless payments (allowing quick payment for Troika card).

 

In 2013, as a way to promote both the "Olympic Games in Sochi and active lifestyles, Moscow Metro installed a vending machine that gives commuters a free ticket in exchange for doing 30 squats."

 

Since the first quarter of 2015, all ticket windows (not turnstiles) at stations accept bank cards for fare payment. Passengers are also able to pay for tickets via contactless payment systems, such as PayPass technology. Since 2015, fare gates at stations accept mobile ticketing via a system which the Metro calls Mobilny Bilet (Мобильный билет) which requires NFC-handling smartphone (and a proper SIM-card). The pricing is the same as Troika's. Customers are able to use Mobile Ticket on Moscow's surface transport. The Moscow Metro originally announced plans to launch the mobile ticketing service with Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) in 2010.

 

In October 2021, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in the world to offer Face-Pay to their customers. In order to use this system, passengers will need to connect their photo, bank card and metro card to the service through the metro’s mobile app. For this purpose, the metro authorities plan to equip over 900 turnstiles in over 240 stations with biometric scanners. This enables passengers to pay for their ride without taking out their phone, metro or bank card and therefore increasing passenger flow at the station entrances. In 2022, Face-Pay was used over 32 million times over the course of the year.

 

Notable incidents

1977 bombing

On 8 January 1977, a bomb was reported to have killed 7 and seriously injured 33. It went off in a crowded train between Izmaylovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations. Three Armenians were later arrested, charged and executed in connection with the incident.

 

1981 station fires

In June 1981, seven bodies were seen being removed from the Oktyabrskaya station during a fire there. A fire was also reported at Prospekt Mira station about that time.

 

1982 escalator accident

Escalator accident in 1982

A fatal accident occurred on 17 February 1982 due to an escalator collapse at the Aviamotornaya station on the Kalininskaya Line. Eight people were killed and 30 injured due to a pileup caused by faulty emergency brakes.

 

1996 murder

In 1996, an American-Russian businessman Paul Tatum was murdered at the Kiyevskaya Metro station. He was shot dead by a man carrying a concealed Kalashnikov gun.

 

2000 bombings

On 8 August 2000, a strong blast in a Metro underpass at Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of Moscow claimed the lives of 12, with 150 injured. A homemade bomb equivalent to 800 grams of TNT had been left in a bag near a kiosk.

 

2004 bombings

August 2004 Moscow Metro bombing

On 6 February 2004, an explosion wrecked a train between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, killing 41 and wounding over 100. Chechen terrorists were blamed. A later investigation concluded that a Karachay-Cherkessian resident had carried out a suicide bombing. The same group organized another attack on 31 August 2004, killing 10 and injuring more than 50 others.

 

2005 Moscow blackout

On 25 May 2005, a citywide blackout halted operation on some lines. The following lines, however, continued operations: Sokolnicheskaya, Zamoskvoretskaya from Avtozavodskaya to Rechnoy Vokzal, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya, Filyovskaya, Koltsevaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya from Bitsevskiy Park to Oktyabrskaya-Radialnaya and from Prospekt Mira-Radialnaya to Medvedkovo, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya from Serpukhovskaya to Altufyevo and Lyublinskaya from Chkalovskaya to Dubrovka. There was no service on the Kakhovskaya and Butovskaya lines. The blackout severely affected the Zamoskvoretskaya and Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya lines, where initially all service was disrupted because of trains halted in tunnels in the southern part of city (most affected by the blackout). Later, limited service resumed and passengers stranded in tunnels were evacuated. Some lines were only slightly impacted by the blackout, which mainly affected southern Moscow; the north, east and western parts of the city experienced little or no disruption.

 

2006 billboard incident

On 19 March 2006, a construction pile from an unauthorized billboard installation was driven through a tunnel roof, hitting a train between the Sokol and Voikovskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. No injuries were reported.

 

2010 bombing

On 29 March 2010, two bombs exploded on the Sokolnicheskaya Line, killing 40 and injuring 102 others. The first bomb went off at the Lubyanka station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line at 7:56, during the morning rush hour. At least 26 were killed in the first explosion, of which 14 were in the rail car where it took place. A second explosion occurred at the Park Kultury station at 8:38, roughly forty minutes after the first one. Fourteen people were killed in that blast. The Caucasus Emirate later claimed responsibility for the bombings.

 

2014 pile incident

On 25 January 2014, at 15:37 a construction pile from a Moscow Central Circle construction site was driven through a tunnel roof between Avtozavodskaya and Kolomenskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The train operator applied emergency brakes, and the train did not crash into the pile. Passengers were evacuated from the tunnel, with no injures reported. The normal line operation resumed the same day at 19:50.

 

2014 derailment

On 15 July 2014, a train derailed between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, killing 24 people and injuring dozens more.

 

Metro-2

Main article: Metro-2

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that a second and deeper metro system code-named "D-6", designed for emergency evacuation of key city personnel in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War, exists under military jurisdiction. It is believed that it consists of a single track connecting the Kremlin, chief HQ (General Staff –Genshtab), Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters), the Ministry of Defense and several other secret installations. There are alleged to be entrances to the system from several civilian buildings, such as the Russian State Library, Moscow State University (MSU) and at least two stations of the regular Metro. It is speculated that these would allow for the evacuation of a small number of randomly chosen civilians, in addition to most of the elite military personnel. A suspected junction between the secret system and the regular Metro is supposedly behind the Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. The final section of this system was supposedly completed in 1997.

 

In popular culture

The Moscow Metro is the central location and namesake for the Metro series, where during a nuclear war, Moscow's inhabitants are driven down into the Moscow Metro, which has been designed as a fallout shelter, with the various stations being turned into makeshift settlements.

 

In 2012, an art film was released about a catastrophe in the Moscow underground.

nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/covid-excess-mortality.html

 

What a Single Metric Tells Us About the Pandemic

 

Live long enough in a pandemic and you will see the entire narrative landscape shift, even flip, sometimes more than once.

 

As recently as a month ago, Americans of a certain cast of mind could have still looked to China — and indeed all of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania — with some plausible pandemic envy. Those early lockdowns in Wuhan were brutal, yes; some of the surveillance testing, contact tracing, and quarantine measures imposed in places like South Korea and Singapore were very restrictive, true; closed borders and reentry policies in Australia and New Zealand went further than those of any country in Europe or the Americas; and while the Sinovac vaccines weren’t as effective as those made by Moderna or Pfizer, the success of true “zero COVID” policies through the region meant that in many places, shots got into arms without anything like a major COVID surge ever having taken place.

 

All of that seemed like an unimaginable triumph. Now, after a brutal Omicron wave punishing its largely unvaccinated elderly, Hong Kong has a cumulative death toll approaching Canada’s. (In February, it was 25 times lower.) Omicron spikes elsewhere in the region — in South Korea, in Singapore — have proved less threatening, given higher rates of vaccination among the elderly. But panicked lockdowns imposed again in China suggest that the country’s leadership, at least, believes an enormous amount of pandemic vulnerability remains — enough to justify a total shutdown of Shenzhen, a city of almost 20 million and such a critical economic and manufacturing hub that American observers immediately started raising their expectations for inflation.

 

Narrative turnabouts are not new with Omicron. Some are familiar: The disease wasn’t spread through the air, then it was; masks weren’t worth it, early on, then became not just essential but badges of personal vigilance, then only useful if they were KN95s. Some narrative shifts were more obscure: Omicron was said to be “mild,” though it is roughly as severe as the original strain in immunologically naïve populations. Others have been somewhat memory-holed, as when much of the public-health Establishment spent the fall of 2020 suggesting that herd immunity would be reached when 60 or 70 percent of the country was infected or vaccinated, a threshold we have now long since surpassed with nothing like herd immunity in sight; or when it spent the summer of 2021 insisting that breakthrough cases were exceedingly rare and breakthrough deaths essentially nonexistent, when in fact probably a quarter of all American deaths since Delta have been among the vaccinated. Some reversals were technical, as when rapid tests were first considered imprecise, became indispensable during Omicron, then had their efficacy in preventing transmission called into question. Some had to do with policy: School closures were once part of a first-response wave of restrictions, but a growing understanding of the relatively low risk to kids and real costs of keeping them home has meant schools are now broadly viewed as among the most important places to remain open. And some had to do with personal behavior, as when many of the same people who spent 2020 yelling at Thanksgiving travelers and arguing that responsibility to protect others should dominate one’s personal behavior spent 2021 reasoning that vaccines had absolved us all of that responsibility. Many of those who once reacted in horror to “Let it rip” proponents began wondering if anything at all could have stopped the early spread in its tracks.

 

Our experience of the pandemic has been littered with bad-faith argumentation and instigation, but most of these narrative reversals are not that, or even signs of what Harvard’s William Hanage has called the “motivated reasoning” of the pandemic. One narrative replacing another is one description of the scientific method, and among the many astonishing features of this pandemic is how quickly science was able to process and respond — perhaps without adequate speed, but at least fast enough for vaccines to be designed within two days, manufactured within two months, and rolled out to the vast majority of the world within two years. But the unsteady narratives of COVID-19 are reminders that, as sure as we might have been about how to interpret our experience of it, the stories we told ourselves about what we were dealing with and what we should be doing to protect ourselves were often incomplete, clouded by much more uncertainty and ignorance, wishful thinking and reflexive panic, than we were ever comfortable acknowledging.

 

There is one data point that might serve as an exceptional interpretative tool, one that blinks bright through all that narrative fog: excess mortality. The idea is simple: You look at the recent past to find an average for how many people die in a given country in a typical year, count the number of people who died during the pandemic years, and subtract one from the other. The basic math yields some striking results, as shown by a recent paper in The Lancet finding that 18.2 million people may have died globally from COVID, three times the official total. As skeptical epidemiologists were quick to point out, the paper employed some strange methodology — modeling excess deaths even for countries that offered actual excess-death data and often distorting what we knew to be true as a result. A remarkable excess-mortality database maintained by The Economist does not have this problem, and, like the Lancet paper, the Economist database estimates global excess mortality; it puts the figure above 20 million.

 

As a measure of pandemic brutality, excess mortality has its limitations — but probably fewer than the conventional data we’ve used for the last two years. That’s because it isn’t biased by testing levels — in places like the U.S. and the U.K., a much higher percentage of COVID deaths were identified as such than in places like Belarus or Djibouti, making our pandemics appear considerably worse by comparison. By measuring against a baseline of expected death, excess mortality helps account for huge differences in the age structures of different countries, some of which may have many times more mortality risk than others because their populations are much older. And to the extent that the ultimate impact of the pandemic isn’t just a story about COVID-19 but also one about our responses to it — lockdowns and unemployment, suspended medical care and higher rates of alcoholism and automobile accidents — excess mortality accounts for all that, too. In some places, like the U.S., excess-mortality figures are close to the official COVID data — among other things, a tribute to our medical surveillance systems. In other places, the numbers are so different that accounting for them entirely changes the picture of not just the experience of individual nations but the whole world, scrambling everything we think we know about who did best and who did worst, which countries were hit hardest and which managed to evade catastrophe. If you had to pick a single metric by which to measure the ultimate impact of the pandemic, excess mortality is as good as we’re probably going to get.

 

So what does it say? A year ago, it seemed easy enough to divide pandemic outcomes into three groups — with Europe and the Americas performing far worse than East Asia, which appeared to have outmaneuvered the virus through public-health measures, and much of the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa, which looked to have been spared mostly by its relatively young population. Today, a crude count of official deaths, not excess mortality, suggests the same grouping: North America and Europe have almost identical death counts with official per capita totals eight times as high as Asia, as a whole, and 12 times as high as Africa. South America’s death toll is higher still — ten times as high as Asia and 15 times as high as Africa.

 

The excess-mortality data tells a different story. There is still a clear continent-by-continent pattern, but the gaps between them are much smaller, making the experiences of different parts of the world much less distinct and telling a more universal story about the devastation wrought by this once-in-a-century contagion. According to The Economist, Europe, Latin America, and North America have all registered excess deaths ranging from 270 to 370 per 100,000 inhabitants; excess mortality in Asia is estimated between 130 to 330; in Africa, the range is 79 to 220. These numbers are not identical, but, all things considered, they are remarkably close together. The highest of the low-end estimates is barely three times the lowest; the highest of the high-end estimates is not even twice as high as the lowest.

 

If you adjust for age, as the Economist database does separately, the differences among continents grow more dramatic — suggesting a reversal of outcomes, rather than a convergence. Outside of Oceania, Europe and North America were among the best in the world at preventing deaths among the old, and they were several times better at protecting their elderly, of whom they had many more, than Africa and South Asia. East Asia performed better, but only slightly: Canada is in line with China, Germany just marginally worse than South Korea, Iceland in the range of Japan. By almost any metric, Oceania remains an outlier: The Economist estimates zero excess deaths among the elderly in New Zealand, for instance, and gives the whole region an excess-mortality range of negative 31 to positive 37 per 100,000 residents, meaning it’s possible fewer people died there than would’ve had we never even heard of SARS-CoV-2.

 

In the country-by-country data, the divergences grow even bigger. Perhaps most striking, given both self-flagellating American narratives about the pandemic and current events elsewhere on the globe, is that the worst-hit large country in the world was not the U.S., which registered the most official deaths of any country but ranks 47th in per capita excess mortality, or Britain, which ranks 85th, or even India, which ranks 36th. It is Russia, which has lost, The Economist estimates, between 1.2 million and 1.3 million citizens over the course of the pandemic, a mortality rate more than twice as high as the American one.

 

Russia is not an outlier. While we have heard again and again in the U.S. about the experience of the pandemic in western Europe — sometimes in admiration, sometimes to mock — it has been eastern Europe that, of any region in the world, has the ugliest excess-mortality data. This, then, is where the pandemic hit hardest — in the countries of the old Warsaw Pact and formerly of the Soviet bloc. In fact, of the ten worst-performing countries, only one is outside eastern Europe. The world’s worst pandemic, according to the data, has been in Bulgaria, followed by Serbia, North Macedonia, and Russia, then Lithuania, Bosnia, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, and Sudan. (Have you read much about pandemic policy in any of these countries?) Peru, which had what is often described as the most brutal pandemic in the world, ranks 11th — with the smallest gap, among those countries with the most devastating pandemics, between the official COVID data and the estimated excess mortality. (You probably haven’t read much about Peru, either, but its lockdowns were severe — for months, only one member of each household was allowed out once a week. At one point, an exemption was extended allowing for children under the age of 14 to leave their homes for 30 minutes of exercise per day, so long as it was conducted less than 500 meters away.)

 

Because The Economist allows you to explore how excess mortality evolved over time, country by country, the data also clearly showcases the pandemic as a tale of two years — a mitigation year, 2020, and a vaccination year, 2021. Early in the vaccine-distribution phase, with the U.K. and U.S. moving most quickly, it was striking how so few of the countries that had done well in preventing spread in 2020 were doing well in providing vaccines quickly. Over the course of 2021, many of those gaps disappeared, with countries across East Asia and Oceania eventually accelerating their vaccine distribution and parts of Europe that were slow at the outset starting to catch up too. But the U.S. took the opposite course. In 2020, the U.S. had done a bit worse than average among its OECD peers. In 2021, when pandemic outcomes were often determined by the relative uptake of American-made vaccines, the U.S. did much, much worse than that. In country after country in Europe, the pandemic killed a fraction as many last year as it had the year before. In the U.S., it killed more. A year ago, it was possible to defend the American record as merely below average — worse than it should have been but not, judging globally, cataclysmically bad. Today, it is cataclysmically bad, which is both outrageous and ironic, given that it is largely American vaccine innovation that has changed the pandemic landscape for the rest of the world — the rest of the rich world, at least.

 

On February 1, 2021, just after the inauguration of Joe Biden, the U.S. had registered, according to The Economist, 178 excess deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, quite close to Britain’s 166, Belgium’s 162, and Portugal’s 201. Fast-forward a year and those gaps have exploded. The U.S. has now registered 330 excess deaths per 100,000 — meaning our total has roughly doubled. In Britain, the excess mortality grew only 30 percent; in Portugal, it was 17 percent.

 

The gaps between deaths in the U.S. and countries that had done better in the first year of the pandemic, like Germany or Iceland, have gotten even bigger. If the U.S. had the same cumulative excess mortality of Germany, it would have had 600,000 fewer deaths. If it had the excess mortality of Iceland, it would have had a million fewer deaths — and would have only lost about 100,000 Americans in total.

 

How did this happen? The answer is screamingly obvious, if also, in its way, confusing: The U.S. drove an unprecedented vaccine-innovation campaign in 2020, which empowered much of the world to turn the page on the pandemic’s deadliest phases, then, in 2021, utterly failed to take advantage of its power itself. But what is perhaps even more striking is that American vaccination coverage isn’t just bad, by the standards of its peers, but getting worse. About two-thirds of Americans have received two shots of vaccine, a level that is in line with Israel and not far off from the U.K., though below many other wealthy countries. (And even in the U.K., vaccination was more effectively directed toward the old.) But over the last six months, the country has had an opportunity to make up that gap with boosters and has simply not taken it. Only 29 percent of Americans have had a booster shot of vaccine, which puts us behind Slovenia, Slovakia, and Poland and means that less than half of those people happy to be vaccinated a year ago have chosen to get a third shot through Delta and Omicron. Booster campaigns seem like an obvious opportunity for easy public-health gains, yet remarkably few Americans seem to think it’s worth the trouble. Why? For everything we think we know about the pandemic and how people have responded to it, that one remains a maddening mystery.

  

www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-boost...

 

COVID rates are rising again. Who's most at risk?

 

As the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 continues to rise on Long Island, experts say those who didn’t contract the coronavirus in the past few months are most at risk, but if they’re vaccinated, their vulnerability drops.

 

The spread of the highly contagious omicron subvariant BA.2 and a decline in mask-wearing are causing the rise in rates after they declined sharply following the omicron surge earlier this winter, said Dr. Leonard Krilov, an infectious disease expert and chief of pediatrics at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola.

 

The positivity rate likely will continue to rise somewhat, but he didn’t expect a major new wave of infections.

 

“The immunity levels in the population are pretty good” because of vaccination and the large number of people infected with the coronavirus in recent months, he said. “I’m guardedly optimistic we won’t see major blips.”

 

WHAT TO KNOW

 

■ The percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 continued to rise on Friday, to 2.31%. It had been 1.99% on Tuesday.

■ Experts don’t believe there will be another major surge, because there is relatively strong immunity from the vaccines and from infections during the winter omicron spike.

■ A second booster shot may be advisable in the near future, especially for older adults and those with certain medical conditions, experts say.

 

After the Long Island positivity rate reached nearly 27% in early January, it fell to 1.52% by March 9. But it’s been steadily rising since then, with the increase accelerating in recent days, going from 1.99% on Tuesday to 2.31% on Friday.

 

Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, said people who both contracted the virus in recent months and are vaccinated, and especially those who also received booster shots, are most protected against new infection. But immunity gradually wanes over time, he said.

 

"Every month that goes by and we’re further away from January, when most of those people got infected, the number of vulnerable people is going to grow," he said.

 

Farber said that, to limit the spread of the virus, “the things we can do are give another booster or change our lifestyles again." But, he said, "there’s no appetite in our country" for reinstituting restrictions such as mask mandates.

 

"The only remaining option is really boosters," he said.

Considering a 2nd booster shot

 

It’s unclear when a second booster shot is advisable, Farber said. Earlier this month, Pfizer and BioNTech asked for Food and Drug Administration authorization for a second booster for those 65 and older, and Moderna asked for authorization for additional boosters for all adults.

 

The Biden administration is planning to allow everyone 50 and older to receive a second booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, although it would only be an option, not a recommendation, according to multiple news outlets. The proposal was first reported late Friday in The New York Times. The FDA could authorize a second booster in the next several days, the reports said.

 

Krilov said focusing on older age groups first is logical.

 

“The argument for it, and it makes some sense, is that after 50, 60, you don’t respond as well, your immune system isn’t quite as robust,” he said. “To boost that population does make some sense. … Everybody’s felt that we’re going to at some point need additional boosting. It’s figuring out the timing of it.”

 

Data out of Israel, which for months has allowed second boosters for people 60 and older and other vulnerable groups, is promising, Farber said. But the results are from two months after the booster was given, and “normally we don’t make decisions based on two-month follow-ups,” he said. It’s unclear how quickly protection wanes after two months, he said.

 

Farber worried that if the FDA gives older adults an option for a second booster, but not a full recommendation, it could be confusing and lead “to very mixed messages among the public.”

 

Farber said people 60 or 65 and older probably should get a second booster, if authorized. For people in their 50s, it would depend on how much time they spend in crowded indoor spaces and whether they have health conditions making them more vulnerable, he said.

 

“A healthy 50-year-old may want to pass on a booster right now, but a 50-year-old with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, that’s a whole different picture,” he said.

56% of eligible NYers boosted

 

In New York, 56% of those eligible for a booster have received one, and 76.1% of the population has received at least two vaccine doses, or one of the Johnson & Johnson, according to state data.

 

Unvaccinated people 12 and older are more than three times as likely to test positive for the coronavirus than boosted people, and 21 times more likely to die of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

The timing of a second booster would be a judgment call, Krilov said. With the positivity rate still relatively low, it may make more sense for many people to wait until just before the fall, when the risk likely will be higher.

 

“On the other hand, if I have multiple risk factors, I’d probably say get it as soon as it’s approved,” he said.

 

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations rose on Long Island, from 119 on Thursday to 123 on Friday, state data shows. But that was after a large drop, from 143 patients on Wednesday. More than 58% were admitted for a reason other than COVID-19.

I went back out to find more interesting stuff, and ran back into the micropanther (Atomosia puella) from earlier, with a bonus. I found him on the back fence when I went to check on my passionflower vines, and got into position. As I tried to get some resolution, I realized he had his lunch with him still! I tried to snag a single shot with his entire body and the prey in focus, but my focal plane at this magnification is practically nonexistent. Small movements from me rendered focus stacking impossible, so here's the best capture I got. Overall, it may not be my best shot, but I absolutely LOVE getting photos of nature in action. Captured with my Vivitar (Komine) 90mm f2.8 Macro in 1:1, attached to 26mm of extension tubes, for around 1.3:1 magnification.

George Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, California, a dusty transportation center in the agricultural Sacramento Valley. As a teenager, Lucas developed an interest in racing, then in vogue as part of the "Cruising" trend of the early 1960s, as kids built up and worked on their cars, picked up girls, and participated in street racing. However a nearly fatal car accident in 1962 turned Lucas over to film making.

 

In 1971, after the failure of THX1138, Lucas decided to turn back to a nostalgic view of Cruising. American Graffiti was set in 1962 Modesto and is loosely autobiographical. However, Modesto was not as accommodating, with a zealous urban-renewal program that demolished most of the old downtown by the 1970s and replaced it with what remains a pretty sterile cityscape. Lucas ended up filming American Graffiti in San Rafael and Petaluma. Released in 1973, the film became a critical and commercial success, and Lucas went on to create the blockbuster Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

 

Modesto did not really give much of a thought to the whole thing, besides banning cruising in 1993. In 1997, it decided to recognize its famed son by erecting this statue of a cruising couple on a 1957 Chevy (or at least a part of it) by Betty Saletta. There was a storm of controversy, as locals opposed the use of funds for the artwork. However the statue was finally erected at what is called Five Points, now George Lucas Plaza. It has nothing to do with the old cruising sites, which were closer to Downtown and now mostly nonexistent.

 

Recently, the city began embracing its history, with a marker-based tour route and a popular American Graffiti Car Show held on the first week of June. Last year, George Lucas, now retired, showed up as the Grand Marshal of the parade to enthusiastic crowds.

Modesto, California

Kafka.

  

Si, ho sé, es quelcom estranya aquesta lletra/fotografia. Però kafka va dir: "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

  

Sóc somiadora, i m'encanta imaginar-me mil aventures. Algunes les faig realitat. Com la de fer les illes balears amb la meva vespa del '82. He cregut que ho podia fer, i ho hem fet possible. Ha estat un viatge màgic, ple de sensacions que em fan saltar la llàgrima. Hem creat un record marevellós, hem seguit els nostres desitjos, i hem convertit somnis en realitat.

A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.

 

The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.

 

The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

Karesansui 枯山水 (dry landscape gardens, also known as rock gardens and waterless stream gardens) are typically associated with Zen Buddhism, and often found in the front or rear gardens at the residences (houjou 方丈) of Zen abbots. The main elements of karesansui are rocks and sand, with the sea symbolized not by water but by sand raked in patterns that suggest rippling water. Representative examples are the gardens of Ryoanji Temple and Daitokuji Temple, both in Kyoto. Plants are much less important (and sometimes nonexistent) in many karesansui gardens. Karesansui gardens are often, but not always, meant to be viewed from a single, seated perspective, and the rocks are often associated with and named after various Chinese mountains. The first-ever Zen landscape garden in Japan is credited to Kenchoji Temple in Kamakura. Founded in 1251, this temple was the chief monastery for the five great Zen monasteries that thrived during the Kamakura era (1185-1333). It became the center of Zen Buddhism thanks to strong state patronage.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

Whale meat and puffins (Lundi) on the menu at Hereford Steikhus, ReykjavÃ-k, Iceland © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com March 13, 2014

I boycotted ALL restaurants which served whale, shark or puffin (aka Lundi) while visiting Iceland. According to Elding, a great Icelandic eco whale watching tour, only 5% of the whales killed in Iceland are consumed by locals and 40% by tourists looking for a kick. Some of whom had just stepped off the whale watching tour- very hypocritical. Since a campaign by IFAW to stop this opportunistic experimentation, tourist consumption has dropped to 20%. Now the one company still killing fin and minke whales, Hvalur, managed by Kristján Loftsso (Kristjan Loftsson), is selling byproducts of its cruel product to a local beer company, Steðja Brewery. I'm adding them to my boycott list. I later learned that the picturesque Icelandic horses we see offered for rides to tourists are also bred for meat. © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com Feb 21, 2014

 

Hunting Minke whales is not an Icelandic tradition- in fact, quite the opposite. According to Wikepedia, "prior to 1914 Icelanders did not hunt minke whales. Superstition held that minke whales were sent by God as protectors" More here- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Iceland

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/whales/meet-us-don%E2...

Meet Us Don't Eat Us: Campaign to take whale meat off the menu for tourists

 

Tourists who visit Iceland during the summer may be greeted by a high-profile campaign from IFAW and Ice Whale (Icelandic Whale Watching Association), encouraging them to enjoy responsible whale watching but to avoid sampling whale meat.

 

The campaign, Meet Us Don't Eat Us is aimed at dispelling the myth some tourists believe that whale meat is a popular dish enjoyed by most Icelanders. However, according to a 2010 Gallup poll survey, only about 5% of Icelanders say they eat it regularly.

Similarly, many people believe Iceland's commercial whaling is a centuries-old tradition, but in reality it started in 1948 and stopped in 1989, with a few boats resuming minke whaling in 2003, initially for so-called scientific research.

IFAW believes an estimated 40% of tourists are persuaded to eat whale meat while in Iceland, mainly out of curiosity. The result is that whales are killed every year just to be sampled by tourists.

The Meet Us Don't Eat Us campaign urges visitors to think carefully about the menu choices they make in the country's excellent restaurants to ensure they don't go home with a bad taste in their mouths.

The campaign, which runs from June to September, is being promoted around Reykjavik by volunteers dressed in whale tail costumes. The volunteers will be talking to tourists in downtown Reykjavik and asking them to sign postcards promising to avoid whale meat and asking Iceland to stop whaling.

The campaign, which ran for the first time in 2011, has ruffled some feathers in Iceland. Despite IFAW signing and paying a four-month contract to place adverts in Keflavik Airport last year, the airport's general manager ordered IFAW to remove them shortly after they went on display following complaints from whalers. The campaign then sparked a major media debate in the country on the issue of free speech and IFAW was delighted to see many Icelanders, including politicians, speak out in defence of the campaign.

In early May, 2012 Kristjan Loftsson, the lone Icelandic whaler responsible for killing 280 endangered fin whales in Icelandic waters over the past six years, told Icelandic media that because of economic issues, including difficulties in trading the meat with Japan following its tsunami tragedy, he would not be fin whaling in 2012. This is the second year in a row that Loftsson has cancelled the hunt, having laid off 30 staff last year. IFAW welcomed this decision and sees it as a positive sign that Loftsson recognises that fin whaling is uneconomic. Icelanders traditionally do not eat fin whale meat and these whales have been killed with a view to selling the meat to Japan, which has so far met with little success.

 

However, commercial hunting of minke whales in Iceland continues. In total, 58 minke whales were killed last season, by two companies. This was from a self-allocated catch limit of 216. IFAW urges Iceland to end all whaling now to protect whales for future generations and to safeguard its successful whale watching industry.

IFAW ran the first workshop looking into the feasibility of whale watching in Iceland more than 20 years ago and has worked closely with Icelandic whale watch operators for several years to promote whale watching as a humane and profitable alternative to the cruelty of whaling.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/iceland...

Iceland's Newest Beer Ingredient: Whale

One brewery is experimenting with a whale of an ale or technically, an ale of a whale.

SVATI KIRSTEN NARULA

JAN 9 2014, 12:46 PM ET

 

Iceland doesn't treat cetaceans the way most of the world wants them to be treated. Like Japan and Norway, Iceland has continued to hunt fin and minke whales in defiance of an international moratorium on the practice. It's not a challenge to find a restaurant serving whale meat in the capital city of ReykjavÃ-k. With all this in mind, is it really surprising that Iceland's whaling business has recently teamed up with a brewery to produce "whale beer"?

 

Steðja Brewery

Hvalur, the company managed by "the Icelandic Ahab" Kristján Loftsson, is providing whale mealâa byproduct of processing the animal's meat and oilâto Steðja Brewery to create a limited edition product tied to Iceland's annual mid-winter festival Thorrablot. The beer, marketed as a drink for "true vikings," will only be available from January 24 through February 22. It's 5.2 percent alcohol and is supposedly "healthy" by virtue of containing whale, which is, according to the brewery, high in protein and low in fat.

Dagbjartur Ariliusson, the brewery's owner, told reporters that whale beer makes sense in the context of Thorrablot and the country's history. For many centuries, he said, they have celebrated this festival by eating "cured food, including whale fat, and now we have the beer to drink with this food." Pickled whale blubber is a traditional Thorrablot menu item.

Like so much else Iceland does with whales, the development is drawing impassioned ire from conservationists and anti-whaling activists. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) society's campaign managers have called the beer launch an attempt "to diversify whale products in the face of almost nonexistent local consumer demand" and "about as immoral and outrageous as you can get." WDC has also gone after Hvalur for "perversely" powering its whale-hunting ships with whale oil.

The outcry probably won't stop tourists from rushing to sample whale steaks and sashimi at ReykjavÃ-k restaurants. Even if whale beer doesn't taste very good because, let's be honest, putting meat of any kind in beer is uncommon and gross it could, one day, be yet another item on a traveler's bucket list.

 

www.ifaw.org/united-states/news/september-drew-end-so-did...

As September drew to an end, so did whaling in Iceland, but for how long?

By: Robbie Marsland

Posted: Mon, 10/14/2013

2013 was a grim year, with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

There are two types of whaling in Iceland.

 

These days, minke whaling is carried out primarily by one vessel, Hrafnreyður KÃ-100.

The number of whales killed each season for the small Icelandic whale meat market has dropped from 58 in 2011, to 52 in 2012 and 35 this year.

Less than 5% of Icelanders regularly eat whale meat and thanks to IFAW's Meet Us Don't Eat Us and Whale Friendly Restaurants initiatives in the country, the percentage of tourists eating whale meat has dropped from around 40% to around 20%.

SEE ALSO: "Whale friendly" is the way forward for Icelandic tourism

Not only are sales down for the minke whalers, but it looks like their costs are up. Facing an extended whale watching sanctuary and the displeasure of the Icelandic tourism community, this year the minke whalers kept out of the enormous Faxafloi bay outside Reykjavik, the capital.

They motored around Iceland's western fjords and started to worry the whale watchers in the north of Iceland between Akureyri and Husavik the northern home of Icelandic whale watching. Not surprisingly, their presence there was also hotly contested by whale watching companies.

So as the winter storms start hitting Iceland, we will have to wait and see if the whalers decide it is worth enduring further international and national criticism to go out and cruelly kill minke whales for a steadily declining market that must yield little or no financial return¦

Fin whales are the second species hunted and cruelly killed in Iceland.

In recent years fin whales have only been hunted by one operator. He is Kristjan Loftsson, the son of a whaler who made a fortune from whaling in the 60s, 70s and 80s - before the vast majority of the world (including Iceland) saw sense and stopped killing whales.

Mr Loftsson started killing fin whales again in 2009. No-one was really sure why he started again because fin whale meat is not eaten in Iceland, and the only other place international trade laws allow him to sell the meat is Japan, and they don't seem overly keen to buy fin whale meat from him.

So it wasn't a surprise when Mr Loftsson didn't go fin whaling in 2011 and 2012. But it was a surprise when he sent his ships out to kill the second largest whale in the world again last June.

As of the end of September his two 1940s steam-driven whaling boats had dragged 134 fin whales back to his whaling station just outside Reykjavik.

But it's not been plain sailing for Mr Loftsson this season.

He was used to the idea of there being celebrations when he brought in the first fin whale of the season. Instead of showing a proud Mr Loftsson flensing (cutting up) his first whale, the newspapers chose to cover the small crowd of demonstrators on the hill above the station holding the banner: What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Later in the season one of his minority shareholders was quoted in the national newspapers as being very concerned that the fin whaling was losing money and depreciating the value of the company shares.

Loftsson's worst moment came in July when a consignment of his fin whale meat was rejected by the port of Rotterdam which wanted nothing to do with his cruel and controversial trade.

Not only that but he had to see photos plastered all over the TV and newspapers of a whale watching boat greeting the returning whale meat with enormous pointing hands and, once again, the message What's the point in Icelandic whaling?

Rotterdam was closed to his trade and so his export options seem to be dwindling.

2013 was a grim year for us with a decrease in minke whales killed offset by a vast increase in the number of fin whales killed.

However, there does seem to have been a sea change in Icelandic attitudes towards this so-called industry and more and more people are asking themselves and in public, what is the point of Icelandic whaling?

--RM

IFAW will continue to work closely with the whale watching and tourism sector and supportive MPs over the winter months. Stay tuned!

HORSE SLAUGHTER of foals in Iceland

 

www.pferd-und-fleisch.de/Horsemeat/iceland.htm

 

ICELANDIC SLAUGHTERHOUSE ADVERTISES FOR HORSES TO FEED OVERSEAS DINERS

MAY 5, 2012 VIVIAN GRANT FARRELL

 

tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/icelandic-slaughte...

Chuck E. Cheese's #557 (11,654 square feet)

3631 Soldano Boulevard, Consumer Square West, Columbus, OH

Opened November 24th, 1992

 

This Columbus location has one of the oddest layouts I've seen in a CEC. First off, kid check was moved from its' original location directly beside this entryway and is now across from the ordering counter, more than likely due to low staffing so whoever's working can man both stations easier. I've seen other locations do this, but here it's problematic: now the front window booths are behind the stand, so if that's where you choose to sit then you potentially have to deal with a line of people next to you on a busier day, which seems like it'd be annoying. Secondly, the showroom/show area is pretty much nonexistent. From the ordering counter you have a straight path to the stage with no obstacles in-between. And third, bathrooms are accessed from behind the salad bar instead of having their own separate hallway. Fortunately, the gameroom floor is much larger and varied compared to some locations (like Chesapeake Sams Circle), which is great for the kids that go here.

Now I knew my Nubian doe, Melody, was going to have more than one kid, but I wasn’t prepared for the carnival ride that happened!

I put Melody in the kennel the day before because she was pawing the ground and showing signs of imminent labor. About 9:00pm Wednesday night I checked on her then went to bed as I had worked that day and had been up since the wee hours of the morning. Around 4:00am I woke up and went out to check on Melody and there was one BIG buckling on his feet. A quick survey told me that the kid had been born probably several hours before and Melody was still in labor. Not good. That meant that a kid was probably in the wrong position and not coming out. Melody was exhausted and in obvious distress.

Let me tell you now the description “goat veterinarian” is somewhat of an anachronism in this area and a vet who will come out to the boondocks in the wee hours for a goat in labor is nonexistent so the “call your vet” option just ain’t there.

So I go back in the house and wake up Vic who groggily comes out. Vic’s hand is too big to reach into Melody’s nether regions, so I got the pleasure. Upon reaching in, I found the kid twisted around in breach position. I had to rotate him inside to be able to get him in position to pull. Now I’m 4’11” and 90 pounds in soggy clothing. Being small has its drawbacks, but having spindly arms helped in this situation! So I finally got the head turned around one-handed and was able to pull him out. He was alive but very weak. Melody did some preliminary cleaning but was too tired to continue. Vic went back to bed as he was figuring he had to work that day.

I toweled the kid off to dry and stimulate him. He was awake but too weak to even hold his head up.

But Melody didn’t look like she was through and to compound matters, the first kid knocked one of her hips completely out of joint. It was starting to get light, so I jumped in the truck and drove over to the neighbor’s house. Now Jeannie and her daughter Lisa are experienced goat folks –Melody came from them. They proceeded to throw on some coats and boots and came right up.

After getting a pile of towels, I proceeded to reach in again –Lisa said “Melody is deep!” and she wasn’t kidding! No pun intended…

I found another kid, and rotated it and managed to pull it out. Alive! The sack hadn’t burst! Melody was too exhausted to push and couldn’t stand, so I went in again and suspicions confirmed there was yet another kid, so I brought it out with Melody down on her side and myself down in the straw saturated with birth goo. All the while, Jeannie and Lisa are toweling kids and clearing their mouths and comforting Melody and giving me a lot of help and support!

After all was done, Jeannie and Lisa left with the intent to come back later and put Melody’s hip back in. She was too exhausted to mess with at the moment. I went and got some colostrum heated up (I keep frozen cubes) to get the kids going so they all got a warm meal before settling in as well as their Bo-Se (selenium) and A&D shots.

I had to milk Melody down and bottle feed the kids because she was too weak to stand for long. Jeannie and Lisa came back to tend to Melody’s hip. Jeannie stood behind Melody and started gently manipulating her leg, there was a “scrunch” and back in it went! It was amazing!

So I have been busy for a few days! This was the condensed version! Jean

 

Uploaded with the Flock Browser

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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Enlarge This Image

 

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.”

Influenza

 

What Is Influenza?

 

Influenza, or the flu, is a viral infection. There are many types of influenza viruses. Common symptoms may include fever, chills, sore throat, body aches, headache, and fatigue. Some forms of the flu virus infect the gastro-intestinal tract causing nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. A flu infection may worsen any chronic illness such as emphysema, asthma, or bronchitis. It has also been known to cause complications in people with coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure. Those who smoke are at an increased risk of mortality from influenza.

 

Who Does Influenza Affect?

 

Influenza primarily affects humans; however, certain types of the flu virus can affect animals (most commonly birds and pigs).

 

What Causes Influenza Infection?

 

Anyone with a weakened immune system is more susceptible to an influenza infection. Coming into contact with the flu virus, increases your risk of developing the flu. Contact includes saliva, nasal secretions, feces and blood. Most commonly influenza is spread through coughing and sneezing.

   

Examination Procedures for the Diagnosis of Influenza

 

Although there are specific laboratory test for diagnosing influenza, diagnosis is usually based on symptoms.

 

Common Chiropractic & Other Conservative Treatments

 

Treatment for influenza is usually geared towards prevention. By keeping the immune system strong and healthy you can prevent yourself from getting the flu in the first place

 

Conservative Chiropractic treatment can consist of:

 

· Posture rehabilitation: Due to the stresses of poor posture having an overall ”ill” effect on health, maintaining good posture is key to maintaining good health.

 

· Joint Manipulations: Studies show that chiropractic manipulations boost the immune system

 

· Vitamins and Supplements: certain vitamins and supplements, such as Vitamin D, C, and E, are known to boost the immune system and may help prevent the flu. You should always check with your chiropractor before taking any vitamin, supplement, or herbal formula.

 

· Chinese Medicine: Chinese medicine can help with prevention and also help with symptoms, naturally. You should always check with your chiropractor before taking any vitamin, supplement, or herbal formula.

 

· Recommendations of: adequate rest, reduced stress levels, and increased fluid intake are all essential to maintain a healthy immune system.

 

Medical Interventions: Studies Fail to Demonstrate Safety or Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccine in Children and Adults

 

Because the flu is a virus, there is no medication to cure the flu. Rest and fluids are most often prescribed by medical practioners. There are several over the counter medications that can lessen the symptoms of the flu, but because these medication have their own inherent risks, caution is advised.

 

The flu vaccine is used to try to prevent one from catching the flu, but because the flu virus is continually mutating and changing, doctors are guessing as to what strain is going to be present. Therefore; the flu vaccination is a “shot in the dark” with no guarantees of prevention or immunity. Due to the inherent risks of vaccinations, caution is advised with any vaccination.

 

In fact, recently, in an independent analysis of the available flu vaccine studies, the Cochrane Collaboration1, concluded that there is little scientific proof that the influenza vaccine is safe and/or effective for children and adults. Additionally, the National Vaccine Information Center is asking the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to stop recommending annual flu shots for all infants and children until methodologically sound studies are conducted.

 

The risks of the flu vaccine may in fact outweigh any possible benefits. Dozens of convulsions and other adverse events, including brain injury experienced by children after receiving the flu vaccination, have been reported. Additionally some subjects exposed to the flu vaccine developed Guillain Barre Syndrome.1-5

 

Even in the Elderly (the most at risk group of people), the benefits of the flu shot is “greatly exaggerated”; according to a 2007 study in the premier medical journal The Lancet.4 The researchers stated that the public policy for the elderly getting flu shots is based on flimsy, even nonexistent, evidence.

 

A Potentially Bigger Problem: if the above information was not enough, it has been identified that the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United States contain Thimerosal and that while highly controversial, this methyl mercury based preservative has been claimed to be linked to autism, Alzheimer’s, and ADD.

 

Chiropractic Care May Have a Positive Influence on Influenza

 

Historically, Chiropractic treatment for flu patients has shown clinical benefits dating back to the flu pandemic in the early 19th century. There is limited data from that era regarding publications but severely ill patients with flu symptoms would line up to receive their daily Chiropractic adjustments. In fact, many Chiropractors set up treatment areas in Churches and Orphanages to adjust the ill. Reports from that era suggest that patients receiving Chiropractic care fared better than those whom did not and than those receiving standard medical care of the times.6

 

By today’s standards, the above reports don’t equate to legitimate data; however, there is emerging evidence that Chiropractic type adjustments can enhance the immune system of a patient and speed recovery of the ill. For example, in Geriatric Patients with pneumonia receiving both conventional medicine and ‘osteopathic manipulation’, it was found that the spinal manipulation group had reduced antibiotic use and decreased length of hospital stay!7,8

 

If nothing else, take the advice of the National Vaccine Information Center:9

 

1. If you have the flu, stay home until you are well

 

2. If you know a person sick with the flu, avoid contact until they are well

 

3. Wash your hands frequently

 

4. Drink plenty of fluids, especially water

 

5. Get adequate rest

 

6. Eat a wholesome diet rich in vitamins and minerals, especially foods containing vitamin D (such as cod liver oil)

 

7. Spend a few minutes a day in sunlight to help your body make and store vitamin D.

 

8. Consider chiropractic adjustments, homeopathic remedies and other natural options for healing and maintaining health.

 

9. Exercise regularly when you are well.

 

10. Lower stress through meditation and other healthy lifestyle changes

   

References

 

British Medical Journal 2006; Oct. 28.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 2006; Oct. 25.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (www.nvic.org ).

Simonsen L, Taylor R, Viboud C, Miller M, Jackson L. Mortality benefits of influenza vaccination in elderly people: an ongoing controversy. Lancet Infect Dis 2007; 7:658–66 Sept 24, www.michigan.gov/documents/mdch/Simonsen_etal_210415_7.pdf

Geier M, Geier D, Zahalsky A. Influenza vaccination and Guillain Barre syndrome. Clinical Immunology 107 (2003) 116–121.

Rhodes, Walter R. The official history of chiropractic in Texas. 1978;:1-4.

Noll DR. J Am Osteo Assoc 1999:99(3):143-146.

Noll DR. J Am Osteo Assoc 1998;98(7):389

www.nvic.org/Default.htm

  

 

ALL DAY GIRLS FILL AND EMPTY HEAVY BASKETS OF ROCK IN ORISSA, INDIA

ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

 

Gravel Quarries are a common sight in Orissa and other states in India. The children that work here are exploited 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Their world consists only of these piles of rocks, dust and back breaking work. At night many sleep in the open or in makeshift shelters where sanitary conditions are nonexistent. There are no schools here, and for many there is no family. Some of the children working here have been trafficked from other areas where their parents have been forced to either sell themselves or their children into debt bondage (Slavery) or, if they are lucky enough not to be bonded, are dependent on the meager wages that these children can provide.

The work is extremely brutal, hazardous, abusive sometimes lethal. Working all day in the hot sun where temperatures regularly climb above 100F (37C), they carry well over a ton of rock a day, to stand on line exposed to the rock dust from the grinder. The pay, If there is any, is minimal, and conditions fall well below minimum levels required by law and are illegal for children . Nonetheless the kids work, Driven by necessity , often unaware of what they are getting into and sometimes tricked or virtually kidnapped by unscrupulous agents and middlemen. For many, their debt actually increases over time due to dishonest accounting.

The poor pay and hard work are just the beginning. These children tend to be chronically tired from the long hours, increasing the probability of accidents, injuries and deformity. Disease, malnutrition and permanent skeletal injury and silicosis are the common lot. Many die before they reach 30.

Medical treatment is primitive or non-existent

Unable to receive the education to which they are entitled by law, they are powerless to act, and trapped in a continual cycle of grinding poverty.

Catalog Number: 2017.005.0001

 

Date (Years): 1891-1900

 

Description:

 

Receipt on billhead from Chattanooga Plow Company for goods sold to A. B. Hamm, Ramer, Tenn., October 12, 1895. Business graphic at header features cotton bolls, a plow, and in the center, surrounded by an oval, a drawing of Lookout Mountain with factories along the Tennessee River and steamboats in the river. It notes Newell Sanders, President, and C. D. Mitchell, Secretary and Treasurer. It promotes its chilled plows, plow repairs, cane mills, evaporators & furnaces. There are also notices of indemnity.

 

The Chattanooga Plow Company was once the largest factory in Chattanooga and an international leader in plow design and production. The company dates to the business activities of Newell Sanders, who arrived in Chattanooga in 1877 from Bloomington, Indiana, where he had owned and operated a bookstore for students of Indiana University. Sanders arrived with a letter of introduction to John T. Wilder, fellow Indianan, industrialist, and former Union Civil War officer. Sanders was intent on starting a manufacturing business and, after touring the city and discussing his options with Wilder, Sanders decided to begin with the manufacture of plows. At that time, the majority of plows used in the South came from the Midwest. To gain some knowledge of the plow business, Sanders returned to Indiana and spent a year working in a plow factory and studying plow design. Sanders returned to Chattanooga in 1878 and began the Newell Sanders Plow Works-advertised as Newell Sanders & Company. From its inception, Sanders advertised his plows as the plow designed for southern soils and for use expressly in the South.

 

Newell Sanders & Company operated out of an eight-hundred-square-foot building manufacturing plows with castings purchased from Wheland Foundry. By 1881, Sanders and his agents were selling plows in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Two years later, Sanders, Charles D. Mitchell, George W. Wheland, C. C. Bloomfield, and Judson Buchanan increased the company’s capitalization, moved and expanded the works, built a dedicated foundry, and renamed the organization the Chattanooga Plow Company. Newell Sanders was the first president of the company, and C. D. Mitchell was the secretary and treasurer.

 

Chattanooga Plow Company utilized the same designs as those of Newell Sanders & Company. The factory at Carter and Montgomery (now Main) Streets employed approximately three hundred people and covered six acres by 1895. They focused on a “southern plow,” the one- or two-horse plow most commonly used by southern farmers. As the company expanded into new markets, they held expositions and field schools to prove the ability of the plow and to teach the proper ways to use the plows.

 

The aggressive sales increased the business to the point where the Chattanooga Chilled Plow became a style of its own, known simply as the “Chattanooga plow.” The company added variations of its one-horse, single-foot plow to appeal to farmers in different regions of the United States. It expanded sales into Texas, the Midwest, the Territories, and Mexico. Chattanooga Plow also added a line of cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for processing sugar cane and making syrups. The line of cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces gained the company substantial business in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica where Sanders sold over five thousand cane mills. These new international sales were in addition to the company’s sales in Europe, Mexico, Cuba, South America, and Central America.

 

A disagreement with other stockholders in 1901 led C. D. Mitchell and his supporters to vote out Newell Sanders and elect Mitchell as the second president of Chattanooga Plow Company. Several months later, in 1902, Sanders opened the Newell Sanders Plow Company. This separate company manufactured only disc plows for tractor use and sought markets in California, Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, and South Africa, all regions where Chattanooga Plow’s business was minimal or nonexistent. Sanders operated Newell Sanders Plow Company until 1927, when he sold that business to the Rock Island Plow Company in Dallas, Texas.

 

After taking control of Chattanooga Plow in 1901, C. D. Mitchell along with G. W. Wheland, the secretary, and treasurer, continued business in much the same fashion as Sanders. In response to a substantial growth of sales in the United States as well as an expansion into Asian markets, the company in 1903 expanded into the largest factory in Chattanooga and one of the largest plow companies in the world.

 

Mitchell and Wheland’s control of Chattanooga Plow ended in 1915 when Newell Sanders purchased Wheland’s shares while Sanders’s ally John C. Miller gained control of Mitchell’s stock. With the support of his nephew and long-time superintendent of the factory, Judson Buchanan, Sanders gained a three-fifths majority in the company and was reelected as president in May 1915. Four years later, Sanders and his partner sold Chattanooga Plow to International Harvester for an estimated one million dollars.

 

The Chattanooga works would continue making chilled plows, cane mills, evaporators, and furnaces for International Harvester until 1944, when the company built a new factory in Memphis, Tennessee. The Harriman manufacturing company of Harriman, Tennessee, bought the Chattanooga works and continued to produce the Chattanooga plow until 1972. Today, Chattanooga’s Finley Stadium occupies the former site of the Chattanooga Plow Company.

 

Source: tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1578

I saw my first-of-year Bluebird just 9 days ago, but didn’t get any decent photos. Today however, I found at least 4 birds and got within photo range more than once. With this nearly nonexistent winter, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s still February and not April. Hennepin County, MN 02/21/24