www.usaraf.army.mil

 

U.S Army Medical Research Unit: Improving malaria diagnosis in Africa, one lab at a time

 

By Rick Scavetta, U.S. Army Africa

 

OYUGIS, Kenya – Inside Rachuonyo district hospital, Simba Mobagi peers through his laboratory’s only microscope at a sick woman’s blood sample.

 

The 33-year-old laboratory technologist’s goal – rapidly identifying malaria parasites.

Dozens more samples await his eyes. Each represents a patient suffering outside on wooden benches.

 

Mogabi takes little time to ponder his workload. He quickly finds malaria parasites, marks his findings on a pink patient record and moves to the next slide. Much to his surprise, a U.S. Army officer arrives, removes his black beret and sets down a large box.

 

Inside Maj. Eric Wagar’s box is a new microscope – a small gesture within U.S. Army Medical Research Unit-Kenya’s larger efforts to improve malaria diagnostics in Africa.

 

For more than 40 years, USAMRU-K – known locally as the Walter Reed Project – has studied diseases in East Africa through a partnership with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

 

Wagar heads USAMRU-K’s Malaria Diagnostics and Control Center of Excellence in Kisumu, a unique establishment begun in 2004 that’s since trained more than 650 laboratory specialist to better their malaria microscopy skills.

 

“Working with the Walter Reed Project is so good for the community, as it benefits the patient,” Mobagi said, who is looking forward to attending the center’s malaria diagnostics course. “Plus, having a new microscope improves our work environment. Work will be easier and we will have better outcomes.”

 

Back in Kisumu, wall maps mark the center’s success, with hundreds of trained lab technicians from more than a dozen countries across the African continent. International students have come from Ireland, the U.S. and Thailand.

Many students are sponsored through U.S. government aid programs aimed at reducing disease in Africa or by nongovernmental organizations. Most of the center’s $450,000 annual budget comes from the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. Other funding is from the U.S. Defense Department, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies.

 

For students to practice malaria identification, five Kenyan lab technicians work tirelessly to create a variety of blood specimens. Slides may show one or more of malaria’s several species – others are free of parasites. The majority of malaria cases are the falciparum species, but many people are co-infected with other species and it’s important for students to recognize that, Wagar said.

 

“At our course, lab students learn skills and habits that increase their ability to accurately detect malaria on blood slides. Yet, when they return to their local laboratories, they face the challenge of changing habits and procedures,” Wagar said. “Changing behavior is hard to do.”

 

In late-April, Wagar accompanied Jew Ochola, 28, the center’s daily operations manager to Oyugis, the district center of Rachuonyo that lies roughly 30 miles south of Kisumu in Kenya’s Nyanza province.

 

“First I do an assessment of the hospital’s lab, what procedures they have, the number of people on staff and the equipment they use,” Ochola said. “By partnering with laboratory managers, we hope to increase standards and improve efficient and effective diagnosis.

 

The goal is to lessen the burden of malaria on the local people.”

 

To mark progress, lab staffs must collect 20 slides each month that show properly handled blood samples. Monthly visits will mark performance improvement.

 

Through quality malaria diagnosis, USAMRU-K is part of a larger public health effort to reduce malaria’s impacts on Kenyan’s lives. Illness means paying for treatment and less wages earned, creating an impact on the economy.

 

“By mitigating a public health burden, people should have more time to grow food and have money for things other than medical care,” Wagar said. “We can’t expect to see change right away, but hopefully things will be a little bit better every month.”

 

Working with the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa and other DoD agencies, the center recently offered microscopy courses through U.S. military partnership events in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. The effort supports U.S. Army Africa’s strategic engagement goal of increasing capabilities and strengthening capacity with the militaries of African nations, Wagar said.

 

“To date, that includes eight Kenyan military lab techs, 17 from the Tanzania People’s Defense Force and 30 Nigerians,” Wagar said.

 

Accurate diagnosis is also a key factor for military readiness, Wagar said. For example, a Kenyan soldier stationed in Nairobi – where malaria is less prevalent – is susceptible to the disease if posted elsewhere in the country.

 

“Improving malaria diagnosis within African military laboratories sets conditions for healthier troops,” Wagar said. “When forces are healthy, they are more capable to support their government and regional security.”

 

To learn more about U.S. Army Africa visit our official website at www.usaraf.army.mil

 

Official Twitter Feed: www.twitter.com/usarmyafrica

 

Official YouTube video channel: www.youtube.com/usarmyafrica

  

See this locomotive in the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3oxDV2lg1s

 

Having just worked the "Cumbrian Mountaineer" over Shap, preserved London, Midland & Scottish Railway Princess Royal 6201 'Princess Elizabeth' readies itself for departure with empty stock bound for the adjacent sidings on what was her last railtour before overhaul.

 

The Princess Royal class were a set of 13 4-6-2 Pacific locomotives designed by William Stanier and built at Crewe Works between 1933 and 1935 to be the prime motive power on the West Coast Mainline between London Euston, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, including the famous Royal Scot premier express service. At first, two prototypical locomotives were built in 1933, followed by 11 production locomotives in 1935. These were later complimented by a fleet of 38 Coronation Pacific locomotives built between 1937 and 1948, which later went on to be arguably the most power steam locomotives ever built for the British Railway network.

 

One of the original prototypes however was retained for use as a testbed for a new Turbine Locomotive project to help improve the efficiency of the engines, later being unofficially dubbed 'Turbomotive'. The engine was fitted with turbines instead of cylinders, with the forward turbine containing 18 rows of blading, resulting in an output of 2,400hp, corresponding to running at 62 mph (100 km/h). The turbine was designed to operate into a maximum back-pressure of 2 psi, allowing a conventional double blast-pipe to provide the boiler draught, and eliminating draught fans, which always seemed to give a disproportionate amount of trouble.

 

The reverse turbine had 4 rows of blades. It was engaged by a dog clutch, activated when the reverser lever being set to "0". This was originally steam-operated by a small piston and cylinder. This locomotive was later rebuilt as a conventional classmate in 1952, using new mainframes and a spare set of cylinders from one of the Coronation Pacifics, and was numbered 46202, later to be named 'Princess Anne'.

 

6201, LMS lot number 99, was built at Crewe for the sum of £11,675 (£685,000 today) and named Princess Elizabeth, after the then Duke of York’s eldest daughter, currently our Queen Elizabeth II, leaving the works on 3rd November 1933.

 

Throughout the years the Princess Royal's continued to ply their trade on the West Coast services, but the years of World War II took their toll on the fleet. The beautiful Crimson Lake was replaced by Wartime Black, and the prestige manner that these locomotives had been accustomed to was stripped away as the railways were rationalised as part of the war effort. Work hours increased, and maintenance turns reduced, meaning these engines were being forced to the very limit of their design to keep Britain moving.

 

With the end of the war in 1945 the workload began to decrease, but the railways had paid the price. The beauty and lavish luxury of the pre-war companies had been stripped and would never return, with all of Britain's main railway companies now almost bankrupt and working a fleet of very tired engines on a poorly maintained railway network. In 1948 the Labour Government nationalised these companies to create British Railways, hoping to modernise the network and rebuild the overworked system.

 

The Princess Royals and their more powerful sisters the Coronation Pacifics continued to work hard as the implementation of diesels gathered pace. Early diesels however were underpowered and suffered heavily from reliability issues, meaning on many occasions the steam locomotives that they intended to replace actually came to their rescue!

 

It was not all plain sailing though for the Princess Royals in the 1950's, as this decade was littered with many fatal accidents. On 21 September 1951, locomotive No.46207 Princess Arthur of Connaught was hauling an express passenger train that was derailed at Weedon, Northamptonshire due to a defective front bogie on the locomotive, resulting in the deaths of 15 people and the injury of 35.

 

This was followed a year later by what would turn out to be the worst rail accident in the whole of British history. On 8 October 1952, an express passenger train hauled by Coronation Class, 46242 'City of Glasgow' overran signals on a train from Perth to London Euston, striking the rear of a stopped Tring to Euston commuter train at Harrow and Wealdstone station in North London. The ensuing wreckage was then struck by a northbound Liverpool express, hauled by Jubilee Class 45637 'Windward Islands', and recently rebuilt ex-Turbomotive Princess Royal 46202 'Princess Anne', which had only entered service two months earlier. In the chaos that followed, a total of 112 people were killed and 340 were injured, with 46202 obliterated in the accident, the first and only member of the class to be lost in an accident.

 

The late 50's however began to see the end of these engines as good, reliable diesels began to be introduced to replace them, followed closely by electric traction on the West Coast Mainline out of Euston. In 1961 the first members of the class were withdrawn from service, including 6201, which was placed in store in March 1961, but returned to service in May of that year due to poor diesel reliability.

 

As more diesels were delivered, in October of the same year 6201 was again placed into storage at Carlisle Kingmoor. However, again in January 1962 6201 was returned to traffic to cover for diesel failures and continued to work until September 1962 where it was once again placed into storage. It was subsequently withdrawn by BR in October 1962 and purchased by Roger Bell. The last of the locomotives to be withdrawn was class premier and original prototype number 62000 'The Princess Royal', which was withdrawn in November 1962 and subsequently scrapped. In all, only two locomotives were preserved, number 6203 'Princess Margaret Rose' and 6201 'Princess Elizabeth'.

 

46201 was bought by the then Princess Elizabeth Locomotive Society straight from BR service when withdrawn in 1962. Initially kept at the Dowty Railway Preservation Society's premises at Ashchurch in Gloucestershire, and then subsequently at the Bulmers Railway Centre in Hereford. When the Bulmers Centre closed in the 1990s, the loco moved to the East Lancashire Railway. Since April 2009 it has been based at the Crewe Heritage Centre. On 3 June 2012, Princess Elizabeth's whistle signalled the start of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant while the locomotive was standing on Battersea Railway Bridge. The Queen was made aware of the locomotive and waved to the crew on the footplate. On 11 July 2012 Princess Elizabeth hauled the Royal Train from Newport to Hereford and again from Worcester to Oxford as part of the Diamond Jubilee Tour. 6201 was withdrawn from service in July 2012 for a piston and valve examination at the Tyseley Locomotive Works and after repairs, she returned to service on 17 November hauling the "Cumbrian Mountaineer" from Carnforth to Carlisle. She was withdrawn for overhaul at the end of December 2012 having completed her longest period of operation in preservation.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

RAF Typhoon

 

It’s been 20 years since the Eurofighter Typhoon’s first flight, and the 2014 Air Show display was performed by Flt Lt Noel Rees of 29(R) Squadron from RAF Coningsby.

 

Eurofighter Typhoon is the world’s most advanced swing-role combat aircraft providing simultaneously deployable Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface capabilities.

 

It is in service with 6 customers across 20 operational units and has been ordered by a seventh. The aircraft has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, high reliability across the globe in all climates. It has been combat proven during operations in Libya.

 

Features of the aircraft Max speed - mach 2.0

 

Thrust - 90 kN from each of the two Eurojet EJ200 engines

 

Max altitude - Above 55,000 ft

 

Length - 15.96 m

 

Span - 10.95 m

 

Eurofighter Typhoon delivers an enviable level of flexibility and efficiency. Only Eurofighter Typhoon possesses both adequate weapon availability (up to 6 bombs whilst also carrying six missiles, a cannon and a targeting pod) and sufficient processing power to simultaneously support missile in-flight updates and bomb in-flight targeting. True swing-role capability.

  

Aircraft diagram

 

The aircraft is designed to be upgraded and extended to provide decades of effective use. Combining a proven, agile airframe built from stealth materials with the latest sensor, control and weapons systems delivers the optimum combat capability – both beyond visual range (BVR) and in close combat.

 

The weapons systems, navigation technologies and control infrastructure are all designed to be upgraded, to continue to enhance the overall performance of the aircraft.

 

The Airframe

 

Plane Aircraft

 

The aircraft is built with advanced composite materials to deliver a low radar profile and strong airframe. Only 15% of the aircraft’s surface is metal, delivering stealth operation and protection from radar-based systems. Pilots were included in design from the earliest stages to develop a deliberately unstable airframe that can still be flown effectively. This delivers both superior manoeuvrability at subsonic speeds and efficient supersonic capability to support the widest range of combat scenarios.

 

Eurofighter Typhoon specifications

 

Max speed Mach 2.0

 

Thrust 90kN from each of the two Eurojet EJ200 turbojets

 

Length 15.96M

 

Max altitude Above 55,000FT

 

Wingspan 10.95M

 

The Materials

Carbon Fibre Composites

 

Aluminium Lithium

Titanium

Glass Reinforced Plastic

Aluminium Casting

  

Aluminium Titanium

Strong, lightweight composite materials were key to the design of Eurofighter Typhoon to give it deliberate instability. Using them means the weight of the airframe is 30% less than for traditional materials, boosting the range and performance as well as reducing the radar signature.

 

General Materials Carbon Fibre Composites 70%

Metals 15%

Glass Reinforced Plastics (GRP) 12%

Other Materials 3%

 

Production

Ultrasound materials

Eurofighter Typhoon foreplane

  

The innovative production techniques developed for Eurofighter Typhoon have created a whole new industry for the most effective use of advanced composite materials. These provide greater tensile strength and more aerodynamic performance with less weight and more reliability than traditional materials.

 

The Eurojet EJ200 engine

Developing leading-edge engine technology has been a key part of the Eurofighter Typhoon project from the start. Four global companies have jointly developed the high performance EJ200 power plants that each provide 90kN of thrust from a small lightweight engine with high strength and high temperature capability.

 

The two-spool design with single-stage turbines drives the three-stage fan and five-stage HP compressor with annular combustion with vaporising burners. This allows Eurofighter Typhoon to cruise at supersonic speeds without the use of reheat for extended periods. The engines deliver 1,000 flying hours without needing unscheduled maintenance through the use of advanced integrated Health Monitoring for class-leading reliability, maintainability and Through Life Cost.

 

Did you know?

After a 1,400 hour flight simulation, the Eurojet engine produces the same operating performance as a brand new engine.

 

Sensor fusion is key to Eurofighter Typhoon's effective infrared sensor

  

Eurofighter Typhoon is at the forefront of sensor fusion technology and the sensor suite continues to be upgraded to deliver enhanced detection and decision-making. Combining the data from key sensors gives the pilot an autonomous ability to rapidly assess the overall tactical situation and respond efficiently to identified threats.

 

Infrared Search and Track (IRST)

 

The PIRATE infrared sensor provides passive Air-to-Air target detection and tracking performance in the IRST mode for covert tracking and Air-to-Surface operations in the Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) mode.

 

Graphic Radar

 

The Captor-M mechanically scanned radar is a best-in-class radar, offering an extensive suite of modes to meet customers’ operational requirements, as well as providing a very competitive field of regard.

 

Captor-E is the future primary sensor on Eurofighter Typhoon and has a full suite of Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface modes. The capacious front fuselage of the Eurofighter Typhoon allows the installation of Captor-E’s optimised array whose Field of Regard is some 50 per cent wider than traditional fixed plate systems.

 

This wide field of regard offers significant benefits in both Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface engagements and given the large power and aperture available provides the pilot with much enhanced angular coverage compared to fixed plate systems.

 

Air-to-Air Features

 

Air-to-air features

•Search Modes - Range While Search (RWS), Velocity Search (VS) and multiple target Track While Scan (TWS)

•Lock-Follow Modes, which are tailored for long range tracking and short range tracking for use in visual identification or gun attacks

•Air Combat Acquisition Modes allowing a choice of boresight, vertical scan HUD field of view or slaved acquisition

  

Air-to-Surface Features

 

Air-to-surface features

•Search Modes - Ground Map, High Resolution Map, Ground Moving Target Identification and Sea Surface Search and Track While Scan

•Track Modes - Fixed Target Track and Moving Target Track

•Air-to-Surface Ranging

 

Throughout the design of the Eurofighter Typhoon, the needs of the single seat pilot have been paramount. This has meant high levels of attention to the control and information interfaces throughout the unique glass cockpit, from the head-up, head-down and head-out systems to all-round vision. High workload situations were analysed to establish information priorities and automate tasks.

 

The advanced cockpit design and layout is based on an extensive series of formal assessments in a rapid prototype facility, undertaken by operational pilots from air forces flying the Eurofighter Typhoon. Using and upgrading the advanced digital technology not only enhances operation and survivability, but also simplifies aircraft maintenance.

 

Other features such as Direct Voice Input (DVI) and Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS) control functions have been implemented on the Eurofighter Typhoon to drastically reduce the pilot’s workload. Voice + Throttle And Stick (VTAS) enables single pilot operations even in the most demanding Air-to-Air, Air-to-Surface and swing-role missions.

 

Head up Display (HUD)

 

The Eurofighter Typhoon’s wide angle head up display (HUD) provides the pilot with stable, accurate, high integrity, low latency eyes-out guidance in a compact package. The fully digital HUD offers high performance that is compatible with night vision and laser protection goggles.

 

Head down display systems (MHDD)

 

Three full colour multi-function head down displays (MHDD) are used for the overall tactical situation, presenting the attack situation, attack formats, map displays and air traffic procedures, in addition to system status and checklists.

 

Helmet mounted symbology system (HMSS)

 

Eurofighter Typhoon utilises a unique Helmet Mounted Symbology System (HMSS), alongside six other pilot display surfaces. HMSS provides flight reference and weapon data aiming through the visor. It is fully compatible with night vision aids using light intensification and Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imagery. It offers pilots a significant competitive advantage.

 

The helmet is composed of an outer helmet, inner helmet, optics blast/display visor, oxygen mask, night vision enhancement camera and head position tracking system.

 

Navigation sensors

 

Hands on throttle and stick (HOTAS) controls

  

The latest sensor technology supports automated and inherently covert operation down to 100ft. Eurofighter Typhoon’s navigation aids include a global positioning system (GPS) for full digital interface with individual satellite tracking channels and improved anti-jam capabilities. The package also includes an inertial navigation system with GPS. In addition, the navigation system features integrated lateral cueing and vertical commands, ensuring safe manoeuvre with 3D situational awareness.

 

Flight Control

 

The flight control system (FCS) is a full authority and quadruplex digital system which allows carefree handling and manoeuvring in all situations. Its intuitive operation is designed to enable the pilot to concentrate on the tactical tasks and to fly the aircraft 'head-up' in combination with the HOTAS (Hand-on-Throttle-and-Stick) concept applied to cockpit design. Automated Emergency recovery features have also been embodied in the system design to ensure maximum safety of operation.

 

Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS)

 

Eurofighter cockpit MIDS

The Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS)

 

The MIDS high capacity digital information distribution system allows secure exchange of real-time data between a wide variety of users, including all the components of a tactical air force and, where appropriate, land and naval forces.

 

Defensive Aids Sub System (DASS)

 

The DASS suite comprises wingtip Electronic Support Measures and Electronic Counter Measures pods (ESM/ECM), missile warners, chaff and flare dispenser and an optional laser warner.

 

Upgrades in computing power will support continuous protection from future threats, to enhance Eurofighter Typhoon’s survivability and greatly increase overall mission effectiveness.

 

Eurofighter Weapons system

Supporting multiple weapon configurations

  

As well as Short Range Air-to-Air Missiles (SRAAM’s) and the 27mm Mauser Canon the Eurofighter Typhoon carries the latest beyond-visual-range (BVR) Air-to-Air missile technology. Soon the METEOR advanced long-range missile will provide the largest No Escape Zone of any Air-to-Air weapon, resulting in a long stand-off range and high probability of interception to ensure air superiority and pilot survivability. Guidance is provided by an active radar seeker with mid-course updates via data link.

 

The Laser Designator Pod (LDP) enables precise location of targets and guidance of Air-to-Surface weapons.

 

Eurofighter Typhoon has also been upgraded with Paveway IV to provide high levels of operational flexibility. The combat proven dual-mode guidance system, coupled with height of burst and penetrating capability, enable the decision of target engagement to be made right up to the point of release.

  

Eurofighter Typhoon will see the constant integration of new, smart weapons in accordance with the demands of current and future customers.

 

Storm Shadow, Taurus, Small Diametre Bombs, Brimstone, Anti-Shipping Missiles are just some of the upgrades planned.

  

Multiple Weapons

Eurofighter Typhoon can remain on task for long periods of time with large, flexible weapons loads including METEOR, AMRAAM, ASRAAM or IRIS-T

  

Multiple Weapons

Eurofighter Typhoon can carry a vast range of Air-to-Surface weapons, including the new Storm Shadow conventionally armed stand-off missile, the Brimstone anti-armour weapon and future Precision Guided Weapons

 

Life Support Systems

 

Fully equipped pilot

A fully equipped pilot before a flight , The Life Support System & Aircrew Equipment Assembly (AEA) is unique to Eurofighter Typhoon and includes full-cover anti-G trousers (FCAGT), a chest counter-pressure garment (CCPG) and a liquid conditioning garment, as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection.

The helmet incorporates the latest Helmet Mounted Symbology System (HMSS) and optical protection. For pilot comfort and optimum performance capability, Eurofighter Typhoon uses computer controlled anti-G and breathing support technology.

  

Ejection Seat

  

The Mk 16A ejection seat on the Eurofighter Typhoon is 30% lighter than equivalent ejection seats. This is achieved by combining the twin ejection gun outer cylinder tubes as both the propulsion system and the seat’s primary structure. The narrow head box also contributes to Eurofighter Typhoon’s excellent rear vision.

The seat integrates an on-board oxygen generation system (OBOGS) and communication systems. The simplified combined harness allows unassisted strap-in, and the passive leg restraint system avoids the need for the pilot to wear restraining garters. A second generation electronic sequencer is also incorporated. Reliability and maintainability are key elements of the design, with full access to in-cockpit components.

  

Cockpit Access

  

Eurofighter pilot entering cockpit

A pilot entering the Eurofighter Typhoon cockpit Normal access to the cockpit is through either a telescopic integral ladder or an external version. The integral ladder is stowed in the port side of the fuselage below the cockpit.

 

Fuel system - Forward transfer tank

 

Throughout the aircraft flexible couplings connect the fuel pipework built into the three main fuselage sections and wings. These provide a simple method to connect the fuel tanks, which all have fuel-flow proportioners to maintain the centre of gravity alongside relief valves to maintain air and fuel pressures. The intelligent computer-controlled fuel system ensures long-range, flexibility and safety.

Hill Aerospace Museum

 

History of the OV-10A "Bronco"

The OV-10A is a turboprop, light attack aircraft developed under a U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps tri-service program to create a versatile counter- insurgency airplane. After these aircraft first took flight in 1967, some of their missions included observation, forward air control, armed reconnaissance, interdiction missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and limited ground attack during the Vietnam War.

 

The OV-10A "Bronco" at Hill Air Force Base

The first OV-10 arrived at Hill Air Force Base in 1988 for structural refurbishment, rewiring, and installation of a secure voice radio. Personnel at Hill performed work on 48 OV-10s within five years. After the main workload for OV-10s at Hill ended in 1990, the Mature and Proven Aircraft Division on base continued to manage this airframe. The OV-10A on display was manufactured in 1968 and was assigned to the Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam, the following year, in 1991, after several base transfers, the aircraft was sent to and modified by the Ogden Air Logistics Center to support a United States State Department drug-interdiction project for the Colombian Air Force. In 2006, the aircraft was put on display here at the Hill Aerospace Museum.

 

Interesting Fact

The aircraft is painted to closely resemble its appearance while serving with the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron in Thailand.

 

Specifications

S/N 67-14675

Manufacturer: North American Aviation

Crew: One

Engines: Two Garrett-AiResearch T76-G turboprops: 715 horsepower each

Wingspan: 40 ft

Length: 41 ft 7 in

Height: 15 ft 1 in

Weight: 7,190 pounds (empty): 14,444 pounds (maximum)

Speed: 281 mph (maximum); 223 mph (cruising)

Range: 1,240 miles Ceiling: 26,000 ft

Armaments Centerline station for 20 mm gun pod, or stores; four 7.62 mm M60 machine guns in sponsons; four sponson stations for rockets, mini guns or stores; two wing stations for rockets or missiles

Stevan DOHANOS • American

* 18 May 1907 in Lorain, Ohio.

✝︎ 4 July 1994 in Westport, Connecticut.

 

Lighthouse Keeper

The Saturday Evening Post — September 22, 1945.

 

The Saturday Evening Post note ↓

The lighthouse on the cover is the West Quoddy Light, Lubec Maine, but the lighthouse keeper is pruning the grass at Sankaty Light, Nantucket, a neat trick that can happen only in the world of art. What happened was that Artist Stevan Dohanos made his preliminary sketches of the West Quoddy Light last summer. This year, to freshen his memory on lighthouse detail, he journeyed up to the Sankaty Light. It turned out the Sankaty Light had "a very strong personality of its own," and wasn't much good as a source of information on the situation in West Quoddy.

 

However, they were cutting the grass at Sankaty Light, and Dohanos liked that touch of domesticity or agriculture or whatever it is, so he included it.

 

About Dohanos ↓

Stevan Dohanos grew up as a great admirer of Norman Rockwell, going so far as to copy his Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations in crayon that he sold to friends, relatives, and co-workers. Little did Stevan know, he would develop a close personal friendship with Rockwell as his own art graced the Post’s cover 123 times over the course of his lifetime.

 

Dohanos was the third of nine children born to Hungarian immigrants Elizabeth and Andras Dohanos. His upbringing in a midwestern steel town would later influence the cultivation of his artistic style showing the normalcy and realism of American life. While inspired by Rockwell’s talent, Dohanos became an “American Realist” who depicted everyday life as it was. He was most heavily influenced by the work of Edward Hopper, and chose not to idealize American life the way Rockwell did.

 

Dohanos realized his love of art fairly early in life, selling calendars and illustration copies for $1.00 to $3.00 apiece while he worked in a grocery store and later at an office job. He began his formal education by taking correspondence classes through the International Correspondence School. Soon after, the artist took night classes at the Cleveland School of Art where he received a scholarship to complete his formal art studies.

 

During and after art school, the young Dohanos worked in a Cleveland advertising firm, then travelled around the country painting wall murals before heading to New York City to work as a commercial artist. He eventually moved to the artist colony of Westport, Connecticut where he found inspiration in the everyday lives of his neighbors.

 

While working in the city, Dohanos picked up advertising work from clients such as Four Roses Whiskey, Maxwell House Coffee, Pan Am Airlines, Cannon Towels, Olin Industries, and John Hancock Insurance. His work was featured in Esquire, Medical Times, McCall’s, and Colliers prior to his first successful submission to The Saturday Evening Post. In September of 1938, he married his longtime sweetheart, Margit Kovacs, and had two children, Peter and Paul.

 

His first Post cover, the March 7, 1942 issue, was a well-received wartime image of air raid searchlights from an artillery battery. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the artist’s workload for The Post increased, garnering a contract for roughly a dozen covers a year.

 

During World War II, Dohanos aided the war effort by painting recruitment posters and wall murals for federal buildings. He also designed stamps for the federal government, starting during the Roosevelt administration, and staying in the profession the rest of his life.

 

As magazine covers turned toward photography and away from illustration, Dohanos quickly changed careers. He did film art for such classics as White Christmas and was the chairman of the National Stamp Advisory Committee where he oversaw the art design for over 300 stamps. He held the position throughout the administrations of 7 presidents and 9 Postmaster Generals. His depictions include presidential portraits, the now collectible NATO commemorative stamps from 1959, and the 1967 John F. Kennedy commemorative stamp.

 

Stevan Dohanos found beauty in everyday life, choosing to focus on “the location and trappings of the American dream, not those who populated it.” Elevated to lofty status as a famous Saturday Evening Post illustrator, Dohanos’s works now garner the walls, halls, and galleries of The Cleveland Museum, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Dartmouth College, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and various federal post offices across the United States. He died July 4th, 1994 at the age of 87.

Coachwork by Pininfarina

Chassis n° 1625GT

 

Bonhams : the Zoute Sale

Estimated : € 600.000 - 800.000

Sold for € 989.000

 

Zoute Grand Prix 2018

Knokke - Zoute

België - Belgium

October 2018

 

By the early 1960s, road car production had ceased to be a sideline for Ferrari and was seen as vitally important to the company's future stability. Thus the 250, Ferrari's first volume-produced model, can be seen as critically important, though production of the first of the line - the 250 Europa, built from 1953 to '54 - amounted to fewer than 20. Before the advent of the Europa, Ferrari had built road-going coupés and convertibles in small numbers, usually to special customer order using a sports-racing chassis as the basis. Ghia and Vignale of Turin and Touring of Milan were responsible for bodying many of these but there was no attempt at standardisation for series production and no two cars were alike.

 

The introduction of the 250 Europa heralded a significant change in Ferrari's preferred coachbuilder; whereas previously Vignale had been the most popular carrozzeria among Maranello's customers, from now on Pinin Farina (later 'Pininfarina') would be Ferrari's number one choice, bodying no fewer than 48 out of the 53 Europa/Europa GTs built. Pinin Farina's experiments eventually crystallised in a new Ferrari 250 GT road car that was first displayed publicly at the Geneva Salon in March 1956. However, the Torinese carrozzeria was not yet in a position to cope with the increased workload, resulting in production being entrusted to Carrozzeria Boano after Pinin Farina had completed a handful of prototypes.

 

True series production began with the arrival of Pininfarina's 'notchback' Coupé on the 250 GT chassis, some 353 of which were built between 1958 and 1960 within the sequence '0841' to '2081'. However, the relatively small scale of production meant that cars could still be ordered with subtle variations according to customer's choice, as well as enabling a handful of show cars and 'specials' to be constructed on the 250 GT chassis.

 

A number of important developments occurred during 250 GT production: the original 128C 3.0-litre engine being superseded by the twin-distributor 128D, which in turn was supplanted in 1960 by the outside-plug 128F engine which did away with its predecessor's Siamesed inlets in favour of six separate ports. On the chassis side, four-wheel disc brakes arrived late in 1959 and a four-speeds-plus-overdrive gearbox the following year, the former at last providing the 250 GT with stopping power to match its speed. More refined and practical than any previous road-going Ferrari, yet retaining the sporting heritage of its predecessors, the 250 GT is a landmark model of immense historical significance.

 

The example offered here, chassis number 1625', left the factory in January 1960 destined for California, USA but was actually delivered to Jacques Swaters' Garage Francorchamps in Belgium. It is a rare 2nd Series example, the most sought after series in the 250 GT Pininfarina coupé range. first owner was Mr Theo de Montpellier, who purchased the car on 4th February 1960, subsequently passing to Mr Louis Galand. The third owner is not known.

 

According to a registration document on file, fourth owner Mr Jean-Marie Cap acquired the Ferrari on 24th December 1976. From 15th May 1978, the car was owned by Ferrari collector Mr Ennio Gianarolli, who kept it on display as part of his collection but did not register it. The current owner purchased '1625' on 7th February 2005.

 

In March 2005, the Ferrari was despatched to Carrozzeria Nova Rinascente in Vigonza, Italy to be restored by the internationally renowned Dino Cognolato and his team of specialist craftsmen. The Ferrari received an exemplary restoration of the chassis, body, and all brightwork including the bumpers, front grille, window surrounds, door plates, etc, and the multiple Ferrari and Pininfarina badges.

 

The mechanical side of the rebuild was entrusted to Corrado Patella's Omega Officina, another recognised specialist in the restoration of Ferrari of road and competition cars. Corrado Patella carried out a full mechanical restoration, which included the engine, carburettors, gearbox, overdrive, axle, suspension, brakes, radiator, etc. The electrical system was overhauled by Elettrauto Franco, which also restored and the refurbished all the dashboard instruments. Luppi of Modena re-trimmed the interior, while the carpets and headlining were renewed by Dino Cognolato. Equipped with new 16" Borrani wire wheels, the fully restored Ferrari left Cognolato's workshop in March 2009, since when it has won the Prix d'Élégance at the Zoute Concours (in 2014). Accompanying documentation consists of the all-important Ferrari Classiche 'Red Book', restoration invoices, and Belgian Carte Grise, and the car also comes with its tool kit and jack.

 

Lastly, the owner has kindly provided us with his driving impressions: 'Once the driver is comfortably installed behind the Nardi steering wheel, he or she is afforded an unobstructed view of the dashboard in a perfect combination of ergonomics and aesthetics. Once started, the engine emits an evocative yet subdued growl, and is supremely flexible on the road. The clutch is not heavy and the gearbox is a delight, its synchromesh beyond reproach, while the overdrive facilitates fast cruising without having to overtax the engine. Handling is excellent, and the four-wheel disc brakes mean that the limits of the car's performance can be explored safely.'

These many attributes and the presence of a generously sized luggage compartment simply invite one to travel; this Ferrari 250 is not designated a Gran Turismo without good reason. Possessing a rare elegance, this beautiful Pininfarina-style Ferrari will appeal to the connoisseur of aesthetics every bit as much as to the enthusiast driver.

Porsche 917-001

Chassis 001, assembled in early March 1969, was the first of the twenty-five 917s completed for homologation. This chassis was used for a multitude of events, though never raced. Its workload consisted of testing at the Nürburgring and display duty in places such as the Geneva Motor Show in 1969 or Frankfurt International Auto Show in 1970.

By October 1970, 917-001 was part of the Press Department of Porsche and painted in the now famous Salzburg paint scheme of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans winner.

 

Festival Automobile International 2017, Paris

Better him than me!

www.freemoviescinema.com/science-fiction/video/latest/con... Full Feature

See more photos in set.

 

Starring Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti. Directed by Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal gave us the sci-fi landmark Destination Moon in 1950. He then gave us the timeless classic War of the Worlds in '53. This, his third epic, was a grand effort, but fell shy of his earlier triumphs. On paper, it should have been another mega-classic. The team members from the earlier hits were reassembled. Pal as producer, Haskin directing, Lydon on screenplay, O'Hanlon writing. Conquest was also based on a popular book. Yet, despite all this pedigree, something fell short. Conquest would not go on to be remembered as one of the 50s mega-classics. Some of this obscurity may be due to Conquest being in the "serious" science fiction sub-genre, like Destination Moon and Riders to the Stars which tried to depict a plausible space-traveling future. Audiences were becoming much more entranced with saucers and weird aliens.

 

In some ways,Conquest is a remake of the basic story line from Destination Moon -- a crew are the first to land on a celestial body. They struggle to survive and yet courageously return. This time, instead of the moon, it's Mars. As a remake goes, however, it's worthy. The Technicolor is rich and the sets well done. This is an A-level production which at its release was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its day. All the melodrama, however, starts to get in the way of the techno-gee-whiz.

Synopsis

Based aboard a rotating wheel space station, workmen prepare a big flying wing of a rocket ship. A group of potential crewmen train for what they think will be a moon landing mission. As the work nears completion, they find out that the real mission will be a landing on Mars instead. While aboard "The Wheel", we're introduced to the phenomenon of "space sickness" -- a mental breakdown due to workload and confinement for long periods. One of the crew candidates is scrubbed because of one such breakdown. Nonetheless, the multinational crew are chosen and embark for the long journey to Mars. After departure, it's found that General Merritt's old friend, Sergeant Mahoney, stowed away. On the way to Mars, a communications antenna is damaged and must be fixed via spacewalking crewmen. Just as the repairs are completed, the customary meteor arrives, threatening to hit the ship. General Merritt manages to fly the ship out of the way, but one of the crewmen on EVA is hit with micrometeoroids (like bullets) and killed. The General is also starting to show odd behavior, doubting whether their mission is proper or is an affront to God. Their evasive action puts them behind schedule, but they arrive at Mars. While attempting to land on Mars, the General has another bout of delusion and tries to abort the landing. His son, Captain Merritt, manages to take control and brings in the flying-wing lander to a rough but successful landing. The others go out to explore, but the General, now fully delusional, is venting rocket fuel in an attempt to blow up the ship. His son discovers this and the two struggle. The General's pistol discharges, killing him. Mahoney comes on the scene just then and accuses Captain Merritt of murdering the General. The rest explore a bit more, but pronounce Mars a dead planet. Despite this, Imoto discovers that his earth flower seed sprouted in martian soil. Earthquakes cause the escape rocket to shift off of perpendicular. They get it righted and blast off. On the way home, Mahoney and Captain Merritt make up and declare that the dead General was a hero, the man who conquered space. The End.

The color, the sets, models and background paintings are very visually rich. The whole image is a great snapshot of the future as people in the mid-50s imagined it would be. More tidbits in the Notes section below.

There is actually a subtle anti-war tone to the movie. No overt talk of nuclear dangers or menacing enemies. It is notable, however, that among the conspicuously international crew candidates, there is no Russian. Americans would "conquer" space with a few other nationals along for the ride, but NO Russians. There is also a poorly explained urgency to the mission. What's the hurry? Back in the Cold War, it was pretty common that WE had to get something before THEY did.

In 1949, Willy Ley wrote the book "The Conquest of Space," which speculated about how mankind might travel to other planets. This book was illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. This book would become the inspiration for the movie.

 

From 1952 to 1954, Collier's magazine ran a series of stories about mankind conquering space. These were repeats by Ley and Bonestell of their 1949 book, but this time Collier's added material from "rocket scientist" Werner von Braun. Bonestell's new illustrations were clearly the prototype for the look of Conquest. People felt that mankind was on the verge of taking to the stars. The Collier's series expressed that giddy optimism.

The screenplay for Conquest added weak human interest sub-plots which almost negate the gee-whiz optimism that the visuals convey. The screenwriters were all experienced in their craft, so it's puzzling why such amateurish characterizations are so prominent. The comic relief moments are almost cartoonish. The whole leader-gone-mad sub-plot seems out of place.

A possible "message" to Conquest is that man is a fragile creature who may not be ready for the rigors of space travel. Certainly, people wondered about this, and other movies touched on the theme too, such as Riders to the Stars ('54). Our not being mentally ready yet was cited by the aliens in It Came From Outer Space ('53). General Merritt's dementia was foreshadowed in the breakdown of Roy early in the movie.

One thing that strikes the viewer is how much life aboard the space station is presumed to duplicate life aboard a navy ship. It's not overtly stated that the military should (or will) be the agency which "conquers" space, but from the ranks and uniforms and the navy-life scenes, that message comes through. Space ships will be like earthly ships.

On the surface, it seems like Conquest is blasting Christians as dangerous religious fanatics. This notion, that anyone who believes in God simply MUST be wacko, would be much more popular in later decades, but it was uncommon in the 50s. For that reason, the General's dementia deserves a closer look.

Actually, General Merritt was not the stereotypic religious fanatic. His son comments that he had never seen him carrying around and reading the Bible before. Instead of headaches or paralysis, the General's "space sickness" took a paranoid turn. He had rational misgivings about the Mars mission from the start, pre-dementia. His repressed misgivings are expressed in Bible verses dealing with sinners being punished by God. He once quotes from Psalm 38, then later from Psalm 62.

Throughout all this, God is not mocked. Indeed, only the "religious" man had the courage to go outside and give the dead Fodor a proper burial. The other non-relgious crewmen were at a loss for what to do.

The notion of impudent mankind trying to meddle in God's domain, is treated as a credible issue. In this, the pattern of the Tower of Babel is drawn. Prideful mankind thinks they can build their way into God's realm. God foils that plan. General Merritt's dementia seems motivated by a fear that this divine retribution could be coming again.

The writers of Conquest imagine a multinationalism in space. Most notable are two former enemy nations: Imoto is from Japan and Fodor is a German-accented Austrian, (as a stand-in for Germany). Imoto gets to make a little speech about why Japan went to war (lack of resources). Fodor gets to be seen as the cherished son of a classic "mama". By 1955, it was starting to become okay to look beyond World War 2.

At one point, the crew of The Wheel are watching a movie with many scantily clad dancing girls (much like sailors aboard a ship). The movie is a lavish musical number with many gold bikini clad pseudo-harem girls dancing while Rosemary Clooney sings about love "...in the desert sand." This clip is total non-sequetor to the high-tech space environment. What's interesting, is that it's NOT stock footage recycled. Clooney had not done any such movie. This dance number must have been staged and shot just for this scene in Conquest. Random act of musical. Gotta love 'em.

 

Bottom line? Conquest is an almost-epic. It's definitely an A-grade sci-fi movie, so it's well worth watching. The human story part gets in the way sometimes, but the visuals more than make up for it.

 

Some Background:

The Space Defense Robot-04-Mk. XIV Destroid Nimrod was an anti-air/heavy artillery mecha, and intended as a replacement for the SDR-04-Mk. XII Phalanx, a Destroid specifically designed for space operations to defend the SDF-1 Macross, along with its sister unit, the cannon-armed ADR-04-Mk. X Destroid Defender.

 

The Phalanx had been developed in a hurry under the pressure of the raging war against the Zentraedi and suffered, as a consequence, from several disadvantages. For instance, its combat operation capability decreased substantially once the missile ordnance (a total of forty-four 430mm caliber missiles, half of them ready to fire and the rest held in reserve in internal magazines) had been exhausted. To counter this, a few models were modified in the field, e.g. with additional light Gatling guns mounted within the head unit, as well as other variations, but most Phalanx’ remained basically bipedal heavy missile launchers. A sub-variant with improved sensors and missile guidance systems, as well as the ability to deploy the new reflex missiles, the Phalanx Mk. XIII, was also built, but only in small numbers, and it could not overcome the flaws of the original design.

 

The Nimrod was the attempt to mend these shortcomings after initial combat experience with the type. The so-called SDR-04-Mk. XIV utilized the proven MBR-04 ambulatory system and shared a common hip and leg structure with a wide range of other Destroids. Like the Phalanx, the Nimrod’s newly designed upper body was a simple core structure that neglected any silliness for a weapon composition consisting of missiles, radar, and propulsion system, all mounted on the main rotating body which could be detached from the lower torso for maintenance of in case of emergency.

The Nimrod filled the same tactical niche as the Phalanx but was a more sophisticated design with improved capabilities and a – though limited – secondary close-range combat capability. The radar and sensor suites for target acquisition as well as missile guidance were improved, so that the Nimrod became even suited for air space surveillance and as a guidance/coordination unit for other Destroids. Due to this additional workload, the Nimrod’s crew was expanded by a WSO to two in a tandem cockpit.

 

The armament remained tailored to medium and long range, but there were some improvements. On the Nimrod, the Phalanx’ bulbous drum-shaped missile magazines gave way to more streamlined 540 mm caliber reflex missile containers, which were carried in staggered clusters of four twin-pods on each shoulder, holding a total of 48 missiles with sixteen of them ready to fire and the rest in reserve. This modification reduced weight and frontal area, and in a case of emergency the missile containers could be jettisoned.

In order to improve the Nimrod’s tactical value after its missiles had been deployed, it was furthermore provided with a secondary close-range combat capability in the form of a pair of particle beam guns. These were integrated into the arms, protected by the missile containers, and these reliable weapons could be effectively used against both air as well as ground targets. Thermal smoke dischargers completed the Nimrod’s defensive measures.

 

Like the Phalanx and other Destroids, the Nimrod was capable of limited space operations due to its vernier thrusters all over the hull. This allowed for units that were stationed on the deck of the SDF-1 to propel themselves back to the battle fortress if they were knocked off.

 

The Nimrod was, like the Phalanx, first deployed on the SDF-1 and was used to augment the ship's own weapon system to protect the vessel from Zentraedi attacks, even though the type came relatively late and was only used in the final phase of the war and only in limited numbers. After the conflict, production was throttled down (only a total of fifty SDR-04-Mk. XIVs were eventually built), and the surviving Nimrods from the SDF-1 were stationed at airbases in New Macross City and in nearby cities, such as Monument City.

  

Specifications:

Designation: SDR-04-Mk XIV

Mecha Class: Destroid

Crew: 2 (Pilot, WSO)

Weight: 21.8 tons (dry)

45.5 tons (loaded)

Height: 12.36 m (hull only, incl. radome)

13,50 m (with raised arms)

Breadth: 9,32 m

Depth: 5.0m

Max. walking speed: 72 kph loaded

 

Armament:

2x weapon clusters in shoulder locations, each with:

- Eight launch tubes for 540mm caliber mid-/long-range missiles (typically with anti-air capacity, artillery

rockets as alternative), with eight missiles ready and another sixteen as reserve (for a total of 48)

- One Mauler PBG-06 liquid-cooled electrically-charged twin particle beam gun

- Three thermal smoke dischargers

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a fictional Macross Destroid, with a highly modified Imai Phalanx kit at its core. It depicts a potential successor for the missile-only-armed Phalanx, but it has been totally made up. Inspiration came when I recently procured a bunch of Kotobukiya’s MSG sets for mecha conversions – one of these sets included the quadruple missile launchers that now make up the Nimrod’s new “arms”. I was torn between using a Defender or a Phalanx as conversion basis, but due to the weapon pods’ bulkiness I went for the more massive Phalanx.

 

Beyond the MSG parts and the replacement of the Phalanx “missile drums”, there was initially no real plan for the conversion – things evolved gradually, depending on the donor parts at hand. However, several fundamental changes were made. The most important improvement measure that works for all Destroid kits with the “04” chassis is the integration of a completely now hip joint arrangement. OOB, the model's posture is pretty stiff, with the legs and feet facing straight forward. The model is just supposed to stand upright, and with the model’s OOB joint options it is really hard to create a vivid poise. Furthermore, the bolts that hold the legs are prone to break off, even more so because the Imai kit is from the 1st generation of mecha kits, without vinyl caps and just relying on a very tight joint fit for hold.

 

My proven solution: the implantation of a new hip “bone” made from plastic-coated steel wire, which is stiff in itself but can be bent in two dimensions. The thighs had to be modified accordingly, since the wire is much thinner than the original bolts. Inside of the pelvis, the W-shaped wire was attached with the help of sprue material and styrene profiles, a thorough fixation is necessary because a lot of load has to be held in place in a very small space.

 

In order to attach the legs to the wire, there’s a convenient trick: the receptor holes in the thighs were simply filled with small vinyl rings, standard material from other mecha kits (e.g. from Arii’s 1:100 VF-1 Battroids or the Gunze Sangyo/Aoshima Dorvack PAs), the rings’ outer AND inner diameter fit perfectly into the new arrangement. With this trick, a much more dynamic and "natural" leg position could be achieved, also thanks to the large feet and their joints of the “04” Destroid chassis. This tuning measure improves the model considerably. The legs were otherwise taken OOB, just some small styrene bits were added to the lower legs’ front sides (improving another small detail flaw of the model), and some openings on the lower legs’ rear side were filled with putty and styrene sheet. Furthermore, the open insides of the “heels” were filled with putty, too.

 

In order to integrate the new missile bins, suitable adapters for the shoulder had to be found. Being somewhat lazy and trying to use as many parts from the Phalanx kit as possible, I decided to integrate a styrene tube all through the upper body, so that I got better attachment points. This tube was extended so far that I could re-use the Phalanx’ blast exhausts from the original missile bins as shoulder joint covers. This looks very natural and these re-dedicated parts fit well over the implanted central styrene tube channel as well as into the channel that runs along the MSG missile containers’ inner side. In order to attach the new arms/containers, a smaller diameter styrene tube was glued into these channels, so that the new pods could be moved vertically.

 

As a weapon improvement over the Phalanx, a pair of particle beam guns was added to the new missile containers – they come originally from a Dorvack PA-36K “Berlon” kit, but they were tailored considerably in order to fit into their new position. They also help to hide the new shoulder joint, which was covered from above with parts from the Phalanx kit (the boxed that are normally attached to the upper legs) and the space between them with paper tissue, drenched with white glue. The result is a good visual transition.

 

The central hull was changed in order to move the look away from the Phalanx base. The rear side uses OOB parts, but these were modified and attached to the hull in a different way, so that the back is not as deep as on the Phalanx. The front received a vertical pair of searchlights (formerly return rollers from a 1:35 tank…), set into the breast plate. The cockpit bulge between the shoulders as well as the head unit are completely new. The cockpit cover is a leftover hull piece from a Kotobukiya helicopter drone, and it was moved forward, so that a crew of two is more plausible. The head unit on the elongated spine behind and above it consists primarily of a donor from a wrecked VT-61 “Tulcas” mecha (Dorvack), plus a small dish antenna for a tracking radar on the right (left over from a Dorvack PA-36K “Berlon” kit) and a round radome for target acquisition – scratched from main wheels of a Matchbox PB2Y and set upon a mount made from styrene profiles. Looks strange, esp. with that flat, square head unit underneath, but I wanted a unique and different look that sets the Nimrod apart from other canonical Destroid designs. And this certainly worked.

 

A final word concerning the Phalanx kit itself: like all other Destroids models, this is basically a simple affair and the model goes together well – but expect some PSR on every seam, and there are some improvements possible that IMHO raise the model’s quality. The lack of vinyl caps makes later movement a tricky affair, though, and it is interesting to see that while the “04” chassis Destroids (Phalanx, Tomahawk and Defender) share the same lower body, all three kits are different! As a positive trait concerning the finish, the Phalanx is also the only kit of this trio that comes with decals for the typical white trim on the lower legs of these Destroids.

  

Painting and markings:

Once more I wanted to stay true to the original look of a typical Macross Destroid from the “04” series. These tend to carry a uniform livery in murky/dull tones of green, brown and ochre: unpretentious "mud movers". Anything else is rare (I am aware of dark blue Phalanx’ on board of the SDF-1), and complex camouflage patterns are AFAIK not seen (probably a tribute to the TV series’ cel production). In consequence, I gave the Nimrod an overall livery in a rather unidentifiable brownish tone, namely RAL 7008 (Khakigrau), a tone that was carried by German WWII Afrikakorps tanks and very similar to the tone IDF vehicles like the Merkava typically carry nowadays. Since I only had this tone in a rattle can available, the model and its components were painted accordingly, with an additional hushed spray over the upper surfaces with a slightly lighter tone as a shading measure. After this basic painting, the parts received a washing with thinned black ink.

 

Decals mostly come from the OOB sheet, plus some extra stencils, including the "nose art" painted on the left leg (from a P-38); many Destroids and also Armored Valkyries seem to bear such markings. Gives the mecha a personal touch, though.

 

Finally, before everything was assembled, the kit received a dry-brushing treatment with light grey and an overall coat with matt acrylic varnish. As a final step, mineral pigments were dusted over the model, esp. around the feet and the lower areas of the mecha.

  

A rather straightforward conversion project that gradually evolved – but with a postive outcome, after some twists and turns. The fictional Destroid Nimrod turned out more believable than expected, thanks to the good donor parts that went into it, and the simple livery also adds to the design’s “realism” within the Macross universe. Even though the thing still looks odd – but not worse than the other canonical Destroids from the original TV series!

Laura, 24 y/o, was among five finalists at the Hanami Festival Costumes Competition in Roihuvuori, Finland.

 

"I come from a rather low income family, which ended up being just me, my sister and our mother. She raised us as a single mother.

I never felt like we were struggling as a kid, but when more and more responsibilities came upon myself, I knew that I had to put in some effort in order to make it in the adult world.

 

"During my journey to adulthood, I've studied art, Japanese language, pop culture and singing. All of these are my passion, but as I'm still new to the field. I have to keep putting the bread on the table by other means. I've worked as a cashier and currently I'm working during night time as the person who delivers your newspaper to your door.

 

"Whenever my workload becomes bigger, thus more stressful, I try to relax with the help of my hobbies--cosplay, music, drawing and video games.

 

"My message to everyone: A day has way too few hours in it. Use your time well.

 

"Right now I'm struggling with my weight and body image, but more importantly I'm worried. Will the things I'm passionate about carry me anywhere in my life?

 

"To my younger self I have only one piece of advice: choose your friends well."

   

Carnet de campagne d’un candidat para-commando.

 

Nous sommes dans notre huitième semaine de formation !

Pas mal de mes collègues ont abandonné la formation suite à diverses blessures.

Au programme cette semaine : progression tactique et réaction contact ainsi qu’un parcours d’orientation de nuit que nous appelons « Dropping ».

Départ au point de drop (largage) à 20 h et arrivée au bivouac le lendemain à 6 h, je dormirai vite et fort si j’ai de la chance !

Un parcours très technique en orientation et très physique de par son dénivelé dans la région d’Arlon.

Pour ce dropping, nous emportons tout notre matériel comme en opération, ce qui correspond à 30 kilos de charge opérationnelle sur l’homme.

Vers 03 heures du matin, sous la pluie battante, le sac est de plus en plus lourd, je le remonte en permanence sur mes épaules et je pense à mes amis et proches qui, à cette heure dorment au chaud, je me pose plusieurs questions….mais qu’est ce que je fous là ?

Mais rien non je ne plierai pas, je continue à avancer, je veux être Para-Commando !

La formation Para-Commando c’est aussi une formation du caractère où la rusticité, l’adversité, la rigueur, le dépassement de soi en sont les clés.

 

Translation

 

Notebook of campaign of a candidate para - commando.

 

We are in our eighth week of training!

Many of my colleagues have abandoned the training following various injuries.

In the program this week: Progression and tactical response contact and a course orientation night that we call ' dropping '.

Departure to the point of drop ( dropping ) at 20 a.m. and arrived in bivouac on the next day at 6 h, i'll sleep hard and fast if i am lucky!

A journey very technical in orientation and very physics of by his grade separated in the region of arlon.

For this dropping, we have all our equipment as in operation, which corresponds to 30 Kilos of operational workload on the man.

Around 03 hours of the morning, in the rain warrior, the bag is increasingly Heavy, i the dates back permanently on my shoulders and i think of my friends and relatives who, At this hour sleep warm, i ask myself several issues.... But that is what i am doing here?

But nothing i will not bend over, i continue to move forward, i want to be para commando!

The training para commando it is also a character education where the rusticité, adversity , rigour, the exceedance oneself in are the keys.

A good friend of mine is a devoted Apple fan since the brand was born. Among others he collects the Tshirts for 20+ years. Since long we have planned to do a photosession with all of them, front and back, for documentation. Some results will come up here. This is the heap after the shooting. It was quite a workload. :-)

THE HISTORY OF TITANIC( OCEAN LINER)

 

The Royal Mail Ship TITANIC was the last grand dream of the Gilded Age. It was designed to be the greatest achievement of an era of prosperity, confidence and propriety. Although no one knew it, the world was about to change drastically. Radio had been invented in 1901. The Wright Brothers' first successful flight was in 1903. The old presumptions about class, morals, and gender-roles were about to be shattered. If the concept of Titanic was the climax of the age, then perhaps its sinking was the curtain that marked the end of the old drama, and the start of a new one.

 

The intensely competitive transatlantic steamship business had seen recent major advances in ship design, size and speed. White Star Line, one of the leaders, determined to focus on size and elegance rather than pure speed. In 1907, White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and Lord James Pirrie, a partner in Harland & Wolff (White Star Line's ship-builder since its founding in 1869) conceived of three magnificent steam ships which would set a new standard for comfort, elegance, and safety. The first two were to be named Olympic and Titanic, the latter name chosen by Ismay to convey a sense of overwhelming size and strength.

It took a year to design the two ships. Construction of Olympic started in December, 1908, followed by Titanic in March 1909. The Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff had to be re-designed to accommodate the immense projects while White Star's pier in New York had to be lengthened to enable the ships to dock. During the two years it took to complete Titanic's hull, the press was primed with publicity about the ship's magnificence, making Titanic virtually a legend before her launch. The "launch" of the completed steel in May, 1911, was a heavily publicized spectacle. Tickets were sold to benefit a local children's hospital.

 

She was then taken for "fitting out" which involved the construction of the ship's many facilities and systems, her elaborate woodwork and fine decor. As the date of her maiden voyage approached, the completed Olympic suffered a collision and required extensive repairs, increasing the workload at Harland & Wolff, which was already struggling to complete Titanic on schedule. Titanic's maiden voyage was delayed from March 20 to April 10.

 

Titanic was 883 feet long (1/6 of a mile), 92 feet wide and weighed 46,328 tons. She was 104 feet tall from keel to bridge, almost 35 feet of which were below the waterline... even so, she stood taller above the water than most urban buildings of the time. There were three real smoke-stacks; a fourth, dummy stack was added largely to increase the impression of her gargantuan size and power and to vent smoke from her numerous kitchens and galleys. She was the largest movable object ever made by man. The ship's immense size and complexity is illustrated by an incident recalled by Second Officer Lightoller. There was a gangway door on the starboard side aft "large enough to drive a horse and cart through." Yet three officers who joined the ship during her preparations spent a whole day simply trying to find their way to it.

 

Moreover, she was designed to be a marvel of modern safety technology. She had a double-hull of 1-inch thick steel plates and a (heavily publicized) system of 16 water-tight compartments, sealed by massive doors which could be instantly triggered by a single electric switch on the bridge, or even automatically by electric water-sensors. The press began to call her "unsinkable."

 

Her accommodations were the most modern and luxurious on any ocean, and included electric light and heat in every room, electric elevators, a swimming pool, a squash court (considered terribly modern), a Turkish Bath, a gymnasium with a mechanical horse and mechanical camel to keep riders fit, and staterooms and first class facilities to rival the best hotels on the Continent. First class passengers would glide down a six-story, glass-domed grand staircase to enjoy haute cuisine in the sumptuous first class dining saloon that filled the width of the ship on D Deck. For those who desired a more intimate atmosphere, Titanic also offered a stately à la carte restaurant, the chic Palm Court and Verandah restaurant, and the festive Cafe Parisien. She offered two musical ensembles (rather than the standard one) of the best musicians on the Atlantic, many of them lured from rival liners. There were two libraries, first- and second-class. Even the third class (steerage) cabins were more luxurious than the first class cabins on some lesser steamships, and boasted amenities (like indoor toilet facilities) that some of Titanic's emigrant passengers had not enjoyed in their own homes.

 

The original design called for 32 lifeboats. However, White Star management felt that the boat-deck would look cluttered, and reduced the number to 20, for a total life-boat capacity of 1178. This actually exceeded the regulations of the time, even though Titanic was capable of carrying over 3500 people (passengers and crew).

 

The maiden voyage lured the "very best people:" British nobility, American industrialists, the very cream of New York and Philadelphia society. It also attracted many poor emigrants, hoping to start a new life in America or Canada.

 

The journey began at Southampton on Wednesday April 10, 1912 at Noon. By sundown, Titanic had stopped in Cherbourg, France to pick up additional passengers. That evening she sailed for Queenstown, Ireland, and at 1:30 PM on Thursday, April 11, she headed out into the Atlantic.

 

The seasoned transatlantic passengers were deeply impressed by the new ship. She was so massive that they barely felt the movement of the sea at all. Her huge, powerful engines produced almost none of the annoying vibration common on other steamers, and their noise was barely perceptible. And she achieved this extraordinary level of comfort while traveling at 22 knots, not the fastest boat on the route, but certainly one of the top five.

 

Weather was pleasant and clear, and the water temperature was about 55 degrees. The winter of 1912 had been unusually mild, and unprecedented amounts of ice had broken loose from the arctic regions. Titanic was equipped with Marconi's new wireless telegraph system and her two Marconi operators kept the wireless room running 24 hours a day. On Sunday, April 14, the fifth day at sea, Titanic received five different ice-warnings, but the captain was not overly concerned. The ship steamed ahead at 22 knots, and the line's Managing Director J. Bruce Ismay relished the idea of arriving in New York a day ahead of schedule.

 

On the night of April 14, wireless operator Phillips was very busy sending chatty passenger's messages to Cape Race, Newfoundland, whence they could be relayed inland to friends and relatives. He received a sixth ice-warning that night, but didn't realize how close Titanic was to the position of the warning, and put that message under a paperweight at his elbow. It never reached Captain Smith or the officer on the bridge.

 

By all accounts, the night was uncommonly clear and dark, moonless but faintly glowing with an incredible sky full of stars. The stars were so bright that one officer mistook the planet Jupiter (then rising just above the horizon) for a steamship light.

 

The sea was, likewise, unusually calm and flat, "like glass" said many survivors. The lack of waves made it even more difficult to spot icebergs, since there was no telltale white water breaking at the edges of the bergs.

 

At 11:40, a lookout in the crow's nest spotted an iceberg dead ahead. He notified the bridge and First Officer Murdoch ordered the ship turned hard to port. He signaled the engine room to reverse direction, full astern. The ship turned slightly, but it was much too large, moving much too fast, and the iceberg was much too close. 37 seconds later, the greatest maritime disaster in history began. During that night of heroism, terror and tragedy, 705 lives were saved, 1502 lives were lost, and many legends were born.

 

There are many books and online sources available for further information on the Titanic. It is worth noting that even the factual information about Titanic varies widely between the different sources. For all that is known and theorized about Titanic, it is in many ways still a mystery. Among the books are:

 

TITANIC, An Illustrated History, by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, 1992

 

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER by Walter Lord, 1955

 

THE NIGHT LIVES ON by Walter Lord, 1986

 

THE STORY OF THE TITANIC AS TOLD BY ITS SURVIVORS edited by Jack Winocur, 1960 (containing "The Loss of the SS Titanic, Its Story and Its Lessons" by Lawrence Beesley, 1912, "The Truth about the Titanic" by Col. Archibald Gracie, 1913, relevant chapters from "Titanic and Other Ships" by Commander Charles Lightoller, 1935 and Asst. Marconi Operator Harold Bride's account as published in the New York Times of April 28, 1912.)

 

TITANIC - TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY by John P. Eaton and Charles Haas 1988 (second edition 1994)

  

www.freemoviescinema.com/science-fiction/video/latest/con... Full Feature

See more photos in set.

 

Starring Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti. Directed by Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal gave us the sci-fi landmark Destination Moon in 1950. He then gave us the timeless classic War of the Worlds in '53. This, his third epic, was a grand effort, but fell shy of his earlier triumphs. On paper, it should have been another mega-classic. The team members from the earlier hits were reassembled. Pal as producer, Haskin directing, Lydon on screenplay, O'Hanlon writing. Conquest was also based on a popular book. Yet, despite all this pedigree, something fell short. Conquest would not go on to be remembered as one of the 50s mega-classics. Some of this obscurity may be due to Conquest being in the "serious" science fiction sub-genre, like Destination Moon and Riders to the Stars which tried to depict a plausible space-traveling future. Audiences were becoming much more entranced with saucers and weird aliens.

 

In some ways,Conquest is a remake of the basic story line from Destination Moon -- a crew are the first to land on a celestial body. They struggle to survive and yet courageously return. This time, instead of the moon, it's Mars. As a remake goes, however, it's worthy. The Technicolor is rich and the sets well done. This is an A-level production which at its release was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its day. All the melodrama, however, starts to get in the way of the techno-gee-whiz.

Synopsis

Based aboard a rotating wheel space station, workmen prepare a big flying wing of a rocket ship. A group of potential crewmen train for what they think will be a moon landing mission. As the work nears completion, they find out that the real mission will be a landing on Mars instead. While aboard "The Wheel", we're introduced to the phenomenon of "space sickness" -- a mental breakdown due to workload and confinement for long periods. One of the crew candidates is scrubbed because of one such breakdown. Nonetheless, the multinational crew are chosen and embark for the long journey to Mars. After departure, it's found that General Merritt's old friend, Sergeant Mahoney, stowed away. On the way to Mars, a communications antenna is damaged and must be fixed via spacewalking crewmen. Just as the repairs are completed, the customary meteor arrives, threatening to hit the ship. General Merritt manages to fly the ship out of the way, but one of the crewmen on EVA is hit with micrometeoroids (like bullets) and killed. The General is also starting to show odd behavior, doubting whether their mission is proper or is an affront to God. Their evasive action puts them behind schedule, but they arrive at Mars. While attempting to land on Mars, the General has another bout of delusion and tries to abort the landing. His son, Captain Merritt, manages to take control and brings in the flying-wing lander to a rough but successful landing. The others go out to explore, but the General, now fully delusional, is venting rocket fuel in an attempt to blow up the ship. His son discovers this and the two struggle. The General's pistol discharges, killing him. Mahoney comes on the scene just then and accuses Captain Merritt of murdering the General. The rest explore a bit more, but pronounce Mars a dead planet. Despite this, Imoto discovers that his earth flower seed sprouted in martian soil. Earthquakes cause the escape rocket to shift off of perpendicular. They get it righted and blast off. On the way home, Mahoney and Captain Merritt make up and declare that the dead General was a hero, the man who conquered space. The End.

The color, the sets, models and background paintings are very visually rich. The whole image is a great snapshot of the future as people in the mid-50s imagined it would be. More tidbits in the Notes section below.

There is actually a subtle anti-war tone to the movie. No overt talk of nuclear dangers or menacing enemies. It is notable, however, that among the conspicuously international crew candidates, there is no Russian. Americans would "conquer" space with a few other nationals along for the ride, but NO Russians. There is also a poorly explained urgency to the mission. What's the hurry? Back in the Cold War, it was pretty common that WE had to get something before THEY did.

In 1949, Willy Ley wrote the book "The Conquest of Space," which speculated about how mankind might travel to other planets. This book was illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. This book would become the inspiration for the movie.

 

From 1952 to 1954, Collier's magazine ran a series of stories about mankind conquering space. These were repeats by Ley and Bonestell of their 1949 book, but this time Collier's added material from "rocket scientist" Werner von Braun. Bonestell's new illustrations were clearly the prototype for the look of Conquest. People felt that mankind was on the verge of taking to the stars. The Collier's series expressed that giddy optimism.

The screenplay for Conquest added weak human interest sub-plots which almost negate the gee-whiz optimism that the visuals convey. The screenwriters were all experienced in their craft, so it's puzzling why such amateurish characterizations are so prominent. The comic relief moments are almost cartoonish. The whole leader-gone-mad sub-plot seems out of place.

A possible "message" to Conquest is that man is a fragile creature who may not be ready for the rigors of space travel. Certainly, people wondered about this, and other movies touched on the theme too, such as Riders to the Stars ('54). Our not being mentally ready yet was cited by the aliens in It Came From Outer Space ('53). General Merritt's dementia was foreshadowed in the breakdown of Roy early in the movie.

One thing that strikes the viewer is how much life aboard the space station is presumed to duplicate life aboard a navy ship. It's not overtly stated that the military should (or will) be the agency which "conquers" space, but from the ranks and uniforms and the navy-life scenes, that message comes through. Space ships will be like earthly ships.

On the surface, it seems like Conquest is blasting Christians as dangerous religious fanatics. This notion, that anyone who believes in God simply MUST be wacko, would be much more popular in later decades, but it was uncommon in the 50s. For that reason, the General's dementia deserves a closer look.

Actually, General Merritt was not the stereotypic religious fanatic. His son comments that he had never seen him carrying around and reading the Bible before. Instead of headaches or paralysis, the General's "space sickness" took a paranoid turn. He had rational misgivings about the Mars mission from the start, pre-dementia. His repressed misgivings are expressed in Bible verses dealing with sinners being punished by God. He once quotes from Psalm 38, then later from Psalm 62.

Throughout all this, God is not mocked. Indeed, only the "religious" man had the courage to go outside and give the dead Fodor a proper burial. The other non-relgious crewmen were at a loss for what to do.

The notion of impudent mankind trying to meddle in God's domain, is treated as a credible issue. In this, the pattern of the Tower of Babel is drawn. Prideful mankind thinks they can build their way into God's realm. God foils that plan. General Merritt's dementia seems motivated by a fear that this divine retribution could be coming again.

The writers of Conquest imagine a multinationalism in space. Most notable are two former enemy nations: Imoto is from Japan and Fodor is a German-accented Austrian, (as a stand-in for Germany). Imoto gets to make a little speech about why Japan went to war (lack of resources). Fodor gets to be seen as the cherished son of a classic "mama". By 1955, it was starting to become okay to look beyond World War 2.

At one point, the crew of The Wheel are watching a movie with many scantily clad dancing girls (much like sailors aboard a ship). The movie is a lavish musical number with many gold bikini clad pseudo-harem girls dancing while Rosemary Clooney sings about love "...in the desert sand." This clip is total non-sequetor to the high-tech space environment. What's interesting, is that it's NOT stock footage recycled. Clooney had not done any such movie. This dance number must have been staged and shot just for this scene in Conquest. Random act of musical. Gotta love 'em.

 

Bottom line? Conquest is an almost-epic. It's definitely an A-grade sci-fi movie, so it's well worth watching. The human story part gets in the way sometimes, but the visuals more than make up for it.

 

THE DAILY TIMES

 

PERSPECTIVES

 

HONORING THE NURSES AND MIDWIVES OF PAKISTAN

ON WORLD HEALTH DAY 2020

 

By

 

DR GHULAM NABI KAZI

 

April 2, 2020

 

The world’s foremost nurse Florence Nightingale knew it all. Ordained by her inner voice to serve humanity, she was hard on herself as she went about creating what the modern world now calls the nursing profession. Transformational leadership has never been easy She is on record as having said, “There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.” She advised all to live their lives while they have it as it was a splendid gift and there was nothing small in it. Having said this, she hastened to counsel, “But to live your life, you must discipline it.” A lesser known fact is that she is also known as the Lady with the Data as she described statistics as a means to understand God's thoughts, which needed to be studied as the measure of His purpose. Thus she not only pioneered nursing but statistics as well.

The mother of all her revelations, however, came in 1870 when Ms. Nightingale predicted that it would take 150 years before the world would achieve the kind of nursing she envisioned. A hundred and fifty years later, it therefore became incumbent upon the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and several international professional organizations to designate and celebrate 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. Thus the World Health Day 2020 falling on April 7 that marks the 72nd birthday of the World Health Organization is being used to celebrate the work of nurses and midwives and remind world leaders of the critical role they play in keeping the world healthy.

The honest truth is that Florence Nightingale could not have been more correct in her analysis concerning 2020. As I write, the coronavirus COVID-19 has affected over 900,000 persons directly and caused over 44,000 deaths in over 200 countries and territories around the world, with nurses and other health workers being at the forefront of COVID-19 response, either directly providing treatment and care, leading community dialogues to address fears or collecting data for clinical studies. As WHO itself recognizes, without nurses there would have been no response.

It therefore remains for the national governments to strengthen their nursing and midwifery workforce in a bid to ensure that everyone, everywhere gets the healthcare they need. Such a move will also be of essence in achieving national and global targets related to universal health coverage, maternal and child health, infectious and non-communicable diseases including mental health and the delivery of integrated people-centered care.

 

In WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region that comprises of 22 countries including Pakistan, progress in strengthening the nursing workforce has been slow despite ongoing efforts to address the challenges facing nursing and midwifery, with most countries struggling with insufficient investment in recruiting, training and retention of nurses, poor working conditions, and increased migration with high attrition rates. In October 2019, the WHO Regional Committee guided by its dynamic Regional Adviser Dr Arwa Oweis resolved to develop and implement national strategies and action plans to strengthen the nursing and midwifery workforce, enhance working environments through well-defined standards of nursing practice, strengthen the primary health care nursing workforce by defining and expanding nurses’ roles and scopes of practice, reorient nursing and midwifery education and training, emphasizing primary care competencies and collect data on the nursing and midwifery workforce, for strategic planning, policy development and management.

In Pakistan, there is apparently a growing commitment towards this end that needs to be capitalized by all public health professionals. The last year 2019 started with a Presidential Summit on Nursing and Midwifery where President Dr Arif Alvi declared the 2019 as the Year for nursing and midwifery in Pakistan with the presence of WHO Director General Director-General WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to highlight the significant role played by these virtuous professions. The President also announced launch of the ‘Nursing Now’ chapter of Pakistan, which aims to raise the status and profile of nursing in the country. The President significantly announced that nursing diplomas would be replaced with degree programmes and to double the nursing and midwifery professionals over the next five years in Pakistan. On the occasion, Dr Ghebreyesus described nurses and midwives as the backbone of any health system. He called upon Pakistan to foster a policy dialogue around investment in the nursing and midwifery workforce as a means of strengthening people-centered care, creating quality employment opportunities for women and youth and achieving universal health coverage. He stressed that the Government of Pakistan must see jobs for nurses and midwives not as a cost, but as an investment in sustainable development, while their voices deserved to be heard at the policymaking table.

Meanwhile, let us pause and reflect on the exact prevailing situation on the ground:

1.According to the Human Resources for Health Vision of the Government of Pakistan 2018, there were 205,152 doctors and 104,046 nurses (including midwives and lady health visitors) in the country comprising a population of 207.775 million in 2017. While ideally, there should be 4 nurses for each doctor, in Pakistan the relationship has been virtually reversed with two doctors for each nurse, midwife and LHV combined. It necessarily follows that the number of nurses produced so far amount only to an eighth or less of our genuine and legitimate requirements. As little has changed in the intervening couple of years, with the current pace of production, the gap will further widen in coming years.

2.Pakistan is far below the critical level for Human Resources for Health (HRH), being amongst the most HRH deprived countries of the world, which constitutes a major impediment to the attainment of universal health coverage and other Sustainable Development Goals. Perhaps the most significant shortage lies in the Nursing and Midwifery cadres, with the proportion of nurse-midwife per 1,000 population standing at less than 0.5. Additionally, the provinces of KP/FATA and Balochistan have a proportion of 0.38 and 0.22/ 1000 population, respectively.

3.The Pakistan Nursing Council is an autonomous, regulatory body constituted under the Pakistan Nursing Council Act (1973) and is empowered to register Nurses, Midwives, Lady Health Visitors, Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), Community Midwives (CMWs) and Nursing Auxiliaries i.e. FWWs to practice in Pakistan. The PNC is mandated to regulate, monitor and evaluate Nursing Institutions and Nursing Examination Boards, with powers to recognize or derecognize any institution. It can also deregister any nurses, midwife or health visitor. It can proceed against any institution for hiring unrecognized personnel of these categories. Currently, however, despite several recent reforms, there is negligible monitoring of benchmarks and discipline as the Pakistan Nursing Council is working with a highly reduced strength and ill-equipped to regulate the situation on the ground.

4.The nursing shortage and the image of the profession has had a reciprocal relationship, in sharp contrast with the more feasible and affordable nurse-centered culture in developed countries, where public health is embedded in the nursing profession to reduce healthcare costs. Nurses work in a variety of settings in primary, secondary, community and social care services in hospitals, health centers, hospices and teaching institutions.

5.In practice, nursing remains a neglected and least preferred line of work, despite the noble duty performed towards the treatment and quick recovery of patients, post-operative management or specialized interventions. Ninety (90) per cent of nurses are females working in a highly misogynist culture, liable to sexual harassment and being treated sub-optimally They are often encumbered with long working hours, low wages, and poor career or promotion prospects or perks in comparison with officers with similar qualifications in other cadres.

6.Of greater concern is the plight of the Midwifery profession that has acquired no identity of its own and is erroneously regarded as a part of nursing. The majority of the students secure diplomas with none or very little practical experience in actual deliveries, and evidence exists that Pakistan is not producing competent midwives with adverse implications for our high maternal mortality rate, particularly in the communities, where 40 % of the births take place.

7.Midwives have few avenues open for practicing their profession. Therefore, although thousands are trained every year they are not visible. Without regulatory mechanism neither the midwives nor the women they serve will have any legal protection. Furthermore, their career prospects are much more eschewed and inferior to nurses.

Despite these significant lapses, until quite recently policymakers in Pakistan have never made a serious attempt to effectively address the problems faced by nurses and midwives in the country. This obviously constituted an emergency situation and special measures need to be put in place to review the entire system of nursing and align it with the requirements of not only the SDGs but the entire public health system. While this situation is obviously not tenable for good service delivery, be it for maternal and child health, treatment of chronic diseases or infectious diseases or preventive healthcare, few efforts have been made to rectify the situation.

It is pertinent to mention that despite this general indifference, the government has remained cognizant of the crucial role of nurses within the Health Sector. Pakistan hosted a high level global consultation on nursing and midwifery led by the Federal Minister for Health in March 2007. The Islamabad Declaration issued at the end of the consultation reiterated our belief that efficient, effective nursing and midwifery services were critical to achieving the global targets and country priority programs including primary health care, health systems strengthening, and the general health of all nations. It called for universal access to competent nurses and midwives alongside a coordinated, integrated, collaborative, sustainable approach to planning, policy and health care delivery to strengthen nursing and midwifery services, with an urgent focus on scaling up nursing and midwifery capacity, a skill mix of existing and new cadres of workers with positive workplace environments. The declaration also enunciated principles for scaling up nursing and midwifery capacity through a range of strategies that address workforce planning, education, skill-mix, maximum utilization of roles, career frameworks, work environments and regulatory frameworks to ensure efficient, effective, and safe health systems. However, despite this important affirmation, little has transpired in the intervening years to ameliorate the shortage of nurses or facilitate their work in the workplace.

The present government has finally underlined to take up this challenge and attempted to resolve this major issue under scientific lines, on the recommendations of the Health Task Force. Following the Nursing and Midwifery Summit in the Presidency on January 8, 2019, a review meeting of the Pakistan Nursing Council held the next day drew up a workable roadmap to implement all the necessary steps to bring about a significant transformation of the Nursing and Midwifery Sub-Sector. The meeting decided to phase out the nursing diploma to be replaced with upgradation to BScN/BScM, with simultaneous upgrading of existing institutions to enable the same, making regulations at federal and provincial level to facilitate the change, establishment of nursing structure cadres with proper standardized job descriptions, enhancing the faculty, capacity and strength of the Colleges and Schools of Nursing, delegating certain powers to lower tiers to substantially reduce the workload of the PNC.

Subsequently, a PC-I was prepared at a cost of nearly PKR 28 billion incorporating all the steps necessary for concretizing the governmental commitment. The salient features of the project include a number of interventions to be taken on several fronts to mitigate the shortages of nurses and midwives across the country through an accelerated education program achieved through an innovative public-private partnership. The rapid scaling-up strategy will entail quality education, workforce planning, education, improved career structures and working with stringent monitoring and regulation. All the existing 47 and 65 others to be upgraded as degree Public sector institutions will receive a grant of PKR 15 million to upgrade their Skill lab, Science lab, computer lab, audio visual equipment, Anatomy/physiology lab and Library. The newly upgraded institutes will also receive a grant of PKR 30 million for building of classrooms/ auditorium. Grant of scholarships (2,555 [Generic BSN] + 770 [Post-RN BSN] + 1,625 [new Generic BScN] annually) enrolled throughout the course of the 5-year project in public sector colleges at PKR 25,000/month/student. These scholarships will be utilised towards their tuition fees and other miscellaneous expenses such as lodging, boarding, uniforms, mess, and subsistence allowance of the students. Placement of 1 MScN international facility in each existing and upgraded public sector institute doing degree programs will be instrumental in faculty development. Grants of PKR 15 million will be provided to each of the 30 public health schools for LHVs/Midwives to be upgraded for their Skill lab, Science lab, computer lab, audio visual equipment, Anatomy/physiology lab and Library. Two PhD international faculty will be provided in the Khyber Medical University Peshawar, University of Health Sciences Lahore, Dow University of Health Sciences Karachi and Jinnah Sindh Medical University Karachi which will offer Masters courses in Nursing/Midwifery. 95 students admitted on open merit enrolled throughout the course of the MSN program in private sector colleges will be paid at PKR 30,000/month/student. Similar incentives will be provided to private sector institutions as well on a lesser scale.

There will be an emphasis on the quality dimension to ensure improved skills and training in the degree programs. The curricula for Bachelors program in Midwifery will be designed to be implemented by the public health schools located in provincial headquarters. Nursing and midwifery will be promoted as a preferred career and public opinion will be mobilized to highlight the nobility of the cadre for both women and men, and generally uplift these professions from their present unenviable position. The Regulation Cell in the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination and the Pakistan Nursing Council which will jointly supervise the project implementation and the necessary procurements, will be strengthened by provision of a few support staff.

The PC-I has been approved by the Central Development Working Party a few months ago and is awaiting the final approval of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council after certain cost sharing issues are resolved between the federal and provincial governments. The share of each province will not be that substantial considering they are already providing stipends to the diploma students of the courses being phased out in addition to bearing several other expenses in relation to nursing and midwifery training. The federal and provincial implementation plans have also been developed after deliberations with the provincial authorities by underlining the immediate and short-term actions to be action.

Pakistan thus stands poised at a point where it can radically transform the doctor-nurse ratio over a period of five years and accelerate its march towards Universal Health Coverage by 2030. If, however, this opportunity is missed due to any reason, the costs will be heavy both in financial and human terms. This well-thought-out process has simply to be taken to its logical conclusion will all the pain, suffering and discipline alluded to by Florence Nightingale a century and a half ago. Moreover, in doing so we will rectify the injustice meted out to this crucial sub-sector over several decades. No other action or short term quick fix can transform Pakistan’s Health Sector so radically and significantly as this one. So, let’s do it!

 

The writer is a senior public health specialist of Pakistan and can be reached at gnkaziumkc@gmail.com

 

dailytimes.com.pk/587454/honoring-the-nursing-and-midwive...

www3.illinois.gov/PressReleases/ShowPressRelease.cfm?Subj...

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 27, 2013

  

Governor Quinn Announces Winners of Illinois Open Technology Challenge

Unprecedented Release and Compilation of Municipal Government Data Fuels Competition to Develop Civic-Minded Apps

CHICAGO – Governor Pat Quinn announced today the winning entries in the pilot competition of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge (ILOpenTech). A total of $60,000 was awarded to four winning teams of developers who created digital tools that utilize open government data for the benefit of Illinois residents and their communities.

 

Each winning entry was awarded $15,000 and was focused on one of three pilot locations – Champaign, Belleville and a group of South Suburban communities under the auspices of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association (SSMMA) – as well as an entry designed for use statewide. The city of Rockford also participated as a fourth pilot community, playing host to a series of developer meet-ups. Rockford’s participation will culminate in an open tech app hackathon later this month, the winner(s) of which will receive a $15,000 prize.

 

“We commend these enterprising developers for applying their skills toward making municipal government more transparent and accessible for Illinoisans,” Governor Quinn said. “This first-of-its-kind initiative clearly demonstrates that Illinois is taking a national leadership role in embracing digital government and promoting open data, which is spurring more innovation and economic development statewide.”

 

Winning entries of the competition include:

 

State of Illinois: iApplied, a web app that tracks job application activity in an effort to help government unemployment security workers streamline the review process for unemployment insurance benefits.

Belleville: Belleville Code, a centralized easy-to-navigate website containing the Revised City Ordinances of Belleville. An essential tool for anyone interested in economic development and entrepreneurship, the website’s content was previously only available within 1,000 pages of PDFs housed on the City Clerk’s website.

Champaign: C-U There!, a “tour guide” app for iPhone that features local news and event feeds, comprehensive parking location information and directories of historic landmarks and local businesses in Champaign-Urbana.

SSMMA: South Suburbs Housing Investment Tool, an online tool that allows users to analyze, score and rank potential housing development projects according to their proposed location. The tool also superimposes the data on a fully navigable map.

“It is my hope that iApplied will reduce government staff workloads, encourage unemployment beneficiaries to apply for jobs and ultimately make more efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” said Tyron Foston of Park Forest, who developed iApplied. “If it improves unemployment benefit operations in Illinois, iApplied could be adopted by other states around the nation.”

 

Foston decided to create iApplied after speaking with some of his unemployed friends and realizing a need for a more effective, streamlined system to verify eligibility for unemployment benefits. He consulted with businesses and municipal employees who provided positive feedback on the tool. Foston plans to use the award money to further develop iApplied to bring it to market.

 

ILOpenTech is an initiative of Governor Quinn’s Illinois Innovation Council and is managed by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC) in partnership with the Smart Chicago Collaborative. The program is focused on making Illinois’ open data platform, Data.Illinois.Gov, available and applicable to communities statewide through trainings, community meet-ups and hackathons, bringing together technology developers with civic leaders and community groups. The challenge was sponsored by the Chicago Community Trust, Comcast, Google, Illinois Innovation Council, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Motorola Mobility Foundation.

 

ILOpenTech is the state’s first sustained, engaged initiative outside the Chicago metro area to work hands-on with local governments and developers on the collection and publication of open data. It has created a strong foundation for starting or accelerating open data projects statewide by helping municipalities understand the nuts and bolts of using open data to drive innovation.

 

In advance of the competition, ILOpenTech worked with 12 government IT professionals in the four pilot communities to compile and publish 138 new sets of data about local government operations to Data.Illinois.Gov: 34 in Champaign, 15 in Rockford, 12 in Belleville and 77 from the 42 communities in the SSMMA.

 

“We are excited to explore ways that SSMMA and our member communities can apply the South Suburbs Housing Investment Tool to the housing development process,” said Ed Paesel, executive director of the SSMMA. “ILOpenTech has galvanized South Suburban communities to strengthen their commitment to open data and increased government transparency.”

 

“Throughout this first phase of ILOpenTech, we’ve seen the tremendous opportunity in gathering and packaging local government data in new ways that are useful to the general public,” said ISTC President and CEO Mark Harris. “By fostering partnerships between municipal governments and the Illinois developer community, we can increase transparency and accessibility, and spark innovation in both government and business.”

 

About the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition

 

The Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC) is a member-driven, nonprofit organization that works to cultivate and attract research and technology-based investment, talent and job growth in the state. Through strategic public-private partnerships, advocacy efforts and project management, ISTC connects government, academia and industry to leverage the state’s world-class resources to enhance Illinois’ position as a global hub for research, innovation and entrepreneurship. For more information, visit www.istcoalition.org

 

About the Smart Chicago Collaborative

 

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is an initiative that helps build the long-term capacity of the city of Chicago and its neighborhoods to realize the transformative potential of information technology. For more information, visit www.smartchicagocollaborative.org

  

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Steetley Pier

Landmark In Hartlepool, County Durham

 

A 2,000 foot long pier built in the 1960's to pipe sea water for the magnesia treatment works.

 

Steetley Pier is just off the North Sands near Hartlepool and was built in the 1960's to pipe sea water for the magnesia treatment works.

 

As demand grew, Steetley Pier was built in the 1960's to pump salty sea water into large round water holding tanks. By reacting Dolomite with the salty sea water, magnesia was produced, Dah da!

 

Steetley became the biggest plant of this nature in the world. Business continued under a few different companies such as Steeley Magesia, Pallister Works and Redland Magnesia until the works closed in 2005 after a couple of takeovers, one can surmise due to the decline of the Steel industries.

 

This 2,000 foot long pier was not built for perambulation. The pier was probably made from pitch pine and like any wood or concrete it suffers from the effects of the sea. There is a fisherman's forum where someone suggests parts of the pier are being washed away and landed on a beach further along the coast.

 

Despite the decay, this did not stop people accessing it to walk on. Some liked to go fishing. One fisherman refers to how he would hide from the security guide, and then catch huge amounts of cod off the end of the pier. After it became redundant in 2005 a section was removed to stop people walking or fishing as there are holes which (in the dark) people can and did fall through!

 

In the 1930s, industrial works alongside this part of the coastline, extracted magnesia (magnesium carbonate), used in the lining of kilns and incinerators, from dolomitic lime and seawater. Today, all that remains of this industrial site are some derelict buildings, old pipes and the dangerous, magnificent remains of Steetley Pier, a long, derelict structure, which stretches out into the sea here.

 

In the 1930s, industrial works alongside this part of the coastline, extracted magnesia (magnesium carbonate), used in the lining of kilns and incinerators, from dolomitic lime and seawater. Today, all that remains of this industrial site are some derelict buildings, old pipes and the dangerous, magnificent remains of Steetley Pier, a long, derelict structure, which stretches out into the sea here.

 

To get the most from this beach, check tidal tables and time your visit to coincide with low tide, when a vast amount of golden sand, interspersed with pipes is exposed. The beach is often deserted, and has no restrictions on dog walking.

 

The sands can be accessed by parking at West View Road and walking through the tunnel which passes under the railway line. Then walk towards the sea, past the former industrial buildings, and turn right, towards the old pier. The beach is backed by a cemetery and further north, by Hartlepool Golf Course, beyond which lies the Durham Coast Nature Reserve. Hartlepool Marina lies to the south of the beach.

 

There is a fish and chip shop nearby, and more places to eat and shops can be found in Hartlepool.

 

Hartlepool is a seaside and port town in County Durham, England. It is governed by a unitary authority borough named after the town. The borough is part of the devolved Tees Valley area. With an estimated population of 87,995, it is the second-largest settlement (after Darlington) in County Durham.

 

The old town was founded in the 7th century, around the monastery of Hartlepool Abbey on a headland. As the village grew into a town in the Middle Ages, its harbour served as the County Palatine of Durham's official port. The new town of West Hartlepool was created in 1835 after a new port was built and railway links from the South Durham coal fields (to the west) and from Stockton-on-Tees (to the south) were created. A parliamentary constituency covering both the old town and West Hartlepool was created in 1867 called The Hartlepools. The two towns were formally merged into a single borough called Hartlepool in 1967. Following the merger, the name of the constituency was changed from The Hartlepools to just Hartlepool in 1974. The modern town centre and main railway station are both at what was West Hartlepool; the old town is now generally known as the Headland.

 

Industrialisation in northern England and the start of a shipbuilding industry in the later part of the 19th century meant it was a target for the Imperial German Navy at the beginning of the First World War. A bombardment of 1,150 shells on 16 December 1914 resulted in the death of 117 people in the town. A severe decline in heavy industries and shipbuilding following the Second World War caused periods of high unemployment until the 1990s when major investment projects and the redevelopment of the docks area into a marina saw a rise in the town's prospects. The town also has a seaside resort called Seaton Carew.

 

The place name derives from Old English heort ("hart"), referring to stags seen, and pōl (pool), a pool of drinking water which they were known to use. Records of the place-name from early sources confirm this:

 

649: Heretu, or Hereteu.

1017: Herterpol, or Hertelpolle.

1182: Hierdepol.

 

A Northumbrian settlement developed in the 7th century around an abbey founded in 640 by Saint Aidan (an Irish and Christian priest) upon a headland overlooking a natural harbour and the North Sea. The monastery became powerful under St Hilda, who served as its abbess from 649 to 657. The 8th-century Northumbrian chronicler Bede referred to the spot on which today's town is sited as "the place where deer come to drink", and in this period the Headland was named by the Angles as Heruteu (Stag Island). Archaeological evidence has been found below the current high tide mark that indicates that an ancient post-glacial forest by the sea existed in the area at the time.

 

The Abbey fell into decline in the early 8th century, and it was probably destroyed during a sea raid by Vikings on the settlement in the 9th century. In March 2000, the archaeological investigation television programme Time Team located the foundations of the lost monastery in the grounds of St Hilda's Church. In the early 11th century, the name had evolved into Herterpol.

 

Normans and for centuries known as the Jewel of Herterpol.

During the Norman Conquest, the De Brus family gained over-lordship of the land surrounding Hartlepool. William the Conqueror subsequently ordered the construction of Durham Castle, and the villages under their rule were mentioned in records in 1153 when Robert de Brus, 1st Lord of Annandale became Lord of Hartness. The town's first charter was received before 1185, for which it gained its first mayor, an annual two-week fair and a weekly market. The Norman Conquest affected the settlement's name to form the Middle English Hart-le-pool ("The Pool of the Stags").

 

By the Middle Ages, Hartlepool was growing into an important (though still small) market town. One of the reasons for its escalating wealth was that its harbour was serving as the official port of the County Palatine of Durham. The main industry of the town at this time was fishing, and Hartlepool in this period established itself as one of the primary ports upon England's Eastern coast.

 

In 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland, and became the last Lord of Hartness. Angered, King Edward I confiscated the title to Hartlepool, and began to improve the town's military defences in expectation of war. In 1315, before they were completed, a Scottish army under Sir James Douglas attacked, captured and looted the town.

 

In the late 15th century, a pier was constructed to assist in the harbour's workload.

 

Hartlepool was once again militarily occupied by a Scottish incursion, this time in alliance with the Parliamentary Army during the English Civil War, which after 18 months was relieved by an English Parliamentarian garrison.

 

In 1795, Hartlepool artillery emplacements and defences were constructed in the town as a defensive measure against the threat of French attack from seaborne Napoleonic forces. During the Crimean War, two coastal batteries were constructed close together in the town to guard against the threat of seaborne attacks from the Imperial Russian Navy. They were entitled the Lighthouse Battery (1855) and the Heugh Battery (1859).

Camion Ford LNT-8000 équippé avec unité de béton mobile. Ce camion, surnommé ''Mod Con No.1'', était opéré par la cie Mod-Con Construction Limitée, fondée par Murray Markanen en 1974.

Ce camion était le premier véhicule de la compagnie et est devenu la fierté de cette dernière. Le camion avait été photographié ici par M. Markanen en 1974, à Lancaster au Pensylvanie, ou il venait juste d'être équippé avec son unité de béton mobile. La compagnie existe encore aujourd'hui.

  

Ford LNT-8000 concrete mobile unit ''Mod Con No.1''. This rig was operated by Mod-Con Construction Limited. The Company was founded in 1974 by Murray Markanen. This was the companies first truck and ''flagship''. The truck is pictures here in Lancaster PA, having just been fitted with its mobile batch plant workload body. Truck shot by M. Markanen in 1974. The company still exists today.

www.usaraf.army.mil

 

U.S Army Medical Research Unit: Improving malaria diagnosis in Africa, one lab at a time

 

By Rick Scavetta, U.S. Army Africa

 

OYUGIS, Kenya – Inside Rachuonyo district hospital, Simba Mobagi peers through his laboratory’s only microscope at a sick woman’s blood sample.

 

The 33-year-old laboratory technologist’s goal – rapidly identifying malaria parasites.

Dozens more samples await his eyes. Each represents a patient suffering outside on wooden benches.

 

Mogabi takes little time to ponder his workload. He quickly finds malaria parasites, marks his findings on a pink patient record and moves to the next slide. Much to his surprise, a U.S. Army officer arrives, removes his black beret and sets down a large box.

 

Inside Maj. Eric Wagar’s box is a new microscope – a small gesture within U.S. Army Medical Research Unit-Kenya’s larger efforts to improve malaria diagnostics in Africa.

 

For more than 40 years, USAMRU-K – known locally as the Walter Reed Project – has studied diseases in East Africa through a partnership with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

 

Wagar heads USAMRU-K’s Malaria Diagnostics and Control Center of Excellence in Kisumu, a unique establishment begun in 2004 that’s since trained more than 650 laboratory specialist to better their malaria microscopy skills.

 

“Working with the Walter Reed Project is so good for the community, as it benefits the patient,” Mobagi said, who is looking forward to attending the center’s malaria diagnostics course. “Plus, having a new microscope improves our work environment. Work will be easier and we will have better outcomes.”

 

Back in Kisumu, wall maps mark the center’s success, with hundreds of trained lab technicians from more than a dozen countries across the African continent. International students have come from Ireland, the U.S. and Thailand.

Many students are sponsored through U.S. government aid programs aimed at reducing disease in Africa or by nongovernmental organizations. Most of the center’s $450,000 annual budget comes from the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. Other funding is from the U.S. Defense Department, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies.

 

For students to practice malaria identification, five Kenyan lab technicians work tirelessly to create a variety of blood specimens. Slides may show one or more of malaria’s several species – others are free of parasites. The majority of malaria cases are the falciparum species, but many people are co-infected with other species and it’s important for students to recognize that, Wagar said.

 

“At our course, lab students learn skills and habits that increase their ability to accurately detect malaria on blood slides. Yet, when they return to their local laboratories, they face the challenge of changing habits and procedures,” Wagar said. “Changing behavior is hard to do.”

 

In late-April, Wagar accompanied Jew Ochola, 28, the center’s daily operations manager to Oyugis, the district center of Rachuonyo that lies roughly 30 miles south of Kisumu in Kenya’s Nyanza province.

 

“First I do an assessment of the hospital’s lab, what procedures they have, the number of people on staff and the equipment they use,” Ochola said. “By partnering with laboratory managers, we hope to increase standards and improve efficient and effective diagnosis.

 

The goal is to lessen the burden of malaria on the local people.”

 

To mark progress, lab staffs must collect 20 slides each month that show properly handled blood samples. Monthly visits will mark performance improvement.

 

Through quality malaria diagnosis, USAMRU-K is part of a larger public health effort to reduce malaria’s impacts on Kenyan’s lives. Illness means paying for treatment and less wages earned, creating an impact on the economy.

 

“By mitigating a public health burden, people should have more time to grow food and have money for things other than medical care,” Wagar said. “We can’t expect to see change right away, but hopefully things will be a little bit better every month.”

 

Working with the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa and other DoD agencies, the center recently offered microscopy courses through U.S. military partnership events in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. The effort supports U.S. Army Africa’s strategic engagement goal of increasing capabilities and strengthening capacity with the militaries of African nations, Wagar said.

 

“To date, that includes eight Kenyan military lab techs, 17 from the Tanzania People’s Defense Force and 30 Nigerians,” Wagar said.

 

Accurate diagnosis is also a key factor for military readiness, Wagar said. For example, a Kenyan soldier stationed in Nairobi – where malaria is less prevalent – is susceptible to the disease if posted elsewhere in the country.

 

“Improving malaria diagnosis within African military laboratories sets conditions for healthier troops,” Wagar said. “When forces are healthy, they are more capable to support their government and regional security.”

 

To learn more about U.S. Army Africa visit our official website at www.usaraf.army.mil

 

Official Twitter Feed: www.twitter.com/usarmyafrica

 

Official YouTube video channel: www.youtube.com/usarmyafrica

  

www.freemoviescinema.com/science-fiction/video/latest/con... Full Feature

See more photos in set.

 

Starring Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti. Directed by Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal gave us the sci-fi landmark Destination Moon in 1950. He then gave us the timeless classic War of the Worlds in '53. This, his third epic, was a grand effort, but fell shy of his earlier triumphs. On paper, it should have been another mega-classic. The team members from the earlier hits were reassembled. Pal as producer, Haskin directing, Lydon on screenplay, O'Hanlon writing. Conquest was also based on a popular book. Yet, despite all this pedigree, something fell short. Conquest would not go on to be remembered as one of the 50s mega-classics. Some of this obscurity may be due to Conquest being in the "serious" science fiction sub-genre, like Destination Moon and Riders to the Stars which tried to depict a plausible space-traveling future. Audiences were becoming much more entranced with saucers and weird aliens.

 

In some ways,Conquest is a remake of the basic story line from Destination Moon -- a crew are the first to land on a celestial body. They struggle to survive and yet courageously return. This time, instead of the moon, it's Mars. As a remake goes, however, it's worthy. The Technicolor is rich and the sets well done. This is an A-level production which at its release was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its day. All the melodrama, however, starts to get in the way of the techno-gee-whiz.

Synopsis

Based aboard a rotating wheel space station, workmen prepare a big flying wing of a rocket ship. A group of potential crewmen train for what they think will be a moon landing mission. As the work nears completion, they find out that the real mission will be a landing on Mars instead. While aboard "The Wheel", we're introduced to the phenomenon of "space sickness" -- a mental breakdown due to workload and confinement for long periods. One of the crew candidates is scrubbed because of one such breakdown. Nonetheless, the multinational crew are chosen and embark for the long journey to Mars. After departure, it's found that General Merritt's old friend, Sergeant Mahoney, stowed away. On the way to Mars, a communications antenna is damaged and must be fixed via spacewalking crewmen. Just as the repairs are completed, the customary meteor arrives, threatening to hit the ship. General Merritt manages to fly the ship out of the way, but one of the crewmen on EVA is hit with micrometeoroids (like bullets) and killed. The General is also starting to show odd behavior, doubting whether their mission is proper or is an affront to God. Their evasive action puts them behind schedule, but they arrive at Mars. While attempting to land on Mars, the General has another bout of delusion and tries to abort the landing. His son, Captain Merritt, manages to take control and brings in the flying-wing lander to a rough but successful landing. The others go out to explore, but the General, now fully delusional, is venting rocket fuel in an attempt to blow up the ship. His son discovers this and the two struggle. The General's pistol discharges, killing him. Mahoney comes on the scene just then and accuses Captain Merritt of murdering the General. The rest explore a bit more, but pronounce Mars a dead planet. Despite this, Imoto discovers that his earth flower seed sprouted in martian soil. Earthquakes cause the escape rocket to shift off of perpendicular. They get it righted and blast off. On the way home, Mahoney and Captain Merritt make up and declare that the dead General was a hero, the man who conquered space. The End.

The color, the sets, models and background paintings are very visually rich. The whole image is a great snapshot of the future as people in the mid-50s imagined it would be. More tidbits in the Notes section below.

There is actually a subtle anti-war tone to the movie. No overt talk of nuclear dangers or menacing enemies. It is notable, however, that among the conspicuously international crew candidates, there is no Russian. Americans would "conquer" space with a few other nationals along for the ride, but NO Russians. There is also a poorly explained urgency to the mission. What's the hurry? Back in the Cold War, it was pretty common that WE had to get something before THEY did.

In 1949, Willy Ley wrote the book "The Conquest of Space," which speculated about how mankind might travel to other planets. This book was illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. This book would become the inspiration for the movie.

 

From 1952 to 1954, Collier's magazine ran a series of stories about mankind conquering space. These were repeats by Ley and Bonestell of their 1949 book, but this time Collier's added material from "rocket scientist" Werner von Braun. Bonestell's new illustrations were clearly the prototype for the look of Conquest. People felt that mankind was on the verge of taking to the stars. The Collier's series expressed that giddy optimism.

The screenplay for Conquest added weak human interest sub-plots which almost negate the gee-whiz optimism that the visuals convey. The screenwriters were all experienced in their craft, so it's puzzling why such amateurish characterizations are so prominent. The comic relief moments are almost cartoonish. The whole leader-gone-mad sub-plot seems out of place.

A possible "message" to Conquest is that man is a fragile creature who may not be ready for the rigors of space travel. Certainly, people wondered about this, and other movies touched on the theme too, such as Riders to the Stars ('54). Our not being mentally ready yet was cited by the aliens in It Came From Outer Space ('53). General Merritt's dementia was foreshadowed in the breakdown of Roy early in the movie.

One thing that strikes the viewer is how much life aboard the space station is presumed to duplicate life aboard a navy ship. It's not overtly stated that the military should (or will) be the agency which "conquers" space, but from the ranks and uniforms and the navy-life scenes, that message comes through. Space ships will be like earthly ships.

On the surface, it seems like Conquest is blasting Christians as dangerous religious fanatics. This notion, that anyone who believes in God simply MUST be wacko, would be much more popular in later decades, but it was uncommon in the 50s. For that reason, the General's dementia deserves a closer look.

Actually, General Merritt was not the stereotypic religious fanatic. His son comments that he had never seen him carrying around and reading the Bible before. Instead of headaches or paralysis, the General's "space sickness" took a paranoid turn. He had rational misgivings about the Mars mission from the start, pre-dementia. His repressed misgivings are expressed in Bible verses dealing with sinners being punished by God. He once quotes from Psalm 38, then later from Psalm 62.

Throughout all this, God is not mocked. Indeed, only the "religious" man had the courage to go outside and give the dead Fodor a proper burial. The other non-relgious crewmen were at a loss for what to do.

The notion of impudent mankind trying to meddle in God's domain, is treated as a credible issue. In this, the pattern of the Tower of Babel is drawn. Prideful mankind thinks they can build their way into God's realm. God foils that plan. General Merritt's dementia seems motivated by a fear that this divine retribution could be coming again.

The writers of Conquest imagine a multinationalism in space. Most notable are two former enemy nations: Imoto is from Japan and Fodor is a German-accented Austrian, (as a stand-in for Germany). Imoto gets to make a little speech about why Japan went to war (lack of resources). Fodor gets to be seen as the cherished son of a classic "mama". By 1955, it was starting to become okay to look beyond World War 2.

At one point, the crew of The Wheel are watching a movie with many scantily clad dancing girls (much like sailors aboard a ship). The movie is a lavish musical number with many gold bikini clad pseudo-harem girls dancing while Rosemary Clooney sings about love "...in the desert sand." This clip is total non-sequetor to the high-tech space environment. What's interesting, is that it's NOT stock footage recycled. Clooney had not done any such movie. This dance number must have been staged and shot just for this scene in Conquest. Random act of musical. Gotta love 'em.

 

Bottom line? Conquest is an almost-epic. It's definitely an A-grade sci-fi movie, so it's well worth watching. The human story part gets in the way sometimes, but the visuals more than make up for it.

 

Belfast's skyline is still dominated today by Harland and Wolff's famous twin Gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, built in 1974 and 1969 respectively.

 

The Lagan Bridge takes motorway and rail traffic across the River Lagan

 

Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861 by Edward James Harland (1831–1895) and Hamburg-born Gustav Wilhelm Wolff (1834–1913, in the UK from age 14). In 1858 Harland, then general manager, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island from his employer Robert Hickson.

 

After buying Hickson's shipyard, Harland made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Wolff was the nephew of Gustavus Schwabe, a financier from Hamburg, who was heavily invested in the Bibby Line, and the first three ships that the newly incorporated shipyard built were for that line. Harland made a success of the business through several innovations, notably replacing the wooden upper decks with iron ones which increased the strength of the ships; and giving the hulls a flatter bottom and squarer section, which increased their capacity.

 

When Harland died in 1894, William James Pirrie became the chairman of the company until his death in 1924. Thomas Andrews also became the managing director and head of the draughting department in 1907. It was during this period that the company built the RMS Titanic and her sister-ships RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic between 1909 and 1914, commissioning William Arrol to construct a massive twin gantry and slipway structure for the project. These were three of over 70 ships constructed for the White Star Line by the company, the last being the RMS Britannic in 1929.

 

In 1912, the company acquired another shipyard at Govan in Glasgow, Scotland. It bought the London & Glasgow Engineering & Iron Shipbuilding Co's Middleton and Govan New shipyards in Govan and Mackie & Thomson's Govan Old yard. The three neighbouring yards were amalgamated and redeveloped to provide a total of seven building berths, a fitting-out basin and extensive workshops. Harland & Wolff specialised in building tankers and cargo ships at Govan. The yard was eventually closed in 1962, when the company opted to consolidate its operations in Belfast.

  

During World War I, Harland and Wolff built monitors and cruisers, including the 15-inch gun armed "large light cruiser" HMS Glorious.

 

In 1918, the company opened a new shipyard on the eastern side of the Musgrave Channel which was named the East Yard. This yard specialised in mass-produced ships of standard design developed during the First World War.

 

The company started an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary with Short Brothers, called Short and Harland Limited in 1936. Its first order was for 189 Handley Page Hereford bombers built under license from Handley Page for the Royal Air Force. During the Second World War, this factory built Short Stirling bombers as the Hereford was removed from service.

 

The shipyard was busy during World War II, building 6 aircraft carriers, 2 cruisers (including HMS Belfast) and 131 other naval ships; and repairing over 22,000 vessels. It also manufactured tanks and artillery components. It was during this period that the company's workforce peaked at around 35,000 people. However, many of the vessels built during this era were commissioned right at the end of World War II, as Harland and Wolff were focused on ship repair during the first three years of the war. The yard on Queen's Island was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in April and May 1941 causing considerable damage to the shipbuilding facilities and destroying the aircraft factory.

 

With the rise of the jet powered airliner in the late 1950s, the demand for Ocean liners declined; and this coupled with competition from Japan led to difficulties for the British shipbuilding industry. The last liner that the company built was the SS Canberra in 1960.

 

In the 1960s, notable achievements for the yard included the tanker Myrina which was the first supertanker built in the UK, and the largest vessel ever launched down a slipway (September 1967). In the same period the yard also built the semisubmersible drilling rig Sea Quest which, due to its three-legged design, was launched down three parallel slipways. This was a first and only time this was ever done.

 

In the mid-1960s, the British government started advancing loans and subsidies to British shipyards to preserve jobs. Some of this money was used to finance the modernisation of the yard, allowing it to build the much larger post-war merchant ships including one of 333,000 tonnes. However continuing problems led to the company's nationalisation as part of British Shipbuilders in 1977.

 

The company was bought from the British government in 1989 in a management/employee buy-out in partnership with the Norwegian shipping magnate Fred Olsen; leading to a new company called Harland and Wolff Holdings Plc. By this time, the number of people employed by the company had fallen to around 3000.

 

For the next few years, Harland and Wolff specialised in building standard Suezmax oil tankers, and has continued to concentrate on vessels for the offshore oil and gas industry. It has made some forays outside of this market. The company bid unsuccessfully tendered against Chantiers de l'Atlantique for the construction of Cunard line's new Queen Mary.

 

With the Shipyard being situated in the mainly Protestant area of East Belfast, for most of its history the workers at Harland and Wolff were almost exclusively Protestant. At certain times, some Roman Catholics working in the shipyard did report discrimination and occasionally violent and threatening behaviour. While there is little concrete proof of this (except in the case of Catholic Maurice O'Kane who was shot by the Ulster Volunteer Force), some Catholic workers insist on its accuracy. The O'Kane case, while occurring within the shipyard, was not carried out by any of Mr O'Kane's co-workers, and indeed a number of workers from both sides of the divide have claimed that the mainly working class status of the yard's workers united them, regardless of political and religious affiliation.

 

In the late 1990s, the yard was part of the then British Aerospace's team for the Royal Navy's Future Carrier (CVF) programme. It was envisaged that the ship would be constructed in Belfast. However in 1999 BAe merged with Marconi Electronic Systems. The new company, BAE Systems Marine, now own the former Marconi shipyards at Barrow and on the Clyde and will likely construct the ships at one of these.

 

The Samson and Goliath gantry cranes have become city landmarks. Faced with competitive pressures (especially as regards shipbuilding), Harland and Wolff sought to shift and broaden their portfolio, focusing less on shipbuilding and more on design and structural engineering, as well as ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for other projects to do with metal engineering and construction. This led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and also in the Republic of Ireland, building on the success of its first foray into the civil engineering sector with the construction of the Foyle Bridge and others such as Dublin's Millennium Bridge, which some perceived as a historic turnaround, given the company's controversial history.

 

Harland and Wolff's last shipbuilding project (to date) was the MV Anvil Point, one of 6 near identical Point class sealift ships built for use by the Ministry of Defence. The ship, built under sub-contract from German shipbuilders Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, was launched in 2003.

 

There is also speculation about a resurgence in the prosperity of the shipyard thanks to the company's diversification into Emerging technologies, particularly in Renewable energy development, such as offshore Wind turbine and Tidal power construction, which may provide an opportunity to further improve the company's fortunes in the long term.

 

In recent years the company has indeed seen its ship-related workload increase slightly. Whilst Harland & Wolff has no involvement in any shipbuilding projects for the foreseeable future, the company is increasingly involved in overhaul, re-fitting and ship repair, as well as the construction and repair of off-shore equipment such as oil platforms. In late 2007, the 'Goliath' gantry crane was re-commissioned, having been moth-balled in 2003 due to the lack of heavy-lifting work at the yard.

 

In March 2008 the construction of the World's first commercial tidal stream turbine, for Marine Current Turbines, was completed at the Belfast yard. The installation of the 1.2MW SeaGen Tidal System was begun in Strangford Lough on the third of April 2008.

  

SS Venetian - the first steamer built by Harland & Wolff 1860 - a plaque on the William James Pirrie monument, grounds of Belfast City Hall.Ships built by Harland and Wolff include: [3]

 

89 of the White Star liners (most notably RMS Titanic)

RMS Mooltan: Launched on 15 February 1923

RMS Maloja: Launched on the 19th April 1923

SS Minnewaska:Maiden Voyage 1st September 1923

SS Minnehaha Built in 1900, Sunk in 1917

 

Aircraft Carriers

HMS Formidable (R67)

HMS Eagle (R05)

HMS Unicorn (I72)

HMS Glory (R62)

HMS Warrior (R31)

HMCS Magnificent (CVL 21)

HMCS Bonaventure (CVL 22)

HMS Centaur (R06)

HMS Bulwark (R08)

 

Cruisers

HMS Penelope (97)

HMS Belfast (C35)

HMS Black Prince (81)

HMCS Ontario (C53)

Eurofighter Typhoon is the world’s most advanced swing-role combat aircraft providing simultaneously deployable Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface capabilities.

 

It is in service with 6 customers across 20 operational units and has been ordered by a seventh. The aircraft has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, high reliability across the globe in all climates. It has been combat proven during operations in Libya.

 

Features of the aircraft Max speed - mach 2.0

 

Thrust - 90 kN from each of the two Eurojet EJ200 engines

 

Max altitude - Above 55,000 ft

 

Length - 15.96 m

 

Span - 10.95 m

 

Eurofighter Typhoon delivers an enviable level of flexibility and efficiency. Only Eurofighter Typhoon possesses both adequate weapon availability (up to 6 bombs whilst also carrying six missiles, a cannon and a targeting pod) and sufficient processing power to simultaneously support missile in-flight updates and bomb in-flight targeting. True swing-role capability.

  

Aircraft diagram

 

The aircraft is designed to be upgraded and extended to provide decades of effective use. Combining a proven, agile airframe built from stealth materials with the latest sensor, control and weapons systems delivers the optimum combat capability – both beyond visual range (BVR) and in close combat.

 

The weapons systems, navigation technologies and control infrastructure are all designed to be upgraded, to continue to enhance the overall performance of the aircraft.

 

The Airframe

 

Plane Aircraft

 

The aircraft is built with advanced composite materials to deliver a low radar profile and strong airframe. Only 15% of the aircraft’s surface is metal, delivering stealth operation and protection from radar-based systems. Pilots were included in design from the earliest stages to develop a deliberately unstable airframe that can still be flown effectively. This delivers both superior manoeuvrability at subsonic speeds and efficient supersonic capability to support the widest range of combat scenarios.

 

Eurofighter Typhoon specifications

 

Max speed Mach 2.0

 

Thrust 90kN from each of the two Eurojet EJ200 turbojets

 

Length 15.96M

 

Max altitude Above 55,000FT

 

Wingspan 10.95M

 

The Materials

Carbon Fibre Composites

 

Aluminium Lithium

Titanium

Glass Reinforced Plastic

Aluminium Casting

  

Aluminium Titanium

Strong, lightweight composite materials were key to the design of Eurofighter Typhoon to give it deliberate instability. Using them means the weight of the airframe is 30% less than for traditional materials, boosting the range and performance as well as reducing the radar signature.

 

General Materials Carbon Fibre Composites 70%

Metals 15%

Glass Reinforced Plastics (GRP) 12%

Other Materials 3%

 

Production

Ultrasound materials

Eurofighter Typhoon foreplane

  

The innovative production techniques developed for Eurofighter Typhoon have created a whole new industry for the most effective use of advanced composite materials. These provide greater tensile strength and more aerodynamic performance with less weight and more reliability than traditional materials.

 

The Eurojet EJ200 engine

Developing leading-edge engine technology has been a key part of the Eurofighter Typhoon project from the start. Four global companies have jointly developed the high performance EJ200 power plants that each provide 90kN of thrust from a small lightweight engine with high strength and high temperature capability.

 

The two-spool design with single-stage turbines drives the three-stage fan and five-stage HP compressor with annular combustion with vaporising burners. This allows Eurofighter Typhoon to cruise at supersonic speeds without the use of reheat for extended periods. The engines deliver 1,000 flying hours without needing unscheduled maintenance through the use of advanced integrated Health Monitoring for class-leading reliability, maintainability and Through Life Cost.

 

Did you know?

After a 1,400 hour flight simulation, the Eurojet engine produces the same operating performance as a brand new engine.

 

Sensor fusion is key to Eurofighter Typhoon's effective infrared sensor

  

Eurofighter Typhoon is at the forefront of sensor fusion technology and the sensor suite continues to be upgraded to deliver enhanced detection and decision-making. Combining the data from key sensors gives the pilot an autonomous ability to rapidly assess the overall tactical situation and respond efficiently to identified threats.

 

Infrared Search and Track (IRST)

 

The PIRATE infrared sensor provides passive Air-to-Air target detection and tracking performance in the IRST mode for covert tracking and Air-to-Surface operations in the Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) mode.

 

Graphic Radar

 

The Captor-M mechanically scanned radar is a best-in-class radar, offering an extensive suite of modes to meet customers’ operational requirements, as well as providing a very competitive field of regard.

 

Captor-E is the future primary sensor on Eurofighter Typhoon and has a full suite of Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface modes. The capacious front fuselage of the Eurofighter Typhoon allows the installation of Captor-E’s optimised array whose Field of Regard is some 50 per cent wider than traditional fixed plate systems.

 

This wide field of regard offers significant benefits in both Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface engagements and given the large power and aperture available provides the pilot with much enhanced angular coverage compared to fixed plate systems.

 

Air-to-Air Features

 

Air-to-air features

•Search Modes - Range While Search (RWS), Velocity Search (VS) and multiple target Track While Scan (TWS)

•Lock-Follow Modes, which are tailored for long range tracking and short range tracking for use in visual identification or gun attacks

•Air Combat Acquisition Modes allowing a choice of boresight, vertical scan HUD field of view or slaved acquisition

  

Air-to-Surface Features

 

Air-to-surface features

•Search Modes - Ground Map, High Resolution Map, Ground Moving Target Identification and Sea Surface Search and Track While Scan

•Track Modes - Fixed Target Track and Moving Target Track

•Air-to-Surface Ranging

 

Throughout the design of the Eurofighter Typhoon, the needs of the single seat pilot have been paramount. This has meant high levels of attention to the control and information interfaces throughout the unique glass cockpit, from the head-up, head-down and head-out systems to all-round vision. High workload situations were analysed to establish information priorities and automate tasks.

 

The advanced cockpit design and layout is based on an extensive series of formal assessments in a rapid prototype facility, undertaken by operational pilots from air forces flying the Eurofighter Typhoon. Using and upgrading the advanced digital technology not only enhances operation and survivability, but also simplifies aircraft maintenance.

 

Other features such as Direct Voice Input (DVI) and Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS) control functions have been implemented on the Eurofighter Typhoon to drastically reduce the pilot’s workload. Voice + Throttle And Stick (VTAS) enables single pilot operations even in the most demanding Air-to-Air, Air-to-Surface and swing-role missions.

 

Head up Display (HUD)

 

The Eurofighter Typhoon’s wide angle head up display (HUD) provides the pilot with stable, accurate, high integrity, low latency eyes-out guidance in a compact package. The fully digital HUD offers high performance that is compatible with night vision and laser protection goggles.

 

Head down display systems (MHDD)

 

Three full colour multi-function head down displays (MHDD) are used for the overall tactical situation, presenting the attack situation, attack formats, map displays and air traffic procedures, in addition to system status and checklists.

 

Helmet mounted symbology system (HMSS)

 

Eurofighter Typhoon utilises a unique Helmet Mounted Symbology System (HMSS), alongside six other pilot display surfaces. HMSS provides flight reference and weapon data aiming through the visor. It is fully compatible with night vision aids using light intensification and Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imagery. It offers pilots a significant competitive advantage.

 

The helmet is composed of an outer helmet, inner helmet, optics blast/display visor, oxygen mask, night vision enhancement camera and head position tracking system.

 

Navigation sensors

 

Hands on throttle and stick (HOTAS) controls

  

The latest sensor technology supports automated and inherently covert operation down to 100ft. Eurofighter Typhoon’s navigation aids include a global positioning system (GPS) for full digital interface with individual satellite tracking channels and improved anti-jam capabilities. The package also includes an inertial navigation system with GPS. In addition, the navigation system features integrated lateral cueing and vertical commands, ensuring safe manoeuvre with 3D situational awareness.

 

Flight Control

 

The flight control system (FCS) is a full authority and quadruplex digital system which allows carefree handling and manoeuvring in all situations. Its intuitive operation is designed to enable the pilot to concentrate on the tactical tasks and to fly the aircraft 'head-up' in combination with the HOTAS (Hand-on-Throttle-and-Stick) concept applied to cockpit design. Automated Emergency recovery features have also been embodied in the system design to ensure maximum safety of operation.

 

Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS)

 

Eurofighter cockpit MIDS

The Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS)

 

The MIDS high capacity digital information distribution system allows secure exchange of real-time data between a wide variety of users, including all the components of a tactical air force and, where appropriate, land and naval forces.

 

Defensive Aids Sub System (DASS)

 

The DASS suite comprises wingtip Electronic Support Measures and Electronic Counter Measures pods (ESM/ECM), missile warners, chaff and flare dispenser and an optional laser warner.

 

Upgrades in computing power will support continuous protection from future threats, to enhance Eurofighter Typhoon’s survivability and greatly increase overall mission effectiveness.

 

Eurofighter Weapons system

Supporting multiple weapon configurations

  

As well as Short Range Air-to-Air Missiles (SRAAM’s) and the 27mm Mauser Canon the Eurofighter Typhoon carries the latest beyond-visual-range (BVR) Air-to-Air missile technology. Soon the METEOR advanced long-range missile will provide the largest No Escape Zone of any Air-to-Air weapon, resulting in a long stand-off range and high probability of interception to ensure air superiority and pilot survivability. Guidance is provided by an active radar seeker with mid-course updates via data link.

 

The Laser Designator Pod (LDP) enables precise location of targets and guidance of Air-to-Surface weapons.

 

Eurofighter Typhoon has also been upgraded with Paveway IV to provide high levels of operational flexibility. The combat proven dual-mode guidance system, coupled with height of burst and penetrating capability, enable the decision of target engagement to be made right up to the point of release.

  

Eurofighter Typhoon will see the constant integration of new, smart weapons in accordance with the demands of current and future customers.

 

Storm Shadow, Taurus, Small Diametre Bombs, Brimstone, Anti-Shipping Missiles are just some of the upgrades planned.

  

Multiple Weapons

Eurofighter Typhoon can remain on task for long periods of time with large, flexible weapons loads including METEOR, AMRAAM, ASRAAM or IRIS-T

  

Multiple Weapons

Eurofighter Typhoon can carry a vast range of Air-to-Surface weapons, including the new Storm Shadow conventionally armed stand-off missile, the Brimstone anti-armour weapon and future Precision Guided Weapons

 

Life Support Systems

 

Fully equipped pilot

A fully equipped pilot before a flight , The Life Support System & Aircrew Equipment Assembly (AEA) is unique to Eurofighter Typhoon and includes full-cover anti-G trousers (FCAGT), a chest counter-pressure garment (CCPG) and a liquid conditioning garment, as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection.

The helmet incorporates the latest Helmet Mounted Symbology System (HMSS) and optical protection. For pilot comfort and optimum performance capability, Eurofighter Typhoon uses computer controlled anti-G and breathing support technology.

  

Ejection Seat

  

The Mk 16A ejection seat on the Eurofighter Typhoon is 30% lighter than equivalent ejection seats. This is achieved by combining the twin ejection gun outer cylinder tubes as both the propulsion system and the seat’s primary structure. The narrow head box also contributes to Eurofighter Typhoon’s excellent rear vision.

The seat integrates an on-board oxygen generation system (OBOGS) and communication systems. The simplified combined harness allows unassisted strap-in, and the passive leg restraint system avoids the need for the pilot to wear restraining garters. A second generation electronic sequencer is also incorporated. Reliability and maintainability are key elements of the design, with full access to in-cockpit components.

  

Cockpit Access

  

Eurofighter pilot entering cockpit

A pilot entering the Eurofighter Typhoon cockpit Normal access to the cockpit is through either a telescopic integral ladder or an external version. The integral ladder is stowed in the port side of the fuselage below the cockpit.

 

Fuel system - Forward transfer tank

 

Throughout the aircraft flexible couplings connect the fuel pipework built into the three main fuselage sections and wings. These provide a simple method to connect the fuel tanks, which all have fuel-flow proportioners to maintain the centre of gravity alongside relief valves to maintain air and fuel pressures. The intelligent computer-controlled fuel system ensures long-range, flexibility and safety.

   

Laurie Anderson Presents Lou Reed’s Drones With Stewart Hurwood @ Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC on Friday, June 3, 2022

  

For one night only, Grammy award-winning musician and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson presents a drone-based sonic experience as part of the yearlong celebration of Lou Reed’s 80th birthday. Anderson and special guests will perform live throughout the afternoon alongside an installation of guitars from her late husband’s collection that will be curated by Reed’s former guitar technician Stewart Hurwood. Reed’s instruments are arranged with a group of amplifiers to create an enveloping drone of harmonics that shifts as the sound waves and the audience move through the space.

 

About The Performers

 

As A Grammy Award-Winning Musician, Performer, Writer, And Artist, Laurie Anderson Has An International Reputation As An Artist Who Combines The Traditions Of The Avant-Garde With Popular Culture. Anderson’s Theatrical Works Combine A Variety Of Media, Including Performance, Music, Poetry, Sculpture, Opera, Anthropological Investigations, And Linguistic Games, To Elicit Emotional Reactions. As A Visual Artist, Anderson Has Been Shown At The Guggenheim Museum, Soho, And Extensively In Europe, Including The Centre Georges Pompidou In Paris. She Has Also Released Seven Albums For Warner Brothers, Including Big Science, Featuring The Song “O Superman,” Which Rose To No. 2 On The British Pop Charts. She Is Currently Charles Eliot Norton Professor Of Poetry At Harvard University.

 

Guitar Technician Stewart Hurwood Started Experimenting With Sounds And Building Elaborate Guitar Rigs Early In His Life. After Moving From London To New York City, He Took A Position At A Prominent New York Music Studio. Hurwood’s Technical Skills Were Quickly Noticed And He Began To Work In Many New York Venues And Pretty Soon Found Himself On Tour With Duran Duran. It Wasn’t Long After His Return Home, Hurwood Received The Call To Work With Lou Reed. Reed Too Noticed Hurwood’s Skills And Started To Rely More Upon His Sound Judgement. With Studio Work, One-Off Gigs And A Few Tours Under His Belt, Hurwood Finally Won The Trust Of Mr. Reed And Was Elevated To The Position Of Lou Reed’s Right Hand Man. Over Time, And With An Increasing Workload, Their Relationship Went From Strength To Strength. Much Of Their Work Was Musically Diverse And Included Collaborations With The Killers, Renée Fleming And The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, The Strokes, The Gorillaz, Laurie Anderson, Metal Machine Trio, Metallica And Various Benefit Gigs With Pete Townsend, Martha And Rufus Wainwright, Yoko Ono And Sean Lennon, Jimmy Fallon, Hal Willner, And The List Goes On! Hurwood Worked With Lou Reed Until Lou’s Death On October 27, 2013. Hurwood Continues To Carry The Baton For Reed By Promoting “The Drones.” Initially, The Idea Was The Backbone For Mr. Reed’s 1975 Album “Metal Machine Music.” However, The Idea Was Expanded In Preproduction For “The Metal Machine Trio Live Tour.” Hurwood’s Clientele Reads Like A Veritable Who’s Who In Rock And Roll. This Long, Distinguished List Includes: Duran Duran, Lou Reed, The Cult, Coldplay, Scissor Sisters, Steely Dan And Numerous Others. He Continues To Thrive And Is Sought After By Prominent Private And Public Artists Who Have A Desire To Own Unparalleled Musical Rigs And Explore Their Sonic Palette. Stewart Hurwood Currently Resides In New York City.

 

Featuring

 

Acclaimed Composer And Instrumentalist Kaoru Watanabe’s Melodic, Authentic And Engaging Music Focuses On Points Of Connection: The Joints Between Western Jazz And Eastern Traditional, Japanese Theater And Political Action, The Ancient And The All-Too-Contemporary. Born Into A Musical Family, Watanabe Began His Training At A Young Age, Eventually Graduating From The Manhattan School Of Music, Then Devoting A Decade Overseas Performing With And Ultimately Leading The World-Renowned Taiko Drum Performance Group Kodo. His Ten Years In Japan Deeply Influenced Watanabe’s Practice And His Signature Skill Of Infusing Japanese Culture To Disparate Styles Has Made Him A Much In-Demand Collaborator. Watanabe’s Impressive List Of Creative Work Across Different Media Reflects His Ever-Curious Ear And Wandering Eye. He Advised And Contributed To Film Director Wes Anderson’s Oscar-Nominated Score For Isle Of Dogs; Tours Regularly With Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad; Has Supported Numerous Dance Companies And Movement Artists, Including Mikhail Baryshnikov; And Has Composed With And Performed Alongside Jason And Alicia Hall Moran, Eva Yerbabuena, Bando Tamasaburo, Sydney Symphony Orchestra And Zakir Hussain, Among Many Others. As A Composer, Watanabe Writes For Various, Often Unconventional Instrumentation, Utilizing A Wide Variety Of Techniques. Thematically, He Regularly Explores Issues Of Social Justice, History, And Heritage. Watanabe’s Newest Pandemic-Era Creation, Incense, Uses Live-Recorded Sample Loops Of Flute, Drums And Vocals, Providing Him The Technical Means To Perform Ensemble Compositions As A Solo Artist.

  

www.usaraf.army.mil

 

U.S Army Medical Research Unit: Improving malaria diagnosis in Africa, one lab at a time

 

By Rick Scavetta, U.S. Army Africa

 

OYUGIS, Kenya – Inside Rachuonyo district hospital, Simba Mobagi peers through his laboratory’s only microscope at a sick woman’s blood sample.

 

The 33-year-old laboratory technologist’s goal – rapidly identifying malaria parasites.

Dozens more samples await his eyes. Each represents a patient suffering outside on wooden benches.

 

Mogabi takes little time to ponder his workload. He quickly finds malaria parasites, marks his findings on a pink patient record and moves to the next slide. Much to his surprise, a U.S. Army officer arrives, removes his black beret and sets down a large box.

 

Inside Maj. Eric Wagar’s box is a new microscope – a small gesture within U.S. Army Medical Research Unit-Kenya’s larger efforts to improve malaria diagnostics in Africa.

 

For more than 40 years, USAMRU-K – known locally as the Walter Reed Project – has studied diseases in East Africa through a partnership with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

 

Wagar heads USAMRU-K’s Malaria Diagnostics and Control Center of Excellence in Kisumu, a unique establishment begun in 2004 that’s since trained more than 650 laboratory specialist to better their malaria microscopy skills.

 

“Working with the Walter Reed Project is so good for the community, as it benefits the patient,” Mobagi said, who is looking forward to attending the center’s malaria diagnostics course. “Plus, having a new microscope improves our work environment. Work will be easier and we will have better outcomes.”

 

Back in Kisumu, wall maps mark the center’s success, with hundreds of trained lab technicians from more than a dozen countries across the African continent. International students have come from Ireland, the U.S. and Thailand.

Many students are sponsored through U.S. government aid programs aimed at reducing disease in Africa or by nongovernmental organizations. Most of the center’s $450,000 annual budget comes from the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. Other funding is from the U.S. Defense Department, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies.

 

For students to practice malaria identification, five Kenyan lab technicians work tirelessly to create a variety of blood specimens. Slides may show one or more of malaria’s several species – others are free of parasites. The majority of malaria cases are the falciparum species, but many people are co-infected with other species and it’s important for students to recognize that, Wagar said.

 

“At our course, lab students learn skills and habits that increase their ability to accurately detect malaria on blood slides. Yet, when they return to their local laboratories, they face the challenge of changing habits and procedures,” Wagar said. “Changing behavior is hard to do.”

 

In late-April, Wagar accompanied Jew Ochola, 28, the center’s daily operations manager to Oyugis, the district center of Rachuonyo that lies roughly 30 miles south of Kisumu in Kenya’s Nyanza province.

 

“First I do an assessment of the hospital’s lab, what procedures they have, the number of people on staff and the equipment they use,” Ochola said. “By partnering with laboratory managers, we hope to increase standards and improve efficient and effective diagnosis.

 

The goal is to lessen the burden of malaria on the local people.”

 

To mark progress, lab staffs must collect 20 slides each month that show properly handled blood samples. Monthly visits will mark performance improvement.

 

Through quality malaria diagnosis, USAMRU-K is part of a larger public health effort to reduce malaria’s impacts on Kenyan’s lives. Illness means paying for treatment and less wages earned, creating an impact on the economy.

 

“By mitigating a public health burden, people should have more time to grow food and have money for things other than medical care,” Wagar said. “We can’t expect to see change right away, but hopefully things will be a little bit better every month.”

 

Working with the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa and other DoD agencies, the center recently offered microscopy courses through U.S. military partnership events in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. The effort supports U.S. Army Africa’s strategic engagement goal of increasing capabilities and strengthening capacity with the militaries of African nations, Wagar said.

 

“To date, that includes eight Kenyan military lab techs, 17 from the Tanzania People’s Defense Force and 30 Nigerians,” Wagar said.

 

Accurate diagnosis is also a key factor for military readiness, Wagar said. For example, a Kenyan soldier stationed in Nairobi – where malaria is less prevalent – is susceptible to the disease if posted elsewhere in the country.

 

“Improving malaria diagnosis within African military laboratories sets conditions for healthier troops,” Wagar said. “When forces are healthy, they are more capable to support their government and regional security.”

 

To learn more about U.S. Army Africa visit our official website at www.usaraf.army.mil

 

Official Twitter Feed: www.twitter.com/usarmyafrica

 

Official YouTube video channel: www.youtube.com/usarmyafrica

  

NASA Deputy Administrator Dava J. Newman visits the STS-42 mission patch during a tour through Heros Way. Dr. Newman was a Co-Investigator on the Mental Workload and Performance Experiment (MWPE) that flew to space on STS-42 to measure astronaut mental workload and fine motor control in microgravity. (left to right) Mike Kynard, Dr. Danielle Wood, Bobby Watkins, Dr. Dava Newman, & Malcom Wood.

Some Background:

The Space Defense Robot-04-Mk. XIV Destroid Nimrod was an anti-air/heavy artillery mecha, and intended as a replacement for the SDR-04-Mk. XII Phalanx, a Destroid specifically designed for space operations to defend the SDF-1 Macross, along with its sister unit, the cannon-armed ADR-04-Mk. X Destroid Defender.

 

The Phalanx had been developed in a hurry under the pressure of the raging war against the Zentraedi and suffered, as a consequence, from several disadvantages. For instance, its combat operation capability decreased substantially once the missile ordnance (a total of forty-four 430mm caliber missiles, half of them ready to fire and the rest held in reserve in internal magazines) had been exhausted. To counter this, a few models were modified in the field, e.g. with additional light Gatling guns mounted within the head unit, as well as other variations, but most Phalanx’ remained basically bipedal heavy missile launchers. A sub-variant with improved sensors and missile guidance systems, as well as the ability to deploy the new reflex missiles, the Phalanx Mk. XIII, was also built, but only in small numbers, and it could not overcome the flaws of the original design.

 

The Nimrod was the attempt to mend these shortcomings after initial combat experience with the type. The so-called SDR-04-Mk. XIV utilized the proven MBR-04 ambulatory system and shared a common hip and leg structure with a wide range of other Destroids. Like the Phalanx, the Nimrod’s newly designed upper body was a simple core structure that neglected any silliness for a weapon composition consisting of missiles, radar, and propulsion system, all mounted on the main rotating body which could be detached from the lower torso for maintenance of in case of emergency.

The Nimrod filled the same tactical niche as the Phalanx but was a more sophisticated design with improved capabilities and a – though limited – secondary close-range combat capability. The radar and sensor suites for target acquisition as well as missile guidance were improved, so that the Nimrod became even suited for air space surveillance and as a guidance/coordination unit for other Destroids. Due to this additional workload, the Nimrod’s crew was expanded by a WSO to two in a tandem cockpit.

 

The armament remained tailored to medium and long range, but there were some improvements. On the Nimrod, the Phalanx’ bulbous drum-shaped missile magazines gave way to more streamlined 540 mm caliber reflex missile containers, which were carried in staggered clusters of four twin-pods on each shoulder, holding a total of 48 missiles with sixteen of them ready to fire and the rest in reserve. This modification reduced weight and frontal area, and in a case of emergency the missile containers could be jettisoned.

In order to improve the Nimrod’s tactical value after its missiles had been deployed, it was furthermore provided with a secondary close-range combat capability in the form of a pair of particle beam guns. These were integrated into the arms, protected by the missile containers, and these reliable weapons could be effectively used against both air as well as ground targets. Thermal smoke dischargers completed the Nimrod’s defensive measures.

 

Like the Phalanx and other Destroids, the Nimrod was capable of limited space operations due to its vernier thrusters all over the hull. This allowed for units that were stationed on the deck of the SDF-1 to propel themselves back to the battle fortress if they were knocked off.

 

The Nimrod was, like the Phalanx, first deployed on the SDF-1 and was used to augment the ship's own weapon system to protect the vessel from Zentraedi attacks, even though the type came relatively late and was only used in the final phase of the war and only in limited numbers. After the conflict, production was throttled down (only a total of fifty SDR-04-Mk. XIVs were eventually built), and the surviving Nimrods from the SDF-1 were stationed at airbases in New Macross City and in nearby cities, such as Monument City.

  

Specifications:

Designation: SDR-04-Mk XIV

Mecha Class: Destroid

Crew: 2 (Pilot, WSO)

Weight: 21.8 tons (dry)

45.5 tons (loaded)

Height: 12.36 m (hull only, incl. radome)

13,50 m (with raised arms)

Breadth: 9,32 m

Depth: 5.0m

Max. walking speed: 72 kph loaded

 

Armament:

2x weapon clusters in shoulder locations, each with:

- Eight launch tubes for 540mm caliber mid-/long-range missiles (typically with anti-air capacity, artillery

rockets as alternative), with eight missiles ready and another sixteen as reserve (for a total of 48)

- One Mauler PBG-06 liquid-cooled electrically-charged twin particle beam gun

- Three thermal smoke dischargers

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a fictional Macross Destroid, with a highly modified Imai Phalanx kit at its core. It depicts a potential successor for the missile-only-armed Phalanx, but it has been totally made up. Inspiration came when I recently procured a bunch of Kotobukiya’s MSG sets for mecha conversions – one of these sets included the quadruple missile launchers that now make up the Nimrod’s new “arms”. I was torn between using a Defender or a Phalanx as conversion basis, but due to the weapon pods’ bulkiness I went for the more massive Phalanx.

 

Beyond the MSG parts and the replacement of the Phalanx “missile drums”, there was initially no real plan for the conversion – things evolved gradually, depending on the donor parts at hand. However, several fundamental changes were made. The most important improvement measure that works for all Destroid kits with the “04” chassis is the integration of a completely now hip joint arrangement. OOB, the model's posture is pretty stiff, with the legs and feet facing straight forward. The model is just supposed to stand upright, and with the model’s OOB joint options it is really hard to create a vivid poise. Furthermore, the bolts that hold the legs are prone to break off, even more so because the Imai kit is from the 1st generation of mecha kits, without vinyl caps and just relying on a very tight joint fit for hold.

 

My proven solution: the implantation of a new hip “bone” made from plastic-coated steel wire, which is stiff in itself but can be bent in two dimensions. The thighs had to be modified accordingly, since the wire is much thinner than the original bolts. Inside of the pelvis, the W-shaped wire was attached with the help of sprue material and styrene profiles, a thorough fixation is necessary because a lot of load has to be held in place in a very small space.

 

In order to attach the legs to the wire, there’s a convenient trick: the receptor holes in the thighs were simply filled with small vinyl rings, standard material from other mecha kits (e.g. from Arii’s 1:100 VF-1 Battroids or the Gunze Sangyo/Aoshima Dorvack PAs), the rings’ outer AND inner diameter fit perfectly into the new arrangement. With this trick, a much more dynamic and "natural" leg position could be achieved, also thanks to the large feet and their joints of the “04” Destroid chassis. This tuning measure improves the model considerably. The legs were otherwise taken OOB, just some small styrene bits were added to the lower legs’ front sides (improving another small detail flaw of the model), and some openings on the lower legs’ rear side were filled with putty and styrene sheet. Furthermore, the open insides of the “heels” were filled with putty, too.

 

In order to integrate the new missile bins, suitable adapters for the shoulder had to be found. Being somewhat lazy and trying to use as many parts from the Phalanx kit as possible, I decided to integrate a styrene tube all through the upper body, so that I got better attachment points. This tube was extended so far that I could re-use the Phalanx’ blast exhausts from the original missile bins as shoulder joint covers. This looks very natural and these re-dedicated parts fit well over the implanted central styrene tube channel as well as into the channel that runs along the MSG missile containers’ inner side. In order to attach the new arms/containers, a smaller diameter styrene tube was glued into these channels, so that the new pods could be moved vertically.

 

As a weapon improvement over the Phalanx, a pair of particle beam guns was added to the new missile containers – they come originally from a Dorvack PA-36K “Berlon” kit, but they were tailored considerably in order to fit into their new position. They also help to hide the new shoulder joint, which was covered from above with parts from the Phalanx kit (the boxed that are normally attached to the upper legs) and the space between them with paper tissue, drenched with white glue. The result is a good visual transition.

 

The central hull was changed in order to move the look away from the Phalanx base. The rear side uses OOB parts, but these were modified and attached to the hull in a different way, so that the back is not as deep as on the Phalanx. The front received a vertical pair of searchlights (formerly return rollers from a 1:35 tank…), set into the breast plate. The cockpit bulge between the shoulders as well as the head unit are completely new. The cockpit cover is a leftover hull piece from a Kotobukiya helicopter drone, and it was moved forward, so that a crew of two is more plausible. The head unit on the elongated spine behind and above it consists primarily of a donor from a wrecked VT-61 “Tulcas” mecha (Dorvack), plus a small dish antenna for a tracking radar on the right (left over from a Dorvack PA-36K “Berlon” kit) and a round radome for target acquisition – scratched from main wheels of a Matchbox PB2Y and set upon a mount made from styrene profiles. Looks strange, esp. with that flat, square head unit underneath, but I wanted a unique and different look that sets the Nimrod apart from other canonical Destroid designs. And this certainly worked.

 

A final word concerning the Phalanx kit itself: like all other Destroids models, this is basically a simple affair and the model goes together well – but expect some PSR on every seam, and there are some improvements possible that IMHO raise the model’s quality. The lack of vinyl caps makes later movement a tricky affair, though, and it is interesting to see that while the “04” chassis Destroids (Phalanx, Tomahawk and Defender) share the same lower body, all three kits are different! As a positive trait concerning the finish, the Phalanx is also the only kit of this trio that comes with decals for the typical white trim on the lower legs of these Destroids.

  

Painting and markings:

Once more I wanted to stay true to the original look of a typical Macross Destroid from the “04” series. These tend to carry a uniform livery in murky/dull tones of green, brown and ochre: unpretentious "mud movers". Anything else is rare (I am aware of dark blue Phalanx’ on board of the SDF-1), and complex camouflage patterns are AFAIK not seen (probably a tribute to the TV series’ cel production). In consequence, I gave the Nimrod an overall livery in a rather unidentifiable brownish tone, namely RAL 7008 (Khakigrau), a tone that was carried by German WWII Afrikakorps tanks and very similar to the tone IDF vehicles like the Merkava typically carry nowadays. Since I only had this tone in a rattle can available, the model and its components were painted accordingly, with an additional hushed spray over the upper surfaces with a slightly lighter tone as a shading measure. After this basic painting, the parts received a washing with thinned black ink.

 

Decals mostly come from the OOB sheet, plus some extra stencils, including the "nose art" painted on the left leg (from a P-38); many Destroids and also Armored Valkyries seem to bear such markings. Gives the mecha a personal touch, though.

 

Finally, before everything was assembled, the kit received a dry-brushing treatment with light grey and an overall coat with matt acrylic varnish. As a final step, mineral pigments were dusted over the model, esp. around the feet and the lower areas of the mecha.

  

A rather straightforward conversion project that gradually evolved – but with a postive outcome, after some twists and turns. The fictional Destroid Nimrod turned out more believable than expected, thanks to the good donor parts that went into it, and the simple livery also adds to the design’s “realism” within the Macross universe. Even though the thing still looks odd – but not worse than the other canonical Destroids from the original TV series!

[George] A man sits at his desk

One year from retirement,

And he's up for review

Not quite sure what to do

Each passing year

The workload grows

 

[Dallas] I'm always wishing, I'm always wishing too late

For things to go my way

It always ends up the same

(Count your blessings)

I must be missing, I must be missing the point

Your signal fades away and all I'm left with is noise

(Count your blessings on one hand)

 

So wait up, I'm not sleeping alone again tonight

There's so much to dream about, there must be more to my life

 

[George] Poor little tin man still swinging his axe,

Even though his joints are clogged with rust

 

[Wade] My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away

Safe in monotony, (so safe), day after day

(Count your blessings)

My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away

Cold wind blows off the lake, and I know for sure that it's too late

(Count your blessings on one hand)

 

[Dallas] So wait up, I'm not sleeping alone again tonight

There's so much to dream about, there must be more to my life

 

[George] Can't help but feel betrayed, punch the clock every single day

There's no loyalty and no remorse

Youth sold for a pension cheque

And it makes him fucking sick

He's heating up, he can't say no

 

(Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh)[x4]

 

[Dallas] So wait up, I'm not sleeping alone again tonight,

There's so much to dream about, there must be more to my life.

(So wait up)

So wait up I'm not sleeping alone again tonight

Between the light and shallow waves is where I'm going to die

Wait up for me

Wait up for me

Wait up for me

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-470

 

INTERNATIONAL AIR TRAVELERS: CBP Collaborates with Stakeholders to Facilitate the Arrivals Process, but Could Strengthen Reporting of Airport Wait Times

 

Note: MIA North Terminal, also known as Terminal D is shown on the left. DFW is shown on the right.

Another shot taken over the weekend. The workload between editing and school is almost overwhelming, but I can manage. Only two more days and I'm free! .... till summer term starts in two weeks haha. I'm loving what I do though, I get to meet these great, fantastic people that I would've never had the chance to if it wasn't for photography. I'm in love with what I do and that definitely helps during those long hours of staring at the computer meticulously working each photo trying to make what I think looks best. It's definitely a lot of work, but I love looking at the finished product as much as my clients do, if not more so. 50mm f/1.8 with an ND4 filter.

1944 Kodak Red Border Kodachrome Slides purchased from an estate sale in 2014 in Wayne, Illinois. From the collection of Dr. W.W. Sanger.

 

Fort Gibson 907 N Garrison (Route 80A)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Fort Gibson is a historic military site located next to the present day city of Fort Gibson, in Muskogee County Oklahoma. It guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 until 1888. When constructed, the fort lay farther west than any other military post in the United States; it formed part of the north–south chain of forts intended to maintain peace on the frontier of the American West and to protect the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase.

 

The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there. The fort site is now managed by the Oklahoma Historical Society as the Fort Gibson Historical Site. It is a National Historic Landmark.

 

Building the fort

Colonel Matthew Arbuckle commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment (United States) from Fort Smith, Arkansas. He moved some of his troops to establish Cantonment Gibson on 21 April 1824 on the Grand River (Oklahoma) just above its confluence with the Arkansas River. This was part of a series of forts which the United States established to protect its western border and the extensive Louisiana Purchase. The US Army named the fort for Colonel (later General) George Gibson, Commissary General of Subsistence.

 

The post surgeon began taking meteorological observations in 1824, and the fort provided the earliest known weather records in Oklahoma. Colonel Arbuckle also established Fort Towson in southern Indian Territory. In the early years, troops constructed a stockade, barracks, other facilities, and roads. They also settled strife between the indigenous Osage Nation, which had been in the area since the seventeenth century, and the earliest bands of western Cherokee settlers

.

Indian removal

 

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which led to a new mission for Cantonment Gibson. The Army designated the cantonment as Fort Gibson in 1832, reflecting its change from a temporary outpost to a semi-permanent garrison. Soldiers at Fort Gibson increasingly dealt with Indians removed from the eastern states to Indian Territory. These newcomers complained about hostility from the Osage Nation and other Plains Indian tribes indigenous to the region.

 

Montfort Stokes, former governor of North Carolina, convened a commission at Fort Gibson to address these problems, and troops at the fort supported its work. The American author Washington Irving accompanied troops exploring the southern Plains west of Fort Gibson in 1832. This excursion and another journey in 1833 both failed to find any significant nomadic Indian tribes, but Washington Irving wrote A Tour of the Prairies in 1835 from his experiences.

 

General Henry Leavenworth in 1834 led First Dragoon Expedition on a peace mission to the west, finally established contact with the nomadic Indian tribes. The artist George Catlin traveled with the dragoons and made numerous studies.

 

General Leavenworth died during the march, and Colonel Henry Dodge replaced him in command. The expedition finally established contact and negotiated the first treaty with the Indian tribes. Debilitating fevers struck and killed many men on this expedition, posing more of a danger than the Native Americans. A West Point officer assigned to the fort said the men felt that expeditions to the Plains in the 1830s were "a veritable death sentence."

 

During these years, the soldiers at Fort Gibson built roads, provisioned incoming American Indians removed from the eastern states, and worked to maintain peace among antagonistic tribes and factions, including the indigenous Osage Nation and the Cherokee Nation, a people removed from the American South to the Indian Territory.

 

During the Texas Revolution against the weak Mexican government, the Army sent most of the troops stationed at Fort Gibson to the Texas border region. Their absence weakened the military power and pacification capacity at Fort Gibson, but the reduced garrison maintained stability in the region.

 

At the height of Indian removal in the 1830s, the garrison at Fort Gibson ranked as the largest in the nation. Notable American soldiers stationed at (or at least visiting) Fort Gibson include Stephen W. Kearny, Robert E. Lee, and Zachary Taylor. The Army stationed Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederate States of America, and more than 100 other West Point cadets at the fort.

 

The Army also assigned Nathan Boone, son of the famous explorer Daniel Boone, to the post. After leaving Tennessee, Sam Houston owned a trading post in the area; he later moved to Texas.

At a bitterly contentious meeting at Fort Gibson in 1836, the majority faction of the Muscogee (Creek) reluctantly accepted the existing tribal government under the leadership of Chilly McIntosh, son of William McIntosh, and his faction. Colonel Arbuckle tried to prevent intertribal strife within the Cherokee, but Chief John Rossand his followers refused to acknowledge the government that earlier "Old Settlers" had established in Indian Territory. After losing the Seminole Wars against the United States Army in Florida, many of the Seminole arrived in Indian Territory "bitter and dispirited." Officials at Fort Gibson prevented bloodshed and disunity among them.

 

Pacification and first abandonment

 

When Colonel Arbuckle left Fort Gibson in 1841, he reported that despite the arrival of 40,000 eastern Native Americans of decidedly unfriendly disposition, "I have maintained peace on this frontier and at no period have the Whites on our border or the Red people of this frontier been in a more perfect state of quiet and Security than they enjoy now." The removed Native American nations gradually lost their desire for American military protection.

 

Among the traders who operated at Fort Gibson was John Allan Mathews, who was the husband of the half-Osage Sarah Williams, daughter of William S. Williams. In the 1850s, the Cherokee complained about the liquor and brothels at Fort Gibson. They tried to prevent the sale of alcohol to their people, who could not tolerate it physically.

 

The Cherokee ultimately urged Congress to close Fort Gibson, and the War Department heeded their request. On May 7, 1857, Brevet Lt. General Winfield Scott issued General Orders No. 6 to abandon the Fort for the first time. The Cherokee nation received the deed to the property and improvements, and established the village of Kee-too-wah on the site.[4] It became a center of traditionalists and eventually an independently federally recognized tribe of Cherokee.

 

American Civil War

During the American Civil War, Union troops occasionally occupied the post. During the summer of 1862, Union soldiers repulsed a Confederate invasion of Indian Territory. They left the fort and withdrew to Kansas. In April 1863, Colonel William A. Phillips of the Indian Home Guard (Union Indian Brigade) reoccupied Fort Gibson and kept it in Union hands throughout the remainder of the war.

 

The Army briefly renamed the post Fort Blunt in honor of Brigadier General James G. Blunt, commander of the Department of Kansas. The fort dominated the junction between the Arkansas River and Texas Road, but Confederates never attacked the fort, though an attack on the fort's nearby livestock grew to a heavy encounter in the battle of Fort Gibson. Its troops under General Blunt marched southward in July 1863 and won the Battle of Honey Springs, the most important in Indian Territory.

 

In the summer of 1864, a steamboat came up the Arkansas River with a thousand barrels of flour and 15 tons of bacon to resupply Union troops at Fort Gibson. Cherokee Gen. Stand Waite, largely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, didn’t want to sink the boat. He wanted to capture it, along with the food and other supplies on board. The ensuing battle is the only naval battle to have been fought in Oklahoma/Indian Territory History.

 

After the American Civil War, the US Army retained Fort Gibson. American soldiers ultimately established enduring peace with the Indian tribes of the southern Plains only after 1870, but forts farther west increasingly took on the duties of securing that peace. For more than 50 years, Fort Gibson had kept peace in its area.[4] The Army transferred most troops elsewhere in 1871, leaving only a detachment responsible for provisions in a quartermaster depot.

 

Cavalry mission

 

Ft. Gibson in the 1870s.

In 1872 the Tenth Cavalry reoccupied Fort Gibson. Soon after, workers were sent to the area to build the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad from Baxter Springs, the first "cow town," in Kansas, to the Red River crossing at Colbert's Ferry, Indian Territory, along the Texas border. This would improve transportation of cattle and beef to the east as well as shipping of goods from that area to the West. The cavalry from Fort Gibson was used to police the camps of local workers. Soldiers tried to manage threats from outlaws, white encroachment on Indian lands, intra-tribal disputes, and other issues. The size of the garrison varied with the workload.

 

The Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway built track through the area in 1888, and the town of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma began to develop. In the summer of 1890, the Army abandoned Fort Gibson for the last time. Troops occasionally camped at the site when unrest brought them to the town of Fort Gibson, which took the name of the fort. After the military permanently departed, the civilian town expanded into the former military grounds of the fort.

 

Historic site

 

The Works Project Administration of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the 1930s reconstructed some or all buildings at the fort, as part of historic preservation and construction work that the government sponsored during the Great Depression. In 1960 the National Park Service designated Fort Gibson as a National Historic Landmark.. The old fort was located in present Muskogee County, Oklahoma. It is located at Lee and Ash Streets in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

 

The Society operates the site, which includes a reconstruction of the early log fort, original buildings from the 1840s through 1870s, and the Commissary Visitor Center, which has museum exhibits about the history of the fort. The site hosts special living history events and programs.

Fort Gibson National Cemetery lies a few miles away.

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

www.freemoviescinema.com/science-fiction/video/latest/con... Full Feature

See more photos in set.

 

Starring Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti. Directed by Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal gave us the sci-fi landmark Destination Moon in 1950. He then gave us the timeless classic War of the Worlds in '53. This, his third epic, was a grand effort, but fell shy of his earlier triumphs. On paper, it should have been another mega-classic. The team members from the earlier hits were reassembled. Pal as producer, Haskin directing, Lydon on screenplay, O'Hanlon writing. Conquest was also based on a popular book. Yet, despite all this pedigree, something fell short. Conquest would not go on to be remembered as one of the 50s mega-classics. Some of this obscurity may be due to Conquest being in the "serious" science fiction sub-genre, like Destination Moon and Riders to the Stars which tried to depict a plausible space-traveling future. Audiences were becoming much more entranced with saucers and weird aliens.

 

In some ways,Conquest is a remake of the basic story line from Destination Moon -- a crew are the first to land on a celestial body. They struggle to survive and yet courageously return. This time, instead of the moon, it's Mars. As a remake goes, however, it's worthy. The Technicolor is rich and the sets well done. This is an A-level production which at its release was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its day. All the melodrama, however, starts to get in the way of the techno-gee-whiz.

Synopsis

Based aboard a rotating wheel space station, workmen prepare a big flying wing of a rocket ship. A group of potential crewmen train for what they think will be a moon landing mission. As the work nears completion, they find out that the real mission will be a landing on Mars instead. While aboard "The Wheel", we're introduced to the phenomenon of "space sickness" -- a mental breakdown due to workload and confinement for long periods. One of the crew candidates is scrubbed because of one such breakdown. Nonetheless, the multinational crew are chosen and embark for the long journey to Mars. After departure, it's found that General Merritt's old friend, Sergeant Mahoney, stowed away. On the way to Mars, a communications antenna is damaged and must be fixed via spacewalking crewmen. Just as the repairs are completed, the customary meteor arrives, threatening to hit the ship. General Merritt manages to fly the ship out of the way, but one of the crewmen on EVA is hit with micrometeoroids (like bullets) and killed. The General is also starting to show odd behavior, doubting whether their mission is proper or is an affront to God. Their evasive action puts them behind schedule, but they arrive at Mars. While attempting to land on Mars, the General has another bout of delusion and tries to abort the landing. His son, Captain Merritt, manages to take control and brings in the flying-wing lander to a rough but successful landing. The others go out to explore, but the General, now fully delusional, is venting rocket fuel in an attempt to blow up the ship. His son discovers this and the two struggle. The General's pistol discharges, killing him. Mahoney comes on the scene just then and accuses Captain Merritt of murdering the General. The rest explore a bit more, but pronounce Mars a dead planet. Despite this, Imoto discovers that his earth flower seed sprouted in martian soil. Earthquakes cause the escape rocket to shift off of perpendicular. They get it righted and blast off. On the way home, Mahoney and Captain Merritt make up and declare that the dead General was a hero, the man who conquered space. The End.

The color, the sets, models and background paintings are very visually rich. The whole image is a great snapshot of the future as people in the mid-50s imagined it would be. More tidbits in the Notes section below.

There is actually a subtle anti-war tone to the movie. No overt talk of nuclear dangers or menacing enemies. It is notable, however, that among the conspicuously international crew candidates, there is no Russian. Americans would "conquer" space with a few other nationals along for the ride, but NO Russians. There is also a poorly explained urgency to the mission. What's the hurry? Back in the Cold War, it was pretty common that WE had to get something before THEY did.

In 1949, Willy Ley wrote the book "The Conquest of Space," which speculated about how mankind might travel to other planets. This book was illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. This book would become the inspiration for the movie.

 

From 1952 to 1954, Collier's magazine ran a series of stories about mankind conquering space. These were repeats by Ley and Bonestell of their 1949 book, but this time Collier's added material from "rocket scientist" Werner von Braun. Bonestell's new illustrations were clearly the prototype for the look of Conquest. People felt that mankind was on the verge of taking to the stars. The Collier's series expressed that giddy optimism.

The screenplay for Conquest added weak human interest sub-plots which almost negate the gee-whiz optimism that the visuals convey. The screenwriters were all experienced in their craft, so it's puzzling why such amateurish characterizations are so prominent. The comic relief moments are almost cartoonish. The whole leader-gone-mad sub-plot seems out of place.

A possible "message" to Conquest is that man is a fragile creature who may not be ready for the rigors of space travel. Certainly, people wondered about this, and other movies touched on the theme too, such as Riders to the Stars ('54). Our not being mentally ready yet was cited by the aliens in It Came From Outer Space ('53). General Merritt's dementia was foreshadowed in the breakdown of Roy early in the movie.

One thing that strikes the viewer is how much life aboard the space station is presumed to duplicate life aboard a navy ship. It's not overtly stated that the military should (or will) be the agency which "conquers" space, but from the ranks and uniforms and the navy-life scenes, that message comes through. Space ships will be like earthly ships.

On the surface, it seems like Conquest is blasting Christians as dangerous religious fanatics. This notion, that anyone who believes in God simply MUST be wacko, would be much more popular in later decades, but it was uncommon in the 50s. For that reason, the General's dementia deserves a closer look.

Actually, General Merritt was not the stereotypic religious fanatic. His son comments that he had never seen him carrying around and reading the Bible before. Instead of headaches or paralysis, the General's "space sickness" took a paranoid turn. He had rational misgivings about the Mars mission from the start, pre-dementia. His repressed misgivings are expressed in Bible verses dealing with sinners being punished by God. He once quotes from Psalm 38, then later from Psalm 62.

Throughout all this, God is not mocked. Indeed, only the "religious" man had the courage to go outside and give the dead Fodor a proper burial. The other non-relgious crewmen were at a loss for what to do.

The notion of impudent mankind trying to meddle in God's domain, is treated as a credible issue. In this, the pattern of the Tower of Babel is drawn. Prideful mankind thinks they can build their way into God's realm. God foils that plan. General Merritt's dementia seems motivated by a fear that this divine retribution could be coming again.

The writers of Conquest imagine a multinationalism in space. Most notable are two former enemy nations: Imoto is from Japan and Fodor is a German-accented Austrian, (as a stand-in for Germany). Imoto gets to make a little speech about why Japan went to war (lack of resources). Fodor gets to be seen as the cherished son of a classic "mama". By 1955, it was starting to become okay to look beyond World War 2.

At one point, the crew of The Wheel are watching a movie with many scantily clad dancing girls (much like sailors aboard a ship). The movie is a lavish musical number with many gold bikini clad pseudo-harem girls dancing while Rosemary Clooney sings about love "...in the desert sand." This clip is total non-sequetor to the high-tech space environment. What's interesting, is that it's NOT stock footage recycled. Clooney had not done any such movie. This dance number must have been staged and shot just for this scene in Conquest. Random act of musical. Gotta love 'em.

 

Bottom line? Conquest is an almost-epic. It's definitely an A-grade sci-fi movie, so it's well worth watching. The human story part gets in the way sometimes, but the visuals more than make up for it.

 

1944 Kodak Red Border Kodachrome Slides purchased from an estate sale in 2014 in Wayne, Illinois. From the collection of Dr. W.W. Sanger.

 

Fort Gibson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Fort Gibson is a historic military site located next to the present day city of Fort Gibson, in Muskogee County Oklahoma. It guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 until 1888. When constructed, the fort lay farther west than any other military post in the United States; it formed part of the north–south chain of forts intended to maintain peace on the frontier of the American West and to protect the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase.

 

The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there. The fort site is now managed by the Oklahoma Historical Society as the Fort Gibson Historical Site. It is a National Historic Landmark.

 

Building the fort

Colonel Matthew Arbuckle commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment (United States) from Fort Smith, Arkansas. He moved some of his troops to establish Cantonment Gibson on 21 April 1824 on the Grand River (Oklahoma) just above its confluence with the Arkansas River. This was part of a series of forts which the United States established to protect its western border and the extensive Louisiana Purchase. The US Army named the fort for Colonel (later General) George Gibson, Commissary General of Subsistence.

 

The post surgeon began taking meteorological observations in 1824, and the fort provided the earliest known weather records in Oklahoma. Colonel Arbuckle also established Fort Towson in southern Indian Territory. In the early years, troops constructed a stockade, barracks, other facilities, and roads. They also settled strife between the indigenous Osage Nation, which had been in the area since the seventeenth century, and the earliest bands of western Cherokee settlers

.

Indian removal

 

Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which led to a new mission for Cantonment Gibson. The Army designated the cantonment as Fort Gibson in 1832, reflecting its change from a temporary outpost to a semi-permanent garrison. Soldiers at Fort Gibson increasingly dealt with Indians removed from the eastern states to Indian Territory. These newcomers complained about hostility from the Osage Nation and other Plains Indian tribes indigenous to the region.

 

Montfort Stokes, former governor of North Carolina, convened a commission at Fort Gibson to address these problems, and troops at the fort supported its work. The American author Washington Irving accompanied troops exploring the southern Plains west of Fort Gibson in 1832. This excursion and another journey in 1833 both failed to find any significant nomadic Indian tribes, but Washington Irving wrote A Tour of the Prairies in 1835 from his experiences.

 

General Henry Leavenworth in 1834 led First Dragoon Expedition on a peace mission to the west, finally established contact with the nomadic Indian tribes. The artist George Catlin traveled with the dragoons and made numerous studies.

 

General Leavenworth died during the march, and Colonel Henry Dodge replaced him in command. The expedition finally established contact and negotiated the first treaty with the Indian tribes. Debilitating fevers struck and killed many men on this expedition, posing more of a danger than the Native Americans. A West Point officer assigned to the fort said the men felt that expeditions to the Plains in the 1830s were "a veritable death sentence."

 

During these years, the soldiers at Fort Gibson built roads, provisioned incoming American Indians removed from the eastern states, and worked to maintain peace among antagonistic tribes and factions, including the indigenous Osage Nation and the Cherokee Nation, a people removed from the American South to the Indian Territory.

 

During the Texas Revolution against the weak Mexican government, the Army sent most of the troops stationed at Fort Gibson to the Texas border region. Their absence weakened the military power and pacification capacity at Fort Gibson, but the reduced garrison maintained stability in the region.

 

At the height of Indian removal in the 1830s, the garrison at Fort Gibson ranked as the largest in the nation. Notable American soldiers stationed at (or at least visiting) Fort Gibson include Stephen W. Kearny, Robert E. Lee, and Zachary Taylor. The Army stationed Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederate States of America, and more than 100 other West Point cadets at the fort.

 

The Army also assigned Nathan Boone, son of the famous explorer Daniel Boone, to the post. After leaving Tennessee, Sam Houston owned a trading post in the area; he later moved to Texas.

At a bitterly contentious meeting at Fort Gibson in 1836, the majority faction of the Muscogee (Creek) reluctantly accepted the existing tribal government under the leadership of Chilly McIntosh, son of William McIntosh, and his faction. Colonel Arbuckle tried to prevent intertribal strife within the Cherokee, but Chief John Rossand his followers refused to acknowledge the government that earlier "Old Settlers" had established in Indian Territory. After losing the Seminole Wars against the United States Army in Florida, many of the Seminole arrived in Indian Territory "bitter and dispirited." Officials at Fort Gibson prevented bloodshed and disunity among them.

 

Pacification and first abandonment

 

When Colonel Arbuckle left Fort Gibson in 1841, he reported that despite the arrival of 40,000 eastern Native Americans of decidedly unfriendly disposition, "I have maintained peace on this frontier and at no period have the Whites on our border or the Red people of this frontier been in a more perfect state of quiet and Security than they enjoy now." The removed Native American nations gradually lost their desire for American military protection.

 

Among the traders who operated at Fort Gibson was John Allan Mathews, who was the husband of the half-Osage Sarah Williams, daughter of William S. Williams. In the 1850s, the Cherokee complained about the liquor and brothels at Fort Gibson. They tried to prevent the sale of alcohol to their people, who could not tolerate it physically.

 

The Cherokee ultimately urged Congress to close Fort Gibson, and the War Department heeded their request. On May 7, 1857, Brevet Lt. General Winfield Scott issued General Orders No. 6 to abandon the Fort for the first time. The Cherokee nation received the deed to the property and improvements, and established the village of Kee-too-wah on the site.[4] It became a center of traditionalists and eventually an independently federally recognized tribe of Cherokee.

 

American Civil War

During the American Civil War, Union troops occasionally occupied the post. During the summer of 1862, Union soldiers repulsed a Confederate invasion of Indian Territory. They left the fort and withdrew to Kansas. In April 1863, Colonel William A. Phillips of the Indian Home Guard (Union Indian Brigade) reoccupied Fort Gibson and kept it in Union hands throughout the remainder of the war.

 

The Army briefly renamed the post Fort Blunt in honor of Brigadier General James G. Blunt, commander of the Department of Kansas. The fort dominated the junction between the Arkansas River and Texas Road, but Confederates never attacked the fort, though an attack on the fort's nearby livestock grew to a heavy encounter in the battle of Fort Gibson. Its troops under General Blunt marched southward in July 1863 and won the Battle of Honey Springs, the most important in Indian Territory.

 

In the summer of 1864, a steamboat came up the Arkansas River with a thousand barrels of flour and 15 tons of bacon to resupply Union troops at Fort Gibson. Cherokee Gen. Stand Waite, largely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, didn’t want to sink the boat. He wanted to capture it, along with the food and other supplies on board. The ensuing battle is the only naval battle to have been fought in Oklahoma/Indian Territory History.

 

After the American Civil War, the US Army retained Fort Gibson. American soldiers ultimately established enduring peace with the Indian tribes of the southern Plains only after 1870, but forts farther west increasingly took on the duties of securing that peace. For more than 50 years, Fort Gibson had kept peace in its area.[4] The Army transferred most troops elsewhere in 1871, leaving only a detachment responsible for provisions in a quartermaster depot.

 

Cavalry mission

 

Ft. Gibson in the 1870s.

In 1872 the Tenth Cavalry reoccupied Fort Gibson. Soon after, workers were sent to the area to build the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad from Baxter Springs, the first "cow town," in Kansas, to the Red River crossing at Colbert's Ferry, Indian Territory, along the Texas border. This would improve transportation of cattle and beef to the east as well as shipping of goods from that area to the West. The cavalry from Fort Gibson was used to police the camps of local workers. Soldiers tried to manage threats from outlaws, white encroachment on Indian lands, intra-tribal disputes, and other issues. The size of the garrison varied with the workload.

 

The Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway built track through the area in 1888, and the town of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma began to develop. In the summer of 1890, the Army abandoned Fort Gibson for the last time. Troops occasionally camped at the site when unrest brought them to the town of Fort Gibson, which took the name of the fort. After the military permanently departed, the civilian town expanded into the former military grounds of the fort.

 

Historic site

 

The Works Project Administration of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the 1930s reconstructed some or all buildings at the fort, as part of historic preservation and construction work that the government sponsored during the Great Depression. In 1960 the National Park Service designated Fort Gibson as a National Historic Landmark.. The old fort was located in present Muskogee County, Oklahoma. It is located at Lee and Ash Streets in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

 

The Society operates the site, which includes a reconstruction of the early log fort, original buildings from the 1840s through 1870s, and the Commissary Visitor Center, which has museum exhibits about the history of the fort. The site hosts special living history events and programs.

Fort Gibson National Cemetery lies a few miles away.

 

Carnet de campagne d’un candidat para-commando.

 

Nous sommes dans notre huitième semaine de formation !

Pas mal de mes collègues ont abandonné la formation suite à diverses blessures.

Au programme cette semaine : progression tactique et réaction contact ainsi qu’un parcours d’orientation de nuit que nous appelons « Dropping ».

Départ au point de drop (largage) à 20 h et arrivée au bivouac le lendemain à 6 h, je dormirai vite et fort si j’ai de la chance !

Un parcours très technique en orientation et très physique de par son dénivelé dans la région d’Arlon.

Pour ce dropping, nous emportons tout notre matériel comme en opération, ce qui correspond à 30 kilos de charge opérationnelle sur l’homme.

Vers 03 heures du matin, sous la pluie battante, le sac est de plus en plus lourd, je le remonte en permanence sur mes épaules et je pense à mes amis et proches qui, à cette heure dorment au chaud, je me pose plusieurs questions….mais qu’est ce que je fous là ?

Mais rien non je ne plierai pas, je continue à avancer, je veux être Para-Commando !

La formation Para-Commando c’est aussi une formation du caractère où la rusticité, l’adversité, la rigueur, le dépassement de soi en sont les clés.

 

Translation

 

Notebook of campaign of a candidate para - commando.

 

We are in our eighth week of training!

Many of my colleagues have abandoned the training following various injuries.

In the program this week: Progression and tactical response contact and a course orientation night that we call ' dropping '.

Departure to the point of drop ( dropping ) at 20 a.m. and arrived in bivouac on the next day at 6 h, i'll sleep hard and fast if i am lucky!

A journey very technical in orientation and very physics of by his grade separated in the region of arlon.

For this dropping, we have all our equipment as in operation, which corresponds to 30 Kilos of operational workload on the man.

Around 03 hours of the morning, in the rain warrior, the bag is increasingly Heavy, i the dates back permanently on my shoulders and i think of my friends and relatives who, At this hour sleep warm, i ask myself several issues.... But that is what i am doing here?

But nothing i will not bend over, i continue to move forward, i want to be para commando!

The training para commando it is also a character education where the rusticité, adversity , rigour, the exceedance oneself in are the keys.

Epilogue

 

The aim of this book is: to create a serious, monumental work, worthy of its great subject, both in content and appearance. If it were made by an individual, it would be afflicted with the defects that come with the impossibility of mastering a vast material about which an infinite amount has been written and argued. The dark sides could only be avoided if fresh forces were brought in for the various sections, who not only appeared to be ideally suited for them, but who also lived through them for a good part, and in a position that enabled an overview and judgment. In this way, the result could become a memorial book and a work of remembrance at the same time.

 

Of course, there was a danger that it would grow together from a bunch of loosely juxtaposed treatises, while one that complemented the others would have to belong to it. For better or worse, the editor's activity was necessary: he had to bring the particular into harmony with the whole so that, despite fundamentally different forces, it still appeared unified as a real whole. From the same point of view he also took care of the maps and illustrations, although this increased the workload and responsibility and did so with limited time. There was no other way to create something that was well-balanced and well thought out.

 

The editor has had the idea of an important war work in terms of text and features for years; At that time, however, I was only met with pious wishes, shrugging my shoulders or even the opinion that such a thing was impossible in Germany. When he presented the plan to the Schall & Grund publishing house in April last year, to his delight they were inclined to take on the costly risk, but were then held up by things outside their area of expertise, so that production did not begin until January of this year could finally be included. However, the nine months lost could no longer be recovered; The haste in which work now had to be carried out often had a detrimental effect, all the more so as the conditions had become less favorable, especially in the equipment sector with its never-ending difficulties. Especially in the anniversary year, the artists and art institutions in question are very busy, and yet each of the hundreds of illustrations would have to be arranged, executed, checked, transferred to solder or metal, compared and ranked. In addition, the size of the work increased and the number of pages guaranteed by the publisher's bookstore was exceeded.

 

In order not to come too late and have to increase the price of 6 marks, which had also been determined, the publisher felt compelled to publish the actual warlike material first and leave out the more cultural material, but in such a way that this too would soon be available to buyers for a cheap price can be provided. It will contain treatises by: Bishop Dr. Aßmann, Lieutenant Colonel v. Bernhardi, war writer K. Bleibtreu, postal inspector Erbe, senior seminar teacher Frehtag, consistorial councilor Dr. Frommel, General of the Infantry von Kretschmann, Chief Medical Officer 1st Class Dr. Krocker, Professor Dr. C. Meyer, Major General Pirscher, Dr. v. Pflugk-Garttung, Professor L. Pietsch, Chamber Judge G. Wichert, Major General Wille. The addendum will also contain registers and corrections.

 

It should be noted that the majority of the papers published here were written between January and April, meaning that more recent publications could no longer be used.

 

I am grateful to many men who have assisted me with advice and support, especially to His Excellency the General of the Infantry, Mr. Kretschmann, His Excellency the General of the Infantry Mr. v. Holleben, Professor Director A. v. Werner and Professor and court painter C. Frehberg.

 

May this beautiful work, which required such unusual forces to bring about, present to the German people at home and abroad the faithful, diverse and yet unified image of a great past, and be received by them in the pure spirit in which it was created.

 

Berlin, on Sedantage 1895.

 

Addendum

 

In the pursuit of brevity, I did not address in my opening essay the many controversial issues that arose over the outbreak of war. However, to be more precise, I would like to note the following: Bismarck did not seek war in any way, nor did he fear it. The Ems events were brought about exclusively by France. When Gramont made it to the rejection of Benedetti, i.e. H. had pushed it to the point of breaking, only then did Bismarck step in; but then completely, because he had to protect the reputation and honor of his state. His well-known dispatch does not make any changes to the royal telegram before him, it is only cleverly edited for the purpose of writing, actually only shortened. The undoubted fact that they had suffered a diplomatic defeat, that Europe was fearlessly informed of it, increased the sensitivity of the French to red-hot heat. It was Bismarck's duty to assert his rights and wrongs at sea and abroad, to exploit the favorable position that French politics had forced upon him. The brutal clumsiness of this policy, the outbursts and priorities of the Parisians in Germany gave rise to the national backlash in politics, the press and popular sentiment that brought North and South together.

 

The editor. 3234 Sieg Krieg und Sieg 1870-71 Herausgeber Julius von Pflugk-Harttung

 

Nachwort

 

Das Ziel dieses Buches ist: ein ernstes, monumentales Werk zu schaffen, seines großen Gegenstandes würdig, sowohl inhaltlich als äußerlich. Wäre es von einem Einzelnen hergestellt, so würde es mit den Mängeln behaftet sein, welche die Unmöglichkeit der Beherrschung eines gewaltigen Stoffes mit sich bringt, über den unendlich viel geschrieben und gestritten ist. Die Schattenseiten ließen sich nur vermeiden, wenn für die verschiedenen Abschnitte je frische Kräfte eintraten, die nicht bloß hervorragend für sie geeignet erschienen, sondern sie guten Teils mit durchlebt haben, und zwar in einer Stellung, welche Überblick und Urteil ermöglichte. Auf diese Art konnte das Ergebnis ein Gedenkbuch und ein Erinnerungswerk zugleich werden.

 

Freilich drohte die Gefahr, dass es zusammenwüchse aus einem Bündel lose nebeneinander stehender Abhandlungen, während eine, die andere ergänzen, zu ihr gehören müsste. Wohl oder übel war da die Tätigkeit des Herausgebers erforderlich: Er hatte das Besondere in Einklang zum Ganzen zu bringen, damit es trotz grundverschiedener Kräfte doch einheitlich als wirkliches Ganzes erscheine. Aus demselben Gesichtspunkte besorgte er auch das Karten und Illustrationswesen, obwohl die Arbeitslast und Verantwortung sich dadurch steigerte, und das bei beschränkter Zeit. Nicht anders war es möglich, etwas überall Abgewogenes, fest Durchdachtes zu schaffen.

 

Der Herausgeber hat den Gedanken eines in Text und Ausstattung bedeutenden Kriegswerkes bereits seit Jahren gehabt; begegnete damals jedoch nur frommen Wünschen, Achsel zücken oder gar der Ansicht: in Deutschland sei so etwas unmöglich. Als er den Plan im April vorigen Jahres der Verlagsbuchhandlung Schall & Grund vorlegte, zeigte sie sich zu seiner Freude geneigt, das kostspielige Wagnis auf sich zu nehmen, wurde dann jedoch durch außerhalb ihres Bereiches liegende Dinge hingehalten, sodass die Herstellung erst im Januar dieses Jahres endgültig aufgenommen werden konnte. Die verlorenen neun Monate ließen sich aber nicht mehr einholen; die Eile, in der jetzt gearbeitet werden musste, hat vielfach nachteilig gewirkt, um so mehr, als sich inzwischen die Verhältnisse ungünstiger gestaltet hatten, besonders im Ausstattungswesen mit seinen nicht endenden Schwierigkeiten. Gerade im Jubiläumsjahre sind die in Betracht kommenden Künstler und Kunstanstalten stark beschäftigt, und doch müsste jede die Hunderte von Abbildungen angeordnet, ausgeführt, nachgesehen, auf Solz oder Metall übertragen, verglichen und eingereiht werden. Hinzu kam, dass sich der Umfang des Werkes vergrößerte und die von der Verlagsbuchhandlung gewährleistete Seitenzahl überschritten wurde.

 

Um nicht zu spät zu kommen und den ebenfalls festgestellten Preis von 6 Mark notwendig erhöhen zu müssen, sah sich der Verlag genötigt, das eigentlich Kriegerische zunächst herauszugeben und das mehr Kulturelle fortzulassen, jedoch so, dass auch dies den Käufern bald für billiges Entgelt zur Verfügung gestellt werden kann. Es wird Abhandlungen enthalten von: Bischof Dr. Aßmann, Oberstleutnant v. Bernhardi, Kriegsschriftsteller K. Bleibtreu, Postinspektor Erbe, Seminaroberlehrer Frehtag, Konsistorialrat Dr. Frommel, General der Infanterie von Kretschmann, Oberstabsarzt I. Klasse Dr. Krocker, Professor Dr. C. Meyer, Generalmajor Pirscher, Dr. v. Pflugk-Garttung, Professor L. Pietsch, Kammergerichtsrat G. Wichert, Generalmajor Wille. Der Nachtrag wird zugleich mit Registern und Berichtigungen versehen sein.

 

Zu beachten ist, dass die Mehrzahl der hier veröffentlichten Abhandlungen bereits in der Zeit vom Januar bis April geschrieben wurde, dass also neuere Veröffentlichungen nicht mehr benutzt werden konnten.

 

Vielen Männern weiß ich Dank, welche mir mit Rat und That zur Seite gestanden haben, im besonderen Seiner Exzellenz dem Generale der Infanterie Herrn v. Kretschmann, Seiner Exzellenz dem Generale der Infanterie Herrn v. Holleben, Herrn Professor Direktor A. v. Werner und Herrn Professor und Hofmaler C. Frehberg.

 

Möge dieses schöne Werk, für dessen Zustandekommen sich so ungewöhnliche Kräfte bereinigt haben, dem deutschen Volke des In und Auslandes das treue, vielgestaltige und doch einheitliche Bild einer großen Vergangenheit vergegenwärtigen, und von ihm in der reinen Gesinnung aufgenommen werden, in der es entstanden ist.

 

Berlin, am Sedantage 1895. Der Herausgeber.

 

Nachtrag

 

In dem Streben nach Kürze bin ich in meiner Anfangs-Abhandlung nicht auf die vielen Streitfragen eingegangen, welche gerade über den Ausbruch des Krieges entstanden sind. Um jedoch Messgerät zu beugen, bemerke ich hier noch Folgendes: Bismarck suchte den Krieg in keiner Weise, fürchtete ihn nicht. Die Emser Vorgänge wurden ausschließlich durch Frankreich bewirkt. Als Gramont es bis zur Abweisung Benedetti's, d. h. also bis zum Brüche getrieben hatte, erst da trat Bismarck ein; dann aber ganz, denn er hatte Ansehen und Ehre seines Staates zu wahren. Seine bekannte Depesche e keine Veränderungen des ihm vorliegenden königlichen Telegramme, sie ist nur geschickt für die redigiert, eigentlich nur verkürzt. Die unzweifelhafte Tatsache, dass sie eine diplomatische Niederlage hätten, die, dass Europa davon furchtlos unterrichtet wurde, steigerte die Empfindlichkeit und der Franzosen zur Glühhitze. Es war Bismarcks Pflicht, sein Recht und das Unrecht des See und Ausland zur Geltung zu bringen, die günstige Stellung, die ihm die französische Politik aufgedrängt hatte, auszunutzen. Die brutale Täppigkeit dieser Politik, die Ausbrüche und Prioritäten der Pariser in Deutschland jenen nationalen Gegenschlag in Politik, Presse und Volksstimmung hervor, der Turmessgange Nord und Süd zusammenführte.

  

Autor/in: Pflugk-Harttung, Julius von (Hg.)

Titel: Krieg und Sieg 1870-71. Ein Gedenkbuch.

Gewicht: 1550 g

Verlag: Berlin: Schall & Grund

Erschienen: 1895.

Sprache: Deutsch

 

Epilog

 

Cilj je ove knjige: stvoriti ozbiljno, monumentalno djelo, sadržajem i izgledom dostojno svoje velike teme. Da ga je izradio pojedinac, bio bi pogođen nedostacima koji dolaze s nemogućnošću svladavanja ogromnog materijala o kojem je beskonačno puno napisano i raspravljano. Mračne strane mogle bi se izbjeći samo ako bi se za različite dionice dovele svježe snage, koje ne samo da su im se činile idealne, nego su ih dobrim dijelom i proživjele, i to na poziciji koja je omogućavala pregled i prosudbu. . Na taj bi način rezultat mogao postati spomen knjiga i djelo sjećanja u isto vrijeme.

 

Naravno, postojala je opasnost da će izrasti iz hrpe labavo postavljenih traktata, dok će mu jedan koji nadopunjuje ostale morati pripadati. U dobru i zlu, urednikova je aktivnost bila nužna: morao je pojedinačno uskladiti s cjelinom kako bi ono, unatoč bitno različitim silama, ipak izgledalo jedinstveno kao stvarna cjelina. S istog gledišta također se brinuo o kartama i ilustracijama, iako je to povećalo opterećenje i odgovornost i to uz ograničeno vrijeme. Nije bilo drugog načina da se stvori nešto što je dobro uravnoteženo i promišljeno.

 

Urednik je godinama imao ideju o tekstualno i tematski važnom ratnom djelu; Tada sam se, međutim, susretao samo s pobožnim željama, slijeganjem ramenima ili čak s mišljenjem da je tako nešto u Njemačkoj nemoguće. Kada je u travnju prošle godine predstavio plan izdavačkoj kući Schall & Grund, na njegovo oduševljenje bili su skloni preuzeti skupi rizik, ali su ih tada zaustavile stvari izvan njihovog područja stručnosti, tako da produkcija nije započeti do siječnja ove godine konačno bi se moglo uključiti. Međutim, devet izgubljenih mjeseci više se nije moglo nadoknaditi; Žurba u kojoj se sada moralo izvoditi radove često je imala štetan učinak, tim više što su uvjeti postali nepovoljniji, posebno u sektoru opreme s njegovim neprestanim poteškoćama. Osobito u obljetničkoj godini, umjetnici i umjetničke institucije o kojima je riječ, vrlo su zaposleni, a ipak bi svaku od stotine ilustracija trebalo posložiti, izvesti, provjeriti, prenijeti na lem ili metal, usporediti i rangirati. Osim toga, povećala se veličina djela i premašio je broj stranica zajamčen u knjižari nakladnika.

 

Da ne bi zakasnili i morali povisiti cijenu od 6 maraka, koja je također bila određena, nakladnik se osjećao ponukanim prvo objaviti stvarni ratni materijal, a izostaviti kulturniji, ali tako da i ovaj uskoro će biti dostupan kupcima po povoljnoj cijeni. Sadržat će rasprave: biskupa Dr. Aßmann, potpukovnik v. Bernhardi, ratni pisac K. Bleibtreu, poštanski inspektor Erbe, viši seminarski učitelj Frehtag, konzistorijalni savjetnik Dr. Frommel, general pješaštva von Kretschmann, glavni sanitetski časnik 1. klase Dr. Krocker, profesor dr. C. Meyer, general bojnik Pirscher, Dr. v. Pflugk-Garttung, profesor L. Pietsch, sudac vijeća G. Wichert, general bojnik Wille. Dodatak će također sadržavati registre i ispravke.

 

Treba napomenuti da je većina ovdje objavljenih radova napisana između siječnja i travnja, što znači da se novije publikacije više nisu mogle koristiti.

 

Zahvalan sam mnogim ljudima koji su mi pomogli savjetima i podrškom, a posebno Njegovoj Preuzvišenosti generalu pješaštva gosp. Kretschmann, njegova preuzvišenost general pješaštva g. v. Holleben, profesor ravnatelj A. v. Werner te profesor i dvorski slikar C. Frehberg.

 

Neka ovo prekrasno djelo, za čije su ostvarenje bile potrebne tako neobične sile, njemačkom narodu u zemlji i inozemstvu predstavi vjernu, raznoliku, a ipak jedinstvenu sliku velike prošlosti, i neka ga oni prime u čistom duhu u kojem je stvoreno .

 

Berlin, na Sedantage 1895. Urednik.

Dodatak

 

U potrazi za sažetošću, u svom uvodnom eseju nisam se bavio mnogim kontroverznim pitanjima koja su se pojavila nakon izbijanja rata. No, da budem precizniji, želio bih primijetiti sljedeće: Bismarck nije ni na koji način tražio rat, niti ga se bojao. Događaje u Emsu donijela je isključivo Francuska. Kada je Gramont uspio odbiti Benedettija, tj. H. gurnuo ga do točke sloma, tek je tada uskočio Bismarck; ali onda posve, jer je morao štititi ugled i čast svoje države. Njegova poznata depeša ne unosi nikakve izmjene u kraljevski telegram prije njega, samo je vješto uređen za potrebe pisanja, zapravo samo skraćen. Nedvojbena činjenica da su pretrpjeli diplomatski poraz, da je Europa o tome neustrašivo obaviještena, povećala je osjetljivost Francuza na užarenu vrelinu. Bismarckova je dužnost bila potvrditi svoja prava i zla na moru iu inozemstvu, iskoristiti povoljan položaj koji mu je francuska politika nametnula. Brutalna nespretnost ove politike, ispadi i prioriteti Parižana u Njemačkoj doveli su do nacionalne reakcije u politici, tisku i popularnom sentimentu koji je spojio Sjever i Jug.

Julius Albert Georg Harttung, ab 1876 von Pflugk-Harttung, preußische Adelsanerkennung 1893 (* 8. November 1848 in Wernikow bei Wittstock/Dosse; † 5. November 1919 in Berlin) war ein deutscher Urkundenforscher; Historiker und Archivar.

 

XI, 690 S. plus 1 Bl. Beilage. Originalleinen.

Einband berieben und bestossen, papierbedingt gebräunt. - J. v. Pflugk-Harttung, Der Ursprung des Krieges -- A. v. Boguslawski, Die Heere und Kriegsmittel -- A. Pfister, Der Aufmarsch, Weißenburg, Wörth -- H. v. Kretschman, Von Spicheren bis Vionville -- Freiherr von der Goltz-Pascha, St. Private-la-Montagne und Metz -- M. Exner, Die Maasarmee und Sedan -- A. v. Holleben, Die Einschließung von Paris -- W. Bigge, Der Feldzug der ersten Armee im Norden Frankreichs -- A. v. Heinleth, K. Endres, Orleans -- H. v. Kretschman, Von Vendôme bis Le Mans -- F. Oberhoffer, Straßburg, Belfort, Pontarlier -- G. Cardinal v. Widdern, Der kleine Krieg im Rücken der deutschen Heere -- A. Stenzel, Flotte und Küste -- Th. Flathe, Die politischen Ereignisse -- A. v. Werner, Versailles und die Hauptquartiere -- J. v. Pflugk-Harttung, Die Heimkehr.

My garden has gotten 5.8 inches of much needed rain in the last four days, and now the forecast again is for sun for the foreseeable future, so soon on my permitted three days a week I'll be out trying to keep it alive by being out with my hose and mosquito repellant between 8 pm and 5 am.

-----------------------------------------

Please, no notes and no photos in comments. Thanks.

 

Because of the intermittent storms the last four days, I've had to shut down the computer frequently, so now I must redouble my efforts to make a dent in my workload. I probably won't be visiting you much, alas.

 

© All rights reserved. No usage allowed in any form without the written consent of Mim Eisenberg.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-470

 

INTERNATIONAL AIR TRAVELERS: CBP Collaborates with Stakeholders to Facilitate the Arrivals Process, but Could Strengthen Reporting of Airport Wait Times

40 hours later, The Forge is finally finished! So, what is The Forge? The Forge is a mobile asteroid mining and processing facility. It uses six tugs to collect asteroids and bring them to one of the six mining platforms near the front of the ship. The asteroids are then put through grinding drums that break them into smaller pieces. Next, any desired ore, minerals, etc. are removed from the fragments and the waste is jettisoned from the ship. The ore, minerals, etc. are sorted into seperate containers. Eight huge reinforced plates protect the shipping containers from rogue asteroids and open to allow a transport to collect them.

 

The two bridges share the workload of the ship. The rear bridge is in charge of piloting, navigation and shipping. The forward bridge handles the mining and processing operations.

 

Alright, time for some tech specs!

 

The forge measures in at a whopping 156 studs in length (The biggest SHIP I've ever built). She's 62 studs at the widest (26 at the thinnest) and 38 studs tall. I did have two big landing gears built into it but it got WAY too heavy for them, thus the stand. It also has motor-driven grinding drums in the mining platforms and the big grey button in the middle of the ship opens and closes the armored plates. The plates where also supposed to be motor-driven but I could get them working for the life of me. Oh well!

 

I hope you all enjoyed watching this beast going together as I had building it (even if I did shout some horrific profanities from time to time)! Thanks for watching and for all the support!

Chassis n° 2071GT

Engine n° 2071GT

 

Bonhams : the Zoute Sale

Estimated : € 1.200.000 - 1.600.000

 

Zoute Grand Prix 2019

Knokke - Zoute

België - Belgium

October 2019

 

By the early 1960s, road car production had ceased to be a sideline for Ferrari and was seen as vitally important to the company's future stability. Thus the 250, Ferrari's first volume-produced model, can be seen as critically important, though production of the first of the line - the 250 Europa, built from 1953 to '54 - amounted to fewer than 20. Before the advent of the Europa, Ferrari had built road-going coupés and convertibles in small numbers, usually to special customer order using a sports-racing chassis as the basis. Ghia and Vignale of Turin and Touring of Milan were responsible for bodying many of these but there was no attempt at standardisation for series production and no two cars were alike.

 

The introduction of the 250 Europa heralded a significant change in Ferrari's preferred coachbuilder; whereas previously Vignale had been the most popular carrozzeria among Maranello's customers, from now on Pinin Farina (later 'Pininfarina') would be Ferrari's number one choice, bodying no fewer than 48 out of the 53 Europa/Europa GTs built. Pinin Farina's experiments eventually crystallised in a new Ferrari 250 GT road car that was first displayed publicly at the Geneva Salon in March 1956. However, the Torinese Carrozzeria was not yet in a position to cope with the increased workload, resulting in production being entrusted to Carrozzeria Boano after Pinin Farina had completed a handful of prototypes.

 

The 250 GT featured the lighter and more compact Colombo-designed 3.0-litre V12 in place of its predecessor's bulkier Lampredi unit. Power output of the single-overhead-camshaft all-aluminium engine was 220bhp at 7,000rpm. Shorter in the wheelbase (by 200mm) than that of the Europa, the 250 GT chassis followed Ferrari's established practice, being a multi-tubular frame tied together by oval main tubes, though the independent front suspension now employed coil springs instead of the previous transverse leaf type. A four-speed all-synchromesh gearbox transmitted power to the live rear axle, while braking was looked after by hydraulic drums all round.

 

True series production began with the arrival of Pininfarina's 'notch back' Coupé on the 250 GT chassis, some 353 of which were built between 1958 and 1960 within the sequence '0841' to '2081'. However, the relatively small scale of production meant that cars could still be ordered with subtle variations according to customer choice, as well as enabling a handful of show cars and 'specials' to be constructed on the 250 GT chassis.

 

A number of prominent European coachbuilders offered a variety of body styles on the 250 GT chassis, with Scaglietti and Pininfarina producing elegant open-top spyder and cabriolet models. Exhibited at the 1957 Geneva Salon, the latter's first 250 GT Cabriolet, which, unusually, featured a Vintage-style cut-down driver's door, was snapped up by Ferrari works driver Peter Collins, who later had the car converted to disc brakes. After a handful of alternative versions had been built, series production began in July 1957, around 40 Series I Pininfarina Cabriolets being completed before the introduction of the Series II in 1959. Effectively an open-top version of the Pininfarina-built 250 GT Coupé, whose chassis and mechanicals it shared, the Cabriolet was built alongside its closed cousin until 1962. Overall design followed that of the Coupé, with short nose and long rear overhang, while a more-vertical windscreen provided greater headroom in the generously sized cockpit. As well as the aforementioned improvements to brakes and transmission, the Series II cars benefited from the latest, 240bhp V12 with outside sparkplugs, coil valve springs, and 12-port cylinder heads. The 250 GT was the most successful Ferrari of its time, production of all types exceeding 900 units, of which 200 were Series II Cabriolets like that offered here.

 

A number of important developments occurred during 250 GT production: the original 128C 3.0-litre engine being superseded by the twin-distributor 128D, which in turn was supplanted in 1960 by the outside-plug 128F engine which did away with its predecessor's Siamesed inlets in favour of six separate ports. On the chassis side, four-wheel disc brakes arrived late in 1959 and a four-speeds-plus-overdrive gearbox the following year, the former at last providing the 250 GT with stopping power to match its speed. More refined and practical than any previous road-going Ferrari, yet retaining the sporting heritage of its predecessors, the 250 GT is a landmark model of immense historical significance. Despite this, original survivors are relatively few, as many have been modified and converted into replicas of more exotic Ferraris such as the 250 GTO, Testarossa, etc.

 

According to the accompanying Massini Report, chassis number '2071' is the 66th of the 200 units built, and as a Series II car has the added advantage of disc brakes all round. Originally finished in the handsome combination of Grigio Argento with Nero interior, the Ferrari was sold new in 1960 via Jacques Swaters' Garage Francorchamps, the official Ferrari importer for Belgium, to its first owner, Jean Blaton. A wealthy Belgian industrialist, Ferrari aficionado and gentleman racing driver, who raced under the name 'Beurlys', Jean Blaton had an excellent taste and was a personal friend of Jacques Swaters, from whom he bought numerous Ferraris over the years.

 

Blaton is best remembered for his daring exploits in the Le Mans 24-Hour Race in which he drove a succession of Ferraris over a 10-year period between 1958 and 1967, finishing on the podium on nearly every outing. On many occasions he drove his own Ferraris, including a 250 GT MM, 250 GT Testarossa, 250 GT LWB Tour de France, 250 GT SWB, 250 GTO, 250 LM, and 330 P3/P4. He secured his best result at Le Mans in 1963 when he finished 2nd overall with co-driver Langlois van Ophen at the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GTO, winning the GT Class for Swaters' racing team, Écurie Francorchamps.

 

Jean Blaton was also a friend of Enzo Ferrari, who was only too happy to accommodate his highly regarded customer's special requests. In the case of his 250 GT Cabriolet, Blaton specified that the car should have large side vents in the front wings, similar to those of the Series III 410 Superamerica, which were incorporated by Pinin Farina on Mr Ferrari's instruction. These vents not only make the car appear more sporting, they also serve to break up its lengthy flanks to good effect. Blaton's car, with its special features, was prominently displayed in Ferrari's 1960 yearbook.

 

In 1964, Blaton sold '2071' to Luigi Chinetti, another gentleman racing driver and sole importer of Ferraris into the USA. The car was then sold to a Mr Gilbertson from Vista, California. Following Mr Gilbertson's death, the Ferrari was acquired from his widow in 1978 by Mr Ken Gerber of San Diego, California, who kept it for the next 32 years. A member of the Ferrari Owners' Club, Mr Gerber enjoyed the car throughout the 1980s, attending various events.

 

During Mr Gerber's ownership (in 1992-1994) a fastidious restoration was carried out, the precision machining work on the engine and mechanical systems being entrusted to recognised specialist Bob Wallace of Phoenix, Arizona. Original parts were retained wherever possible and the few that were not saveable were either replaced with originals or perfect reproductions. The car was refinished in Rosso Rubino and completed in time for the 1994 International Ferrari Concours in Monterey.

 

Ken Gerber sold the Ferrari in 2010 and the following year the car moved to the UK having been bought by DK Engineering. The car was sold to Belgium in 2012, since when it has belonged to the current lady owner. Carrying the very suitable registration, '250 – GTS', the car has been enjoyed by its owner on numerous occasions and at prestigious events including the Zoute Rally. Now presented in excellent condition after recent cosmetic re-commissioning, it affords the prospect of comfortable open-top cruising in unparalleled style. Possessing links to Belgian and excellent provenance, this unique Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet is worthy of the closest inspection.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

Le HSBC PARIS SEVENS (8 au 10 juin 2018 au Stade Jean-Bouin) a officiellement été lancé aujourd’hui à Paris à la Région Île-de-France.

A cette occasion les 16 capitaines hommes et 12 capitaines femmes des équipes participantes au tournoi ont pris la pose autour du trophée de la compétition dans les jardins du Musée Rodin, Paris (Crédit Photo : I.PICAREL/FFR). Ils ont ensuite rejoint les locaux de la Région Île-de-France, partenaire de cette étape parisienne, situés dans le 7ème arrondissement.

Le HSBC Paris Sevens

Ultime étape du circuit mondial de rugby à 7, le HSBC Paris Sevens se déroulera au stade Jean-Bouin à Paris, du vendredi 8 au dimanche 10 juin 2018. Tournoi mixte pour la première fois de son histoire, le HSBC Paris Sevens 2018 accueille les meilleures équipes masculines et féminines du monde.

Avec 79 matches entre 28 équipes en 3 jours, le spectacle sera non-stop sur la pelouse du Stade Jean-Bouin. Dernier tournoi de la saison, les titres des circuits mondiaux masculin et féminin se joueront donc au HSBC Paris Sevens. Les tribunes et le Village des Supporteurs seront également en ébullition pendant 3 jours, avec de nombreuses animations « CRAZY RUGBY » qui seront proposées à tous les spectateurs !

Le programme :

• Vendredi 8 juin de 14h à 21h40 > tournoi Féminin (ouverture des portes au public à 13h30)

• Samedi 9 juin de 9h à 23h > tournoi mixte (ouverture des portes au public à 8h30)

• Dimanche 10 juin de 8h45 à 19h40 > phases finales féminines et masculines (ouverture des portes au public à 8h15)

Le World Rugby Sevens Series 2017-2018 est la 19e édition de la compétition la plus importante du monde de rugby à sept. Elle se déroule du 1er décembre 2017 au 10 juin 2018. L'Afrique du Sud est tenante du titre et l'Espagne est l'équipe promue de la saison.

Au mois d'avril se déroulent les Jeux du Commonwealth 2018 où dix équipes des World Rugby Sevens Series participent. La compétition enchaine ensuite avec la Coupe du monde de rugby à sept en juillet 2018.

Chaque étape est un tournoi se déroulant sur deux ou trois jours, entre le vendredi et le dimanche. À chaque étape est convié une équipe qui ne possède pas le statut d'équipe permanente, portant le nombre total d'équipes à seize.

En fonction du résultat du tournoi précédent, ou du classement de la saison passée pour le premier tournoi de la saison à Dubaï, les équipes sont réparties en chapeaux avant tirage au sort pour former quatre poules de quatre équipes. Chaque équipe joue les trois autres membres de sa poule et un classement est établi, tout d'abord sur le nombre de points (victoire 3 points, nul 2 points, défaite 1 point) puis sur le goal-average général. Les deux premiers de chaque poule passent en quart de finale de la Cup ou tournoi principal et les deux derniers passent en quart de finale du Challenge Trophy. Les équipes vaincues en quart de finale sont alors reversées en demi-finales de classement, respectivement pour la cinquième et treizième place. Les équipes battues en demi-finales ne disputent pas de petite finale de classement et remportent le même nombre de point, sauf pour les équipes battues en demi finales de Cup qui disputeront un dernier match de classement pour la troisième place.

Chaque rencontre, y compris la finale depuis l'édition 2016-2017, se dispute en deux fois sept minutes.

Créée en 2016, l’étape parisienne de rugby à 7 rassemble, de ce vendredi à dimanche, les meilleures nations mondiales pour décider du vainqueur du circuit mondial. Une belle vitrine pour la discipline dans un pays qui ne jure que par le XV.

Dixième étape de la saison, le Paris Sevens clôture ce week-end le circuit mondial de rugby à 7, réunissant les 16 meilleures nations du monde aux quatre coins de la planète. De vendredi à dimanche, dans l’enceinte du Stade Jean Bouin, les équipes masculines feront le spectacle à travers une discipline méconnue en France mais très appréciée dans de nombreux pays. Et, pour la première fois cette année, les équipes féminines ouvriront les festivités.

Une véritable fête du rugby à 7, discipline olympique depuis 2016 et en plein boom grâce à la vitrine que lui ont offert offert les Jeux de Rio. Chez les hommes, outre les nations majeures de l’Ovale comme la Nouvelle-Zélande, l’Australie, l’Angleterre ou les Fidji, le Kenya, le Canada ou encore l’Espagne font leur trou et voient dans cette discipline une chance de développer un sport mineur dans leur pays. Chez les femmes, la Chine, le Japon ou la Russie figurent dans le top 12.

Le crazy rugby à la fête

Créée en 2016, l’étape parisienne est également l’occasion pour la France de développer la discipline dans un pays qui ne jure que par le XV. «Nous sommes fiers de soutenir financièrement ce tournoi et de permettre qu’il existe», a tenu à rappeler le vice-président de la région Île-de-France, Patrick Karam. Et de poursuivre. «La région est également présente dans la sensibilisation. Vendredi, 360 lycéens pourront découvrir la discipline grâce à de nombreuses animations. Il est important pour nous de tout faire pour développer cette pratique, en vue de Paris 2024», a-t-il poursuivi, alors que la conférence de presse de présentation se tenait dans les locaux de la région, dans le 7e arrondissement parisien.

Dernière étape de la saison, le tournoi parisien représente en tout cas une belle vitrine pour la discipline, dans une ville au rayonnement mondial. «C’est formidable de pouvoir clôturer la saison dans une ville aussi magnifique, chez un hôte comme la France», ajoute de son côté Douglas Langley, directeur du tournoi et membre de World Rugby. «Nous nous réjouissons d’avance de ce week-end de ‘crazy rugby’», conclut-il. Et c’est bien là l’atout majeur de la discipline. Spectaculaire, chaque rencontre offre de nombreux essais et des sprints permanents.

Les Bleues veulent briller

Le public parisien, qui vient en nombre à chaque édition, est adepte de cette discipline. Le Stade Jean Bouin était plein en 2016 et 2017, et l’édition 2018, même s’il reste encore des places à vendre, ne dérogera certainement pas à la règle. Pourtant, ce ne sont pas les résultats des Bleus qui font venir les supporters. Malgré une 3e place en 2016, et une 5e en 2017, l’équipe masculine connaît une saison compliquée. 12e sur 16 au classement, les Bleus n’ont pas fait mieux que 7e cette année lors des neuf précédents tournois du circuit.

«Même si nos chances sont moindres, on rentre dans ce tournoi pour le gagner, et on a la chance d’avoir le soutien du public avec nous», déclare Manoël Dall’igna, capitaine de France 7. «Ces deux dernières années on a eu des supers résultats ici et on compte sur le 8e homme pour faire aussi bien», termine-t-il. Cette période de creux, due en partie à de nombreux départs en retraite en 2016, ne touche pas les féminines. 3e du circuit mondial, les coéquipières de Fanny Horta visent le podium à Paris. «On a reçu beaucoup de messages de soutien de la jeune génération, et on veut vraiment profiter de ce soutien pour garder la dynamique de la saison et faire un nouveau podium», confie la capitaine.

Mises en valeur ce week-end, les Bleues représentent «la véritable locomotive du 7 en France avec une très belle réussite sportive», estime Christophe Reigt, manager des équipes de France à 7. Suffisant pour développer la discipline en France ? Quoiqu’il en soit, avec cette étape parisienne, la Fédération se démène pour populariser le 7 dans l’Hexagone, avec un objectif majeur en ligne de mire : les Jeux olympiques de Paris en 2024.

The HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2018 Awards in Paris brought a fitting end to an enthralling season which saw South Africa and Australia crowned men’s and women’s series champions respectively.

It’s been one of the most competitive seasons on record as both the women’s and men’s series were decided by just two-point differences.

South Africa fought an incredible battle with Fiji in the men’s series to retain their title with victory at the final round in Paris, while Olympic champions Australia won their second overall title ahead of rivals New Zealand on the women’s series after reaching the podium at every one of the five rounds.

The end of season awards provided a chance to celebrate the men’s and women’s sevens players, coaches and teams that are the stars, ambassadors and role models of the sport.

World Rugby Chairman Bill Beaumont said: “It has been another tremendous year for the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, which continues to go from strength to strength.

“I hugely admire the skill and physicality of rugby sevens and thank the players for their outstanding commitment which makes the series such a success. It is great to see the series capturing the imagination on and off the field with year-on-year increases in attendances, broadcast and fan-engagement figures, and that is a great testament to the players, coaches, host unions and everyone involved with the events.

“Rugby sevens took a quantum leap when it joined the Olympic programme in 2016 and now we look forward to a Rugby World Cup Sevens in San Francisco in just 40 days time in an iconic city and a market with great potential. It promises to be a thrilling and spectacular event.”

the workload. It is a blessing for me to be standing here.”

Rookies of the Year

Eroni Sau is the second Fijian to be named Rookie of the Year for the men’s series after being a clear winner in the fan vote ahead of his compatriot Alosio Naduva and Australia’s Ben O’Donnell. The 28-year-old featured in all 10 rounds in his debut season, using his powerful physique to score 37 tries.

France’s Coralie Bertrand, meanwhile, claimed the women’s accolade, having featured in all five rounds and helped Les Bleues enjoy their best season, reaching a first-ever Cup final in Kitakyushu and semi-finals in Langford and Paris to clinch the series bronze medal.

Fair Play Award

This award, selected by the match officials, recognises the teams who showcase rugby’s values of integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect. Japan were awarded the women’s accolade after an event that saw them lose their core team status on the series, with Kenya the men’s recipients following an exciting season which saw them reach the final in both Vancouver and Hong Kong.

Roche’s kick with the final play of the match against England to snatch the bronze medal for invitational team Ireland at the HSBC London Sevens was a clear winner of the men’s award, beating Fijian Alosio Naduva’s last-gasp winning try against Australia in the Singapore Cup final and Matias Osadczuk’s break and calm head to send Renzo Barbier over for the winning try in Argentina’s Cup semi-final against South Africa in Las Vegas.

Capgemini Coach of the Series

Another inaugural category, selected by the series’ global innovation partner Capgemini, was won by New Zealand women’s coach Alan Bunting after successive victories in the last three rounds of the series in Japan, Canada and France as well as the Commonwealth Games title in April.

South Africa coach Neil Powell, who guided the Blitzboks to retaining their series title, picked up the men’s coach of the series award and paid tribute to his victorious team: “The mental focus and composure they showed was fantastic, all credit to the boys for believing in their success. We had everything to play for and the team did an incredible job, not just today but over the whole season.

“I also want to congratulate Fiji on an amazing season, they were phenomenal.”

DHL Impact Player

The race to be named DHL Impact Player of the Year in both the men’s and women’s series went right down to the final matches. In total 16 players from 12 nations won tournament awards during this season’s series.

New Zealand’s Michaela Blyde was delighted to win the women’s award: “This is pretty special. I’m shocked and truly grateful. I put this down to my teammates who create the opportunities for me and I thank them.”

La Fédération française de rugby organise, du 8 au 10 juin au stade Jean-Bouin, à Paris 16e, un tournoi international de rugby à 7 masculin et féminin, étape du HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.

Cette manifestation sportive, soutenue par la Région à hauteur de 170.000€, va rassembler 28 équipes internationales, qui s'affronteront au cours de 45 matchs masculins et 34 matchs féminins.

Le public pourra découvrir à cette occasion, jusque dans sa pratique féminine, une discipline largement méconnue.

Quant au stade Jean-Bouin, qui est l'un des sites retenus pour les JO Paris 2024, il pourra mettre en avant sa capacité d’accueil de 20.000 spectateurs.

Ce tournoi constituant la 10e et dernière étape du circuit mondial, il s'achèvera avec la remise des titres de champion et championne du monde de rugby à 7.

En soutenant l'organisation de tels grands événements sportifs franciliens, la Région Île-de-France renforce chaque fois un peu plus l'attractivité de ses territoires tout en assurant son rayonnement à l'échelle internationale.

Le titre HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series a été décidé de façon spectaculaire après que l'Afrique du Sud a battu l'Angleterre 24-14 en finale du HSBC Paris Sevens pour décrocher la médaille d'or et conserver son titre de série.

Au cours d'une des années les plus compétitives de l'histoire de la série, le titre est allé jusqu'au tout dernier match puisque l'Afrique du Sud avait besoin d'une victoire en tournoi pour dépasser les Fidji dans le classement de la série.

L'Afrique du Sud a terminé la série en tête avec 182 points, suivie des Fidji qui ont remporté l'argent avec 180 points et la Nouvelle-Zélande avec 150 points après avoir remporté la médaille de bronze à Paris avec une victoire de 38-5 contre le Canada dans la troisième place

Les champions de la série de l'année dernière, l'Afrique du Sud, ont devancé l'Espagne 15-10 en quart de finale avec un essai à la cinquième minute de Justin Deguld, après que les pointages aient été 10-10 à la fin du temps réglementaire. Les Blitzboks sud-africains ont ensuite trouvé leur rythme en demi-finale avec une victoire complète de 24-12 contre la Nouvelle-Zélande grâce à deux essais de l'impressionnant Dewald Human, 23 ans, qui a fait ses débuts il y a deux mois à Hong Kong .

Humain était de nouveau en forme de but en finale et était ravi d'être élu Joueur de la Finale: "Ca a été une expérience fantastique ici à Paris, je me suis appuyé sur moi et j'ai apprécié chaque minute sur le terrain. sommes très heureux de la victoire. "

Le capitaine de l'équipe sud-africaine, Philip Snyman, a ajouté: "Nous voulions aller jouer au rugby et nous concentrer sur ce que nous pouvions contrôler: les gars ont joué un rugby phénoménal et ont fait honneur à l'équipe. C'est un sentiment incroyable de représenter un pays si merveilleux et les gens de chez nous n'ont jamais cessé de croire en nous et de nous soutenir. "

Fidjiens ont raté l'occasion de remporter le titre plus tôt dans la journée alors qu'ils ont été vaincus 19-17 par une équipe d'Angleterre pleine d'entrain dans un quart de finale à couper le souffle. Le capitaine de l'équipe d'Angleterre, Tom Mitchell, a complété un mouvement de 26 passes pour marquer dans les dernières secondes du match et mettre un terme à la récente domination des Fidji qui les avait vaincus lors des quatre dernières manches de la série.

Les Fidjiens se sont rétablis pour battre l'Irlande 38-5 et les États-Unis 28-7 pour terminer cinquième à Paris et mettre la pression sur l'Afrique du Sud pour la finale mais finalement ce n'était pas suffisant et les Fidjiens ont été obligés de se contenter des dix tours.

L'Angleterre a produit une autre performance puissante en demi-finale avec une victoire convaincante de 26-12 contre le Canada pour atteindre sa première finale de la série 2017-18, mais ils ont été incapables de faire face aux Blitzboks en finale alors que les hommes d'Afrique du Sud couraient vainqueurs devant une foule parisienne bruyante.

Équipe Invitational L'Irlande a battu 19-5 du quart en quarts de finale, mais après sa médaille de bronze à Londres la semaine dernière, les Irlandais se sont montrés assez prometteurs au cours des deux derniers tours un brillant avenir dans le rugby à sept.

L'Argentine a remporté le Challenge Trophy, décerné à l'équipe terminant en neuvième position, après avoir vaincu le Pays de Galles 33-26.

Toute l'attention se tourne maintenant vers la Coupe du monde de rugby à sept 2018 à San Francisco du 20 au 22 juillet, où 24 équipes masculines et 16 équipes féminines s'affronteront pour devenir championnes du monde au cours de trois journées d'action excitantes.

 

1. L'AFRIQUE DU SUD : UN TOURNOI À L'IMAGE DE LEUR SAISON

« C'est un tournoi à l'image de leur saison. L'Afrique du Sud gagne le premier tournoi et se retrouve à des moments compliqués. A Paris, elle était en délicatesse en poule, perd contre l'Ecosse (12-14), se met en danger contre l'Espagne en quart de finale (15-10 dans les prolongations, ndlr). Ce n'était pas évident car l'équipe avait dans un coin de la tête que c'était fini par rapport à la saison. Et derrière ça, ils arrivent à se remobiliser après la défaite des Fidji. La défense, c'est la clé des Sud-Africains avec 85% de plaquages réussis et surtout un trio qui a été magique avec Philip Snyman, Ruhan Neil et Werner Kok : 60 plaquages à eux trois. Ce sont les joueurs qui ont été majeurs sur l'ensemble du tournoi. Ils ont un jeu de passes assez nul : 172 passes en six matches, soit 28 en moyenne par match (le Canada en a 307 en six matches, soit 51 en moyenne par rencontre, ndlr). »

2. LES FIDJI À DEUX POINTS DU LEADER

« Ils manquent un peu le tournoi. Ils avaient la possibilité de passer, mais ils ont laissé beaucoup d'énergie dans la poule. La défaite contre le Kenya (19-22) leur fait du mal, ils ont du faire un match plein face à la Nouvelle-Zélande. Ils sont plutôt adeptes à gérer les phases de poule et à accélérer sur les play-offs, donc c'était un peu dur pour eux de retrouver l'énergie nécessaire et de trouver en quart de finale une équipe anglaise qui a été assez incroyable sur la possession de balle. Malgré leur 5e place à Paris, les Fidji ont le titre qui leur passe sous le nez par pas grand chose (deux points derrière l'Afrique du Sud, ndlr).

« Il y a eu de grosses lacunes sur les coups d'envoi : 16% des coups d'envoi récupérés, ce qui est très faible quand on connait la capacité des Fidji (22% en moyenne sur la saison, ndlr). Et alors qu'ils sont les maîtres à jouer dans les turnovers, là ils n'ont récupéré que cinq ballons dans le tournoi de Paris (et en ont perdu six, ndlr). En comparaison, l'Afrique du Sud en a récupéré 14. Les Fidjiens sont très forts sur la récupération de ballon, mais les équipes adverses ont été assez lucides et leur ont donné que peu de ballons. Du coup, les Fidjiens n'avaient pas beaucoup de munitions pour scorer car les équipes en face ont su s'adapter. »

3. L'ANGLETERRE, TOUJOURS PRÉSENTE DANS LES GRANDS MOMENTS

« L'Angleterre fait un très bon tournoi. Sans être exceptionnels, ils ont réussi à passer la phase de poule. Derrière, ils font un exploit contre les Fidji (17-19 en quart de finale, ndlr), puis une défaite en finale contre l'Afrique du Sud 14-24). Ils doivent leur tournoi grâce à un réalisme incroyable : 20 possessions de balle sur 23 dans les 22 mètres ; 87% de réalisme dans les 22 m adverses. Norton, Bibby, Mitchell ont su actionner le jeu anglais. Défensivement, Harry Glover a été l'un des meilleurs joueurs du tournoi. Il n'a que 20 ans et est en train d'exploser et de devenir un joueur majeur sur le système anglais (22 plaquages). Il a supporté l'équipe d'Angleterre sur ce tournoi.

« Ils sont toujours là dans les grands moments : finaliste aux JO, médaille de bronze aux Commonwealth... Ils étaient 9e mondial et ils terminent à la 5e place du classement mondial, sur le fil, à un point de l'Australie (à un point d'écart). Le prochain objectif c'est la Coupe du Monde et en 2019 la quatrième place. Leur saison est parfaitement maîtrisée du point de vue gestion, même s'ils n'ont pas démarré très fort. »

4. L'IRLANDE A SA PLACE SUR LE WORLD SERIES

« Encore une fois elle a montré ses capacités de performance sur le World Series. Elle a été pragmatique. Le rugby à 7, c'est de l'endurance et du cardio. Ils montrent des atouts dignes d'un top 3 du Worl Series. Ils font plus de points que la Russie en deux tournois et sont 15e au classement, juste derrière le Pays de Galles. Défensivement ils sont en tête du classement et Harry McNulty est leur leader défensif (18 plaquages).

« Ils n'ont pas fait le World series en entier, mais c'est une équipe qui est très rigoureuse défensivement. Ils ont étouffé en phase de poule (14-5 sur l'Espagne, 19-19 sur le Pays de Galles et 24-14 sur l'Australie, ndlr). Et même en changeant cinq joueurs de l'effectif initial, ils arrivent toujours à être au haut niveau et à passer le cap et à être performant. L'Irlande a fait une très grosse performance à Paris et sera très dangereuse à la Coupe du Monde.

« Leur objectif numéro 1, c'est l'Europe Series ; le Paris Sevens n'était pas ciblé et pourtant ils y arrivent. Ils battent tout le monde en poule. »

5. L'ESPAGNE : DANGER EN DEVENIR

« Ils gagnent l'Australie (17-10), puis le Pays de Galles (21-14) et font surtout un match monumental contre l'Afrique du Sud en quart de finale où ils perdent à la dernière seconde (15-10). Ils ont encore fait une très belle saison, malgré le manque de réalisme : 45% de réalisme, elle score 10 fois sur 22 (45%). C'est dire tout le potentiel offensif qu'elle a !

« C'est une équipe qui a beaucoup le ballon. Le jour où elle va être efficace offensivement, elle va être dangereuse. »

6. LE CANADA A RÉUSSI À PASSER LE CUT DES DEMI-FINALES

« Le Canada s'est qualifié encore une fois en demi-finale sur le World Series où elle s'incline 26-12 face à l'Angleterre. C'est une quatrième place au Paris Sevens après avoir été impressionnante en phase de poule. Elle n'a eu que 11 pénalités dans le tournoi. Elle a une justesse technique incroyable avec seulement 12 fautes de main sur l'ensemble du tournoi, soit deux par match, ce qui est très propre.

« C'est un jeu de quinziste. Le Canada fonctionne en mode quinziste, mais score derrière. Hirayama a été le meilleur joueur en offload, Douglas a cassé la ligne huit fois, Connor Braid ballon porté... « Le Canada a réussi à passer ce cut pour les demi-finales. »

7. LA FRANCE EN PANNE

« Elle avait réussi à réunir son effectif au complet malgré la blessure de Manoël Dall'Igna. Elle attendait depuis longtemps le tournoi de Paris. Au premier jour, elle est à sa place et a du mal à performer face à l'Angleterre (21-28), aux USA 12-26) et à l'Argentine 28-26) qui sont au-dessus. Elle a réussi à débloquer son compteur de victoires en battant l'Argentine.

« Elle a montré beaucoup de faiblesse défensive, avec 5,4 plaquages manqués par match, contre 3,4 pour l'Espagne. C'est le chantier numéro un pour que la France puisse repasser en Cup.

« En attaque, elle est efficace, même si le point noir est le coup d'envoi : trois manqués contre le Pays de Galles. Quand on n'a pas les ballons en conquête, c'est très compliqué de pouvoir rivaliser. C'est l'équipe qui a été le plus pénalisée du tournoi : 18 pénalités.

« Malgré tout, l'équipe de France a réussi à contenir et n'a pas pris 40-0 comme sur d'autres tournois. La ferveur populaire a permis à la France de rester concentrée à chaque match. Elle a joué avec ses armes et s'est faite contrer par meilleur que soit. »

 

THE HISTORY OF TITANIC

 

The Royal Mail Ship TITANIC was the last grand dream of the Gilded Age. It was designed to be the greatest achievement of an era of prosperity, confidence and propriety. Although no one knew it, the world was about to change drastically. Radio had been invented in 1901. The Wright Brothers' first successful flight was in 1903. The old presumptions about class, morals, and gender-roles were about to be shattered. If the concept of Titanic was the climax of the age, then perhaps its sinking was the curtain that marked the end of the old drama, and the start of a new one.

 

The intensely competitive transatlantic steamship business had seen recent major advances in ship design, size and speed. White Star Line, one of the leaders, determined to focus on size and elegance rather than pure speed. In 1907, White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and Lord James Pirrie, a partner in Harland & Wolff (White Star Line's ship-builder since its founding in 1869) conceived of three magnificent steam ships which would set a new standard for comfort, elegance, and safety. The first two were to be named Olympic and Titanic, the latter name chosen by Ismay to convey a sense of overwhelming size and strength.

It took a year to design the two ships. Construction of Olympic started in December, 1908, followed by Titanic in March 1909. The Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff had to be re-designed to accommodate the immense projects while White Star's pier in New York had to be lengthened to enable the ships to dock. During the two years it took to complete Titanic's hull, the press was primed with publicity about the ship's magnificence, making Titanic virtually a legend before her launch. The "launch" of the completed steel in May, 1911, was a heavily publicized spectacle. Tickets were sold to benefit a local children's hospital.

 

She was then taken for "fitting out" which involved the construction of the ship's many facilities and systems, her elaborate woodwork and fine decor. As the date of her maiden voyage approached, the completed Olympic suffered a collision and required extensive repairs, increasing the workload at Harland & Wolff, which was already struggling to complete Titanic on schedule. Titanic's maiden voyage was delayed from March 20 to April 10.

 

Titanic was 883 feet long (1/6 of a mile), 92 feet wide and weighed 46,328 tons. She was 104 feet tall from keel to bridge, almost 35 feet of which were below the waterline... even so, she stood taller above the water than most urban buildings of the time. There were three real smoke-stacks; a fourth, dummy stack was added largely to increase the impression of her gargantuan size and power and to vent smoke from her numerous kitchens and galleys. She was the largest movable object ever made by man. The ship's immense size and complexity is illustrated by an incident recalled by Second Officer Lightoller. There was a gangway door on the starboard side aft "large enough to drive a horse and cart through." Yet three officers who joined the ship during her preparations spent a whole day simply trying to find their way to it.

 

Moreover, she was designed to be a marvel of modern safety technology. She had a double-hull of 1-inch thick steel plates and a (heavily publicized) system of 16 water-tight compartments, sealed by massive doors which could be instantly triggered by a single electric switch on the bridge, or even automatically by electric water-sensors. The press began to call her "unsinkable."

 

Her accommodations were the most modern and luxurious on any ocean, and included electric light and heat in every room, electric elevators, a swimming pool, a squash court (considered terribly modern), a Turkish Bath, a gymnasium with a mechanical horse and mechanical camel to keep riders fit, and staterooms and first class facilities to rival the best hotels on the Continent. First class passengers would glide down a six-story, glass-domed grand staircase to enjoy haute cuisine in the sumptuous first class dining saloon that filled the width of the ship on D Deck. For those who desired a more intimate atmosphere, Titanic also offered a stately à la carte restaurant, the chic Palm Court and Verandah restaurant, and the festive Cafe Parisien. She offered two musical ensembles (rather than the standard one) of the best musicians on the Atlantic, many of them lured from rival liners. There were two libraries, first- and second-class. Even the third class (steerage) cabins were more luxurious than the first class cabins on some lesser steamships, and boasted amenities (like indoor toilet facilities) that some of Titanic's emigrant passengers had not enjoyed in their own homes.

 

The original design called for 32 lifeboats. However, White Star management felt that the boat-deck would look cluttered, and reduced the number to 20, for a total life-boat capacity of 1178. This actually exceeded the regulations of the time, even though Titanic was capable of carrying over 3500 people (passengers and crew).

 

The maiden voyage lured the "very best people:" British nobility, American industrialists, the very cream of New York and Philadelphia society. It also attracted many poor emigrants, hoping to start a new life in America or Canada.

 

The journey began at Southampton on Wednesday April 10, 1912 at Noon. By sundown, Titanic had stopped in Cherbourg, France to pick up additional passengers. That evening she sailed for Queenstown, Ireland, and at 1:30 PM on Thursday, April 11, she headed out into the Atlantic.

 

The seasoned transatlantic passengers were deeply impressed by the new ship. She was so massive that they barely felt the movement of the sea at all. Her huge, powerful engines produced almost none of the annoying vibration common on other steamers, and their noise was barely perceptible. And she achieved this extraordinary level of comfort while traveling at 22 knots, not the fastest boat on the route, but certainly one of the top five.

 

Weather was pleasant and clear, and the water temperature was about 55 degrees. The winter of 1912 had been unusually mild, and unprecedented amounts of ice had broken loose from the arctic regions. Titanic was equipped with Marconi's new wireless telegraph system and her two Marconi operators kept the wireless room running 24 hours a day. On Sunday, April 14, the fifth day at sea, Titanic received five different ice-warnings, but the captain was not overly concerned. The ship steamed ahead at 22 knots, and the line's Managing Director J. Bruce Ismay relished the idea of arriving in New York a day ahead of schedule.

 

On the night of April 14, wireless operator Phillips was very busy sending chatty passenger's messages to Cape Race, Newfoundland, whence they could be relayed inland to friends and relatives. He received a sixth ice-warning that night, but didn't realize how close Titanic was to the position of the warning, and put that message under a paperweight at his elbow. It never reached Captain Smith or the officer on the bridge.

 

By all accounts, the night was uncommonly clear and dark, moonless but faintly glowing with an incredible sky full of stars. The stars were so bright that one officer mistook the planet Jupiter (then rising just above the horizon) for a steamship light.

 

The sea was, likewise, unusually calm and flat, "like glass" said many survivors. The lack of waves made it even more difficult to spot icebergs, since there was no telltale white water breaking at the edges of the bergs.

 

At 11:40, a lookout in the crow's nest spotted an iceberg dead ahead. He notified the bridge and First Officer Murdoch ordered the ship turned hard to port. He signaled the engine room to reverse direction, full astern. The ship turned slightly, but it was much too large, moving much too fast, and the iceberg was much too close. 37 seconds later, the greatest maritime disaster in history began. During that night of heroism, terror and tragedy, 705 lives were saved, 1502 lives were lost, and many legends were born.

 

There are many books and online sources available for further information on the Titanic. It is worth noting that even the factual information about Titanic varies widely between the different sources. For all that is known and theorized about Titanic, it is in many ways still a mystery. Among the books are:

 

TITANIC, An Illustrated History, by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, 1992

 

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER by Walter Lord, 1955

 

THE NIGHT LIVES ON by Walter Lord, 1986

 

THE STORY OF THE TITANIC AS TOLD BY ITS SURVIVORS edited by Jack Winocur, 1960 (containing "The Loss of the SS Titanic, Its Story and Its Lessons" by Lawrence Beesley, 1912, "The Truth about the Titanic" by Col. Archibald Gracie, 1913, relevant chapters from "Titanic and Other Ships" by Commander Charles Lightoller, 1935 and Asst. Marconi Operator Harold Bride's account as published in the New York Times of April 28, 1912.)

 

TITANIC - TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY by John P. Eaton and Charles Haas 1988 (second edition 1994)

  

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on authentic facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Latvian Air Force was first founded during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. In 1939, the Aviation Regiment consisted of three fighter squadrons, armed with 24 Gloster Gladiator and 6 Bristol Bulldog (a fourth squadron was in organization), three reconnaissance squadrons, armed with up to 12 Letov Š-16LS, 2 Hawker Hind and 10 Stampe SV.5, and a naval reconnaissance squadron with 4 Fairey Seal and two other planes. The Soviet occupation in 1940 ended the activities of the Air Force. At that time there were almost 130 aircraft in service.

 

The post-Soviet Latvian Air Force was formed on 24 February 1992 at Spilve Airport. In August 1994, the air force moved to an ex-soviet Lielvārde Air Base. In the beginning of the new century two new and more heavy Mi-8MTV Hip helicopters were bought for search and rescue equipment duties, but they were also used for transportation of troops, evacuation and support of the Special Forces. In March 2004 Latvia joined NATO and the Ministry of Defense made the decision to improve the small country’s air defense with a dedicated fighter squadron. The country also bought two more Mi-8MTV's at the Russian Ulan Ude helicopter (rework) factory that year, augmenting the SAR fleet.

 

In 2005, soldiers of the Air Force Air Defense Wing started a training course in order to prepare an upgraded air defense. At the same time, the Latvian Air Force commenced the modernization of the surface air defense capabilities by signing a contract regarding procurement of RBS-70 manpads missiles from Sweden and negotiated the purchase or leasing of 2nd hand Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Coming from a neutral country, the Gripen was the LAF’s wish candidate for the new interceptor aircraft, but eventually Latvia could be convinced (primarily through the USA and with generous financial support thorugh the “Baltic Peace II” program) to buy eight F-5E fighters and two F-5F trainers with relatively low flying hours and in good overall condition from Switzerland. Besides the financial support, the type’s ruggedness and relatively low maintenance costs led to this choice.

 

The Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II itself was part of a highly successful supersonic light fighter family, initially designed in the late 1950s by Northrop Corporation. Being smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to both procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s. The design team wrapped a small, highly aerodynamic fighter around two compact and high-thrust General Electric J85 engines, focusing on performance and low cost of maintenance. Though primarily designed for the day air superiority role, the aircraft was also a capable ground-attack platform.

After winning the International Fighter Aircraft competition in 1970, a program aimed at providing effective low-cost fighters to American allies, Northrop introduced the second-generation F-5E Tiger II in 1972. This upgrade included more powerful engines, higher fuel capacity, greater wing area and improved leading edge extensions for a better turn rate, optional air-to-air refueling, and improved avionics including air-to-air radar. A total of 1,400 Tiger IIs were built before production ended in 1987, and the type is still in operational use in many countries round the world.

 

The Swiss F-5E airframes for Latvia were overhauled and the avionics suite modernized in 2006 and 2007 by SAI in Italy. Elbit Systems from Israel became the sub-contractor responsible for systems integration. Upgrades for the fighters included an Italian FIAR Grifo-F X band multi-mode radar with BVR (beyond-visual-range) missile and Look-down/shoot-down capabilities, making the modernized F-5E capable of deploying AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which were, together with AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs, part of the Baltic Peace II support for Latvia. The new radar necessitated an enlarged radome for its scanner antenna, resulting in a duckbill shape. The fighters’ port side M39 20 mm cannon was removed to make way for the additional avionics.

 

All machines received a revamped cockpit with new MIL-STD-1553R databuses, a GEC/Ferranti 4510 Head-up display/weapons delivery system, two BAE Systems MED-2067 Multi-function displays, Litton LN-93 inertial navigation system and Hands On Throttle-And-Stick controls (HOTAS) to reduce pilot workload. Reportedly, the Elisra SPS2000 radar warning receiver and countermeasure system was also installed.

 

The modernization process was completed by early 2007 and the machines were re-designated F-5L/M. By late 2007, the Latvian air defense had become operational and worked closely together with its Baltic neighbors and the NATO forces that were frequently deployed to the Baltic NATO countries.

The small Latvian F-5 fleet is expected to remain in service until 2024, even tough, if there is sufficient funding, the machines will certainly be replaced beforehand by more capable models. The Saab Gripen is still a favored candidate, but F-16C/Ds from USAF stocks are a potential option, too.

By end of 2009, the LAF’s Fighter Squadron moved to Lielvārde Air Base, in an attempt to ensure centralization of Air Force units and to establish an efficient command and control system, which will result in a reduction of the Air Force units’ maintenance costs. With the Fighter Squadron the Air Force carries out Latvian airspace surveillance, control and defense and provides air defense support to the Land Forces units.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 47 ft 4¾ in (14.45 m)

Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)

Height: 13 ft 4½ in (4.08 m)

Wing area: 186 ft² (17.28 m²)

Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8 root, NACA 64A004.8 tip

Empty weight: 9,558 lb (4,349 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,745 lb (7,157 kg)

Max. take-off weight: 24,722 lb (11,214 kg)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.02

Drag area: 3.4 ft² (0.32 m²)

Aspect ratio: 3.82

Internal fuel: 677 U.S. gal (2,563 L)

External fuel: up to 3× 275 U.S. gal (1,040 L) drop tanks

 

Powerplant:

2× General Electric J85-GE-21B turbojet with 3,500 lbf (15.5 kN) dry thrust

and 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust with afterburner each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 917 kn (Mach 1.6, 1,060 mph, 1,700 km/h) at altitude

Range: 760 nmi (870 mi, 1,405 km)

Ferry range: 2,010 nmi (2,310 mi, 3,700 km)

Service ceiling: 51,800 ft (15,800 m)

Rate of climb: 34,400 ft/min (175 m/s)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.0

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M39A2 Revolver cannon in the nose with 280 rounds

7 hardpoints (2× wing-tip AAM launch rails, 4× under-wing & 1× under-fuselage pylon stations,

only pylon stations 3, 4 and 5 are wet-plumbed) with a capacity of 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg)

  

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple build, originally inspired by a Blue Rider decal sheet for Latvian Air Force aircraft that I had bought some time ago, as part of a vague plan to build a modern what-if aircraft for each of the young and small Baltic states’ air forces. The first one had been a Lithuanian MiG-21, Estonia is still pending (even though there’s a vague idea), and the Lithuanian interceptor was recently spawned when I bought an Italeri F-5E as part of a kit lot, even though it lacked box, decals and instructions and had a slight damage.

 

The Tiger II was built mostly OOB, the only changes I made are replaced wing tip launch rails (they were damaged beyond repair), I omitted port side cannon and created a modified “shark nose” radome, which was sculpted with putty; in real life, the enlarged radome for the upgraded radar is 33cm deeper than the original F-5E radome, even though the aircraft’s overall length remained the same, as well as the nose profile. In order to make the model look a little less static I slightly lowered the slats and the flaps – easy to realize on this model. The leftover cannon received a better barrel, made from a hollow steel needle. The pair of AIM-120s and their respective launch rails come from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. The ventral drop tank came from the kit.

 

The Italeri F-5E is a simple affair and goes together well, even though the section ahead of the air intakes called for considerable PSR work – not certain if that’s my fault or an innate flaw of the kit (which comes with an upper and lower fuselage half)? The raised panel lines are another weak point – the kit cannot conceal its age, and there are certainly better options today (e .g. from Hobby Boss).

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted something that would neither look too Western, nor a typical Soviet-style livery. The resulting paint scheme is purely fictional and was inspired by a grey North Korean MiG-21 and USAF aggressor schemes for F-5Es – both reminiscent of the Soviet “Pumpkin” paint scheme for export MiG-21s. For the choice of colors, the complex “Norm 81” scheme from German Luftwaffe F-4Fs had an influence.

 

The result became a primarily grey air superiority scheme with uniform light grey undersides (FS 36495, Humbrol 147) and light Ghost Grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) fuselage and fin. The wings’ upper surfaces became mostly Dark Gull Grey (FS 36231, Testors 1740) and patches of the same tone were applied to the fuselage and the fin, too. On the wings’ upper surfaces, some patches in a dull, greenish grey (Humbrol 111, Uniform Grey) were finally added in order to break the aircraft’s outlines from above. The result somewhat reminds of German WWII camouflage, even though unintentionally.

 

The radome was painted in Revell 75 (Light Grey, with a brownish hue) to set it apart from the rest of the aircraft. Humbrol 140 was used for the cockpit interior. The landing gear became classic glossy white, while the air intake interior was painted in Humbrol 127, matching the aircraft’s flanks. Only subtle post-shading and weathering was done.

 

As mentioned above, the Latvian air force markings came from a Blue Rider decal sheet. The tactical codes and the matching serial number come from a Begemot MiG-21sheet. Other fictional elements are the NATO emblem on the fin and a small squadron emblem on the nose, which is a vintage Polish air force motif.

Most stencils had to be salvaged from secondary sources, since the kit came without a decal sheet. Fortunately, I had a spare F-5E sheet left over from a Hobby Boss kit. As a final step, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A rather simple project, but re-sculpting the nose was a tedious task. However, I am happy with the outcome and how the fictional paint scheme works. Together with the exotic Latvian roundels, this creates an interesting, if not plausible, look.

 

The Grumman EA-6B Prowler was developed primarily to replace older electronic warfare aircraft in US Navy service, namely the EKA-3B Skywarrior, as well as in response to the growing lethality of Eastern Bloc electronic threats. Initially, the ALQ-99 electronics suite was installed in a standard A-6 Intruder airframe as the EA-6A, but the aircraft was somewhat limited and workload was heavier for a two-man crew, especially in combat. EA-6As did see combat in Vietnam with the US Marine Corps, but something better was clearly needed. The result was the lengthened EA-6B Prowler, which upgraded the electronics suite considerably and also added two more crewmembers to reduce workload and increase effectiveness. The EA-6B first flew in May 1968, and entered US Navy and Marine service in 1971, just too late for service in Vietnam.

 

The ALQ-99 system is divided between several antennae on the aircraft, including the distinctive “football” antenna at the top of the tail. Most of the noise jammers are in the three or five underwing pods the Prowler almost always carries, though in the case of a three-pod arrangement, often antiradar missiles such as the AGM-88 HARM. It can also be used as an Elint aircraft.

 

Continually updated over its life, the EA-6B saw action in both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo; in service over the Middle East, the Prowler proved effective in jamming IED detonation signals. With the retirement of the USAF’s EF-111 Ravens, the EA-6B is now the sole ECM aircraft in US service, further contributing to the overwork of the aircraft, and has often been the only ECM aircraft available in NATO operations as well. The last of the A-6 family in service, the Prowlers were replaced by the EF-18G Growler, and the last was retired around 2016.

 

Dad took this picture of 160433, a VAQ-130 ("Zappers") EA-6B off USS Forrestal at the Malmstrom AFB 1977 airshow. This view shows the various antennas and bulges of the ALQ-99 ECM system. At the time, the US Navy was still using the Vietnam-era light gray over white scheme. This aircraft was later transferred to the Marines and served last with VMAQ-1 before it was retired in 2011. The "Pride" hangar in the background was a Malmstrom AFB icon until it was torn down in the late 1990s.