Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Today I Found Out" channel.

  1. You didn't mention Eddie Albert, Sterling Hayden, David Niven, or Anthony Quayle, who all served as spies or special operations officers. Jimmy Stewart's highest rank was Brigadier General. There was a myth he was a Major General which Ronald Reagan unintentionally helped propagate. When Reagan eventually learned the truth, he asked Stewart why he never corrected him. According to Reagan, Stewart responded, "Well, Dutch, because it sounded so nice when you said it."
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  2. I'm surprised nobody has made a movie about Benz and Bertha.
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  3. Simon, you left out what may be the only successful combat use of airborne tanks after WWII. That was the insertion by parachute of ten M551 Sheridans by USAF C-141 Starlifters during Operation Just Cause (the 1989 invasion of Panama). My brother was the navigator on one of these ten Starlifters.
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  4. It is regrettable that there has never been a movie made about these men and these times.
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  5. A pony is just a horse with a Napoleon complex.
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  6. We never called it S-A-C. We always called it SAC (pronounced "sack").
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  7. I'm a native Floridian and grew up during this period. I was in military school in Deland, FL in 1971 when Walt Disney World first opened. The commandant of our school announced we would be going there by bus. You should have heard the cheers that aroused. The place had only been open a short while and half the rides did not work, but we had a blast. I can still hear "It's a small world after all" ringing in my ears almost 50 years later (Will somebody stop the music!). After we returned from our day trip, the commandant somberly announced the school would be closing due to a lack of funds. Such much fun and misery in a single day.
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  8. Simon, THANK YOU for not saying "Congressional" Medal of Honor or using the terms win and winner. Your descriptions were most accurate as presented.
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  9. “I have never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as a reason for withdrawing from a friend.” - Thomas Jefferson If only Americans today felt such congeniality, what a happier and stronger nation we would be.
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  10. Decades ago I watched a documentary on the Vietnam War, which contained a scene showing an Army LT COL sitting on an emergency room operating table, calmly discussing with the surgeons the need to remove one of his legs which had nearly been blown off. He then sat back and let them proceed. While I have never suffered such a grievous wound, I have received several violent non-combat injuries that required immediate action. At first there was no pain, perhaps due to shock and disbelief. Then instinct took over and I did what I must to reach medical aid. Only later did I experience pain (quite a bit of it), but thankfully we have drugs to mitigate it. I can't imagine how men of the past were able to deal with it. The passing of time during recovery must have been agonizingly slow.
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  11. I was completely unaware of this atrocity. "No one who speaks German could be an evil man." (from the Simpsons "Cape Feare" episode (1993))
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  12. This is what happens when Normans conquer your country. They corrupt the language.
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  13. Thank you, Simon, for using the word "citizen" instead of the incorrect term "civilian" when describing police and public interaction. I'm surprised you did not mention the very recent court case where a criminal barricaded himself in a home, only to have the police shoot it to pieces. The Department successfully refused to fully reimburse the owner for the $100,000 worth of damage, citing the precedents you addressed.
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  14. Who knew that progressives and puritans shared a common antipathy?
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  15. I was told just the opposite by one former B-52 navigator I knew. Regardless, the movie remained a SAC favorite for years. A friend of mine who served as a missile launch officer did tell me that the launch sequence depicted in another movie (I forget which one, but I think it was Damnation Alley) was so accurate that SAC changed its procedures. How accurate or true such stories are is anybody's guess, but they do make for fun conversation.
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  16.  @MajesticSkywhale  You should have said "None, they all committed suicide."
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  17. Curious there's no cure for Curie's radium papers.
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  18. It's a skewed population sample within the prison. Only those who behave well get this treatment. I'd be curious to know what alternatives they have to influence the rest of the prison population.
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  19. After the Japanese attack on the Philippines in Dec 1941, Navy Lt John D. Bulkeley and the members of his six PT boats in MTB Squadron 3 were attached to a support ship that contained an ice cream maker and huge stores of ice cream mixture. Bulkeley and his men dined on ice cream at all hours of the day, intent on not letting it fall into Japanese stomachs. This had to be good for crew morale since nothing else was going right for them. Bulkeley later received the Medal of Honor for extracting MacArthur from the small fortress island of Corregidor when he was recalled to Australia by President Roosevelt.
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  20.  @Von_Splatterblast  Yes, I've seen the Pirates of Penzance. I was spoofing Jimmy Stewart's expression (apparently not very well).
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  21. I meant to include Lee in my list but forgot. Good catch.
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  22.  @MajesticSkywhale  The one commentator said "The British Secret Service, the OSS, whatever they were called." Roll eyes.
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  23. I forgot to mention Leslie Howard, who was killed while performing courier/propaganda service for the British government.
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  24. The Germans seem to run hot and cold on such matters. If memory serves me correctly, the German officers advising the Turks were appalled by the Armenian genocide. And during their WWII campaigns in Yugoslavia there were SS soldiers who complained about the murderous behavior of some Ustasha units. Even Hitler was appalled. Go figure.
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  25. Thank you Simon. It's so rare to hear anyone tell the rest of the story behind this photo (the only other time I can recall was when I read an article about it in a magazine about three decades ago). To answer your question, what would I do in this situation, I don't know, but I do not condemn the general for his actions. The country was in chaos during he Tet Offensive, and he could not allow such a dangerous man the opportunity of escape.
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  26. A family friend who served in WWII ended up in Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. He said the meaning of the nod and shake we reversed in Czech culture, which led to numerous misunderstandings between the local girls and the GIs.
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  27. That's the movie version. The truth is somewhat more subdued but no less fascinating. King went on to become a decorated Commando, was promoted to Captain, and served again in the Korean War where was again cited for bravery. He retired a major and later drowned in a driving accident in New Zealand in 1962.
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  28. It was aliens. One of our lizard overlords casually mentioned it to me the other day.
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  29.  @Epitome613  Aw, shucks.
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  30.  rwsthedemonking  I wouldn't fire the cops. They did what they thought was necessary to protect themselves and others. I would suggest that both the federal and state governments pass laws to ensure that property owners are properly reimbursed for any damages caused by police departments. This may require setting up some sort of insurance fund, which means Joe Taxpayer ultimately foots the bill. The courts should only get involved if the citizen believes he has not been adequately reimbursed. As for ordering people to assist law enforcement even to the point of risking life and limb, this seems to fly in the face of a SCOTUS decision that said police are under no obligation to protect individual citizens, only the community at large. It mean the police get have their cake and eat it.
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  31.  @IvanBaturaChannel  It was the dictator Noriega who repeatedly broke both Panamanian and international law in order to remain in power illegally. It was Noriega who was heavily involved in illegal drug tracking into the USA. And it was it was the Panamanian National Assembly that declared a “state of war” with the US on 15 December 1989, which was several days before we invaded. That was a pretty dumb move. The killing of an American military officer at a roadside checkpoint proved to be the last straw for Bush. As for the War Powers Act, the Congress has never enforced it because they know it will be challenged before the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional. So your argument boils down to this. Is any nation obligated to obey a treaty when other parties to that treaty are violating it?
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  32. Have you done an episode on screen legend Hedy Lamar's greatest invention, the frequency hopping technology for wireless guided torpedoes in WWII? It's still used today in such common items as Bluetooth headphones.
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  33.  @rlud304  Not even that anymore.
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  34. That's true, but in 1992 a circus elephant named Kelly went on a rampage in Palm Bay, FL, and had to be killed by police officers. There's even horrific video of her being shot multiple times by one officer using a 9mm handgun. She was finally dispatched with a rifle. In 1994 an elephant named Tyke was killed by a fusillade of bullets fired by Honolulu police after she killed her trainer and ran rogue during a carnival show.
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  35. WRNS can be such deadly little birds.
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  36. Disappearing into the Canadian Mist, he wasn't a Robin Hood but a Curtiss Robin Hood (as pictured in my logo).
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  37. In college I saw a documentary of German WWII propaganda movies. In one scene, whcic was set in a British run Boer concentration camp, the arrogant British camp commander is inspecting the terrible conditions the Boer women and children are suffering under before declaring there is nothing wrong. Since the majority of Boers were actually of Dutch origin, and Holland was struggling under the boot of Nazi oppression at the time this movie was made, the irony did not escape me. No doubt German audiences had a different view and probably nodded approvingly at the portrayal of the Brits as evil incarnate. It would seem comical today if the subject matter had not been so dark.
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  38. I recommend the Bronx cheer replace the Olympic salute.
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  39. A pilot at our local airport restored several WWII trainers in the 1970s. I went up with him in his North American SNJ (Navy version of the AT6 Texan trainer, aka the Harvard in Commonwealth use). He too sourced parts from anywhere and everywhere, including spent 22 LR casings which he discovered worked well enough as ersatz brass fittings on the engine. When he later sold his collection, I heard from my brother that the new owners were aghast once they uncovered the "workmanship" applied to these planes. Oh well, they weren't the first customers he had suckered.
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  40.  @MajesticSkywhale  I'm glad I wasn't in that movie. He might have learned that I was once in the OSI, then assumed I knew the bionic man.
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  41. Simon said it grossed $8 million.
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  42. What global temperature would you prefer?
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  43.  @IvanBaturaChannel  Which laws? You are being quite vague.
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  44. Annie Oakley was a great American, as was her husband, Frank Butler, and her story follows the classic Horatio Alger line of overcoming great adversity to achieve success. I only know of two movies about her life, neither of which stuck too closely to the facts, the musical "Annie, Get Your Gun" (1950), starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel, and "Annie Oakley" (1935) starring Barbara Stanwyck. A proper treatise on her life and times would make a great contribution to American entertainment lore, but I imagine very few directors or writers today could master the subject without resorting to darker themes and motives. Such is the current state of the American dream.
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  45.  @MrS22222  Same here. At a MG shoot in NH we had a M2 .50 cal on the line that I thought was loud, but the guy next to me was worse. He was firing his pet HK53 (chopped down HK33 in 5.56 with 8.3" barrel), and despite my ear muffs, the concussion force coming from his muzzle gave me a headache and made me somewhat queasy.
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  46. I think the top speed of the Tu-114 was misstated by over 100 MPH. 880 KM/H is 545 MPH which is close to what Wikipedia shows. 650 MPH is nearly the speed of sound at 35,000 ft (660 MPH or Mach .98). I do not believe such performance is scientifically possible with propeller driven aircraft.
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  47.  @DFX2KX  You're probably thinking of the Republic XF-84H "Thunderscreech". The claims of it a having a top seed of 670 MPH have never been verified and contradict official Air Force records which put it at 520 MPH.
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  48.  @darksteelmenace595  No, while some humans are garbage, most are not. The real tragedy is that among the most, few are willing to recognize and take an active stand against evil until it's almost too late.
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  49. Well I'll be hanged- whoops, sorry about that. :)
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  50. The pistol at 11:36 is actually an American designed and built FP-45 Liberator in caliber 45 ACP. The plan was to drop them to potential resistance fighters in occupied countries. The theory was they could be used to kill an enemy combatant and take his weapon. The bore was not rifled so one had to be close to to his victim if he wanted a solid hit. Spare ammo was housed in the butt and a simple picture drawing showed the operator how to load, fire, and eject the round. Somewhere around a million them were made, though not that many were ever distributed. Most were destroyed after the war and now they are highly prized collector pieces. A friend of mine used to have one.
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