Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "PeriscopeFilm" channel.

  1. Great example of 50's optimism. Unfortunately, even the soothing voice of Walter Cronkite couldn't overcome the problems soon to befall the Seaway. Within ten years, almost everything changed when it came to shipping. The largest bulk cargo carried was grains being exported to Europe. As that continent recovered from WWII, they became mostly self sufficient in grains. The new markets for this bulk cargo became South American and Africa, and if was much less expensive to load the grains into railroad cars and haul it to Gulf ports than to sail the long and slow route of the Seaway and all the way south. The next largest exports were sheet steel from Great Lakes ports like Cleveland. However, 1960 marked the st art of the decline of US steel making as cheaper imports from countries like Brazil began to displace US Steel. The decline became a rout. By 1990, no steel at all was being shipped from Cleveland. What little that was still being made traveled by rail or truck. Next was the revolution of container shipping. No longer was there a need for all those freighters carrying mixed cargoes, known as break bulk cargo, in holds and loaded and unloaded by relatively small cranes on each ship. Just about any dry cargo, from grains to finished products, could be loaded in containers and loaded and unloaded by automated cranes, eliminating the need for large numbers of stevedores, along with their jobs. With the standardized size of containers, ever larger and faster ships were built to handle them. These ships all exceeded the Seawaymax set by those locks. The engineers designing the canal in the early 1950's had no way to know that, within 20 years of the opening 800 to 900 foot long container ships became common. Now goods that might have been carried on the Seaway were transported by rail to the ports of the East Coast. Due to all those factors, traffic through the Seaway started to decline. It was a rare year that saw an increase over the previous year. As new types of break bulk cargo have started to use containers and ships built to Seawaymax size, and cruise ships started to include Great Lakes ports in their itineraries, Seaway traffic started to show modest increases by the late 90's. That has continued through today. The Seaway has, except for the first ten years, never met forecasts for traffic and tolls. Given all this, the Seaway has never paid for itself and likely never will. In some years, revenue has barely covered the cost of all the dredging required to keep river channels at 27 feet. While it has provided employment for some people, others lost their jobs. The Seaway was a case of engineering being ahead of economics. Engineers like to build thins, especially huge projects like the Seaway. They then backfit revenue projections to make it seem as if it was a no brainer to build it. It is a magnificent feat of engineering and construction, and any of the locks are well worth the visit.
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  2. Packard had always been trying to appeal to the upper middle class and upper class market. It starts with the obviously comfortable modern home. Note at 3:10 the large Zenith T600 Transoceanic "portable" radio on the table to the left of the woman. This was a long range AM and shortwave radio much in demand for people like those in remote hunting and fishing camps, sailors, and explorers like Richard Byrd. It cost $139.95 in 1956, the equivalent of $1,388 in 2019, so it was a high status thing to have sitting in your home, but also a good prop to demonstrate pushbuttons. Everyone going to the "club" at the end was also a pitch to those who belonged to country clubs. The boys were being a little disingenuous about torsion bars. They were first used by Citroen in 1934, and almost all WWII tanks used them as well. Many German panzers had the front to rear torsion bar setup similar to what's being shown, but Packard was the first car company to use the concept in a passenger car. The electric motor for automatic leveling was another first in the auto industry. The Push Button Ultramatic was not a first, Chrysler developing the push button PowerFlite the year before. Packard decided it could develop a better (and cheaper) option using an electric motor to engage the gears rather than a mechanical linkage that was essentially the same as using a manual shift lever. The Chrysler system turned out to be very reliable. Packard, currently in its final money crunch, couldn't afford to engineer a new motor made especially for the loads put on it by the transmission selections, especially if the car was on any kind of grade, up or down hill. The modified a starter motor and hoped for the best. It turned out to be a disaster. The motor didn't have enough torque to get the car into drive on a hill, so circuit breakers popped and the car was stuck. The owner would have to await a tow truck to get him off the hill. In some cases, the loads were high enough to start the wiring on fire, destroying the entire car in a couple cases. This "futuristic" transmission system cost Packard hundreds of thousands of dollars in warranty claims at a time when making payroll was becoming harder and harder. Packard had workable plans to fix these problems in the 1957 models, but time had run out. Packard had merged with Studebaker in 1954 in an attempt to keep both companies afloat. There was a merger mania at the time, and Packard, much more financially healthy then, accepted the word of Studebaker management and their balance sheet that Studebaker could be an equal partner. As it turned out, Studebaker was near bankruptcy and had been turning out misleading financial statements at the time of the merger, and the formerly strong cash position of Packard was drained off to pay enough of Studebaker's debts to avoid bankruptcy for the merged corporation. By 1956, the situation was dire. The Packard plant in Detroit was the more modern but also much too large for the diminished numbers of Packards being sold. The toolings costs were just too high to maintain the real Packard line. The Studebaker plant in South Bend was older but also smaller and cheaper to maintain compared to the sprawling Packard plant. Consequently, the decision was made to end Packard production and move the machinery to South Bend. This film must have been made right after the introduction of 1956 model in September, 1955 since everyone still looked happy and hopeful. Alas, that wouldn't last, as the last real Packard rolled off the line in Detroit on June 25, 1956. Parts of the plant were used for smaller businesses after the plant closed in 1958, but the area around the plant deteriorated, and the businesses started to leave, the last closing up in 2010. Most of the plant remained unoccupied and unsecured, so scrapers moved in and removed anything of value, including the wiring, plumbing and window frames. There have been a number of plans for reuse over the years but none have come to fruition. Its highest use has become as a tourist attraction for those into ruins porn and movie sites for life after humans types of films. The iconic pedestrian bridge between the two largest plant buildings over Grand Blvd collapsed into the street on January 23, 2019. It seems to be a rather symbolic end to what was once one of the largest industrial concerns in the country, and maybe a sign of the times we live in today. No one will probably ever read this but, if you do, ponder that for a bit.
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  3. This is amazing for me. I moved to California in 1966 and remember this segment of CBS Reports. In the main, this describes California car culture much more so than in the rest of the country. The smog was just terrible then, and all the nice sunlight just made it even worse. I didn't have a car with a/c until 1976, and being stuck in a freeway traffic jam on a 100 degree day (which could occur in almost any month) was one of the things that set off the original road rage. You could still buy a junker for fifty bucks and start hot rodding it during auto shop at school. Contrary to what the show said, many kids did become mechanics, and a lot of them made as much money as doctor.
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  4. Tha Stratocruiser was a disaster for Boeing. Although it was essentially a double bubble B-29 and should have been a successful airliner, changes to the props and engines in the quest for higher speeds caused too many prop failures and engines separating from the wings. It had one of the worst accident rates of any of the modern prop airliners. Combined with the higher maintenance costs associated with the props and engines and higher fuel costs because of the need for higher speeds, the 377 had a short lifespan in service, with none lasting longer than 10 years in passenger service. They lasted longer as freighters, where flying at lower speeds and altitudes was more to the liking of the 377. Regardless of these issues, the coming of jets, including Boeing's own 707, doomed the 377, even before doing the same to other prop airliners.
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  5. It's a little late now, but that two way radio is a rare DeWald Model 1050 CB radio. It was only made from 1961 to 1963, so this film cannot be earlier than 1961, and it's likely to be between 1962 and 1965. It's definitely not a 1950's film. Just saw the end if the film. The copyright date is 1963, so that settles that.
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  6. This was brave Allied propaganda at a time when the war was going badly on almost every front. Dieppe was a disaster, El Alamein would change hands several times, and Guadalcanal was a close run thing which took months of fighting for the US to finally win. This was made near an absolute low point in the war for us, but it turned out that North Africa and Guadalcanal marked the beginning of the end for the Axis.
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  7. Some classic old time Southern California fire equipment in this movie. Ubiquitous Crown engines are shown alongside Macks and Whites. Some of the footage also shows LA County and LA City trucks. The wildfire appears to be the 1961 Baldwin Hills fire with units from both of those agencies. The water bomber is a CDF contract B-17 fire bomber conversion, and the helicopter is an LA City FD Bell 47G. All of this equipment is long gone, as are open trucks in general, riding on the back of trucks, and the iconic brass fire pole.
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  8. Atchison was founded in 1854, and the station was built in 1954. The centennial must have also been in 1954.
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  9. This film was not made shortly after the end of the Korean War. At 22:05, a picture of a 1958 Chevrolet station wagon hauling a boat is shown. Hence, 1958 has to be the earliest date for this movie. EDIT: a 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible is shown at 23:53, so 1959 must be the earliest date now.
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  10. There are only six makes left out all the ones that entered the run. That was a weird route to the ?South Rim. I guess they wanted to include Death Valley. I checked the identical route on Google Maps. Even taking old Route 66 through Arizona, the trip today would take 11 hours 32 minutes. That shows the effect of freeways compared to the two lane road era. The CHP car was a hoot. Single red spotlight to the front and single amber light in the rear window. If the people in Lone Pine were shivering it couldn't have been that hot in Death Valley. Of the four hotels in Vegas, only the Flamingo still exists, but name only, since the the last remaining Flamingo structure from the original 1946 hotel was demolished in 1993. It was obviously chilly in Vegas at 7:30 in the morning. In 1950, you could drive to the top of the dam, park right along the road, and go take a free tour down to the powerhouse. You can still drive across the top of the dam, but you can't stop, only park in the garage for $10, then take a shuttle to the dam. The free tour will now cost you $30, and you'll be thoroughly searched before you can enter. It's worse than getting on an airliner. Even a nail file is prohibited, just in case you decided to start chipping away at the concrete. The switchbacks coming up from the Dam on US 93 are long gone, replaced by a wide four lane highway, crossing the Colorado River on a long steel bridge, downstream from the Dam. The suicide barriers are so high you can no longer see the Dam from what is now Interstate 11. The stretch of 93 from the Nevada border used to be in terrible shape, Just as it was in 1950, shown by all the patches and potholes. It's now also replaced by a wide four lane highway. Ash Fork is on the last major section of old 66 in Arizona, and was bypassed by I-40 running over 20 miles to the south. This killed off the town, and, with only 396 people left in 2010, it's rapidly approaching ghost town status. The tracks still go to the Grand Canyon, but now it's just a tourist railroad. The last Santa Fe passenger train visited the Grand Canyon in 1969, with only the occasional freight with heating oil for the park running the rust off the rails. The Grand Canyon Railway tourist operation began in 1989 and is still going strong. And, after watching 36 minutes of this, do you think Mobil was going to announce the actual winners, thereby pissing off all the other entrants? Not on your life! They needed those car companies to come back next year, and that wasn't going to happen by naming a competitor as having better gas mileage than you did. No, we'll use the last ten minutes to let you know why you need to visit a Mobil station and have everything on your car serviced or replaced. :-)
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  11. Santa Fe got those first "2400 horsepower turbocharged diesel locomotives", EMD SD-24 models, in July, 1958, so that pretty well dates the movie as not being any earlier and probably not more than six months later.
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  12. I swear that Chinese officer at the beginning of the film is Reagan's voice at double speed.
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  13. This film must have been made in 1929. TAT merged with Maddux in 1929 and with Western Air Express in 1930 to form Transcontinental & Western Air, known later as Transworld Airways, or TWA. The Airway Limited started on July 7, 1929. Given the winter scenes, my guess is the film was taken in advance of the inaugural run of the train-plane service, sometime in early 1929. The Airway Limited only lasted until May of 1932. The depression had reduced the demand for transcontinental travel to the point that a special train for the service wasn't needed. The service was handled by other PRR trains until mid-1934. By then, night flying had been perfected with a nationwide network of radio directional beacons. Newer planes like the Boeing 247 were in service, cruising at 188 mph compared to the Trimotor's sedate 100 mph. It was now possible to fly coast to coast in 19 hours, and the fare was often no more than the cost of the four days travel it took on a train. The Pennsylvania discontinued stops at Port Columbus in late 1934, and any passenger wishing to take a plane west was on their own. It was a short lived but rather romantic piece of railroad and airline history.
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  14. At least in south Alabama, cotton has fallen to less than half the agricultural products grown here. Peanuts, corn, and soybeans are now among the top crops. Almost no hand labor is used for growing and harvesting any of these crops. Many more people are employed for poultry raising and timber production than work with traditional field crops. The sharecropping system is extinct because the production from small parcels of land isn't sufficient to provide a family with a living. Land leasing is common, where owners lease land otherwise fallow to farmers. These owners are not involved with crop raising, only with leasing their land. The era of trying eke out a living on a small parcel of land is rapidly coming to a close as large farms are becoming more and more common, as is corporate ownership. This has reduced agricultural employment, formerly the leading employer. This has caused an increase in poverty and a depopulation of many southern towns, some of which are only a small step above ghost town status.
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  15.  @boboala1  I wasn't attempting answering any ecological problems, only economic. I realize things like the Zebra mussel have also caused economic problems, but I was only addressing the claim the Seaway would pay for itself. As to your question about them not seeing into the future, I can guarantee you no one in 1950 would have predicted the shipping economy of 1980 - no one. Rapid changes in technology have sunk many a project, and the Seaway was another, but I'm not blaming the designers for not having a crystal ball. The costs of dredging have been made worse by general lowering of lake levels over the past 50 years, something the designers of the Seaway also couldn't have foreseen.
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  16. I learned to drive in the old man's '56 Pontiac Star Chief station wagon. That thing was size of today's tiny house. The steering wheel was about six feet across. Once I did get my license, this was the only car I had for a year. Nothing like showing up for a date in a 20 foot long station wagon. I hated that car. Even worse, he traded it on for a poop brown '64 Chevy Biscayne 4 door. Bottom of the line stick shift with black walls and dog dish hubcaps. The only options were the heater, AM non-push button radio and spotlites...on both sides. The old man loved spotlites. Girls thought I was some kind of undercover cop.
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  17. Must have been 1950 or 1951 since there are several mentions of "the first four postwar years".
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  18. I was 17 when this happened. I still remember my utter shock that we could have a president assassinated. That was something that happened in the nineteenth century, not now. I was eating lunch when the funeral and procession was broadcast. I couldn't finish it because I was physically sick watching this. This was watershed in American history. Things just continued to get worse from that time on. Look at the crowd watching the procession. They were dressed decently, no cell phones to bury themselves in, and there was respectful silence as the cortege passed. I shudder to think what it would be like today if this was President Trump's funeral.
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  19. Okay, the part with the ropes had to be a stunt. I've hiked to Inspiration Point a number of times. While it's steep, there's a good trail all the way up, and that trail was built by Thaddeus Lowe, same guy who built the rail line up the canyon to Alpine Tavern. It was a hotel and resort from 1893 to 1936, when it was mostly destroyed by a wildfire, a common occurrence in the San Gabriel Mountains. The snow and ice scene had to be filmed at two different time. You wouldn't find ice and snow part way up and then none at Inspiration Point. The nickname of Perspiration Point is apt, and hiking the trail when Los Angeles is going through o9ne of its recurring heat waves would be a bad idea. The biggest problem is shown in the film. When the weather is cooler in the spring and good for hiking, the fog from the ocean often gets backed up against the mountains, obliterating your view. Knowing the weather before you start out is important for a number of reasons. In winter, you won't be hot, but sudden snowstorms can hit, and then the trail can be really tricky in parts.
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  20. The worst thing was some of these people became parents just after this. They spawned Gen X, which then spawned Millennials, and here we are. Most Boomers returned to reality at some point and had good families, but some of the ones in this film are directly responsible for the mess we're in today. I remember the late 60s and 70s well, and they were just awful.
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  21. Beautiful locomotives and trains. Thanks for saving this one.
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  22. Reminds me of "Airplane" as they keep using propeller noises while showing Tu-16 jet bombers.
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  23. In WWI, the government took over all the railroads because they though private enterprise couldn't handle the job. It was horribly expensive, the trains never ran on time or with the right manifests, and the almost three years of government ownership bankrupted a number of railroads after the government turned back a physical plant completely worn out. For WWII, the railroads, not wanting to see a repeat of the WWI disaster, convinced the government they could handle the loads, and at no additional expense to the taxpayer. Freight generally got where it was supposed to, they carried the largest passenger loads on record for four years, and they did it with very few new locomotives or rolling stock. Remember that when you hear how well the government can run anything.
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  24. The Super Constellation in the closing scene is shown flying over nearly the exact spot that another TWA Super Connie collided with an American Airlines DC-7. It was the worst crash in America up to that time, with 123 people killed. The crash has special meaning to me because, while hiking the Canyon in 2002, I managed to locate a 1'x 3' piece of the vertical stabilizer from the DC-7. At the time, all I knew was it looked like part of an airplane. I have hiked the backcountry many times and always kept a lookout for any remnants when I'm in the Temple Butte area. Even though I've been to the area of the crash at least 10 times, this is the only piece of it I've found. You're not allowed to remove anything you might find. I marked it with my GPS, took pictures, and forwarded it to the FAA. They were the ones that confirmed what I had found. Very chilling thing to hold in your hands and realize how it got there. RIP to all aboard those two planes.
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  25. I don't see a date anywhere on the film but it can't have been later than May, 1942. That was the date the red "meatball" was removed from the center of national star, and the "meatball" was still present on the B-25 used in the film. The reason for this was a fear that the red "meatball" was the same shape and color as the Japanese marking and so might lead to misidentification by US and allied forces.
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  26. This film is a good example of the problems with the 1968 Guard. They were poorly trained and equipped, still using M1 Garand rifles and M-1 carbines when regular Army units had already been equipped with M-16's. Using powdered CS without soldiers wearing gas masks just means your own men will also be affected by the powder. A Garand with a fixed bayonet was much less effective for crowd control than just using 36" riot sticks. A crowd knows a soldier is unlikely to stab them with a bayonet, but they don't know if they will get cracked in the knees with a riot stick. The M2 sniperscope used with the M-1 carbine show here was already superseded by the much more effective starlight scope in the regular Army. The sniperscope was nearly useless in an urban setting, where all the lights would overwhelm the scope. This lack of effective training, outdated methods of riot control, and obsolescent equipment and weapons led directly to the Kent State shootings less than two years later in 1970.
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  27. The Attacker was really a jet powered version of the Spiteful, even to retaining most of the rear of the fuselage, including the tailwheel undercarriage. The Attacker was never a very good airplane, being far too slow as an interceptor, but at least being able to perform reasonably well as a fighter bomber. Clement Attlee and the Labour government that came in directly after the end of the war assumed no other conflicts would break out for at least a decade, and the current Vampire and Meteor would still be frontline aircraft in 1957. Given the dire financial condition of Britain after the war, only enough money was doled out for some experimental aircraft. The 510 was the Attacker with only the needed changes for replacing the straight wings and tail with swept surfaces. It was the only tail wheeled swept wing aircraft ever built. Contrary to the Attlee government assumptions, the Korean War broke out in 1950, and the UN forces came up against the MiG-15, an aircraft far superior to anything in service with the West. At least the US had the XP-86, later the F-86 Sabre, in final acceptance testing. The British had no modern swept wing fighters. In a panic move, the Churchill government put the swept wing versions of the Attacker and Hawker P.1067 on super priority, being ordered off the drawing board. The P.1067 became the outstanding Hawker Hunter. The Supermarine competitor was the Type 541, a disastrous failure compared to the Hunter. The lack of development aircraft in the initial period after the war caused Hawker and Supermarine to essentially do acceptance level testing on squadron level aircraft. Both aircraft had protracted development periods due to the lack of work after the war, and neither one entered service in time for the Korean War. The Hunter at least was the "right" aircraft from the start. The Swift was just the opposite. Underpowered with weak armament and handling that can only be described as dangerous. Work was rushed to solve these problems, but every step forward revealed yet more problems with the airframe as it became even more overweight with the addition of more cannon. An afterburning engine was added but the FB.2, which was supposed to solve the problems of the FB.1, developed fatal wing folding problems in the air leading to several fatal crashes, and the grounding of the entire fleet in August, 1954. The government did all it could to hush up these problems but, bye late 1955, rumors spread that the Swift was failing its final evaluation as an RAF fighter. This was finally acknowledged by the government in 1956 as the Mk.4 fighter version was scrapped, leaving the FR.Mk.5 reconnaissance version as the only one to enter full squadron service in 1956. It was developed in version up to the Mk.10 before it was finally decided the Swift was never going to be the aircraft the RAF really needed, and the Swift was removed from service in 1961 after a mere five years of troublesome development. The Swift was not only a poor aircraft. The government's attempts to cover up how poorly testing was going became a national scandal once the full breadth of troubles with the Swift was revealed, including the deaths od a number of pilots due to handling and airframe failures. The Swift, to its credit was the fastest plane in the world for eight short days in 1953 before the record was wrested away by the Douglas Skyray, a marginally more successful aircraft that still had a short service life. The success of the Hunter redeemed some of the failures of the Swift, but the real disaster of the Swift was the perception of the public and other aircraft buying countries that the British couldn't be counted on to be transparent about the performance of British aircraft. This caused Britain to fall out of favor with buyers, and new models were looked with some disdain until they had proved themselves. While the Swift was not the only cause of the decline of the British aircraft industry, it was another nail in the coffin.
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  28. Must have been made, or at least released, toward the end of 1945. The then Department of War was slashing the fleet, canceling almost every ship planned or under construction. Some of the oldest and most worn out ships were already being scrapped, and about 30% of the fleet was scheduled to be decommissioned to reserve. The slogan "Keep the fleet to keep the peace" was part of the Navy PR campaign to get the public onboard with pressuring Congress to stop the scrapping and decommissioning. Never let it be said the Navy didn't know how to insulate itself from budget cuts.
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  29. I remember watching this as a kid but I didn't know how many mistakes were in the episode then. By 1958, no C-47's were still in olive drab. The long shots showed an obvious WWII aircraft since it was not only in olive drab but the insignia had no red bar in the the bars of the insignia. Those were added in 1947, shortly after the Air Force became an independent service. There's no way they could have used up all the Co2 on one engine fire, and trying to restart number 1 was worth the risk compared to a dead stick landing into terrain. The load master had a flip down seat with a seat belt in a the C-47. He would have been in that seat, not sitting on the floor next to a load of heavy boxes. The last thing any pilot would do is extend the gear for landing on an unknown surface. All it would take is one obstacle or hole and the plane flips over. The first rule after an emergency landing like that is get away from the plane! You do a fireman's carry to get the injured man out and then use a blanket to drag him if he can't walk. A fire in the aircraft, especially after already experiencing an engine fire and runaway prop, would rapidly kill them all. There was smoke on the outside of the plane, so everyone would have tried to get out, not sit there looking at a wound. The flight surgeon would have at least gotten into coveralls, not fly around in a dress uniform. He would have also had a medic with him, and they would have loaded a bunch of medical gear in the copter. The URC-4 survival radio had a switch on the side that you pushed up to talk and let go to listen. It wasn't like a speaker phone where you could just hold it out and talk. Their quest for radio accuracy got lost early on when the flight surgeon was talking on the radio at the same time the tower was talking to him. Two way radios don't work like that. I was a helicopter medic, and it would have taken a powerful storm to have not gotten at least close enough to the ground to dump out some gear. I've landed in far worse storms than that one. A doctor would have asked to get some fishing line or thread out of their survival kit, not use multistranded copper wire to tie off an artery. You can't pull with tight enough without slicing through the artery. If keeping pressure on the gut was enough to stop the bleeding, that''s what they would have done. Gangrene wouldn't have been an issue doing that for an hour. All they would have had to do was release pressure every ten minutes of maybe twenty seconds. Assuming this was the femoral artery, there was no blood getting to the rest of the leg anyway, and that''s where the risk of gangrene would have been, not high up like that. Of course, I wasn't a medic back then, and all I knew about helicopters is that they were really cool. Looking at it today, not only is it full of errors, but it had a bunch of USAF technical advisors and was filmed in cooperation with the Air Force. I guess I'm most surprised at what a really sloppy show it was, and the Air Force guys must have known it. My guess is the needs of the TV production overrode any complaining about accuracy.
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  30. There's no way you can run communications without soundproofing between each work stations. Some kind of partitions would have to be erected between each station if you want anyone to be able to hear their own radio and phone traffic. It's one thing to separate all the communications from the operations area, but then you have to subdivide all the communications work stations. This was the beginnings of what later became the standardized method of handling all emergencies, the Incident Command System. This later morphed into what we use today, the National Incident Management System (NIMS). I spent a good [art of my life developing and then working within these systems. We are orders of magnitude better prepared to handle any emergency today than we were in 1967.
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  31. Charles Cahill and Associates was a production company from sometime in the mid-1950's to 1985. They produced a range of films, from obvious school movies like this one, to scare movies for teenagers about driving, drinking, and drug use. They also made films of pretty questionable quality about street gangs and narcotics control for police departments. The were one of several companies that rode the juvenile delinquent and beginning driving eras of baby boomers. Once baby boomers had grown up and scare movies in general had lost their lustre, Charles Cahill and Associates apparently lost their markets as well. They made their last film in 1985.
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  32. Well, there wasn't railroad in the city limits of Milford, but there were two railroads to the north and south within 8 and 10 miles in 1948, so the idea everything was transported completely by truck is a little disingenuous. It's not difficult to tell this is sponsored by The Highway Transportation Industries of America with the constant subtle and not so subtle digs at railroads and streetcars. I find it difficult to believe that many loads of steel plate were hauled from Pittsburgh to Cleveland by truck when there were eleven mainline railroads running between the two cities in 1948. The finished tractors may have been hauled by truck to the railroad team track, but there's no way a semi load of three tractors was hauled by truck from Cleveland to Kansas. The Highway Transportation Industries of America merged with the American Trucking Association sometime in the mid-50's. The ATA exists primarily to advocate for the least amount of regulation of trucks and trucking, especially fuel and use taxes, and they have done a very effective job of it. A 2000 Federal Highway Administration study estimated that combination trucks paid only 80 percent of the federal-scale costs they imposed on highways via user fees, with the largest trucks paying only half of their cost responsibility. The federal tax on over the road diesel hasn't been raised since 1993. At the same time, the ATA opposes subsidies of any kind for railroads and water transport.
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  33. Iceland has been one of the luckiest countries on earth. The US spent huge amounts fo money establishing bases in the island during WWII, but Iceland was spared the ravages of war, so was the only European country to have an economy that grew during the war. Fishing is no longer the main industry, and Reykjavik is no longer the pastoral town shown in the movie. Up until 2007, Iceland prospered by being one of the main financial centers of Europe, and Reykjavik now has many 15-30 story buildings. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 lingered until about 2015 as all the large banks ended up in bankruptcy. Unemployment skyrocketed, and Iceland experienced a net out migration of 5,000 people, a large number for a country with only 348,000 people. Things are looking up now, but Iceland had to go through a period of austerity like they had never seen before to get the ship righted.
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  34. Norway was not a defenseless country. She was surely outmatched by the Germans but she didn't roll over and play dead. One of those forts shown with "silent guns" was Oscarsborg Fortress. The fort's old 11 inch guns, and torpedo tubes with WWI era torpedoes, combined to sink the nearly brand new German cruiser Blucher as well as at least two other transports and one heavily damaged. Over 1,000 German soldiers were killed, and the invasion was delayed long enough to allow the King, Queen, and most of the government to escape the Britain. While southern Norway was conquered fairly rapidly, troops in northern Norway, abandoned by the British to fight Germany in France. fought a gallant rear guard action, with the last Norwegian forces, out of ammunition and food, not surrendering until June 10, 1940. Norway actually held out longer against German forces than any other continental European country ,including France. Norway was not defenseless.
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  35.  @joaqstarr  No, it was meant to be played to workers actually producing LVTs. I assume there was some attempt to be entertaining since it wasn't being shown to the troops.
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  36. No shit.
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  37. That was the most bizarrely tangential film I've ever seen about a gas station. It also shows how times have changes. Grandpa would have been dragged away as a child molester today, men don't spend their time away from work in a shirt and tie, houses close to downtown are now dumps, half the downtown stores are vacant, and junior would have been inside on the computer engaged in some kind of twitter war over nazis and white supremacists. Gas stations no longer have men who pump the gas and clean your windshield. Most of them now only exist selling gas as a sideline business, with the real money being made selling beer, garbage snacks, and rolling papers. Yes, we've made a lot of progress.
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  38. I'm almost certain this wasn't a railroad produced movie. The title screens are missing, but the narration and pace are typical of the Encyclopedia Britannica educational films of the 50's and 60's. I watched what seem to me now to be hundreds of these when I was in school. The newest vehicles are the 1961 Chevys being loaded on the transport truck, so I'd guess 1961 to 1962 as the movie's date. None of the railroad locomotives are newer than a GP-9, so that would also put the movie around 1960. No railroad would have permitted so many trucks to be shown, and an SP produced film would't have allowed the UP and ATSF locomotives to be in the film. Even the freight car with Bobby's stuff would have been a brand new SP box car, not a beat up old Reading car. I'll bet a Trump Buck this was an EB film. :-)
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  39.  @pjhaebe  That would be Tarawa, and this wasn't it. As stated on the closing credits. it was produced by the USN Industrial Incentive Division to be shown to the workers producing the LVT. Pictures of dead Marines were pretty good incentives to not call in sick tomorrow.
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  40. She was FDR's cousin as well as being a well known filmmaker. I assume the last name Roosevelt was of more value for her getting funding for movie making than if she had used her husband's name.
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  41. The Handley Page Hermes 5 only had two prototypes built, and it never went into production. The Hermes 4, powered by Hercules piston engines, was not a success in airline service and stopped production when 25 examples were produced. It did well for holiday charter flying and freighter service and lasted until 1964. The Armstrong Whitworth Apollo was a disaster, with underpowered and unreliable engines. The Viscount was able to handle medium and long range flying so there would have been no role for the Apollo even if it was a good airplane. This was another example of the Brabazon Committee mandating certain types of aircraft instead of letting the British aircraft companies design what they thought would sell. The H.P.R 5 was another stupid design forced on Mile Aircraft by the Brabazon committee. It led to the bankruptcy of Miles Aircraft, and Handley Page produced two turboprop Marathons before giving up on the idea and scrapping them in 1953.  The biggest flying white elephant was the Bristol Brabazon, named in honor of the Lord of the same name, and chairman of the Brabazon Committee. It was tailored to a perceived need by BOAC that no other airline would require. It was assumed that only the wealthy or government officials, both of which described Lord Brabazon, would want to spend all their time on a transatlantic flight, and not cramped up in something like a DC-6. To solve that problem, the space of a small apartment, 270 sq ft, was allocated to each first class passenger, while those in steerage would have a mere 200 sq feet. You would need room to move around since the Brabazon took about 12 hours from London to New York, depending on headwinds, as it lumbered along at a stately 250 mph compared to the DC-6's 311 mph. It never flew in passenger service and the sole prototype was broken up in 1953. I was the largest aircraft ever until the Airbus A300 and had a wingspan larger than a 747. In retrospect, it seems the real reason for the Brabazon was so Britain would have the largest airplane in the world, and gain back some of her prewar aircraft manufacturing prestige.   Contrary to the commentary, the Supermarine was nowhere near supersonic. None of the planes at the show were. The real winner of the show was the Hawker P 1052, which was developed into the Hawker Hunter the most successful British combat aircraft ever. The only real airliner success was the Vickers Viscount, although the Comet would have been a world beater if not for the bad luck of designing windows with the wrong shape.
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  42. Interesting to see how much effort the producers went through to make sure no individual restaurant's name was shown.
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  43. Then, 13 years later, France showed their appreciation of NATO by withdrawing from it, throwing out all of the NATO troops on French soil, closing down NATO bases, and forcing the headquarters to move to Brussels. This was 21 years after the nations that ultimately become NATO spent their blood and treasure to eject the Nazis from French soil after the French surrendered to the Nazis following a valiant 46 day battle. To make matters worse, they agreed to an armistice with the Nazis when they had promised Britain not make a separate peace. This saw the creation of the Vichy puppet government that lasted until almost the end of the war, a government that actively collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up French citizens for deportation to concentration camps. One more chapter in the glorious history of French resistance to tyranny.
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  44. Well, that certainly was melodramatic. I don't understand why it had to be though. Penicillin was widely available and used to cure syphilis by 1949, the date of this film. Most doctors would have treated Joan confidentially and contacted her husbands doctor to make sure he was tested as part of his next physical, but he wouldn't have had to know anything unless he also had syphilis. It would have been up to her how and if she told her husband, assuming he wasn't the carrier. It's far more likely he gave the disease to his wife than the other way around.
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  45. Britain simply doesn't have the money to do so. They can participate in shared risk aircraft like the Airbus and Tornado, but the government doesn't have the resources to guarantee high risk projects. Rolls Royce went bankrupt over the engine fiasco on the L-1011, and the government was nearly made insolvent over the nationalization of Rolls. Without the colonies, Britain is just too small to absorb many financial shocks.
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  46. Brady filmed this between October and December, 1940. It was released in January, 1941. Brady went on to become a distinguished combat photographer during the war and produced more of this type of film after the war.
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  47. "That new FM everyone is talking about..." LOL. People who bought FM then got a receiver that covered 42-50 MHz. By 1949, the band was changed to the present frequencies, 88-108 MHz, so she would have had an FM radio only good for listening to police calls.
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  48. The destroyer pictured is the HSwMS Småland, a Swedish destroyer commissioned in 1956 and decommissioned in 1979. It was the last destroyer ever built for the now much diminished Swedish Navy. The the Bofors rocket launchers may have been used in the Indian Navy is never mentioned in the film and has nothing to do with the vessel in the film. The reference to the Indian Navy is misleading. It should be replaced by the Swedish Navy.
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  49. He's just another troll, Jake. B-17's were converted to QB-17 drones as far back as 1946 when they were used to sample the air after the big nuclear tests in the Pacific. They were used as targets for missile tests during the 50's but were rapidly wearing out by the last half of the decade. The last one was retired in 1959. The Navy never had QB-17's, and a Terrier missile would have been shooting a much faster drone by then, probably a Panther variant. The missile "hit" was inserted in the film and looks like a fake. If you look closely, the plane explodes but no missile hits it. A 1959 version of CGI graphics.
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  50. It was a tricky process for the 1940's. They developed better glue and better methods of getting the glue between the layers in the 1950's but that came as aluminum and aluminium composites were also developed, and aluminum was cheaper than the wood composite because of improvements in aluminum smelting techniques.Of course, carbon fiber and other materials make better and lighter composites now, and they have gotten cheaper and better ways have been found to make those materials. I'm 71 years old and it's fascinating to watch some of the old films on your channel since I was alive through many of the events in those films. I've seen the changes in life, mostly for the better, in person, and we are generally a lot better off today than when I was born in 1946.
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  51. "Space Cadet". Good username. Railroads have been one of the largest taxpaying industries in country. The railroads long ago pad the government back for their land grants in the 1800's. The railroad accident rate has been in a constant decline since about 1995 and is now the lowest in history for fatal crashes. Railroads have been winning freight traffic back from long haul trucks because of their on-time deliveries compared to trucks fighting the heavy traffic on freeways, something the government built. And who exactly was supposed to pay for this nationwide system of monorails? The railroads, that were rarely profitable in the 1950's? No, it would have to be done by the taxpayer. And what exactly would have been gained by constructing monorails. Even now, the longest monorail in the world is only 60.8 miles while the longest maglev lines 19 miles. Both of these systems are in China and both were built by the government. The technical and financial issues with maglevs make it impossible to built a nationwide system. Typical monorails have no speed advantage over high speed trains already in service in many parts of the world, but they do have horrendously high costs of maintenance, another good reason why no country has thousands of miles of monorails in service. Building high speed rail lines for passengers might make sense, but you can't build a high speed line that competes with jets for long haul routes. Long distance commuter serve the likes the Northeast Corridor where we already have trains running at 120-150 mph. Other high speed lines with speeds of 220 mph are in the works for lines where passenger traffic will support them. That's a faster speed than any monorail. It sounds like you actually know very little about railroads.
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  52. The aircraft in the movie is a C-82 Packet, as the pilot said at 2:04. It was the predecessor to C-119 Flying Boxcar, which was a larger, faster aircraft. The last few Packets were retired in 1954 after a production run of only about 200. The C-119 was much more successful. It had a production run of more than 1,100. They flow in roles from freighter to medical evacuation to gunship until 1976. Retired USAF aircraft were modified with a jet pod on the top of the fuselage and used as fire tankers. Unfortunately, wear on the airframes and age, since many were about 35 years old, led to permanent grounding in 1987.
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  53. It is indeed a DC-7B. The four bladed props give it away, but the extra fuel tanks built into the rear of the engine nacelles mark it as either an SAA or Pan Am plane, the only ones to have these tanks. We obviously know this is a SAA flight, so it's a DC-7B. It was the first pressurized aircraft owned by SAA, and the four examples carried all the long haul traffic for the airline until the arrival of the first 707s in 1960. They had a brief engagement with two Comet 1s leased from BOAC, but the fleet was grounded after one of them crashed into the Mediterranean in 1954, and SAA never flew a Comet again. The flight was a very long 18 hours on the DC-7. It was restful in terms of things like meals and how you were treated, but it was a noisy plane and almost 100 mph slower than the Comet. The DC-7 also required a stop in Khartoum to refuel. The 707 was able to fly non-stop from London to Johannesburg in 14 hours or less depending on headwinds. Unfortunately, that only lasted a few years as more and more countries in Africa denied SAA use of their air space, and detours out over water brought the flight time back to the days of the DC-7.
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  54. The biplane trainer was the Boeing/Stearman PT-13/17. They were what almost all military pilots used in the first phase of training, and over 10,000 were built. The low wing monoplane was the Vultee BT-13 Valiant, the next step up from the biplane. The next step was not shown in flight, but the T-6 Texan retractable gear trainer was shown facing the cadets in several shots. They were the planes at 13:39 being used to sight in their machine guns. The T-6 was built to be a lead in for single engine fighter training. The T-6 was easily the longest lived in service of any of the aircraft seen. It wasn't retired by USAF as a trainer until 1959, but a few served as counter insurgency aircraft in Vietnam, while others flew in the same role in places like Algeria and Angola. The last T-6 in military service was retired from the South African Air Force in 1995. Several hundred are still flying today as warbirds and in air races. The twin engine craft In the row facing the cadets are Cessna AT-17 Bobcats. This was the standard twin engine trainer of AAF for the whole war. Generally, pilots who weren't successful as single engine fighter pilots had the chance to fly multi engine aircraft instead. Some, wanting to be bomber pilots, chose to go to multi engine training as soon as basic flight training was completed. Almost 6,000 AT-17s were built, and they were commonly used as "station hacks" for the CO and XO to keep up their flying hours, and general transports for other pilots from the base. Pilots being trained at March Field in Riverside reputedly used AT-17s to visit brothels across the border in Nevada, many of which had their own airstrips. Some went for the swimming pools, horseback riding, tennis, and excellent meals, along with gambling in the small casinos of the larger brothels. The single rooms each had comfortable beds with top grade mattresses, a radio in each room, big bathtubs and showers, plenty of hot water, and, most importantly, air conditioning. The price of a room without female accompaniment was only $2 a night, and that included a steak dinner at some of them. That was a pretty nice way to spend the weekend after barracks life. The madams knew what to do to make sure the pilots would keep coming back. Of course, others went for more nefarious purposes, but the pilots of March field were setting the scene for the resort hotel casinos of the Vegas we know today. The fighters were were twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Bell P-39 Airacobra. The P-39 was already obsolescent by mid-1942 and was only used for training in the US, although we sent thousands to the USSR on Lend Lease. It was a well loved airplane there. The four engine bomber was, of course, the famous B-17 Flying Fortress. It was in use from before the war all they way to the end of it and after. The film must have been made in late 1942. The red "meatball" that was in the center of the star marking was removed in May 1942. The B-17s shown are F models, not put in squadron use until June, 1942. The film was careful not to show our more modern fighters like the P-47 Thunderbolt or P-51 Mustang
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  55. 1918-1919 was a real pandemic, not like we've had in past year and a half. When we get to the point we are carrying two or three bodies from a workplace in a day, then I'll start worrying.
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  56. More Diabetes = More Safety....
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  57. It's highly unlikely the humidity during the day was 90%. I live in one of the most humid areas of the country. On a summer day with a temperature of 93, the dewpoint is typically about 72. That's a humidity of 51%. That's still very high, it just doesn't sound that high. A hot day up north might still be 93 but the dewpoint is normally about 60. That's a humidity of 37%. Still unpleasant, but not like a humid day in the South. I'm old enough to have lived about half my life without A/C in my home or car. After living the second half with it, I'd never be without it again. Even if it was possible to stand it during the day, it's sleeping that's the killer. I well remember as a kid having my pillow laid out on the window sill, trying to catch a breeze. One of the reasons why crimes against persons goes up during a prolonged heat wave in the big cities of the north is irritability from lack of sleep. No matter what the cost, I just couldn't survive without A/C again.
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  58. I love the Caribbean, but things were different in 1948. The idea of being "whisked" there in a couple hours from Miami in an unpressurized, non-air conditioned DC-4, bumping along at 15,000 feet while dodging thunderstorms in not my idea of being whisked now. At 560 miles, it wasn't exactly a fast trip in a plane cruising at about 220 mph. The four hours time from Trinidad to Jamaica must have been on a Constellation since it was the only plane flying in 1948 with the required cruising speed of 350 mph. It would have been a lot more pleasant than the DC-4 since it was pressurized, air conditioned, and cruised at 23,000 feet. That '48 Chrysler woody cab may still be driving around Havana for all I know. The Tropicana was the premiere nightclub/casino during the postwar period and up to Castro's takeover in 1959. The casino was run by Mafia mobsters during the 50's after most had left the US during the times of Keufhaufer hearings. Although the casino is going, the Trop is still there, with the lavish shows and showgirls not much changed from 1948. Unfortunately, I was a mere 13 years old when Castro "liberated" Cuba, so it's the one Caribbean island I've never seen. San Juan has turned into a huge third world dump. The big hotel/casinos are, of course, safe and nice to visit, and Old San Juan is still safe and a tourist mecca, at least during the day. The rest of the city has been left to rot as Puerto Rico teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. The murder rate is about the same as Chicago, and police and government corruption is common. I haven't been back since Hurricane Maria last year, but I imagine things are even worse. Jamaica in 1948, and Kingston in particular, had one of the lowest murder rate in the world, even lower than London. Police were unarmed and, from what residents of Jamaica have told me. it really was a tropical paradise. After independence in 1962, drugs and drug gangs became a growing problem, and the police were generally armed by 1990. The murder rate is one of the highest in the world, and the police are now armed to the teeth, but very poorly trained. It's the only place in the Caribbean I've ever been caught in the middle of a gunfight. The special drug squad had apparently cornered several gang members at an outdoor cafe almost in the heart of downtown Kingston, and the police were determined to take them into custody. The gang members were just as determined not to be. The result was a 15 minute gun battle with automatic weapons on both sides. All my late wife and I could do is huddle in a doorway and keep our heads down as rounds whizzed around us. I was a police officer in the US at the time, and it was one of the few times traveling overseas that I wish I had my gun. There are some very nice resorts on the north coast like Ocho Rios and Negril that were still safe the last time I was there in 2003. If you decide to visit Jamaica, go to the north coast and try to get a flight into Sangster International (MJB) in Montego Bay. It's modern, air conditioned, and efficient. It allows you to avoid all the problems of Kingston.
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  59. The vessel in the film is actually HMS Londonderry, a Rothesay class frigate, commissioned in 1958. She was built for antisubmarine warfare, so that's why the ASDIC room was shown, although a submarine used by drug smugglers, especially penicillin smugglers, was doubtful at best. The film must have been made sometime after 1969 when the flight deck and hangar were added aft for the small Westland Wasp helicopter. The rifles shown were L1A1 SLR's, but they were never made in the automatic version for general service, regardless of the amount of automatic fire shown. The actual automatic weapons shown were the Sterling submachine guns, carried by both the landing party and the smugglers, and a Thompson submachine gun in the hands of one of the smugglers, complete with the iconic 50 round drum magazine
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  60. Sorry, Bernie is out trying to find a job.
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  61. Between the Navy and the Air Force, almost 600 F-4 Phantom II's were lost in the Vietnam War to all causes. That was about 1/3 of all the F-4's deployed to Vietnam. 201 A-1's were lost to all causes, not just combat, in the same period in the war, about 20% of the number deployed. Two A-1's shot down two NVA MiG-17's while two A-1's were lost to MiG-17's. Your argument that sending A-1"s into combat in Vietnam was suicide is hardly persuasive.
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  62. Unfortunately, your counter box at the bottom covers the copyright date, but this film was made in 1967, so it's not the 50's. This was part of a series made for Civil Defense covering various aspects of the bomb shelter and how to manage one.
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  63.  @bobrand3895  Yes, grabbed it, because it was just laying in the streets back then. They worked hard for what they got. Unfortunately, they also raised children who expected things to be given to them, and they raised children that think socialism is a cool thing.
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  64. Sounds like a couple of LAPD dispatchers were used in this one. I started in 1978, and I'm pretty sure I saw this one in the academy.
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  65. Here was the problem. When their marketing people said Americans wanted smaller cars, management thought "Cheap". When they said better gas mileage, management thought "Underpowered". When they were told Americans still wanted a small car to be well built, they thought "Cheap". GM management could never get out of the "Small = Cheap" mindset. That's how we got the Vega.
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  66. The copyright is on the opening credits - 1946.
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  67. Bit having the Thousand Year Reich curb stomped into submission in twelve years isn't a fairytal., Teddy?
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  68. Officer Jim Daniels and his pearl handle .38. Those were the days.
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  69. I'm amazed the the Army wouldn't have filmed this in color. Color movie film was common in 1953, and color views of France would have made the film at least a little more interesting.
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  70. The prototype Viscount was introduced in 1949 in time for the Farnsbouth show. The Hunter prototype likewise first flew in 1949. In addition, do you think the makers of the film put the wrong date in the title? It's pretty clear you don't know much about real airplanes. Maybe all your model building over the past three years has helped you learn.
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  71. The Duramold process wasn't well suited for aircraft. Early models of the AT-21 had significant cracking problems due to vibration and delamination when used in humid environments. Howard Hughes was a great believed in laminated wood being the aircraft composite structure of the future, and it was the only easily available material to use for his famous HC-4, better known as the Spruce Goose. Even the lightness of Duramold wood wasn't enough to make the HC-4 a military or commercial load carrier due to its great size and underpowered engines. It was also a seaplane at a time that seaplanes were already becoming obsolescent.
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  72. Bayer-Semesan was a product line that lasted from 1929 to 1943. It became Du Pont Semesan Company from 1943 to 1946, after which it became part of Grasselli Chemical Company. Given the Pan Am Clipper is the only vehicle of any kind shown in the movie, my guess is this was made immediately prewar, sometime between 1939 and 1940.
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  73. 59,000 miles and the old jalopy is already shot. I have a 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara with 131,000 miles and it just had its first failure - the power window on the driver's side quit. I am old enough to remember when a car with 75,000 really was shot.
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  74.  @jackofalltrades8353  I'll tell you what, boss, go back and do those calculations against the debt. I already have, and it still won't pay off the construction costs of the dams and turbines. There was already a lot of hydro power in Ontario, and the Saunders project was built with the idea of supplying power to all the industries that were going to locate in New York and Ontario. Instead, it was completed just in time for the industries already there to shut down and move to of the country. The power generation has not only not paid for itself, they had to spend another $254 million to correct faults in the construction of the powerhouse and generators , and they are still settling continuing lawsuits over all the land seized for the reservoir. Do some research next time.
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  75. Given that WWII started in September, 1939, it seems pretty doubtful that anyone was taking a pleasure cruise on the Rhine. It's even more doubtful the Germans would have allowed such a thing to filmed in any case.
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  76. The frontline planes shown in the film are the Curtis P-36 Hawk, a brief shot of the P-40 Warhawk, the Boeing XB-15, Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Northrop A-17 light bomber, Bell YFM-1 Airacuda, and the Douglas B-18 Bolo. Of those, only the P-40 and B-17 turned out to be successful combat aircraft. The B-18 achieved some success as an antisubmarine aircraft but was never used as a bomber. All the rest of the frontline aircraft were hopelessly obsolete by 1940 with the P-36 not the equal to any frontline German or Japanese fighter. B-18 was too slow and had too small a bomb load to have any serious use as a bomber. The A-17 was in use long after single engine bombers were shown to be too slow, too small, and had a weak defensive armament. Of all these though the Airacuda was the most disastrous failure. It was supposed to be the first real fighter bomber, able to bring down enemy bombers, engage in dogfights with enemy fighters, and able to be used as a bomber when required. It was also the only pusher aircraft until the postwar B-36. It was slow, the 37mm cannon fired too slow, the bomb load too small, and the handling was described from "challenging" to "downright dangerous". The 13 examples were rarely flown due the pilots hatred of the plane. It was so bad that by 1942, when the US needed almost anything that would fly, the 13 examples, that never entered operational service, were unceremoniously declared surplus and scrapped.
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  77. Really. If it was a complete victory, we would have had something like a black man elected President for two two terms, a black female Vice-President, black Supreme Court justices, eleven black senators, 57 black Members of Congress, black mayors of almost all large American cities, almost 35% of police officers in large cities are black...yeah, a real incomplete victory.
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  78.  @bermudezhg  Would you like to be speaking German or Japanese and living under a totalitarian government with death camps and no rights at all? .Does it hurt to be that stupid?
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  79.  @LC-jy8mj  Does it hurt to be this stupid?
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  80. Yes, because Neoarsphenamine, the only drug available at the time, wasn't a cure. It only stopped the bacteria from being damaging for a short period of time and had to be re-administered to be effective. This is why syphilis was mostly an uncontrolled disease until penicillin came along in the 1940's.
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  81. Probably not. It was only needed in places where the demand for phone exceeded the number of lines available. I don't think the post WWII demand for phone service in France was very high until maybe the mid-50s'. By that time, multiple conductor lines had replaced older single conductor copper, so line capacity was probably not a big issue. It would rear its ugly head again with the advent of the internet and dial up. Lines occupied for hours on end was never envisioned by telephone planners in 1946.
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  82. I was surprised at that also. Every K Ration had at least a 3 pack (with some 4 packs and sometimes a 9 pack) of one of about 10 brands of smokes. The government paid for these, which is why the brands were rotated. Almost any of the tobacco companies would have provided these cigarettes for free (as they did for many military hospitals) but the military did not want to be seen as promoting one brand of cigarettes. The lucky soldiers found one of the popular brands like Luckies, Chesterfield, or Camels while the unlucky were stuck with less popular brands like Wings and Carven-A. This practice continued up until 1975, substituting popular postwar brands like Marlboro and Salem for less popular brands, when it was decided that soldiers didn't need to get free smokes. Soldiers of the era when a meal also meant a couple free smokes have lamented the decision ever since.
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  83. Wolfman Jack on AFRN. You can tell the armed forces had really loosened up by 1971. We can date this one pretty precisely. The Alaska DJ plays a song called "Absolutely Right" by The Five Man Electrical Band. That song was a hit in Canada and Alaska during the winter of 1971. That coincides with the 42 below lament of the DJ so this movie had to be made in 1971 or 1972. "Laugh In" was at its height of popularity in 1971 and had stated to fade by 1972, so my vote is 1971.
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  84. I don't think six years qualifies as "just after". It's small thing anyway, but now we at least have a good approximate date.
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  85. It's hard to realize at this late date what a massive airplane the DC-2 and DC-3 was when it was first introduced. It had the sleekness of the Vultee V-1 and the DC-2 two more seats than that of the Condor. That went up to nine nine more seats on the DC-3. The early DC series aircraft pointed to the future of airliners while the Vultee and Curtis models were both made obsolete by the DC's. The next big leap in airliners wouldn't take place until the introduction of the jets in the mid to late 50's.
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  86. That has to be the most irritating radio jingle ever. I guess it was considered pretty cool before we got into the robotic voice era.
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  87. Ironically, assuming this was actually filmed in 1946, 20mm guns started being removed from ships less than two years later. The 20mm was too light for the new, heavier jet fighters and bombers. The Navy was moving to all radar directed gunfire, and the 20mm gun wasn't set up for remote firing. In addition, each gun required a crew of two, and two more armorers were required for each battery of four guns to reload the ammo drums and repair and maintain the guns. A cruiser was generally armed with about sixty 20mm guns. That required about 150 crew, and that was a lot of berthing and messing space for guns that were increasingly ineffective. The rearming of destroyer size and larger vessels with twin 3"/50 automatic, radar controlled gun mounts and removal of all the 20mm and 40mm guns provided much more effective AA protection for only about half the required crew. Within fifteen years, many of the 3"/50 guns were removed in favor of 20mm very rapid fire, fully automatic Phalanx gun mounts and surface to air missiles. Time marches on.
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  88. Not quite true. A Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, similar to the USAF C-97, ditched in the Pacific on October 16, 1956. Through a series of skilled maneuvers. a Coast Guard cutter standing by to pick up survivors, not one of the 31 crew and passengers abosrd died.
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  89. There were no jet powered passenger planes in 1940. The opening scenes are of the interior and exterior of the Douglas DC-4E. It wasn't related to the smaller but successful DC-4/C-54. The DC-4E was classed as an experimental version of the DC-4 but almost nothing except the tricycle landing gear was reused in the later DC-4. The DC-4E was too large for airline passenger demand n 1938 at 52 seats, was unreliable., complex, and slow, with a cruising speed slower than the twin engine DC-3. The single example was sold to Imperial Japanese Airways in late 1939. The Japanese government invented a cover story that the aircraft crashed into Tokyo Bay shortly after delivery. It was actually being reversed engineered into the Nakajima G5N bomber, as unsuccessful as the DC-4E.
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  90. Holy cow! A car that could burn rubber? Swell! Make a note of that too, would you, Pat? Don't worry about the nausea from trying to write in a moving car. It will go away within a couple hours after we stop, Pat. And get us out to that polo field, Pat. The average 1953 American watches polo every weekend!
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  91. So how many cars carried them part of the way there? How did they get all those bedrolls and food and supplies in one '46 Ford? They cooked supper over an open fire...in a fireplace? Who did KP duty? Then they had a nice clean cabin with their own beds, not cots or bunks? No pup tents, no bugs, no sleeping bags, no having it pour all night until your tent was flooded and everything you owned was wet, so you spent most of the night shivering? Where were things like canteens while there were rambling around making a map with on compass? And who made those flapjacks in the morning? Camping with the Girl Scouts was sure a lot different than camping when I was in the Boy Scouts.
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  92. The series was produced by Airborne Productions Inc. California National was the company that packaged the show and sold it to the TV networks and stations.
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  93.  @kingduckford  True, but I think a lot of that technology has been the cause of the other degeneracy I mentioned.
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  94. The revised movie was released in 1952. Most of the stainless steel cars are post WWII. The New York Central E-7 locomotives with the large number boxes weren't built until 1949. Most of the cabs are 1948-9 Chryslers with very few pre-war Checkers. The UN building was just under construction in 1948 and completed in 1952. The SS United States. the large liner shown several times, wasn't christened until 1951. The radio station section and experimental TV were both from the 1942 film. It would appear that large sections of the 1942 movie were junked and 1952 footage substituted. Most of the NYC passenger fleet was still heavyweight cars and many of the trains were still pulled by streamlined steam locomotives. I suspect that the movie had the misfortune of being released just before Pearl Harbor. No NYC tourism movie was going to get any theater time after Pearl Harbor. Once the war was over, all the train footage would have to be reshot since the NYC management wanted to show off the new postwar trains. They also had to be reshot a lot of the street footage since 1q941 cars looked old by 1948. They used the 1942 footage when they could but it must have been an expensive undertaking to shoot new film and then intersperse the new footage with the old. The NYC was unfortunate again because, in that same ten year period between the old and new move, many of the passenger trains had ceased to exist, and the NYC was getting reading to merge with the Pennsylvania RR to form the Penn Central, another disaster for the NYC. The NYC then ceased to exist, at least the end of their long string of bad luck.
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  95. Zoran (are you Slovenian), I think I answered your question on how the system handled calls. There was a capacity of six or twelve channels and everyone else had to wait. The phone company would cut you off after five minutes unless you had a good reason you needed the line longer and had permission from the operator. Cars were bigger then and, even though you needed a big trunk, the control head under the dash was generally small enough to fit. As to making it work today, no, not possible. Cell phone frequencies are much higher today so there's no operator to take the call. Worse, there are police and fire departments that were allowed to use the old MTS frequencies when they migrated to higher frequencies. If you found one of those old radios that still worked and was hooked to power (a very unlikely thing, I'd add), pushing that button on the handset might interfere with emergency traffic, something that theoretically could get you a couple years at Leavenworth if you kept playing with it.
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  96.  @arthurmartins5495  If that's true, you have no excuse for pushing an historical falsehood. However, I've met many Portuguese living Brazil. I have no idea how you could buy into this lie without some family connection to Brazil.
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  97. Yes, well, so did Sweden,Brazil, Japan, France, and Columbia, to name a few. It just makes more sense to credit Sweden in the title since Bofors, as Swedish company, what the developer of this rocket system. The Bofors system was most widely deployed in the Japanese navy with 20 launchers and the French navy with 17 systems, compared to 6 for India.
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  98.  @small_ed  Sure. Information from a noted antisemitic, racist, and neonazi site is sure to have the "real" story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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  99. There was never was a USS Montana. in WWII. There was a planned USS Montana, an enlarged Iowa class battleship, but it was canceled in 1943 when it became clear it wouldn't be ready before the likely end of the war. I assume they used the name of this fictional vessel so it wouldn't reflect badly on a real warship.
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  100. Stuart Legg was quite a famous documentary filmmaker. He did work for the British and Canadian governments from 1933 until the end of WWII, winning the first Oscar for a Documentary Short Subject for "Churchill's Island in 1941 and was nominated for his 1944 production "Warclouds in the Pacific". He continued to produce documentaries after the war, including this one for Shell in 1937. He also wrote "The Barbarians of Asia" in 1970. He died in 1988 at the age of 77. Legg was the uncredited narrator of the film and was undoubtedly responsible for the high production values of what was essentially a long commercial for Shell.
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  101. The date she writes on the form at 4:50 is 10/7/41, two months before Pearl Harbor. People watching this when it first came out had no idea how close this may have come to being a reality.
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  102. Very interesting video. Itr's easy to forget how complex radio was back in the days when most of the programs were live. I'd guess that this was made in mid-1942. There was no mention of the North African landings and the idea that we could get bombed was pretty much gone by 1943.
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  103. There were two quick shots of an RF-84 at the recon competition. They were rare birds by 1971. The Air National Guard had a few stateside but none in Europe. The only NATO countries still flying them as The Netherlands and Italy. I couldn't see any national markings on the aircraft but it must hoave been from one of those two air forces. They were retired by the Dutch in 1971 and the Italians by 1974. Interesting to catch a glimpse of a real reconnaissance workhorse from the 50's and 60's still flying competitions in 1971.
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  104. This film and films like it were made to show to assemblies of workers at former auto plants now producing armored vehicles. They were to show workers their products in action and how, if they took one sick day, Hitler would win the war. This must have been made in late 1942, when our only real combat was with the Germans and Italians in North Africa. Armor wasn't anywhere near as important to fight Japan, but we had to arm Russia and part of Britain as well as build up our own forces, so these morale films were actually pretty important in encouraging maximum worker productivity.
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  105. I don't know what hear this was made. I suspect it was late 1940, when the Blenheim was still a daylight bomber. What I don't understand is why waste this much time on an RAF aircraft that wasn't easily confused with any German aircraft. It seems like the time could have been better spent on something like Mosquito or any number of German planes. It's hard to imagine members of Royal Aircraft Observer Corp sitting there in rapt attention for 10 minutes,
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  106. @8:52, the vessel pictured is a Forrest Sherman class destroyer. The name ship of the class wasn't commissioned until late 1955, and the other eight ships were commissioned from 1956 to 1959. All were put in service much too late to have served off Korea during the 1951-1953 "police action".
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  107. Sadly, we shall never see the likes of Dave Garroway in American media again. He was too good a person to ever make it today. Rest in Peace, Dave, we will soon be meeting again. Peace.
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  108. I saw it in Pomona as well, back when they had painted and cleaned up the station. I rather doubt any corporation would ever sponsor something like the freedom train again. Way too much politics rolled up in our recent history.
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  109.  @michaelmccarthy4615  One can only hope we regain out collective sanity by then.
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  110. There's an account of the crash at https://www.goldenknightsaa.com/documents/C123-story.pdf., The C-123 Provider had the entire Golden Knights team on board as well as military and civilian photographers. Three people died in the crash. The short snippet of the C-123 overhead was when the plane was coming in to land. It was supposed to take off using JATO rockets but, for some reason, the rockets failed, and the plane then bellied onto the runway.
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  111. It would have been great if Lionel trains ever really sounded like that, but most of what were hear are prototype railroad sounds that were used as a soundtrack. I was never more disappointed than when I got my first Lionel and all it did was make toy sounds going down the rails.
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  112. There must have been a sound track to this at one time. It's hard to believe the money was spent on such a clear color film only for it to be silent.
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  113. Those yellow streetcars are from the Shaker Heights Interurban Railroad Company, popularly know as the "Rapid Transit". They used PCC cars on that line up to the late 80's, and the line itself is still in use today. The PCC cars have been replaced with modern motive power, but the trains still roll down that landscaped strip in the middle of the road.
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  114. I sure had a few good laughs from these things. If these guy were working on automobiles, we'd still be trying to come up with a coal powered horse. No, Beryl, every single one these supposed flying machines were a dead end. Almost every clip was post WWI, long after we had learned basic aeronautical engineering. They were just a bunch of mad inventors. Try not to get overly butthurt just because these "inventors" were also autistic.
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  115.  @jacksons1010  Midway happened in June, 1942. Dieppe was being heralded as a success, and that was in August of 1942. The film was describing the First Battle of El Alamein in July, 1942. Guadalcanal landings took place in August as well, and it was close to a US defeat in the first month of the campaign. Even with the success of Midway, we didn't know the full scope of Japanese' losses for months after the battle, We suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of Savo Island in August, and Guadalcanal would probably have been lost if Admiral Mikawa hadn't decided not to attack US transports that were essentially defenseless at the time. Savo Island and the Battle of Tassafaronga in November are generally credited as the two worst defeats in US Navy history. You are looking back for 2021, when we know exactly what happened. Things were still precarious in the fall of 1942, when I believe the film ws made. Nothing was a done deal then to those fighting the battles on land and sea.
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  116. This film was released by Union Pacific in 1960 as part of a series of film promoting various tourist attractions along the route of the railroad. It appears to be a mixture of films from the early 1950's to probably 1959. This was pretty common with UP promotional films, you'll see some of the earlier films repeated in later firms if you watch enough of them. Ironically, the UP never got closer to San Francisco than Ogden, Utah. It had traffic sharing agreements in the Central Pacific, later the Southern Pacific, into Oakland, and then it was either a ferry ride across the Bay or, after 1938, a ride on a Key System train across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge into the heart of San Francisco at the Transbay Terminal. The Key System was abandoned in 1958, and then a trip to SF from Oakland was by bus across the Bay Bridge. The film shows two way traffic on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge. That ended in 1963 as the lower deck, which used to carry trucks and the rails of the Key System, was paved and repurposed to carry one way eastbound traffic with westbound traffic on the upper deck. During the 1980' the UP purchased its rivals, the Western Pacific and Missouri Pacific. In 1995, the Santa Fe and BNSF had merged, leaving the UP to being shut off from California except for the longer WP route. It quickly purchased the Southern Pacific, and the UP finally had a rail route into San Francisco. The entire Western US is now a duopoly controlled by just two railroads, BNSF and UP. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this was a good idea.
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  117.  @SquishyZoran  Zoran is a very common man's first name in Slovenia and Croatia. My late wife was Slovenian, and I rarely see Zoran as part of a screen name. Looks like you just happened on it by poor spelling. :-) I don't know anything about Tugs or diaper wearing lizards? COE trucks were not common in 1950, and there was no law I'm aware of requiring them. The vast majority of trucks of all kinds were the traditional engine in front of the cab variety. The first mobile phones were a two piece affair. The largest part that contained all the transmitting a receiving tubes and circuits was in a large steel case. That was mounted in the trunk if there was one, or generally behind the seat. Under seat mounts were avoided due to poor air circulation. Those cases gave off a lot of heat that needed to be dissipated. From the rear case, a fairly thick cable ran either under floor mats or in the headliner to the control head, the part you see with the telephone handset. The cable allowed the transmitter and receiver to function remotely through the control head. Those were usually mounted to the firewall with just a stabilizing screw in the dash. There was a lot of empty space behind the dash on old vehicles, even cars, so mounting the control head was usually not a problem.
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  118.  @PeriscopeFilm  Sorry, you're right, it was Earhart. I guess I had Lindberg stuck in my brain.
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  119. The first aircraft is definitely a T-6 Texan. The tailwheel support is a distinctive feature of that aircraft. I can't find anything about that crash in the database but not all military crashes were recorded. The terrain indicates it was also in the SF Bay area, as was the DC-3 crash. I was in search and rescue in the area and the appearance of the summertime brown hills between Fairfield and Vallejo is very characteristic.
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  120. I agree. It's not difficult to remove and is really annoying.
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  121. The NB-36H only flew from 1955 to 1957. At 1:57, the narrator talks of the war only being a dozen years ago. so that places the movie's date at 1957.
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  122. Can you imagine having demonstrators well enough organized to have marshals? Then try to picture these marshals actually cooperating with the police? I'm old enough to have actually lived through those times. It's the children and grandchildren of these demonstrators/hippies/communists that are antifa today.
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  123. What was the point of repeating all these commercials?
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  124. Central City/Blackhawk are much different places today than when this film was made. Casino gambling has changed the face of both towns, with the facades mstly preserved to hide the casinos lurking on the other side of the walls. Many of the buildings in Central City were badly deteriorated before the coming of gambling, and wagering money has been spent pot at least restore the look of the towns. The casinos were badly hurt by covid, so it remains to be seen how many of the 18 casinos there before covid will survive. Oh, yes, Central City is the seat of Gilpin County, so the sherrifs shown would have been Gilpin County sheriffs rather than Central City. The towns were patrolled by their own police department rather than the sheriff. There was talk of merging the Central City police with the sheriff's department a few years back, but I don't know what became of that.
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  125.  @loganbaileysfunwithtrains606  It waws a huge problem for the Army having to maintain the logistics for all that obsolescent equipment. Maintaining three types of rifle ammunition, for one example, was a lot more difficult and expensive than just one type. The big difference in the 1968 Guard compared to later was they weren't expected to be deployed to hot combat zones then whereas Guard troops are some of the first ones called up now. Most first line units have exactly the same kinds of equipment now as regular Army. Things had already changed for most Guard units by the time your friend got called up, so his state must have been one that was behind the curve on reequipping. The 1968 Guard wasn't equipped with modern combat weapons nor modern riot control equipment. It was the worst of both worlds..
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  126. The train was not the Golden Gate. It ran from Oakland to Los Angeles. It had through cars for San Diego, but the those were handled by the San Diegan, and that's the train pictured pulling into the San Diego station. The Santa Fe ran the train until Amtrak took over in 1971. Amtrak continued to run the train until 2000 under the name San Diegan. The name was then changed to Pacific Surfliner, and it still has eleven round trips a day between Los Angeles and San Diego.
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  127.  MIDBC1  I had to crank the speakers on PC all the way up. The sound is also somewhat distorted, making it hard to make out the words sometimes. These old films, especially color foods, deteriorate faster than B&W, and the sound track tends to do the same.
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  128. Mark 33 3"/50 RF twin mount that replaced the previous standard of quad 40 mm mount. They were excellent antiaircraft guns in good working order, but keeping them that way was no easy task. The 3" twin mount spent much less time in active service than that of the 40 mm guns.
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  129.  @TheRjjrjjr  Thanks for the kind words. I've thought about doing such a thing, so watch this space. :-)
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  130. A comedy short with no sound? You've hit a new low.
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  131. This was quite a good film for its purpose. The War Department wanted a film to give people hope and encourage them that we were still in the fight and they could and should help. This film, helped in no small part by the stirring narration of Henry Fonda, isn't the usual bombastic propaganda film. It slowly draws you in to the people and their lives of an anonymous farming community in the Midwest. in mid-1942, we weren't really sure we were going to win. With Britain now fighting off the Germans and us fighting the Japanese, things looks gloomy indeed. This was a great film to lift people's spirit and get them in a fighting mood. Even 76 years later, I could feel the patriotism and pride the film was meant to instill in the people. This was a really unusual film for O'Neil. As stated in the description most of his works were dark and foreboding. I don't know what moved him to direct this movie but he did an outstanding job. A lot of the narration was pointed towards stopping the spread of rumors, which was a big problem in the first year of the war. We had almost no way to get any kind of accurate news from the Philippines after the fall of Manila, and people started to fill in what little they did know with rumors and guesses. Some of the more twisted minds acted as the trolls of 1942, spreading rumors of death and defeat. One of the goals of the movie was o make people see how their helping to spread rumors hurt real people as well as the national morale. Unfortunately, the rumors about the mistreatment of our men by the Japanese turned out to be true. Americans didn't take well to the idea of retreat and surrender, and the movie, without chest thumping, gave the impression we were really just regrouping and reequipping so there wouldn't be any more retreat or surrender. I liked this movie. It did what its writers and director set out to do, and was entertaining at the same time.
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  132. Is this a reupload? I commented on this video over a month ago.
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  133. Shhh....you're going to get Beryl upset again by criticizing those cutting edge aircraft.
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  134.  @welshpete12  Right. Take a look at this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Gl41OMsa4) about production of the Enfield Mk 4 rifle being made in July, 1942 and tell me if the British thought the war was already won. It's getting a little annoying to have to keep explaining that looking back on the war in 1942 with 2021 knowledge isn't the same as being the British or Americans in July of 1942 and not knowing how long the war would last and who would come out on top.
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  135.  @郑颍  You're quite right. I should have written they threatened El Alamain several times, but the Empire forces rallied just in time to drive them off.
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  136. That would be the Swedish. The Finns never made Bofors guns during the war.
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  137. Bob forgot to mention the great new Rustomatic body too! I had a '57 as my first cat in 1963, and six winters in Ohio had completely rusted through the rocker panels, and the parking lights were about to fall out of the grill from rust. A lot of cars back then got traded in not because there was anything wrong mechanically but because the seats were about come through the floor.
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  138.  @vinnydaq13  Yes, and I'll take checkered wood grips. We're all different.
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  139. Now that I think about it, you're probably right. It was mostly big musicals and such being shot in color in 1953. Give it another 10 years and B&W, outside small studios and "art" films, black and white was pretty much gone. There was a fair bit of emphasis on the scenery in this one for a training film though. I think the main message was, just because France had the largest Communist party in Europe outside Russia at the time, it didn't mean the average Frenchman was a communist. No, not at all, the average Frenchman was a simple minded peasant, and sometimes he'd vote communist just because he got confused. And France was a good ally now. Their military was no longer cowardly, and they'd never stab us in the back like they did the British 12 years earlier.
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  140. That part was pretty funny. I guess the idea of "loose" French girls must have been pretty strong then. Like most stereotypes, it must have had some grains of truth to survive. GIs in postwar Europe were like millionaires compared to the people of France so I suppose girls latched onto GIs to help supplement the family income.
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  141. Of all the aircraft shown at Farnborough in 1960, the Hawker Hunter was by far the most successful. Of the almost 2,000 aircraft produced, the Lebanese Air Force was the last to fly the Hunter, retiring the last four in 2014. With a record of 61 years in service (although they were stored for about 20 of those years), it's a record for jet combat aircraft unlikely ever to be equalled let alone broken. No other British combat aircraft came close to the production of the Hunter. That BAE Hawk, with about 1,000 produced so far, is the only other British aircraft to come close, but it's not a true combat aircraft. The Harrier is probably about the most successful combat aircraft after the Hunter The Vulcan bomber was the most successful of the three "V" bombers of the 50's. The Vulcan was the only really successful aircraft of the trio, with the Valiant being withdrawn from service by 1965 due to fatigue problems. The Victor was a successful tanker while the few remaining Vulcans were finally withdrawn in 1964, leaving Britain with no strategic bombers. None of the commercial aircraft were very successful. The British were building turboprops when the world was already moving to jets in 1960. The Vickers Viscount four engine turboprop was the biggest commercial success with 445 units built, and the first turboprop airliner to market in 1948. The Black Arrows never flew again after 1960. The RAF tried to reform them around the Lightning but found the slab sided supersonic fighter was just too difficult to fly in close formation. The RAF reformed their new aerobatic team in 1964, flying Folland Gnats. They were all painted red because the tiny fighters were too difficult to see painted black like the Hunters. Due to this operational requirement, they new team became the Red Arrows. The Red Arrows continued to use the Gnat until 1979, when they switched to the BAE Hawk. This was due to the Gnats being worn out, and there were no new Gnats being produced. They have continued to fly updated version of the Hawk to this day, and remain one of the top military aerobatic teams in the world.
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  142. BTW, that's Anne Lindberg greeting passengers in Los Angeles.
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  143. The postwar evidence was that the bombing of germany never really diminished German morale, and it was the destrujcton of the continental rail system that did more to stop production than strategic bombing. Strategic bombing did more against Japan because of the B-29, each carrying a bomb load equal to about 2.5 B-17's, and near complete air superiority. Even with these advantages, the studies showed that submarines and aircraft carriers, destroying both the enemy's combat fleet and merchant shipping, had more effect on winning the war than strategic air power up until the time of dropping the atomic bombs. These studies threatened the role of the sir force in any new war, since there was an assumption wed just end it with more atomic bombs. Films like this were commissioned by the Air Force to show to groups like local Lion's and Elk's clubs, plus women's clubs, so they'd contact their legislators to advocate for a bigger air force. It was generally successful, and the US maintained a larger air force postwar than any of our allies.
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  144.  @arthurmartins5495  Have you read any history outside of what you were taught in Brazil? Santos Dumont was a great pioneer in aviation, made many useful inventions, but he didn't make the first heavier than air engine powered flight.That was made by the Wright Bothers three years before Santos Dumont piloted the 14-bis in 1906. The flights of the Wright Brothers are well documented by films, photographs, and witnesses. Just because Santos Dumont refused to believe it happened doesn't mean it didn't happen. I don't know why Brazilians continue to cling to this discredited notion.
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  145. I don't mind the music you've added, but it's far too loud. Just some soft background music would work better.
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  146. Quite surprising that a color film made no earlier than 1959 would have no sound or even captions. I read your idea that it was used as part of a sales presentation, and that may be right, but it still seems odd to me, BY 1959, almost all sales films had sound. This must have served some special purpose back then.
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  147. Maybe he would have had to pay for it if he called it by the correct name of Riverview in Chicago? Something has gone wrong with his business plan with the amount of errors that keep creeping into his videos.
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  148.  1manuscriptman  Well, assuming you are what you say you are, and one never knows on the internet, I find it quite interesting you feel the need to capitalize the title of your former position and the fact your were a "Presidential Historian" while not even having the common courtesy capitalize Trump's name. Oh, I know, "not my president" and all that. You certainly are a good example of what's wrong with college professors and colleges in general now. As a matter of fact, you are a poster boy of exactly the kind of person I shuddered to think of showing up to the funeral and being as disrespectful as possible. You sound quite gleeful about the idea of people dancing in the street over the death of a president that has presided over one of the best economies of modern times. As far as I know, he hasn't been convicted of any crimes, so maybe we can hold off on convicting him in absentia.
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  149.  @richardvernon317  Considering the first real production version of the Seahawk, the F 2, didn't enter squadron service until 1953, it's doubtful any swept wing version, even if a prototype was more advanced that it actually was, could have been ready before the end of the Korean War. The compressor surge problem with the 100 series Avon powered Hawkers was more or less solved fairly early on by using fuel dipping. The 203 version of the Avon used in the F.6 had solved the surge problem, so no further problems with the cannons were experienced. The Hunter wasn't the only aircraft with compressor surge problems when the gun armament was fired. Early Meteors and some models of the F-86 had similar problems. It was all part of the learning curve with engines that were having the last bit of power wrung out of them, leaving inadequate surge margins.
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  150.  @richardvernon317  There were two flying P.1052 prototypes by 1952. It was clear by late 1953 that the P.1052 wasn't worth further development. The P1081 was just a single experimental aircraft that first flew in June, 1950 and was destroyed less than a year later in a flying accident. Given the very protracted development of the Hunter and Swift, both of which were "super priority" projects that didn't enter squadron service until well after the end of the war, it's impossible for me to believe British industry at the time could have done any better getting the two Hawker prototypes in operational service, even assuming the RAF really wanted them.
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  151.  @PeriscopeFilm  Fine and dandy. Just put [SILENT] in the title along with all the other stuff you had in it and I'll avoid watching it. It seems pretty disingenuous to include COMEDY SHORT when there was no soundtrack, assuming it wasn't about mimes.
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  152.  @jimmartin7881  Do you know the difference between a title and a description? Didn't think so.
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  153.  @jimmartin7881  Surely you're not suggesting every video I'm even vaguely interested in I should open it and read the whole description compared to reading just the title, which doesn't require opening the video at all. My request wa pretty simple. Put important information (like if it's silent) in the title. Not hard to implement at all. As for your rather snarky reference to my obvious lack of reading material in my life, I had over 3,000 books when I downsized and sold my house in 2005. I sold about 2,000 of them, donated 500 to the local library, and kept 500 for my use. I'm now up to almost 1,000 and am once again running out of room. So yes, I read books, and no, my knuckles don't drag on the floor.
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  154.  @jimmartin7881  Most were chosen from the reputation, favorite author, reviews, the information in the book, and some because the titles were interesting. Not one of them was chosen because I sat down and read the forward first. The forward of a book is like the description here. I shouldn't need to hunt through a description to find a salient bit of information that should have been in the title.
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  155.  @jimmartin7881  And you're certainly a good demonstration of that. I'm done with you. Go away.
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  156. British torpedoes were to be sorely tested in the Pacific when they came up against the Japanese Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedoes. These really were the longest range torpedo, able top sink a ship at an extreme range of 25 miles. Some Allied ships were sunk by a Type 93 when the ship being attacked had no idea another ship was within 20 miles and had fired a torpedo. Since the Type 93 was oxygen fueled, it left almost no visible track until ti was too close to be evaded. It was only the invention, perfection, and wide use of radar by the British and Americans that blunted the effect of the Type 93.
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  157.  @Sandman253  I assume you mean some of the Japanese torpedoes sank Japanese ships. It was actually in the Battle of Sunda Strait, where Type 93's sank a minesweeper and empty troop transport. Hardly surprising given the large number of ships in the Strait and the large number of torpedoes fired.
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  158.  @PeriscopeFilm  I'm glad to hear that. I saw this movie back in the mid-60's and the colors were very vibrant. Stuart Legg, the producer, chose airliners and locations for their colors and how one scene juxtaposed color in the next. This must have been recorded on low quality color film to have faded this badly, or maybe it was just poor storage. Whatever the reason, I look forward to seeing it again in the original colors.
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  159.  @PeriscopeFilm  That's true. It may have been backdrop for a spoken script that could change depending the crowd it was being shown to. Whatever the case, it was exceptionally clear for an early color movie, and the colors have really held up well over the years. It must have been stored in the proverbial dark and cool place to preserve the colors this well.
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  160. Strangely, Jack Webb was in the USAAF during WWII but washed out of flight training. He was then given a hardship discharge to take care of his ailing mother and grandmother. Why he was given this role narrating a Marine Corp recruiting film is a mystery to me.
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  161.  @rapman5363  Firstly, I've been watching Jack Webb in films and on TV for longer than you've been alive so we can knock off that "lesson over" crap now. My question was why not use a retired Marine instead of Jack Webb, not that Jack Webb made a terrible narrator. There were guys like Lee Marvin, Tyrone Power, Hugh O'Brien, and George C Scott around at the time who were former Marines and would have been as good a narrator for the film as Jack Webb. They also would have had some skin in the game rather than just being a hired actor. Pretty simple point for you to get your panites all in a wad over.
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  162. Too bad the film is in such bad shape.
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  163.  @jonhohensee3258  And you know I'm in such bad shape how? Go troll somewhere else.
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  164.  @jonhohensee3258  Yes, several women have told me that.
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  165. This happened in Trinidad, not Rosemead. https://hoodsite.com/businessman-assaulted-and-robbed-200k-by-goons-in-trinidad
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  166.  @SFTaYZa  Thanks
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  167.  @jacksons1010  This is my last attempt to get you to undersatnd that 1942 didn't happen last year. Did you watch the video in my link? The British certainly weren't confident that the Germans were defeated. The US won a single naval battle by the fall of 1942 but lost two. No one then knew the long term effect oif any of the defeats or that victory. We put most if resources into the was against the Germans because, as Roosevelt d=said at the time, you don't put out a fire in the yard when the living room is ablaze. It would take time for the Japanese to consolidate all their 1942 victories before they could attack Australia or the US. Germany was at the British front door. You have learned some facts about WWII with no understanding of what they meant. I'm done now. Believe what you wish.
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  168. ​ @SugarBearMosher  an overall length of 206 inches, over 17 feet, was small? I can tell you've never driven one.
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  169.  @SugarBearMosher  As I've written, the Star Chief was 206 inches long overall. That's compared to a 2020 GMC Yukon at 203 inches. We can quibble all day long about what your idea is of small, but the objective evidence is the Star Chief was not a small car.
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  170.  @vinnydaq13  Pearl and ivory grips for revolvers were popular right to the end of revolvers in police work.
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  171. Are you aware your opening screen is reversed?
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  172. The M3 37mm antitank gun was brand new in 1940. These guns were also the main armament the M2A4 "medium" tanks shown in the film. This antitank gun was already obsolescent in June, 1940, as German tanks already had armor that was proof against a 37mm round. The M2A4 only saw combat with the Marines in Guadalcanal for only a few months, thereafter only being used for training. The M2/M3/M5 would be reclassified as light tanks by 1942 since they couldn't fight against heavier German tanks. The M2A4 was the only semi-modern tank available at the time of these maneuvers. The first M3 Grant medium tank that had a decent chance against German armor entered service in late 1940, but even the Grant was obsolescent, with its high silhouette and sponson mounted main gun. The 1940 maneuvers, which were happening at the same time as the Fall of France, should have been a warning about how ill prepared we were for war. We had less than 300 tanks of any type available in 1940, with only about fifty 37mm and seventy 90mm antiaircraft guns. The sound detectors were almost worthless, and the M5 director units were only useful in daylight. Instead of alarm bells going off about the war in Europe, these maneuvers gave us a false sense of security of how well our new "mechanized army" could fight, even though 70% of all transport was still by horse and mules. The 7,000 Dodge trucks of all types were less than what Dodge was turning out per day by October, 1942. Except for a few scattered after action reports by soldiers like Patton, the Army assured the public we were ready for war if it came. The Battle of Kasserine Pass in February, 1943 showed how badly prepared we really were.
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  173. What is that supposed to mean?
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