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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