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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  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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  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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  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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  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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