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