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

  1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. @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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9.  @michaelmccarthy4615  One can only hope we regain out collective sanity by then.
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  10. 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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  11. 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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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15.  @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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  16. 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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  17.  @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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  18.  @PeriscopeFilm  Sorry, you're right, it was Earhart. I guess I had Lindberg stuck in my brain.
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  19. 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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  20. I agree. It's not difficult to remove and is really annoying.
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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. What was the point of repeating all these commercials?
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  24. 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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  25.  @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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  26. 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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  27.  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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  28. 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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  29.  @TheRjjrjjr  Thanks for the kind words. I've thought about doing such a thing, so watch this space. :-)
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  30. A comedy short with no sound? You've hit a new low.
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  31. 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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  32. Is this a reupload? I commented on this video over a month ago.
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  33. Shhh....you're going to get Beryl upset again by criticizing those cutting edge aircraft.
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  34.  @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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  35.  @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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  36. That would be the Swedish. The Finns never made Bofors guns during the war.
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  37. 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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  38.  @vinnydaq13  Yes, and I'll take checkered wood grips. We're all different.
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  39. 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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  40. 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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  41. 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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  42. BTW, that's Anne Lindberg greeting passengers in Los Angeles.
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  43. 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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  44.  @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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  45. 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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  46. 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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  47. 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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  48.  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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  49.  @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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  50.  @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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