No! Nothing To Do With Saint-Saens
Although it is a splendid musical suite, which you may not realise was also satirical in nature, poking sly fun at other composers, Camile himself and whichever pianist happened to be performing the pieces. Art!
A lion as conductor, hmmmm? Conrad confesses to not knowing anything about what conductors do, apart from semaphore with a wand. Come back Harry Potter, all is forgiven.
ANYWAY this Intro is going to be returning to BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM! rather than visiting the death-throes of various ancient civilisations, à la "The Seventy Great Mysteries Of The Ancient World", though I feel certain we're going to return there. I bet you can hardly wait. Art!
Ladies and Gentlemen and Those Unsure, allow me to introduce you to the 'Jagdpanther', which is Teuton for 'Hunting Panther', as if there were such things as 'Sedentary Panther', 'Blue-Collar Panther' and 'Neglectful Parent Panther'.
What is this thing, exactly? O I thought you'd never ask! It was a dedicated tank-destroyer, being a self-propelled anti-tank gun. They took the chassis of a Panther tank, the suspension of which you can see in the lower photo; a complicated array of interleaved road wheels necessary to support the 45 ton beast. Such a suspension gave a very smooth ride, which the crew liked, BUT was prone to getting jammed with mud, stones or ice. When that happened the crew had to get out and unjam them, not a fun occupation if you have enemy fire coming at you. Then, too, if one of the inner wheels needed to be replaced, you had to remove the two outer wheels first. Art!
The JP on the right has lost it's left-side track, and is being towed by the vehicle to port. An intriguing picture and an example of how NOT to recover a Jagdpanther with another Jagdpanther, because the engine and transmission of the towing vehicle are going to be under immense strain.
ANYWAY AGAIN, the Teutons took the Panther hull, whipped off the turret, then built a big armoured box in it's place and stuck a whacking big 88 mm anti-tank gun in it. All part of their lust to up-gun wherever possible. They were not very numerous, only 400 being made from a total of 6,000 Panthers. Art!
Conrad is unsure why the museum had this painting present. It is by official war artist Terence Cuneo, whom we have mentioned previously, and depicts the surrender by Teuton embassies at Luneberg Heath, where Field Marshal Montgomery was an absolute bottom to them, reducing one to tears. One amusing quirk that Terry had was inserting a mouse into his paintings, and I shall highlight this one. Art!
Eek A Mouse
One AFV missing at Bovvie is the Teuton 'Maus', which is - you may be ahead of me here - the Teuton word for 'Mouse'. Mostly because they were a rara avis, with only two being made, and the title shows that Teutons do have a sense of humour, because the things were Dog Buns! enormous. Art!
Composite turret and hull on display at Kubinka, in Mordorvia With puny humans for scale
Teutons exhibiting the well-known Bolshevik passion of 'gigantomania'. The Maus rocked in at 188 tons, was 33 feet long, mounted 128 mm and 75 mm guns, sported armour 200 mm or 8 PROUD IMPERIAL INCHES thick and could manage 12 m.p.h. on perfectly flat dry ground. No bridge built could sustain it's weight, so it was intended to cross rivers by simply driving across them after a short prep to make it amphibious. Conrad is prettttty certain it would simply bog down in the river bed and become a static art installation, if it even got there thanks to it's utter unreliability. No, it never fired a shot in anger. Art!
Shades of Saint-Saens
Behold the awesomeness of Perfidious Albion's 'Tortoise', more formally known as the A39 Heavy Assault Gun. which, like the animal it was named after, focussed on armour rather than speed. Art!
With puny humans for scale
As you can guess from the above photo, it was extremely heavily armoured, up to 9 inches thick on the front hull, mounted a 32-pou0nder gun and could dash at up to speeds of 12 m.p.h. Unlike the Maus, however - that word again! - it was very reliable and could be driven down to the shops daily with no problems. By the time it had exceeded Maus production by 300% - yes they built 6 of them - the Second Unpleasantness was over, a fact that I doubt has prevented model-makers from producing a version in 1/72 scale. Art!
Told you so. I can guarantee that some saddoe wargamer out there is writing an after action report of his scenario where two Maus go up against six Tortoises.
That's enough steel beasts for one Intro.
Strike That, Here's An Alligator
More formally, a Ruffian KA-52 attack helicopter, being towed to the flight line at the Dubai Air Show, where the orcses are fervently crossing fingers and hoping that someone from somewhere puts an order in. Art!
Double-rotor designs like this are rare. I can only think of the Kamov Ka-26 and the South Canadian Huskie.
ANYWAY this picture cropped up on Twitter, and people were commenting on how rarely the ejection seat system is used. The system, when activated, is supposed to explosively eject the rotor blades well away from the airframe, after which the two seats can launch on a booster rocket. The aircrew then discard the seat and deploy their parachute. Art!
IF it all goes according to plan. That's a big if.
Naked Ambition
Conrad appreciates people who have serious intent about commitment to a project. Good for them. Here's an example. Art!
Boy, no wonder this vlog clocks in at getting on for an hour! Conrad had this film on VHS many, many years ago. It was so long they had an Intermission in the middle. In fact, I did a review of it for 'The Agony Booth' back when they still had an open application policy for members. The list of historical inaccuracies is as long as my arm, with another arm attached to it, and a leg for good measure. I dare not start to list them or the Word Count will hit 5,000.
What Is The Flabby Fraudster Fulminating Against?
The irony, it burns with the incandescence of a thousand supernovae. Art!
Solid grifter
This, from a man - stretching the term to it's elastic limits there - who wears lifts in his shoes so he can claim to be 6' 3", because that lifts his weight out of the 'morbidly obese' category and into 'Land Whale', except he lies about being only 230 lbs when he is really 300 lbs. Tom Cruise, like him or not, is a solid grafter who gives 110% to whatever film he's cast in because he's a professional.
Slow News Day At "Starinsider"
So I guess, as they came up with a news item thus. Art!
This isn't news, it's desperate filler. You have a big foot, madame? Step right up and enjoy your fifteen nanoseconds of fame!
This Is News
Thank you 'Museum Of Failure' for another interesting and quirky unsuccessful item. In this case, the Nederlandse DAF 600 Variomatic. Art!
The advertising was slanted for older drivers, making much on how easy the 600 was to drive, which naturally didn't appeal to young Dutch drivers who wanted to do donuts, accelerate to 60 m.p.h. from a standing start and stuff the mileage. So it didn't sell in large numbers.
What it did possess was the ability to drive as fast in reverse as forward, a mechanical peculiarity exploited later on with 'Reverse Race', where - you may be ahead of me here - drivers raced them in reverse. Art!
There you go, proof that driving flat out in reverse is not easy.
And with that we are done!
No comments:
Post a Comment