It seems to me that a lot of folks I know are interested in the computers of the space program. Especially the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Well, here you go: from the National Museum of Computing, “Light Years Ahead: The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer”. Bonus points: the presenter, Robert Wills, is (or at least was as of October 2019) a Cisco employee.
Bonus video: “Common Misconceptions in Aerodynamics”, a presentation to University of Michigan engineering students by Doug McLean, a retired Boeing Technical Fellow.
Just a random assortment today. Think of this as like a Whitman’s Sampler that you picked up at the grocery store after Valentine’s Day for 50% off. At least, you would have IF YOU HAD BEEN ABLE TO GET OUT TO THE GROCERY STORE THROUGH THE SNOW AND ICE IN AUSTIN.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Anyway: The Pogues perform “London Calling”. Without Shane MacGowan, but with Joe Strummer.
This next one requires a bit of background: I’ve posted videos from “Captain Joe” before. If you’re the kind of person who sees videos of air traffic control conversations pop up in your feed, you’ve probably heard of “Kennedy Steve”. Steve was a controller at JFK (he retired a few years back) who became somewhat of a legend for his sharp (and often amusing) exchanges with pilots, ground crews, and others. Especially those who were keeping traffic from flowing in and out of JFK. Here’s a random example, which may not be the best: search “Kennedy Steve” on the ‘Tube.
ANYWAY: Captain Joe interviews Kennedy Steve. This is basically RoadRich bait.
“How to Poop in the Woods and NOT Die”. Do I really need to put a content warning on this? Well, maybe. Content warning.
I would like to note, for the hysterical record, that How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art is still in print (in a 4th edition, no less) and is readily available from Amazon (affiliate link).
Bonus: this is short, but I did get enough of a kick out of it that I wanted to share. Two of the stars of a minor 1960s TV science fiction series in a promo for Western Airlines.
I think just one more. I don’t really consider this military history, but more of a music video. Clips of German Luftwaffe F-104 Starfighters…set to Peter Schilling.
What did LTC Vaucher do? He flew B-29s. More specifically, he delivered the first B-29 from the factory to the military. He also led the flyover of the USS Missouri during the surrender ceremony. Additionally:
I don’t want to seem like I’m whinging about the cold (even if it is 477.67 degrees Rankine out at the moment) so I thought I’d fall back to some more military history today.
From 1944, vintage OSS film: “Army Experiments In Train Derailment & Sabotage”. You know, it is a lot harder to derail a train than you’d think…
Bonus video #1: higher quality, and more recent: “An Eye In the Darkened Sky”, a promo video for the A6-E Intruder and the Target Recognition Attack Multi-Sensor system (TRAM).
Bonus video #2: “Royal Navy Learning Gutter Fighting”. Might be some useful tips here if you’re the kind of person who gets held at bayonet or gun point.
Bonus video #3, and I think this one is a real treat: “Cowboy 57” a 1959 short about the day to day activities of a B-52 crew. The treat is: this is narrated by Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart.
I have a doctor’s appointment today. I would say I’m being a little lazy, since these videos are long, but I think there’s some stuff in them that might interest military history buffs. All of these come from the same source (BalticaBeer) and seem to be official productions of the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. I feel like there’s kind of unifying theme here: what a small motivated group of individuals can do if given liberty to work outside of the box.
In rough order of length: “To the Sea, a Sidewinder…50 Years of Snakes on the Wing”, a documentary history of the AIM-9 Sidewinder.
Next up: “The Origins of ARM: Defence Suppression and the Shrike Antiradar Missile”.
Finally: “The Pursuit of Precision: Walleye The TV-Guided Glide Bomb”
I know this last one is the length of a feature film. I’ve actually watched all of it, and personally found it weirdly fascinating. Also, there is a lot of footage of things blowing up or being blown up, so it isn’t just talking heads. Walleye itself is kind of a fascinating story. Today, it’s not uncommon to talk about putting a bomb through one window of a building: but what I don’t think most people realize is that we were actually doing that 55 years ago.
(Ålso, if you’re a television technology geek, there’s a lot of talk about TV tech and how Walleye helped advance the technology.)
The US military had a clever idea back in the 1950s: let’s build missile launch sites under the ice in Greenland. That project was called “Project Iceworm” and was secret: as a cover story, and to test the feasibility of this idea, Camp Century was built.
You can imagine this was a massive logistical operation. Especially when you consider that everything had to be hauled across the ice from Thule AFB, 150 miles away.
Spoiler: it turns out that the ice sheet shifts. A lot. Which makes missile bases under the ice really not feasible.
Bonus: from the same source, the Charlie Dean Archives, “Faces of Rescue”, documenting a typical rescue mission for an Air Force pilot shot down over Vietnam.
This is maybe a little marginal on the travel side, but I feel like it is close enough to count: “Operation Jetliner”, a 1959 United “Breaks Guitars” Airlines promo film for their DC-8.
How can you even have a bad anvil? An anvil is just a big chunk of metal, right? It’s like saying “this is a bad chunk of metal”! How can a chunk of metal be bad?
Answer: “Harbor Freight 55lb Anvil: How Much Does it Suck?”
I guess it might be good for at least one thing: anvil shooting.
I like watching anvil shooting. On YouTube. My concern with watching it in person is that what goes up, must come down, and I really don’t want an anvil coming down on my head. I am not Wile E. Coyote.
Bonus #2, because I don’t have any other place to put this: a 1958 Navy propaganda film, “”Stay in School and Graduate”, featuring vintage footage of the USS Los Angeles.
Bonus #3, just for the heck of it. This goes out to RoadRich and Lawrence: “Why Aerial Refuelling Is Most Challenging Manoeuvre For A Pilot” with Richard Hammond.
Bonus #1: “The Ultimate Supersonic Interceptor – F-106 Delta Dart” from the Dark Skies channel.
Back in the day, when I worked for Four Letter Computer Company in Round Rock that has nothing to do with fruit, they tried to force a new case management system on us called “Delta”. Many of the techs felt they would have been better off converting the money spent to $100 bills, piling them in the parking lot and setting them on fire.
I had a photo of the F-106 hanging in my cube with the caption “The only good Delta”.
Bonus #2: Okay, this one is longer, but it is a bonus: “Wings” from the Discovery Channel on the XB-70 Valkyrie. Speaking of #TheFutureWeCouldHaveHad: yes, it was a Mach 3 bomber, but it also served as a testbed for a lot of the tech that was intended to go into the SST.
Is it just me, or does the Tu-144 remind folks a lot of the XB-70? Granted, it lacks the two vertical stabilizers, but other than that…
Yeah, kind of a bad look there if you punch out and let your passengers get spread evenly over several acres of Siberian landscape. Sort of like the captain deserting a sinking ship ahead of the passengers and the rest of the crew.
I haven’t put up any RoadRich bait recently, so today is his day.
“The Story Of Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport”.
I’m fairly sure this is a view from the ground of a 747 on final to Kai Tak.
And here’s a cockpit view of the Kai Tak approach.
Question for anyone who has the new Microsoft Flight Simulator: can you set up an approach and fly in to the virtual Kai Tak?
“Captain Joe” explains V1, Vr, and V2. If you watch movies (well, if you watch the kind of movies we watch) you’ll hear the pilots calling out those speeds. But what exactly are they?
“Crawl through a B-29 Superfortress IN FLIGHT!”
What is it like to punch out of an F-15 at 600 knots?
Today, a couple of exotic destinations. “Wings Over The West Indies” from our good friends at Pan Am. What makes this interesting is that it is from the 1940s, and features the Sikorsky S-40 flying boat.
And, for a little dose of something slightly more recent and in color…”Wings to Yugoslavia”, also from Pan Am, but this time dating to the 1960s.
One more fun one: “Up and Over”, a promo film made by Sikorsky promoting Los Angeles Airways (LAA). LAA provided helicopter service from various points around LA to the airports and to Disneyland. They also carried mail.
The YouTube notes mention that they went out of business in 1971 after an acquisition with Golden West Airlines failed. What the notes don’t mention is that they had two bad crashes almost back to back (May 22, 1968 and August 14, 1968) that killed a total of 44 people. Which may have been a contributing factor…
Our movie for New Year’s Eve (before we set off fireworks) was “The Starfighters“. (Specifically the MST3K version with “B-1” Bob Dornan, though I’m not sure there is a non-MST3K version available on home video.)
Personally, I feel that it could have used more refueling and flight scenes, and less romance and character development. But that’s just me.
The F-104 is an interesting aircraft, especially in terms of its operational history.
Why was the German accident rate so high? Lots of reasons.
“Why Germany had so many accidents with the F-104 Starfighter”.
Bonus #1: “F-104 Starfighter Walkaround”.
Bonus #2: I hope you like Starfighters, as this is basically “The Starfighters” without bots, Mike, skits, or all that annoying character development stuff.