M103 Heavy Tank, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

A M103 Heavy Tank.

A Cold War giant, the M103 served from 1957 to 1974, with its final years being used by the Marine Corps.  By the time it entered service, the M60b was already in use and the Army regarded the heavy M103 as obsolescent.

While very impressive in size, the tank was too big even for its own era, and plagued with various problems accordingly.

This one must be a rebuilding project.  It's the second one I've seen, the other being at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center / USAHEC

Last edition:

Mortars. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1930s, 1940s, 1960s, U.S. Navy, Vietnam War, Weapons, World War Two

Monday, October 16, 1944. Fascist Hungary.

The German backed fascist coup in Hungary, designed to keep the country in the war, completed with the leader of the banned  fascist Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi, becoming prime minister of  a "Government of National Unity" w hich was controlled by the Germans.  Horthy was taken prisoner.

Horthy, who appears here a lot, died in Portugal in 1957 at age 88.  Szálasi was executed in 1946 at  age 49.

Who the crap could think that the fascist were going to win in late 1944?

 T/5 Ray Tintera, Tampa, Fla., and Sgt. Elwood Johnson, Ogema, Wisc., check civilians at an outpost in Monschau, Germany. 16 October, 1944.g, Admiral Miklós Horthy was forced out of office and replaced by Ferenc Szálasi of the fascist Arrow Cross Party.

Registration slips of these two German frauleins are checked by T/4 Nick Kellen, Woodstock, Mich., as they pass through the outskirts of Monschen, Germany. Slips showed them to be Karolina Rader and Johanna Kirch. 16 October, 1944.

The Soviets launched the Gumbinnen Operation with the goal of penetrating the borders of East Prussia.

Albanian partisans liberated Vlorë.

Maj. Gen. Eurico Jaspar Dutra, (left), Brazilian Minister of War and Maj. Gen. Mascarenhas De Moraes, C.G. of the B.E.F., shown in hatches of a medium tank in which they took a ride during an inspecting tour at the IV Corps recently. Fifth Army, IV Corps area, Italy. 16 October, 1944.

The U.S. launched an offensive towards Bologna.

The 10th Indian Division crossed the Savio River.

A U.S. bombing raid on Salzburg destroyed the dome of the cathedral and most of the Mozart family home.

Troops of the 44th Division await truck transportation after unloading at a station in Northern France. They are on their way to the front. 16 October, 1944.

 

Pfc. Victor Henry, Pontotoc, Miss., fires his machine gun through a hole in a wall, at Germans in a barn 300 yards away, beyond Kohlscheid, Germany. He is flanked by two of his buddies. 16 October, 1944. Company K, 3rd Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division.

Sunday, October 15, 1944. Horthy attempts to take Hungary out of the war.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Battle of Aachen, boats and ships, Commandos, German Army, German Kriegsmarine, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Polish Army, Radio, Red Army, Royal Air Force, U.S. Navy, World War Two, Yugoslavia

Thursday, June 12, 1924. Coolidge nominated, train robbed, disaster on USS Mississippi

Calvin Coolidge was nominated for President at the GOP convention.

The Newton Gang robbed the express mail train number 57 of the Milwaukee Road (the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad) near Rondout, Illinois.  The train was stopped at the time. The gang made away with more than $3M, worth about $54.3M today.  Their success was brief as one of their own members wounded another, preventing their escape.

Asphyxiation following a main battery turret explosion killed 44 crewmen of the USS Mississippi. The incident was the largest peacetime loss of life in the Navy up to that time.

The ship would serve until 1956 and was broken up in 1957.

George H. W. Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, June 10, 1924. GOP Platform adopted.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Albania, Cleveland Ohio, Diplomacy, Election of 1924, Iraq, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Ohio, Ohio (Cleveland), Politics, Radio, Republican Party, United Kingdom

Poster Saturday. Bears are dangerous.

 

Saturday, May 15, 1943. Changes in Tunisian leadership, Flaming bats.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:'

Today in World War II History—May 15, 1943: 80 Years Ago—May 15, 1943: US Army ends experiment in using “bat bombs” as bats burn down newly constructed, unoccupied Carlsbad Army Air Base, NM.

Oops.

She also noted that the Germans launched an offensive in Yugoslavia against Communist partisans, and ABC was founded to enable the newly formed company to purchase the NBC Blue Network.

The Free French deposed Sidi Muhammad VII al-Munsif (Moncef Bey) from Tunis, and would ultimately, that following July, send him packing to Madagascar.  The Bey had collaborated with the Germans, who had in turn made him the King of Tunisia.  To his credit, however, he'd protected the Jewish population of the country as well as the Muslim population.  In context, his actions may have made some sense, from a Tunisian prospective.

When he went into exile, his 25 wives went with him, so at least he wasn't lonely.

His cousin, Muhammad VIII al-Amin (Lamine Bey), became the new Bey.

Moncef Bey retained fairly strong support from Tunisian nationalist, who in turn had an uneasy relationship with the same.  This began to change upon Moncef Bey's death in exile in 1948.  Lamine Bey became king in 1956 with the departure of the French, but he was deposed in 1957.  He died at age 81 in 1962.

He was married to a commoner, with whom he had ten children.

The SS Irish Oak, an Irish flagged vessel with Irish tricolors and Eire painted on the side of it was torpedoed by the U-607.  The crew was able to abandon the vessel and the U-607 waited to fire a final shot until they had departed it.

Operation Checkmate came to an end.

Paths of Glory

I just reviewed 1917 here the other day, although that review won't appear here until tomorrow, and the viewing of which caused me to recall the trench scenes of this film, Paths of Glory.

Paths of Glory is a black and white film directed by Stanley Kubrik and featuring Kirk Douglas as a French lawyer serving as an officer during the Great War.  The movie is a fictionalized account of an actual event in which French soldiers were tried for cowardice for their actions during a 1916 advance.  More than half the movie concerns their fate in French legal proceedings so the film is both a legal drama as well as a war picture.

Considered an anti war drama in typical reviews, the film contains one of the best filmed depictions of trench warfare ever made, surpassed only recently by the depictions in the English movie 1917.  The film was regarded as so critical in this regards that the French managed to put pressure on United Artists not to release the film in France for nearly twenty years.  Release in Germany and Switzerland was delayed so as to not offend the French, and the film was not released in Spain until 1986.  U.S. military establishments would not show the film.

In modern terms the film is mild as an anti war film compared to films on the Vietnam War.  And the degree to which any antiwar film is successful in conveying that message is always debatable.  At any rate, as a drama and a depiction of World War One trench warfare, the film does well.

In terms of material details, the film is a good one, accurately portraying uniforms and equipment of the French Army of the Great War.

January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unite? Suffrage Advances.

The headline news for this day, January 6, 1920, was that a treaty was to be signed between the victorious Allies and the Germans.  Or, more properly, a protocol to the Versailles Treaty

More properly, this was an amendment to the Versailles Treaty altering and amending some of its terms.  Germany's reluctance to enter into a protocol had lead the Allies and Germany back to the brink of war several months earlier, an event now wholly forgotten, but in the end the amendment had been worked out.

The U.S. Senate had not ratified the original text and would still not be ratifying the treaty in its entirety.

The Casper paper was also reporting that a new Wyoming corporation had been formed to build or take over the manufacturing of the Curtis Aircraft line.  I've never heard of this before and Wikipedia sheds no light on what was going on with this story.  Does anyone know the details?

Also making headlines was an effort to unite the nation's Protestant churches into a single organization. The headlines are apparently a bit misleading as they would suggest that the individual denominations were set to be united, which was not the proposal.

Also misleading, today, is the use of the term "United Church of Christ". That denomination would not come about until 1957.

On the same day, Kentucky and Rhode Island passed the 19th Amendment.

Suffrage supporters watching the Governor of Kentucky sign his state's passage of the 19th Amendment.

And Walt experienced something that I routinely do a century later.

Monday, July 19, 1909. Unassisted.

Neal Ball of the Cleveland Indians made the first unassisted triple play in major league history.

July 19, 1909: Neal Ball’s unassisted triple play and homer propel Cy Young to win over former team

Ball played major league ball from 1907 to 1913, when he was returned to the minors in which he played until 1924.  He died at age 71 in 1957.

The Hudson Terminal, the largest underground station in New York City, opened.

Last edition:

Monday, July 12, 1909. Congress passes the 16th Amendment.

Labels: 1900s, 1909, 61st Congress, Japan, Japanese Empire, Korea, Taxes, William Howard Taft