The first recorded piece of nose art was a sea monster painted on the nose of an Italian flying boat in 1913. This was followed by the popular tradition of painting mouths underneath the propeller spinner, initiated by the German pilots in World War I, and exemplified by the cavallino of Francesco Baracca. After these beginnings, though, most nose art was conceived and produced by the aircraft ground crews, not the pilots.
One of his favorite OSS stories involved a colleague sent to occupied France to destroy a seemingly impenetrable German tank at a key crossroads. The French resistance found that grenades were no use.
The OSS man, fluent in German and dressed like a French peasant, walked up to the tank and yelled, "Mail!"
The lid opened, and in went two grenades.
to my Amazon wish list.
In the late 70s and throughout the 80s, adidas provided the armed forces with both boots such as the GSG9 and also training shoes. This is a reintroduction of one of these training shoes - the BW Army - designed for the German military. Using classy leathers and utilising laser perforations instead of overlays, this iconic silhouette is given a clean but recognisable look.
"Russia's boots defeated the Nazis 40 years before. Soviet troops were now wearing "sneakers." They held up better on the rocks and you could run in them without carrying the weight of iron on your legs. I got a pair of these myself. They were made by the Chinese and after some problems the merchants got a connection that would supply them. I remember once that some journalists from Poland were in Bagram, but one of the commanders told them to only aim their cameras from our waists to our faces, because they did not want others to know that the soldiers of the USSR were in shoes that joggers would wear."
Using the numbers, and premises linked to them, Mr. Martinez and his colleagues sought to identify Abu Zubaydah’s most likely hide-outs. They could not reduce the list to fewer than 14 addresses in Lahore and Faisalabad, which they put under surveillance. At 2 a.m. on March 28, 2002, teams led by Pakistan’s Punjab Elite Force, with Americans waiting outside, hit the locations all at once.
One of the SWAT teams found Abu Zubaydah, protected by Syrian and Egyptian bodyguards, at a handsome house on Canal Road in Faisalabad. It held bomb-making equipment and a safe loaded with $100,000 in cash, according to a terrorism consultant briefed on the event. Photographs of the raid reviewed by The Times last month showed Abu Zubaydah, a cleanshaven 30-year-old Palestinian, shot three times during the raid, lying face down in the back of a Toyota pickup before he was taken to a hospital.
At first, Abu Zubaydah fell in and out of consciousness, emerging occasionally to speak incoherently — once, evidently imagining himself in a restaurant, ordering a glass of red wine, a C.I.A. official said. The agency, desperate to keep him alive, flew in a Johns Hopkins Hospital surgeon to consult. Within a few days, Abu Zubaydah was flown to Thailand, to the first of the “black sites,” the agency’s interrogation facilities for major Qaeda figures.
Written and illustrated by Weta Workshop conceptual designer Greg Broadmore, the directory showcases dozens of arcane inventions, contraptions and weaponry.
The stars of the show are, of course, Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators, but you will also find the shiniest new bifurnilizers, metal man servants and automated travel loungers. Also included for your entertainment and scientific education is a compartmentalised picture story (some call them comics) of the world famous naturalist, Lord Cockswain.
Via.
[Oceanographer Robert] Ballard met with the Navy in 1982 to request funding to develop the robotic submersible technology he needed to find the Titanic.
Ronald Thunman, then the deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare, told Ballard the military was interested in the technology—but for the purpose of investigating the wreckage of the U.S.S. Thresher and U.S.S. Scorpion.
Since Ballard's technology would be able to reach the sunken subs and take pictures, the oceanographer agreed to help out.
He then asked the Navy if he could search for the Titanic, which was located between the two wrecks.
"I was a little short with him," said Thunman, who retired as a vice admiral and now lives in Springfield, Illinois. He emphasized that the mission was to study the sunken warships.
Once Ballard had completed his mission—if time was left—Thunman said, Ballard could do what he wanted, but never gave him explicit permission to search for the Titanic.
