Weapons Man

Military static-line parachuting is, as near as we can figure out, substantially safer (in terms of loss of life) than civilian skydiving; and military HALO jumping is, as near as we can figure out, somewhat more hazardous than civilian skydiving.

It’s time for one more dispatch from the provinces of a nation raised on Barney the Dinosaur and Walt Disney’s urbanite view of “nature.”

It’s that time of year. The sun is down before seven.  If one is going to manage his time, he should manage it early, because the tree-pruning and bike riding hours don’t run as late as we were recently accustomed.

This is been a busy week, and unlike recent weeks, we haven’t really been ahead of things.  Instead, we’ve been playing catch-up. We hate that. Still, we feel like we made some good points this week. We had two good posts on the latest on the German G36 disaster; we had an outstanding guest post from Maxim Popenker on Russian and Sovied captive-piston silent weapons. We show you some new technology in 3-D printing, and an AR 15 receiver made with old technology: carefully shaped from laminated wood.

Well, here’s another boy-meets-training tale, but this one a true period piece: instead of tough Brits finding out how tough they really are, we’ve got Americans of the last year or so of peace on our shores (1939) tackling Naval Aviator training. Soon after this movie hit, all of Europe was at war, and the United States was in a desperate rush to modernize its armed forces after two decades of neglect. This movie is often seen, in retrospect, as a propaganda film, but it is more nearly a classic Hollywood tale of sibling rivalry and a love triangle, set in a military setting, with the patriotic themes still seen in other nations’ movies — and often used by Hollywood before is shift to nihilistic anti-Americanism in the 1960s.

Some cretin is charged with using this gunk on his little daughter. Lord love a duck, we don’t even use it on a stopped toilet here at Hog Manor because it’s bad for the septic system.

Here’s the story of the A-10, in Afghanistan, told by the guys who fly them and the guys who are supported by them. About 22 minutes long.

It’s a little weird, the way the wide-angle lenses make the planes look (from the on-dash pilot selfie-cam) like they have swept wings. They don’t, which may be why Big Blue hates on ’em so much, and wants to get rid of them.

The pilots are right about the plane’s unequalled CAS capability, but it was indeed designed as a tank-buster. Indeed, the whole plane is designed around the gun and its ammunition (something last done in the 1930s with the Bell P-39  and the Oldsmobile 37mm cannon). And the design was based, in part, on interviews and discussions with the top tank killer of all time, the Luftwaffe’s Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

A cynic might say that this is just one volley in the never-stilled War O The Budget, that it’s just propagada. Yeah, but if your a close air-support pilot, or a ground combatant, and this short film is propaganda, it’s propaganda for you and your side. It’s the good guys’ propaganda.

“Why do witches burn?” If this completed AR receiver works as forecast, it’s because they’re made of the same thing as guns. “Why do witches burn?” If this completed AR receiver works as forecast, it’s because they’re made of the same thing as guns.

On this grim anniversary we’re throwing the usual kitchen-sink of uncovered stories at you…. Naturally, we’ll cover the usual subjects: Guns, Usage and Employment, Cops ‘n’ Crims, Unconventional (and current) Warfare, and Lord Love a Duck!

The LSU poly-sci faculty in action. They thought it was a Phyrgian Cap.

Parties that begin with murdering the guest of honor, and that continue for three days until her body, stuffed in a closet, gets too ripe. Then, they hastily buried the body and resumed partying.

We’re well conscious of the consequences of a navigation error in an airplane. Even in visual conditions, you can put yourself in a position where you have a fuel issue and no suitable landing spot, and in instrument flying conditions you can find yourself on the non-survivable edge of the airspace, where it meets mountains and things like that.

Bet you’ve never seen a pistol exactly like this before:

From Aviation Week:

Tim Holden took a lot of risks in life, but riding his bicycle is the one that got him. Despite living in a city that tries its best to be a gun-free zone (Bethesda, MD) and that is possibly the most over-policed zip code on the planet, he’s dead as a mackerel.

Gone now: Temple of Bel (Baal), Palmyra, Syria

This is a guest post by the Russian firearms expert and historian Maxim Popenker, co-author (with Anthony Williams) of several reference works1, and the founder and owner of the indispensable world.guns.ru website. some time ago, we mentioned in a story on the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver that the US had not pursued such technology, but the Russians had, and Max asked if our readers wanted to know that Russian history. We said they certainly did, and he shared it with us — and now, with you. It has been very lightly edited, which is amazing given that Max is writing in what is to him a foreign language. We have added amplifying footnotes here and there. — Ed.

We have a couple more 3DP articles percolatin’ in the queue, and every time we do that, somebody wonders, where to get the files? We have posted in the past some links to places to get the last pre-1st-Amendment-repeal DEFCAD and the FOSSCAD megapacks, but what if you’re looking for just one wee file?

Unless you live under a rock, which given the new reality of US-approved Iranian nukes might not be an entirely bad idea, you must have heard the floated rumors of Daniel Craig’s imminent replacement as James Bond by Idris Elba. (There has also been a counter-rumor of the next Bond being David Beckham. This seems improbable. Unlike Beckham, Elba can act). Elba  himself has called on fans to get him the role (and Craig has said Elba would be a good choice).

Yet another would-be Professor Moriarty, Master Criminal, is undone by fickle Fortune and his own stupidity, but mostly his own stupidity.