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 Post subject: REMEMBER Pearl Harbor
PostPosted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 12:18 pm 
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Location: CT
It's incumbent upon all of us to remember the event which cast our families into the worst war mankind has yet seen. Many of us are blessed to have been raised by that Greatest Generation, and it was that war which made them great. They laid aside their own childhood to ensure we, and our children, could be born and raised in freedom.

Remember Pearl Harbor on 07Dec, and the 2,335 Marines and sailors who died and the 1,143 more who were wounded there.

https://youtu.be/_7o4Ltq_Dz8

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 3:40 pm 
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Today's the day, 07Dec.
I found some interesting material on the "battle of Oahu" which gives some excellent background and photos of the actual Japanese attack, issued by the National Parks Service (they own and run the Arizona Memorial):

https://www.nps.gov/valr/learn/historyculture/oahu.htm

I have read recently that the memorial itself had been closed for repairs, and the Park Service hoped it might be re-opened by today, but I have no update on that.

I was stationed at Kaneohe Bay for 4 years in the 1970s [bought my 240 there] and saw daily reminders of this air raid, more than 35 years later. One wave of attacking planes flew directly over Kanehoe, bombing the airfield there. Repaired bomb craters on many areas of the runways, taxi strips and hangars, obvious streams of machine-gun holes on the old hangars, and the carcass of a Japanese torpedo bomber which crashed up on the windward [north] side of the Pali Lookout mountain [Ko'olau range]. We were told a sailor got off a lucky shot with his rifle and managed to hit the four-seat plane's vitals, causing it to crash into the mountain side on its way to Pearl Harbor. The ordnance aboard the Betty bomber exploded and formed a house-sized crater on the coral mountainside, which filled with water over the years and is fed by a small constant waterfall. I hiked up there a lot and always stopped to swim a little at that clear pond. Souvenir hunters stole as much of the plane as they could carry off the mountain over the years, but the big radial engine and the two main landing gear were still at the bottom of the crystal clear pond, along with several other unidentifiable parts of the fuselage.

You can see on the map where the second wave of attackers flew over the Koolau mountain range. The plane was unable to climb high enough to get over the Pali mountain and crashed well below the summit. If he had steered a little to his right he probably could have made it thru the lower Pali Pass [and eventually crashed on the leeward side of the island], but he stayed with the formation like a good Japanese aviator and took what was coming to him.

And PS: if you study that map of Oahu you will notice a road running the entire perimeter of the island. That takes a full day to drive and I did that several times. It was more fun to drive half-way around the island to some new unexplored little village and spend the night there, returning to base the next day, but I traveled the entire route in a single 10-12hr day several times, always stopping at the Arizona Memorial for an hour. I first did it in wire-wheel chrome bumper MGB, then all the rest of the trips were made in my new 240z. I have some fond memories of Hawaii.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 8:26 am 
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Frank,

Thank you for posting re: the attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 Dec 1941 and especially the singing of the Navy Hymn by the US Naval Academy Glee Club. That hymn has an easily recognizable, haunting melody that will usually brings a tear to my eye. It's sad, two generations after ours have never learned or grasped the history of this date, and others of similar importance. Will anyone proudly lower the Flag when we are gone?

I am fortunate to have silently stood, with cap in hand, above the deck of the USS Arizona and walked in amazement on Omaha Beach.

Alan

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Last edited by Alan.Dempsey on Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 3:55 pm 
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Location: Ansonia, CT
My wife and I had the opportunity to visit Pearl Harbor this spring. I had sent in some pictures taken at the memorial. It was a very sobering and somber experience visiting the Arizona monument. In April, I got a birthday present from my daughter . It was a scale model kit of the Arizona. I had actually built the same kit when I was just a kid. I built the kit again and gave it to my grandson after explaining what had happened to the ship and the men it entombed.
My Dad served as a combat engineer in WWII and was part of the Normandy invasion forces. I don't think there will ever be another generation as great has his.


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:24 am 
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John,

Super model, John Kish! We, of our vintage assembled many Revell models as kids. I never got into the ships but had two favorite planes. The P47 Thunderbolt was one and the F4U Corsair the other. We took the time to accurately paint realistic color schemes with Testor's paint and apply decals with care. The Corsair was my favorite because I remember, as a kid, seeing the folded wings behind the prop wash fencing at Bridgeport Airport. So many Corsairs were built at Chance Vought on Main St., Stratford. That factory was also occupied by Sikorsky (helicopters) and AVCO Lycoming (T-53 and T-55 gas turbine engines for the Bell UH-1 Iroquois {Huey} and CH47 Chinook) in different times.

Alan

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 11:59 am 
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Ah yes, the awesome F4U Corsair! I built that model as well as a kid. I loved model building. It was one of those things you could do as a kid when the weather kept you from being outside. In the late 50's and early 60's I would spend my hard-earned lawn mowing money buying various model kits, mostly planes, but also a few ships and army models.

If you recall, Renwal, (later taken over by Revell) produced some really authentic 1:32 scale Army models. I remember some rumors going around that the company was investigated by the Uncle Sam because of the accurate detailing they had in their models. Don't know if that was ever true or not :roll: . I always gravitated to models that had moving parts, and Renwal's models had them. They made the models "fun" to play with. :D Here are some of the Renwal models that I can remember building:

M47 Patton Tank
LaCrosse missle with transport launcher
M50 Ontos
75mm "Skysweeper" AA gun
M65 Atomic Canon - "Atomic Annie"

Most of these ended up getting blown up with firecrackers in mock backyard warfare :P

When you think back during the times WE lived in, weapons like the Atomic Canon were incredible and scary weapons. They were developed by the military for defense during those critical "cold war" years. As a kid, I don't recall worrying much about that, although I'm sure our parents did. Remember in school going through those drills of hiding under your desk in case of a nuclear attack? :roll:

I think model airplanes were my favorite models to build though. My first real model plane that I recall putting any serious effort into was the A4 Skyhawk jet. I proudly hung it up on the ceiling in my room with fishing line. I also built the F104 Starfighter, which is still my favorite jet fighter/interceptor of all time! Monogram was my favorite plane model company back then. I think they were also bought by Revell. I built a whole series of their WWII Navy planes which also had moving parts, some even with folding wings! All had retractable gear. They included the SBD Dauntless, F4 Wildcat, F6 Hellcat, F4U Corsair, TBF Avenger and the Helldiver. I painstakingly painted them with those same Testor's paints and remember struggling to keep the paint in the right places, especially on the clear plastic canopies. :roll:

Ah, and then there were the .049 fuel powered U-Control balsa airplanes! My buddy and I used to build "Baby Ringmaster" planes and would fly them in "combat" at a local park, trailing paper streamers which we would each try to clip off in flight with our planes prop, all while trying to stand up while spinning in a circle. Crashes and tangled lines were common. Between all that airplane model dope and spinning, no wonder why I'm as dopey as I am! Hey, I'm a Z lover right?

As a kid growing up in Levittown NY, I must say I had a happy life. I had good loving parents, lots of neighborhood "boomer" kids to play with and cool toys. We will save the A.C Gilbert Erector Sets, microscope sets and American Flyer train discussions for another day!

Oh, and here is a picture of me taken 3 years ago standing next to an actual Atomic Canon located at the Atomic Museum in Alberquerque NM. Wow, I thought that was so cool!


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 3:18 pm 
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You guys are cool. My bedrooms were decorated (littered) with model attempts, too, and most of them died at the hands of CherryBombs in the back driveway.We had little plastic airplanes from the deck of the Forrestal all over our back yard.

When I was about 13 I swapped military models for car models and went nuts (recovery is not expected). I literally had more model cars than I had room to show them. I eventually outgrew those (the Marine Corps didn't give me time or space to pursue that fun) but in 1973 I got a Bob Sharp 240Z model which became my best effort. I was so proud of that car, especially since I had one in my garage. It shipped with me from home to home and from base to base and it always held a place of honor on my mantel, until my nephew sort of 'ate' it.

Then in NC I met a retired WWII Marine who ran my favorite local gunshop. Fred had almost graduated college when the war broke out and his dad personally knew some of the "Old Corps" heroes and celebrities, who sometimes slept overnight on Fred's couch when he was a kid and spun stories about all the places they'd been. Fred joined the Marines and fought on Guadalcanal (our first amphibious offensive against the Japanese, Aug42). What he saw there changed him forever (he would only talk about it after a lot of beers) and he determined to fly rather than march. He became an F4U Corsair pilot in the Pacific (served under "Pappy" Boyington after the war), flew out of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal (which he had helped capture 18 months before) and shot down 4 Japanese planes in aerial combat before the war ended.

Fred was as much devoted to Olympia beer as he was to guns (he was from Seattle) and his air-conditioned shop was great place to hang out and meet other enthusiasts (of beer, guns and war stories). Fred gave us all free access to his stocked refrigerator in the shop and arrived each morning with a case or two on his shoulder. Once you became a regular customer and bought a few of his guns, he would throw open the curtain and invite you to 'come on in the back' each time you visited. He had arranged a hodgepodge of old easy chairs, sofas and bar stools around a big potbellied stove in the center of his 'parlor' and you could usually find 4-5 good ole boys sitting back there helping Fred kill his cold beer, eager for your conversation.

At our town's only hobby shop I found same-scale models of an early 3-blade Corsair and a Japanese Zero, built them as carefully as I could and suspended them from the overhead in combat pose inside the 'parlor' of his gunshop, the Corsair chasing the Zero in a steep bank. They hung there for over a decade and generated more conversations than any other item in the shop, including his Japanese Nambu "woodpecker" light machine gun souvenir from The 'Canal which he proudly displayed in the shop window. The planes were still there when I left NC to move here, probably 12 years after I had hung them. They were the last models I've ever built. Fred's gone now (lived well into his '90s) and his comfortable good-ole -boys gunshop was a Laundromat when I revisited NC.
My models were no longer there. :lol:

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2018 4:43 pm 
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JohnnyZ and Frank T.

In our early/mid twenty's we discovered slot cars. The kind that offered the possibility of changing gears and tires. We had a 4x4x8 plywood table in a friend's basement and spent entirely too much time there. My most competitive was a Lotus, can't remember which model, but t was sliver. It finally flew off the tile once to many times and the concrete floor won the final round. It might be in that graveyard called an attic.

I remember a CTZCC model Car event that never happened. I went out and bought a $30 350Z coupe, spray painted it that copper color hated by Nancy, and never finished it. I guess there just wasn't much interest. It's now another item in the "one of these days" category.

I can taste a good cup of coffee on a Sunday morning. Whatda you think?

Alan

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PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2018 9:22 pm 
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Almost forgot about the slot cars! Yep, I had a few. Began with a Stromberg set. I later built a couple of kit slot cars which I would take to a local slot car track to run. I still have the little BRM (see Pic). Tires are all cracking and it's missing part of the front end from a crash. :P

I'd be up for a coffee meet. Pick the date and time!


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:01 am 
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Wow, that's supposed to be Richie Ginther in the 1965 BRM P261, the car which won the most podiums for BRM. The BRM decal belongs down on the point of the nose, tho.

I had a FIAT Toplino slot car with big drag slicks on the rear. We spent many weekends at the Millington (Memphis) TN slot car tracks inside a big abandoned factory. The tracks were enormous, some of them running around 3 walls of the factory. The drag strips were 40yds long and there were several of them. My 'little mouse' was very quick, but not the quickest, and I didn't have wheelie bars to keep the rear wheels from scooting underneath the car and out the front (flip-over). I might still have that old car somewhere....don't ever remember throwing it away.


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File comment: FIAT Topolino A/A drag car
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:12 pm 
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Location: Bethel, CT
Well you can never have enough toys ...below some of the dust collectors
I remember they used to have endurance slot car racing...2 or 3 guys one slot car...12 hours!
I had Lotus F1 that I remember had 4 wheel drive...hmmm wonder were that went!
Colin
the older one
...keeper of the toys


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 6:41 pm 
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Wow, a 2-6-0, a 2-8-0 and a 2-4-2!
I wonder where my old Lionel train set got to? I used to have to drop little white pellets down the stack to make it smoke, and my parents got so tired of hearing that lonesome whistle moan all day, they hid it from me for weeks at a time.

There was something magical about steam propulsion. So many moving parts! I could have watched them chug thru our home town for hours if they had let me. Stopped traffic in all directions, puffing, chugging, rumbling bell-ringing monster crawling thru downtown, whole lines of cars disappearing in house-sized clouds of steam....It became almost sad when they put aerodynamic bodies on them and hid all that plumbing.

I covet that red rubber Maserati 250F Indy car with the white rubber tires.

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