Recent content by yosimitesam

  1. yosimitesam

    What's wrong with this picture?

    Speaks for itself.
  2. yosimitesam

    Items I Have Found While Walking in My Neighborhood

    Even though I have a large fenced back yard, I sometimes walk my dogs along the street in front of my house for their variety. I carry "poop-bags" with me, for cleanup, and the neighborhood has no sidewalks (it's dead-end street with a terminating cove.) One day my biggest dog "marked" the grass...
  3. yosimitesam

    SBD dive bombing procedures

    "There were World War 2 ARBS systems for SBDs and SB2Cs - precursors to the later DIve/Toss systems of the '60s. Don't know if they actually got used." Probably not used, but here's one: ASG-10 Toss bombing device
  4. yosimitesam

    Norden Bombsight....

    Quite true. The problem of accuracy grows exponentially with height because, ultimately, bombing accuracy is dependent on precise measurement of two things: ANGLES and WIND. A one degree angle error at 25,000 feet, assuming all other variables are taken care of perfectly, will result in a radial...
  5. yosimitesam

    Norden Bombsight....

  6. yosimitesam

    Did Northrop and Vought Help Design the Zero

    Same here. "Necessity is the mother of invention." The A6M designers had stringent and difficult requirements to meet. And they met them.
  7. yosimitesam

    History according to random people...

    Solid helium melts at -272K and absolute zero is -273.15K, so it melts at 1.15K. But solid helium must be under pressure of 2500kPa (363psi) at <1degK or it stays a liquid, no matter what.
  8. yosimitesam

    Did Northrop and Vought Help Design the Zero

    Yes. The alloy that the Japanese developed was called (back then) 75ST and now is called 7075. It's somewhat lighter than 202x alloys but significantly stronger. It was known in the "West" (which is why it had a name) but was considered too brittle for use in aircraft. The Japanese developed a...
  9. yosimitesam

    Aero engines, reverse torque, and my mechanical ignorance

    That cleared it up. Thanks for the reply.
  10. yosimitesam

    Aero engines, reverse torque, and my mechanical ignorance

    In the famous "Dracula" test where the British tested the Sherman, Centaur, and Cromwell tanks over a 2,000 mile course, the following opinion was offered by one officer concerning the Rolls Royce Meteor aero engine (600hp) used in the Cromwell: "Doubtful as regards durability over 2,000 miles...
  11. yosimitesam

    What are you doing today?

    Helping wife with laundry, including sheets, pillow cases, comforters, and the usual clothes, making 4 or 5 laundry loads. Her friend told her that (superstition) if you do laundry on New Years Day someone you know will die, so we have to get it all done today. I called bullsh*t on it but to no...
  12. yosimitesam

    Realistic options for Japan 1937-41

    That was the problem with the U.S. intelligence "organization" in 1941. It was fragmented and a realistic, in-depth analysis of all intelligence really didn't take place, as there was no infrastructure in the US government to actually do it. Thus, the US command could not separate "the signal...
  13. yosimitesam

    Realistic options for Japan 1937-41

    The U.S. was not viewed by most of the world at that time to be as "fearsome" as it has become since WWII. The U.S. Navy was respectably powerful but the U.S. Army was still tiny. It ranked 17th or 18th in the world in 1939, being about the size of Portugal's army of 150,000-200,000. It was...
  14. yosimitesam

    eBay: Radar systems: Würzburg, Allied etc.

    All Wurzburg radars operated around 560Mhz which is approximately .5m wavelength. It had a 2-microsecond pulsewidth, which is about standard for a search/tracking radar. The smallest wavelength (highest frequency) generally used in the war, and only by the Allies, was 3.2cm or about 9000Mhz =...
  15. yosimitesam

    Kamikaze Pilots Forced? General George Kenney's Memoirs

    General Kenney was a notorious "exaggerator". He claimed (even after the war) that 10,000 or more Japanese were killed in the Battle of the Bismark Sea and that 15-20 ships were sunk. It was actually 12 ships (4 destroyers and 8 transports) and the total killed was around 3,500-4,500. Anything...
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