1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint

1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint

I think Alfas have always been my favorite cars, at least after I realized that the twelve cylinder Ferrari I lusted over was out of reach. I mean, I should have able to buy an Alfa, but people grow and change and it never happened.

Right now I could buy one, but I don't really have any time to spend on it. I'm busy blogging and anytime I need to go anywhere, I want a modern car suitable for the rugby scrum that is modern traffic. Don't worry, some people have the time:

The cars of the California Mille

The cars of the California Mille

Vehicle eligibility

The California Mille is open to any car that could have participated in the original Mille Miglia. We are seeking a variety of makes and types. Foreign and domestic manufacturers are welcome, but all cars must have been made prior to January 1, 1958. 

The event is limited to approximately 65-70 cars based on the availability of hotel reservations. To maintain the spirit of the Mille Miglia, we carefully choose cars that fit our requirements and specifications from each year’s group of applicants.

The California Mille is an annual historic and classic car tour inspired by the Mille Miglia, a former Italian open-road endurance race covering roughly 1000 miles from Brescia-to-Rome-to-Brescia and ran twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957.

Entry fee is $17 grand. Yeah, no thanks, I'm good.

SS Lagos Palm

Lagos Palm - Robert G. Lloyd

The is the 1961 version of the Lagos Palm. It was the second ship of that name working for the Palm Line:

The Palm Line was a UK-owned shipping line that was engaged in the West African trade from 1949, primarily servicing the ports along 5,000 miles of coastline from Morocco in the north to Angola in the far south. It ceased trading in 1986.

Navigating the Niger Delta required certain accommodations:

It is notable that all Palm Line ships, with the exception of Kano Palm and Katsina Palm, built before 1970, had to be less than 500 feet long in order to navigate the creeks of Nigeria. Draught is another important feature. The coast of West Africa is extremely flat, and the slow-moving rivers and tidal currents have combined to build up long sand bars a mile or two off the coast. To enter most of the rivers, ships must pass over these bars; 27 feet being the maximum draught to serve all ports. Even so, to enter many rivers, - for example the Escravos River which leads to Sapele - ships cannot carry more than 4,000 tons since the maximum draught to successfully make it over the Escravos Bar is limited to 17 feet (5.2 m), so vessels would often cross over the bar at the entrance to the adjacent Forcados River, then take the connecting creek to the Escravos River. 

Here are some maps of the Niger Delta. I'm not real happy with any of them:

• the space shot doesn't have a scale, 
• the one labeled estuaries doesn't name any of the rivers,
• the admiralty chart is too zoomed in, so much so that I don't know what I am looking at,
• the last one is pretty good, it has a scale anyway, it has a bunch of names but leaves out the names of the big rivers.

Oh well, they're free, I should be happy with what I've got. It's not like I'm going on a voyage to Nigeria any time soon.

View of the Niger Delta from space (north/land at top).

Map showing Escravos and Qua Iboe Estuaries

ADMIRALTY Chart - 3321 Entrances to Escravos and Forcados Rivers

The Niger Delta with the Forcados (middle left)

Just for completeness, here's a link to Google Maps map of the Niger Delta.

SS Eleanor

SS Eleanor on the River Mersey circa 1957 - Robert G. Lloyd 

Just another cargo ship steaming away. The building on the left is The Royal Liver Building. The building on the right is the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, the largest cathedral in Britain, and the eighth largest church in the world.

SS Tjitjalengka

SS Tjitjalengka at Amoy Harbor in China - Robert G. Lloyd

Australian War Memorial

The 16,700 ton British hospital ship Tjitjalengka. Built for the Java-China-Japan-Line in 1939 and owned by a Dutch shipping company, the Tjitjalengka was requisitioned for Admiralty service on 8 July 1942 and was converted in Liverpool, England to accommodate 504 patients. After service in the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans, she was transferred to the British Pacific Fleet. After the Japanese surrender, she carried Allied Prisoners of War (POWs) repatriated from Japan to Australia. On her final voyage, she carried invalids and Naval casualties from Colombo and Durban to Liverpool, England and was then returned to her owners.

Royal Navy Research Archive has a longer history of this ship.

The artist, Robert G. Lloyd has done numerous marine paintings.

Tjitjalengka, Indonesia

Amoy Harbor, China is directly across the strait from Taiwan.

SS Yih Lee

SS Yih Lee berthed at Dinghai, Zhoushan, China, circa 1929

Poking around, I turned up a couple of sites devoted to old Chinese steamships:

• Old China Coast Ships
• Eddie Steamship

Gundam

RX-78-2 Gundam from the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 anime

I picked this puzzle on a whim and at least partly because I couldn't make out what it was from the thumbnail. I'm still not entirely sure what I am looking at, a bunch of sci-fi war machines, I suppose. But why is the head of the central figure blacked out? It almost looks like it was deliberately censored, but all the other copies of this image that Google found all have the same black blob instead of a head. Weird.

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten, 1660

From Google:

The Battle of Terheide (also known as the Battle of Scheveningen) was the final, decisive naval engagement of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Fought on August 10, 1653, between the English Commonwealth and the Dutch Republic, the clash successfully broke the crippling English blockade of the Dutch coast, though it cost the Dutch their legendary commander, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp.

At that time, the population of England was about five million people and the population of the Netherlands was about two million.

From Wikipedia:

Both sides claimed a victory: the English because of their tactical superiority, the Dutch because the strategic goal of their attack, the lifting of the blockade, had been achieved.

Belligerents
English Commonwealth	Dutch Republic
Commanders and leaders
George Monck  Benjamin Blake	Maarten Tromp †
Strength
130 ships[1] 4,000 guns 17,000 men[2]	125 ships[1] 3,450 guns 13,000 men[2]
Casualties and losses
950–1,200 killed and wounded 2 ships lost [1][3]	2,000 killed and wounded 1,000 captured 12-30 ships lost[2][1]

Ter Heijde

Battle of Delaware Bay

Battle of Delaware Bay

The battle was fought on April 8, 1782, months after General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.

Wikipedia: 

The Battle of Delaware Bay, or the Battle of Cape May, was a naval engagement fought between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States during the American Revolutionary War. A British force of three vessels attacked three American privateers that were escorting a fleet of merchantmen. The ensuing combat in Delaware Bay near Cape May ended with the American sloop Hyder Ally capturing the British sloop-of-war HMS General Monk.

Background

Twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Joshua Barney of the Continental Navy commanded the privateer sloop Hyder Ali during the battles. She was owned by Pennsylvania businessman John Willcocks and was issued a letter of marque. The sloop was armed with 16 six-pounders and had a crew of about 110 men, officers and marines, and was named after Hyder Ali, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and a British enemy.

Hyder Ali? You mean the king of southern India? Yes, that Hyder Ali:

Hyder Ali was an innovator in the military use of rockets, which were used against positions and territories held by the East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Although rocket technology originated in China and had made its way to India and Europe by the 13th century, development of accurate cannons had sidelined rockets as a military technology in Europe. Rocket technology was already in use when Hyder's father served (he commanded a company of 50 rocketmen), but it was Hyder who improved them and significantly expanded their use in the military. Technological innovations included the use of high-quality iron casing (better than was then available in Europe) for the combustion chamber, enabling the use of higher-powered explosive charges. . . . Rockets developed by Hyder and Tipu led to a renaissance of interest in the technology in Britain, where William Congreve, supplied with rocket cases from Mysore, developed what became known as Congreve rockets in the early 19th century.

Battle of Pollilur 1780 - Charles H. Hubbell

In Hyder's time the Mysorean army had a rocket corps of as many as 1,200 men, which Tipu increased to 5,000. At the 1780 Battle of Pollilur, during the second war, Colonel William Baillie's ammunition stores are thought to have been detonated by a hit from one of Hyder's rockets, contributing to the British defeat.

Nakajima Ki-87

Threatening Skies - Antonis Karidis
Nakajima Ki-87 high-altitude fighter attacking a B-29 Superfortress

Japan started working on the Nakajima Ki-87 well before the B-29 appeared, but they only managed to construct one prototype before the war ended, so it never saw combat.

Previous post about the Nakajima Aircraft Company.
Previous posts about the B-29.

Image is from the cover for a plastic model kit.

P-51 Mustang

Miss Helen - North American P-51D Mustang

From Warbird Aviation:

P-51D Mustang “Miss Helen” was delivered to the US Army Air Force (USAAF) in 1945 where she saw active service in World War II with 352 Fighter Group (FG) ‘The Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney’, and has several confirmed kills to her name. ​She was flown by Capt. Raymond Littge as ‘Miss Helen’ and by later by Lt. Russell Ross as ‘Miss Nita’. Today wearing the same paint scheme as she did in 1945 and is the last original 352nd Fighter Group P-51 known to exist. 352 FG flew nearly 60,000 combat hours in just 19 months of WWII, claiming 519 enemy aircraft destroyed in the air, 287 on the ground and produced 26 aces for losses of 118 aircraft. Her full name is ‘P-51D-20NA 44-72216’ and when she was delivered to Capt. Littge he already had a kill tally of 10.5, including an Me 262.

It’s uncertain exactly how many missions Littge flew in Miss Helen but it’s known for sure that he flew her on a mission escorting B-17 bombers to the marshalling yards in Dresden on April 17th 1945, along with another 51 Mustangs. ​They came across an airfield at Platting with about 70 parked aircraft and Littge made an astonishing seven passes, destroying three Me 109s and 2 Me262s on the ground, despite having been hit in the initial attack on enemy flak positions which nearly emptied his oil tank.

​She’s passed through several hands since the War, including those of the Royal Swedish Air Force and Israeli Air Force, starred in the Hollywood film Memphis Belle, and is now owned by Robert Tyrrell and based at the Boultbee Flight Academy at Goodwood Aerodrome.

Several earlier posts about the P-51.

Focke-Wulf Fw190D-9 Mimetall

Focke-Wulf Fw190D-9 Mimetall
Image is from IGB model

Germany built over 20,000 of these fighter aircraft during WW2. Mimetall refers to the Mimetall GmbH factory in Erfurt, Germany, which manufactured the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9 fighter during the final stages of World War II.

Re-2000

Re-2000 fighters Royal Hungarian Air Force

Reggiane Re.2000 Falco I was a minor player in WW2. It was designed and initially built in Italy. Italy made almost 200 of these airplanes. Hungary made 200 more under license. Performance was good in 1940 - speed of 300 MPH and altitude of 30,000 feet, but it was soon outclassed.

Hungarian Air Force Reggiane Re.2000 Heja of 1/1 'Dongo' squadron
Zoran Petek

Reggiane Re.2000 Falco (Svenska Flygvapnet J 20)
silvan500

Lavochkin La-9

Lavochkin La-9

I did a jigsaw puzzle of this image this afternoon, but it was watermarked with AIRLINERS.NET, and I'm not gonna post that here. Asked Google to identify it because the label on the puzzle was entirely cryptic, and Google found the same image, sans watermark, on Ebay, so that's what we have here.

I had never heard of Lavochkin before. I've heard of Antonov, Beriev, Ilyushin, MiG, Sukoi, Tupolev & Yakovlev, but not Lavochkin. The company is still in business and is kind of a big deal.

Wikipedia:

The Lavochkin La-9 (NATO reporting name Fritz) was a Soviet fighter aircraft produced shortly after World War II. It was one of the last piston engined fighters to be produced before the widespread adoption of the jet engine.

The Lavochkin La-9 descended from the La-7 which descended from the La-5. The Soviets built many of these aircraft:

Model	Year	Quantity
La-9	1946	1,600
La-7	1944	6,000
La-5	1942	10,000

Lavochkin. The Evolution of a Fighter.
KOC1

B-26 Marauder

South African Air Force B-26 Marauders over Italy - Darryl Legg

We built over 5,000 B-26 Marauders. They had the lowest loss rate of any U.S. Army Air Forces bomber.

Google:

During World War II, the South African Air Force (SAAF) operated five squadrons of Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers in the Mediterranean Theater. Flying predominantly from temporary steel-plate airfields in Italy, the SAAF flew crucial missions targeting Axis infrastructure and supporting Allied campaigns.

A Brief History of "Flak-Bait"
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

USAAF B-26 Marauder pilot buzzed the flight deck of Akagi to save his crew
Aviation Wings

Double Header Marauder Operations
AP Archive

Bristol Beaufighter Mk VI

Bristol Beaufighter Mk VI
Image from Tamiya scale model kit

Bristol Beaufighter TFX

The prototype flew on 17 July 1939 and the first production Beaufighters were delivered to the Royal Air Force in the following April. The type was the first high performance night fighter equipped with airborne interception radar and successfully operated against the German night raids in the winter of 1940-1941. Later the Beaufighter was introduced into Coastal Command as a strike fighter. Its original formidable gun armament was retained but rockets and torpedoes were added giving it an even greater fire power.

Not only did the Beaufighter operate with distinction in North West Europe but also a considerable reputation was earned in the Middle and Far East.

5562 Beaufighters had been produced by the time the last one was delivered in September 1945 and fifty-two operational Royal Air Force squadrons had been equipped with the type.

Bristol Beaufighter

Beaufighter crews accounted for over half of the Luftwaffe bombers shot down during the Blitz.

 

Bristol Hercules Sleeve Valve Engine

The Beaufighter was powered by a pair of Bristol Hercules 14-cylinder, air-cooled, sleeve-valve, radial piston engines, 1,600 hp each. The Hercules was followed by the Centaurus, which also used sleeve valves.

How This Underrated British Aircraft Helped Win The Pacific War
IsonzoEnjoyer

Daring Solo Beaufighter Raid - Paris 1942
Mark Felton Productions

B-29 Superfortress & Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima: A Hard Won Haven by John Shaw

Iwo Jima as a crucial emergency landing site for crippled bombers returning from missions over Japan. It is estimated that these emergency landing strips saved the lives of nearly 25,000 American airmen during the war. - Google

A B29 Bombing Mission Is Interrupted by Japanese Fighters 💣 Air Warriors | Smithsonian Channel
Smithsonian Channel Aviation Nation

Top to Bottom: Kobe, Iwo Jima, Tinian

It is 1,500 miles from Tinian in the Mariana Islands to Kobe, Japan. Iwo Jima is right at the halfway point between them.

B-29 and P-51 : Forging Air Supremacy from Iwo Jima
After Action Report

Ilyushin Il-2

Ilyushin Il-2 - Romain Hugault
Romain Hugault is a comic book artist

Wikipedia - Production

In early 1941, the Il-2 was ordered into production at four factories, and was eventually produced in greater numbers than any other military aircraft in aviation history, but by the time Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, only State Aviation Factory No. 18 at Voronezh and Factory No. 381 at Leningrad had commenced production, with 249 having been built by the time of the German attack.

Production early in the war was slow because after the German invasion the aircraft factories near Moscow and other major cities in western Russia had to be moved east of the Ural Mountains. Ilyushin and his engineers had time to reconsider production methods, and two months after the move Il-2s were again being produced. The tempo was not to Premier Stalin's liking, however, and he issued the following telegram to Shenkman and Tretyakov:

You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day, and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning. — Stalin

As a result, "the production of Shturmoviks rapidly gained speed. Stalin's notion of the Il-2 being 'like bread' to the Red Army took hold in Ilyushin's aircraft plants, and the army soon had their Shturmoviks available in quantity."

Il-2 Destroys Bridge - The PIlot
Johnny's War Stories

I think the above video is from the movie The Pilot. A Battle for Survival. It was made in  Russia in 1980, so before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so it's basically a Soviet movie. Sounds like a good story though.

Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik | The Flying Tank | Armored Plane of soviet russia in WW2 #sturmovik #il2
Info Cafe

I suspect the audio on this video is artificial, but the script is pretty good: coherent and plausible. Maybe a little excessive boasting about killing German tanks at Kursk, I dunno. I know that Kursk was a big battle, but I never heard much about aircraft there.

Previous Il-2 post.

Supermarine Spitfire

Supermarine Spitfire Grey Nurse

Grey Nurse was a member of No. 457 Squadron RAAF that was transferred to Australia in 1942. It's now in the Temora Air Museum in Australia:

This aircraft was the last Spitfire acquired by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) with the original Military serial number A58-758. It was built by Supermarine in England in 1944, test flown and then shipped to Australia. The Air Force took delivery of the aircraft in April 1945, and, with World War II drawing to a close, the aircraft was not required on active service and was instead placed into storage.

A few years ago the airplane was modified to add a second seat for a passenger and now is giving rides.

Royal Air Force:

The iconic Supermarine Spitfire was critical in defeating Luftwaffe air attacks during the Battle of Britain in 1940. More Spitfires were built than any other British combat aircraft before or since World War Two - 20,341 in total. There are five Spitfires on the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

SPITFIRE Mk. IXb - Flown as it should be! | Flying Legends
PaddyPatrone

SPITFIRE (2018) | Official Trailer | Altitude Films
Altitude Films Links:

Wikipedia page
Duck Me 2
Catapult to Oblivion

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

Chariots of Fire - Loren Blackburn

We built over 12,000 B-17s, but only 5,000 went to Europe. Thousands were used for training stateside. A few hundred were sent to the Pacific theater. Who knows how many ended up on the scrap pile.

B-17 gunners and fighter gun cam video
OkraJoe

The TERRIFYING Side of B-17 Flying Fortress Crews
Unbelievable true stories

Masters of the Air Clip - “Battle of Münster” (2024)
Action Society
The National Archives and Records Administration has the image at top.
The B-17 has been mentioned here before, once or twice.

Fairey Swordfish

Avenging the Hood - Ron Cole

Wikipedia:

The Fairey Swordfish is a retired biplane torpedo bomber, designed by the Fairey Aviation Company. Originating in the early 1930s, the Swordfish, nicknamed "Stringbag", was principally operated by the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. It was also used by the Royal Air Force (RAF), as well as several overseas operators, including the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Royal Netherlands Navy. It was initially operated primarily as a fleet attack aircraft. During its later years, the Swordfish was increasingly used for anti-submarine and training duties. The type was in frontline service throughout the Second World War.

Despite being obsolescent, the Swordfish achieved some spectacular successes during the war, including sinking one battleship and damaging two others belonging to the Regia Marina (the Italian navy) during the Battle of Taranto, and the famous attack on the German battleship Bismarck, which contributed to her eventually being sunk. Swordfish sank a greater tonnage of Axis shipping than any other Allied aircraft during the war. The Swordfish remained in front-line service until V-E Day, having outlasted some of the aircraft intended to replace it.

Fairey Swordfish LS326/L2 Start Up & Take Off
LeicesterPilot

Swordfish Attack Bismarck
Spiral Film Clips

Fairey Swordfish flight deck operations
Armoured Archivist
I posted this image before.
Swordfish Takeoff Duxford - short video
Swordfish | Battle of Britain Airshow - short video