Daydream Notes

It's leaking hydraulic fluid in heaven, now. I've been reading Charlie Foxtrot: Fixing Defense Procurement in Canada , and I think anybody who enjoys this feature will like it. Stuff has happened the past few weeks: Some 40 years after the program to replace them began, the CH-124 Sea King helicopters have flown for the last time. Canada chooses design for Canadian Surface Combatant. The winner is the LockMart-BAE joint project Type 26 Frigates. 60 Billion will be spent constructing 15 Frigates. This move has been expected since 2017, when other bidders started complaining the fix was in for the Type 26. This is because the Type 26, unlike the other contenders, hasn't been built yet, something that the competition explicitly said was a selection criteria. Alion just filed a lawsuit against Canada about this, the second major lawsuit coming out of the NSS after Vice Adm. Norman's wrongful dismissal lawsuit.   This has caused the Canadian International Trade T...

Calling this one done. This project got more complex than I thought it would; I started wanting to do something interesting with stowage, and ended up spending a month or two fashioning wood, metal, and epoxy putty bits. Then I discovered the enclosed tracks were not great, which meant for the first time ever I was motivated to do a diorama. So, this is a M4 Sherman, with the later 76mm gun, welded hull, wet stowage. The Trumpeter kit is adaquite, but not great. Aside from the awful vinyl tracks, the tie down points were rendered as solid plastic wedges; easy to replace by cutting out the wedges, then using your tiny pin vise drill to make holes and run wire through said holes, but still. It's not all bad, though: the kit comes with 2 turrets, and three different suspension assemblies. The two unused ones here are the easy 8 suspension upgrade, and one like I built, except one piece, so easy assembly for say wargaming. If you've seen tank pictures, you know they ...

Luftwaffe Aircraft Manufacturing, 1945. The death of the Luftwaffe as a effective force is dated by historians to Operation 'Baseplate', which happened on January 1st, 1945. This was the last large coordinated action by the Luftwaffe, and not coincidentally, also its single greatest day of losses. Hitler was among other things a gambler, and the 'Watch on the Rhine' winter offensive, later known as the Battle of the Bulge, of ‘44 and early ‘45 was his last “all in” bet, taking his last reserves of men and material to try and make a comeback. While the Luftwaffe was being ground down by constant losses in the fall of ‘44, General Adolf Galland, the Inspector-General of Fighters, was husbanding what fuel he could for “the big sweep”, a moment when the Allies would send a 1000 bomber raid at Germany, and every Luftwaffe fighter extant would take off to intercept the bomber stream, hopefully overwhelming escorts and doing heavy damage to the strategic bombing force. H...