Daydream Notes

By the start of 1943, even a devout Nazi might concede the war was not going well for Germany. The Eastern Front had taken a hard reverse: the 1942 attempt to seize the oil fields of the Caucuses had ended in failure and defeat, with Stalingrad a multi-axis disaster for the Third Reich. In Africa, a similar defeat was looming - Hitler had massively reinforced the Afrika Corps in the wake of their defeat at the second battle of El-Alamein, but now lacked the logistic capacity to get them out of Africa. The Allies were pressing Axis forces back, and the United States had surprised with an invasion of West Africa. On the home front, Allied air raids were now a regular occurrence, and manpower problems continued to grow. A report circulated among Reich Armaments industry said that the average industrial worker had burned through their fat reserves by the end of 1942. All this was putting the squeeze on the Luftwaffe, who had increasing demands for pretty much everything: pilots, airc...

I just started work on a new kit: a Dodge Ramcharger that I thought was really cool. [I've nearly finished another kit, and it's down to the point were making the kit was "perform operation and wait" so I was getting a little restless.] You'll be hearing about that soon: meanwhile, I've been thrashing around the net looking for references for the Dodge. The Dodge Ramcharger, like a lot of old Detroit trucks, was in production a very long time: its first model year was 1974 and it only ended production in 1994 in America, and was sold for two more years in Mexico and Canada. It had a single styling refresh in 1981, where it was made a bit more upscale, but remained the same basic vehicle for its entire production run. That 20 year stretch may sound crazy if you are familiar with the modern car industry's practice of releasing a new model every five years or so, but Detroit is nothing if not cost effective with their tooling; the Ramcharger had a riv...