The fact is, contemporary architecture gives most regular humans the heebie-jeebies. Try telling that to architects and their acolytes, though, and you’ll get an earful about why your feeling is misguided, the product of some embarrassing misconception about architectural principles. One defense, typically, is that these eyesores are, in reality, incredible feats of engineering. After all, “blobitecture” — which, we regret to say, is a real school of contemporary architecture — is created using complicated computer-driven algorithms! You may think the ensuing blob-structure looks like a tentacled turd, or a crumpled kleenex, but that’s because you don’t have an architect’s trained eye.
Another thing you will often hear from design-school types is that contemporary architecture is honest. It doesn’t rely on the forms and usages of the past, and it is not interested in coddling you and your dumb feelings. Wake up, sheeple! Your boss hates you, and your bloodsucking landlord too, and your government fully intends to grind you between its gears. That’s the world we live in! Get used to it! Fans of Brutalism — the blocky-industrial-concrete school of architecture — are quick to emphasize that these buildings tell it like it is, as if this somehow excused the fact that they look, at best, dreary, and, at worst, like the headquarters of some kind of post-apocalyptic totalitarian dictatorship.
Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, “Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture”, Current Affairs, 2017-10-31.
May 31, 2021
QotD: Contemporary architecture hates you
May 28, 2021
Tank Chats #108 | M48 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 23 Oct 2020Tank Museum Historian David Fletcher discusses the M48 “Patton”, an American first generation Main Battle Tank introduced in 1952. Throughout its service life, the M48 has been very successful and has seen service with many countries including the Americans in Vietnam and the Israel Defense Forces.
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May 26, 2021
QotD: Modern architecture is ugly … or worse
Take the Tour Montparnasse, a black, slickly glass-panelled skyscraper, looming over the beautiful Paris cityscape like a giant domino waiting to fall. Parisians hated it so much that the city was subsequently forced to enact an ordinance forbidding any further skyscrapers higher than 36 meters.
Or take Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Downtown Boston is generally an attractive place, with old buildings and a waterfront and a beautiful public garden. But Boston’s City Hall is a hideous concrete edifice of mind-bogglingly inscrutable shape, like an ominous component found left over after you’ve painstakingly assembled a complicated household appliance. In the 1960s, before the first batch of concrete had even dried in the mold, people were already begging preemptively for the damn thing to be torn down. There’s a whole additional complex of equally unpleasant federal buildings attached to the same plaza, designed by Walter Gropius, an architect whose chuckle-inducing surname belies the utter cheerlessness of his designs. The John F. Kennedy Building, for example — featurelessly grim on the outside, infuriatingly unnavigable on the inside — is where, among other things, terrified immigrants attend their deportation hearings, and where traumatized veterans come to apply for benefits. Such an inhospitable building sends a very clear message, which is: the government wants its lowly supplicants to feel confused, alienated, and afraid.
Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, “Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture”, Current Affairs, 2017-10-31.
May 8, 2021
Special Presentation: Semiauto Pistols of the 1800s
Forgotten Weapons
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Today’s Special Presentation is an overview of all the semiautomatic pistols that were actually put into serial production before the year 1900. We have looked at these individually before, but I think it is worthwhile to examine them together in context, to gain a better understanding of what the automatic pistol scene was really like in the last years of the 19th century.
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From the comments:
Joseph Heschmeyer
2 years ago (edited)
“Hi guys, thanks for tuning in for another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. Today we’ll be looking at the science fair project that got me kicked out of middle school.”
May 7, 2021
Tank Chats #106 | Panzer IV | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 11 Sep 2020Join The Tank Museum’s Curator David Willey as he discusses the Sd.Kfz 161, better known as Panzer IV: the most numerously produced tank by Germany during the Second World War.
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April 29, 2021
Tank Chats #105 | Saladin | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 4 Sep 2020David Fletcher is back! Join him as he discusses the FV601 Saladin — a six wheeled armoured car developed by Crossley Motors and later produced by Alvis. The Saladin has had a long service life and despite its dated design, is still in service with some countries.
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April 28, 2021
How Does it Work: Short Recoil Operation
Forgotten Weapons
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Correction: Browning invented the pistol slide, but not the overall short recoil system. Maxim was the first to successfully create a short recoil firearm.
Short recoil is the most common system used today in self-loading handguns, and it also used to be fairly popular in machine gun designs. The basic principle is that the bolt and barrel (in a handgun, slide and barrel) are locked together for an initial travel substantially less than the overall length of the cartridge. After typically a few millimeters of travel, the barrel stops and the bolt or slide is able to continue rearward to extract and eject the empty case. Short recoil can be paired with virtually any locking system, but today the Browning tilting barrel system is most common.
Short recoil has never been popular in shoulder rifle, as the reduction in mechanical accuracy from the moving barrel can be undesirable. In handguns and machine guns, this accuracy reduction is generally below the threshold of relevance.
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April 21, 2021
Tank Chats #104 | T-54 & T-55 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 14 Aug 2020Here Curator David Willey discusses the T-54, and its successor the T-55, tanks which can source their roots back to the Second World War and are probably the most produced tanks of all time.
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April 20, 2021
Why do the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers have twin islands?
Not What You Think
Published 28 Dec 2020There are at least five advantages to having two separate islands on the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. But the main reason for such a design can only be found below the deck. Enjoy!
All the footage used in this video is under MOD license from Royal Navy Imagery archive. https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and…
REFERENCES:
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/why-d…
https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/the-…
April 14, 2021
Tank Chat #103 | Laird Centaur | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 15 May 2020David Fletcher looks at this curiosity from the 1970’s, a Land Rover with tracks. Currently housed in The Tank Museum’s Vehicle Conservation Centre.
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April 4, 2021
The Good Idea Fairy Strikes: American Trowel Bayonets
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Nov 2017The United States first experimented with a combination trowel and bayonet in 1868, producing 200 experimental examples made from standard socket bayonets. This was immediately followed by an additional 500 Model 1869 trowel bayonets made new. These were distributed to a few companies of the infantry to test in the field. Remarkably, the trials reports were overwhelmingly positive.
The US infantryman at that time did not carry any sort of entrenching tool, and so even an awkward combination tool was an improvement over a canteen cup or other ad hoc tool for digging. The bayonet was seen by some officers as becoming obsolete with the introduction of breechloading rifles, so the reduced effectiveness of the new item as a bayonet was not a substantial concern. The intended use of these tools was not to dig elaborate trenches, but rather to hastily construct a shallow ditch and embankment which would provide just enough cover to shelter a prone soldier.
With the trials reports in, the government purchased 10,000 of the improved 1873 pattern trowel bayonet, which featured a stronger blade and a much more comfortable handle for digging. These were issued and used in the field (and in several combat engagements), but the developmental direction turned towards combination knife trowels instead of bayonets, and there would be no further development or issue of these tools after the 1870s.
See the full trials report here: https://books.google.com/books?id=qUE…
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March 27, 2021
SA80 History: The First L85 Mockups (Sterling and Stoner)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 May 2017Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:
http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…
The British military had been working towards a reduced-power cartridge since the end of World War 2, and the ultimate adoption of the FAL/SLR in 7.62x51mm NATO did not end their interest in the concept. It would not be long before the roots of SA80 would take hold, and today we are looking at the very first mockups of the concept that would become the L85A1 and L86A1.
As part of a preliminary study to decide the basic layout and capabilities of a future new individual weapon and light support weapon, five wooden and metal mockups were produced in conventional and bullpup layouts, and also with/without “dropped” stocks to facilitate sighting. The favored mockup was the bullpup seen here, which gave rise to the whole Enfield Weapon System/SA80 family. It is relevant to note that the concept included a universal standard optical sight from the very outset, as this was a cutting edge concept at the time. In addition, note the small features like safety, sling swivels, and magazine catch, as these would vary back and forth through the development program.
After the wooden guns, two functional (or mostly functional) guns were produced. These were standard off-the-shelf rifles converted into bullpup configuration – one Stoner 63 and one Sterling AR18. Neither company was contacted for licensing or technical assistance.
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March 16, 2021
Tank Chats #99 | StuG III | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 2 Apr 2020Here David Willey discusses the Sturmgeschütz III Self-Propelled Assault Gun, better known as the StuG III, Germany’s most numerously produced fully tracked Armoured Fighting Vehicle of the Second World War.
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March 11, 2021
Italy’s WW1 Heavy Machine Gun: FIAT-Revelli Modello 1914
Forgotten Weapons
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Italy was the first major adopter of the Maxim heavy machine gun and had several hundred by 1914 — but wanted to have a domestic design in production as well. The Italian government and military put a lot of resources into the Perino machine gun, but kept it so secret that it was never properly tested and development was very slow. By the time war broke out, the Perino was clearly not ready for field use — and Maxims (along with other foreign designs) were no longer available for commercial sale as production was being taken up by warring nations. This led Italy to adopt a private design of Bethel Revelli in partnership with the FIAT company.
Adopted as the Modello 1914, Revelli’s machine gun was a delayed blowback system with a wedge under mechanical disadvantage holding the bolt closed long enough to safely cycle. Its most unique element was the 50-round mousetrap-type box magazine that used 10 independent stacks of 5 rounds each (a 100-round version was also made). This was a very complex magazine to produce, and much more delicate than the other machine gun feed systems in use at the time. The Revelli is also notable for being the only major machine gun of the period to have a circulating water jacket, operated by a small hand-cranked pump on the condensing tank.
The FIAT-Revelli would see service as both and aircraft and ground gun through World War 1, and was updated in 1935 to an air cooled pattern that would serve through World War 2. These guns are very scarce in the United States today, and I am grateful to the collector who owns this one for providing access to it!
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March 8, 2021
M79: The Iconic “Bloop Tube” 40mm Grenade Launcher
Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Dec 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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Combat experience with the bazooka rocket launcher in World War Two and its larger versions in the Korean War convinced the US military that a better weapon was needed to give front-line troops a direct-fire way to attack enemy strong points. The bazooka was bulky, not particularly accurate, and created a lot of backblast signature when fired. This led to a multi-part development effort involving design of a small grenade body, reliable but cheap fusing system, and a cartridge design that could launch it.
The result was the 40x46mm grenade. It uses a “high-low” system (originally developed by Rheinmetall during World War Two) in which a powder charge is fired in a small compartment within the cartridge case. The initial pressure in this compartment is some 35,000 psi, which is plenty high to ensure complete and repeatable powder burn. At peak pressure, the internal compartment ruptures, allowing the propellant gasses to expand into the full case volume, which lowers the pressure to about 3,000 psi. This lower pressure is safe to use with an aluminum barrel, and propels the grenade at about 250 fps, giving it a range of about 400 yards without generating excessive recoil.
The M79 proved to be very accurate and reliable. Its downside was the need for the grenadier to carry a backup sidearm, as the M79 could not be used at close range. Almost as soon as it was introduced, work began on developing a launcher which could be attached to the M16 service rifle. This would first be the XM-148, and then ultimately the M203 that would replace the M79 in service. M79 launchers can still be found all over the world, however, as they are robust and reliable.
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