May 13, 2008

EXIT the Cavalry… ENTER the Tanks (Aug, 1931)

Filed under: War — @ 11:58 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1931

EXIT the Cavalry… ENTER the Tanks

PICTURES on these pages tell more vividly than words of the impending passing of the United States Army’s most romantic arm— the mounted cavalry. Horses are too slow for modern warfare, says the Army’s Chief of Staff. Except for maneuvers “in some cases of especially difficult terrain,” they will be replaced by fast tanks, as shown on the opposite page. Even the sturdy horses that drag the artillery’s fieldpieces into action will give way to motor tractor. The contrast between war of the past and future is visualized in these striking photographs.

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May 11, 2008

SCHOOL for DEEP SEA DIVERS (Mar, 1941)

Filed under: How to, War — @ 9:14 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1941

SCHOOL for DEEP SEA DIVERS

IF YOU think diving is a glamorous profession, visit the Navy’s Deep-Sea Diving School, at the Washington Navy Yard, and be disillusioned. Here, picked men are trained in the grim and hard business of rescuing sunken submarines, repairing ship bottoms, and doing a hundred and one specialized mechanical jobs on the bottom of the sea.

With every man a potential hero, facing injury and death in his routine daily work, the idea of developing diving “prima donnas” is discouraged at the outset. Students are sent down to their underwater jobs strictly in rotation, and for periods depending upon their strength and ability— just as they will be later sent down as regular divers of the navy.

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May 3, 2008

Air Raid Shelter In Garden (Sep, 1939)

Filed under: Architecture, War — @ 9:22 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939

Air Raid Shelter In Garden
THE beauties of a rock garden hide a reminder of war’s grimness. During the Sudeten scare of September, 1938, an English dentist constructed this concealed shelter from enemy bombers. It is ten feet long, three feet eight inches wide, and the walls are of solid concrete one foot six inches thick.

DEBUNKING Poison Gas War Scares (Jul, 1935)

Filed under: War — @ 9:20 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1935
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DEBUNKING Poison Gas War Scares

Europe is preparing for war. Her people are being drilled to use gas masks and to fight poison gas air raids. Will deadly gas wipe out American cities, destroy U. S. armies? Here are an expert’s views on this “bogey man” of war.

by CAPTAIN GEORGE J. B. FISHER,

Chemical Warfare Service, U. S. Army, as told to James Nevin Miller ENORMOUS cities blanketed with death-dealing gas fumes. Citizens rushing about in panic as enemy planes roar overhead. Thousands of lives snuffed out in a few minutes. Countless humans coughing and screaming with fear, fighting among themselves to reach subterranean gas-proof cellars.

This is the terrifying picture so frequently painted by fiction writers, the movies, and the sensational press about the horrors of poison gas in the next war.

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April 25, 2008

Gas-Raid Shelter Protects Pet Dogs (Oct, 1939)

Filed under: Dogs, War — @ 11:51 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1939

Gas-Raid Shelter Protects Pet Dogs
Air-raid protection, a peacetime program familiarly known as A.R.P. to every English citizen and designed to prepare for the safety of men, women, and children in case of wartime bombing or gas attacks, is now being extended to include animal pets. Recently, Marcus Le Touche, a dog owner of Charlton, Middlesex, developed a gasproof, portable dog house in which his pup would be entirely safe from poisonous fumes. The dog is pictured being urged to try out the new kennel.

April 23, 2008

Space Cops to Enforce World Peace (Dec, 1951)

Filed under: Space, War — @ 10:09 pm
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1951
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Space Cops to Enforce World Peace

Man-made satellite rocketships may soon revolve in endless orbits around the earth, policing our civilization.

By Frank Tinsley

NATIONS of the world are racing to send the first man-made satellite revolving in an endless orbit around the earth. In the hands of an agressor, such a machine might mean slavery for all mankind, but as a police unit of the United Nations, it holds a promise of world peace.

Back in the closing days of 1948, when Secretary of Defense James Forrestal disclosed the existence of an “earth satellite vehicle program,” the press and public reacted with a gasp of incredulous amazement. For the first time, responsible officials had dared to admit that they were seriously investigating the fantastic dreams of Sunday-supplement screwballs!

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April 22, 2008

Polish Army Trains Dogs To String Phone Lines (Sep, 1939)

Filed under: Dogs, War — @ 11:17 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939

Polish Army Trains Dogs To String Phone Lines
Modern warfare may be becoming more and more mechanized, with tanks replacing cavalry and trucks doing the work of mules, but Polish Army authorities are now busily training corps of dogs for military duty. The war dogs are taught not only to carry messages and emergency supplies of food and ammunition, but also to haul reels of wire for stringing field-telephone lines.

April 20, 2008

Can Russia Defeat Us With Atom Bombs? (Feb, 1950)

Can Russia Defeat Us With Atom Bombs?

Assuming that the Reds have enough A-bombs and the planes to deliver them—could they blast us into military, social and economic chaos by a sneak bombing attack on certain key American cities?

By Ralph Coniston

“THIS is WQZ, your favorite local station for music and news, bringing you a noonday program of recorded hit tunes. The first number on today’s show will be. …

“Just one moment, please. Here’s an important bulletin from our newsroom, just handed me. It’s date-lined Washington, D. C.

“A terrific explosion has just wrecked downtown Washington. The blast, of unknown origin, seems to have damaged communication lines out of the city.

“I can’t tell you any more because there is no more to the bulletin. So, until further news comes in we’ll return to our.

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April 7, 2008

Plans Rocket Driven Bomb to Chase and Wreck Plane (Jul, 1931)

Filed under: War — @ 9:11 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1931

Wouldn’t the noise of it’s own passage mask any sound an engine would make?

Plans Rocket Driven Bomb to Chase and Wreck Plane

A bomb that could chase an airplane in the air and destroy it is the amazing war weapon proposed by a San Diego, Calif., man. Launched from the ground automatically, the self-propelled rocket bomb would be guided in the air by the sound of the plane’s motor. No matter how the pilot might twist and turn, the bomb would follow him until it overtook the plane. The impact would set off a charge of high explosive.

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April 6, 2008

THE TRUTH ABOUT Poison Gas (Nov, 1937)

Filed under: War — @ 10:06 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1937
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THE TRUTH ABOUT Poison Gas

By ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC

FRANCE sells gas masks to its citizens on a five-year installment plan. Germany reveals that it has secretly been manufacturing a new type of gas mask for noncombatants, by the million. Startled Britons learn that the world’s first factory for civilian masks, at Blackburn, England, has passed its 9,000,000 mark and is turning out 100,000 a day to reach its quota of a gas mask for every man, woman, and child in the British Isles.

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April 4, 2008

‘Chute Jumpers in Gas Masks March on Skis (Jun, 1936)

Filed under: War — @ 8:47 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1936
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‘Chute Jumpers in Gas Masks March on Skis
Resembling creatures from some strange world, a group of parachute instructors in gas masks recently dropped one after another from a Soviet plane, then marched 200 miles on skis. The skis were dropped from the plane after the twelve men had landed safely. Thirty hours were required for the long march to Moscow. The demonstration was staged by the instructors as one of the lessons in parachute jumping that the Soviet Republic is offering in training civilians.

TRAINING ARMY AIR FIGHTERS (Sep, 1936)

Filed under: Aviation, War — @ 8:46 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1936

TRAINING ARMY AIR FIGHTERS

A LARGE percentage of each year’s graduates of the West Point Military Academy enter the autumn class at the Air Corps Training Center, Randolph Field, Texas. This fact, and the further fact that the flying school is conducted along lines similar to the Military Academy, has caused this Air Corps school to be popularly termed “The West Point of the Air.”

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