ANTARCTIC SNOW CRUISER: A 1930s Giant Snowmobile Aircraft Carrier

THE SNOW CRUISER

Internal layout with airplane attached 

In 1937 Thomas Poulter, a scientist and Antarctic explorer on Admiral Byrd's second expedition to the Antarctic, came up the idea of making a machine to explore the South Pole.  Some people called it the Penguin or Turtle but it was really a large machine designed to traverse the ice and be a shelter from the cold harsh environment of Antarctica.  

Caught in a traffic jam on the way to the docks

It was 55 feet long, 19 feet wide and about 16 feet high, and weighed 75000 pounds.   A monster vehicle advanced especially for its  time, it was a hybrid electric diesel that had four electric motors running the wheels. This same configuration of using electrically driven wheels is still used to day in modern mining trucks.  Besides the hybrid engine it boasted several ingenious designs that were particularly unique. One unique aspect of the vehicle was its ability to use engine coolant to warm the interior, especially the sleeping quarters. This made it possible to do without jackets when inside the vehicle.  Another ingenious device was its ability to raise and lower the front and rear wheels to cross crevasses.  As a crevasse would appear in front of the vehicle, it would drive the front wheel off the ledge and then retract the front wheels, using the rear wheels to propel it forward. Once the front wheels had crossed the crevasse, it would then use them to drag the rear section across as well.   

How the cruiser crossed ravines

getting off the ship in Antarctica 

It had a range of 5000 miles on its fuel tanks and carried a flat spot on the top for a five passenger Beechcraft airplane used for scouting. A winch would place the airplane on the ground and pick it back up when it landed.  It was designed to be self sufficient for up to one year and carried 3500 gallons of fuel. Its crew size was five.

Found by later expeditions 

The sad fate of this vehicle goes back to the first few moments it arrived in Antarctica.  As it was being unloaded from the ship for the first time, it broke through the timbers and got stuck in the snow. Its tires were found to be more suited to swamps and had very little traction on the snow.  Tire chains were put on and the spares were added to the existing tires but to no avail.  It was discovered that being driven in reverse worked better and so it was driven backwards for 92 miles on its longest drive.  Funding for the Snow Cruiser was cancelled in 1940, even though an expedition was currently using the vehicle for living quarters, as the U.S. entered WW2.  In 1946 and expedition found it and got it running with no problems.  In 1956 an international expedition found the Snow Cruiser and uncovered it with a bulldozer.  It was found exactly as it had been left with newspapers, cigarettes, and signs of the former occupants still evident.  Later expeditions found no trace of the vehicle and it is suspected that it now is buried or at the bottom of the ocean as the ice shelf constantly moves ice into the sea.  A sad end for such an incredible vehicle and dreams of exploring the southern continent in style and safety. 

Mega Machine Press: The Iron Giant that still lives

STOP THE PRESSES

The Iron Giant 50,000  hydraulic press

There is a machine that still uses 1940's technology to produce modern machines like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Sounds impossible?  Not nearly as impossible as the incredibly massive nature of this machine: the giant Mesta 50,000 ton press, also know as the Iron Giant and rightly so.

The story of the giant press goes back to post WW1 Germany and the treaty of Versailles which essentially took away Germany's iron production facilities but allowed them to keep its magnesium mines and production methods.  A little metallurgy here:  iron can be hit into a shape, magnesium cracks when you hit it.  Magnesium is not the ideal metal to work with when making strong metal shapes that require forging which is melting into a mold. But, having no other way to make the machines they needed, the Germans developed a forging process with magnesium that required it to be heated to a certain temperature and then hit with a giant force:  enter the gigantic press.  They would use this process to make their airplanes and war machines throughout WW2.

What does the press do you might ask?  It stamps metal into complex shapes that give it extra strength and requires less time to make.  This is huge.  Light metals can be shaped into complex shapes and structures that would not have been thought possible before the German invention.  Most American airplanes before this press had to be riveted together which was a long and labor intensive process and not nearly as strong.

Before and after picture of raw titanium after one hit on the press
in this case the bulkhead of an F-15 fighter jet

The Iron Giant or the Fifty as it is also know, is still producing parts for very modern machines. It is a 50,000 ton press which means it can put that much force on a piece of metal.  The  actual weight of the machine is 16 million pounds.  It can shape titanium, one of the hardest and lightest metals, into any shape by putting 100 million pounds of pressure on it, in seconds.

For production methods that involve speed, quality and strength this is a huge step forward.  What took days now takes seconds to build.  During WW2 it was Rosie the Riveter who put the giant air planes together piece by piece in a long and painstaking process and assembly line.  When the U.S. started using the Mesta 50 in the early 1950s, mostly in response to the Soviets using captured German presses, it was a leap forward.  Even though the giant press was a strategic development to further the U.S. against the Soviets, it is still being used today and will likely still be in use for decades.  There is no substitute for its incredible blows.   Vulcan's mythical hammer still lives.

Huges 500P: The quiet helicopter

THE "QUIET ONE"

America's First Stealth Copter

The Hughes 500 helicopter was widely used in civilian and military efforts.  The first manufactured Hughes 500 took to the air in 1963.  These helicopters are still being produced to this day albeit under the name McDonnell Douglass who acquired the company in 1984. 

This helicopter featured  robust landing skids, a short diameter rotor and tail boom, and very agile and surprisingly quiet performance for a helicopter.  It was this quiet operation that spawned the idea for the Hughes 500P:  the quiet one.  It didn't just have to be quiet, it also had to be fuel efficient, large enough to carry the team of men, and have a powerful enough engine to do all of the lifting.

Possibly a prototype of the Huges 500P

 Near the end of the Vietnam War, President Nixon was meeting with the North Vietnamese at the negotiating table in Paris.  Unsure of the intentions of the communist nation at the time, he requested Intel on what the leadership of the North Vietnamese were thinking or planning.  The CIA came up with a plan to helicopter some commandos into North Vietnam and place a listening device on a switchboard for their phones.  A small radio antennae would then broadcast the information back to South Vietnam.  In order for this to succeed they needed a helicopter that could get them in (it was a long ways) and not be detected as helicopters made a great deal of noise.

Probably another prototype of the 500P

The CIA finally found some civilian contractors that would help them build the quiet helicopter (notably from Lockheed) with one of them even building a prototype engine in his garage at home.  Two helicopters were made and sent to South Vietnam to train local pilots for the mission. After an accident scrapped one of the helicopters, the CIA resorted to using Air American pilots to do the mission..

A typical Hughes 500 (MD500)

The mission was carried out with success and the negotiations continued until the end of the war, thanks to the quiet helicopter.  The CIA never really released all the information about the helicopter and its capabilities and no one really knows just how quiet it was for sure, but everyone who worked with it were in awe of just how incredibly quiet it was. 

The Maligned P-39 Airacobra

The P-39

Perhaps one of the most maligned air craft of WWII, the Bell P-39 Aircobra was in many ways a fascinating design and unique aircraft.  Some of the more outstanding features that many hated and some liked included the car door-like cockpit doors, the rear fuselage engine that sat behind the pilot in an awkward place causing the driveshaft to run beneath the pilots legs,  and the 37mm cannon that shot through the front propeller.  The tricycle landing gear was also unique as many of its contemporaries were tail draggers but other than a few front landing gear collapses no one complained of this feature. 

The P-39 was doomed, however, by the Allison v-12 non supercharged engine that was to be its power plant.  Although a supercharger was put in the original prototype engine, it was later taken out to improve aerodynamics thus robbing the aircraft of high altitude performance.  It is of some note to consider that the P-51 had the same Allison non-supercharged engine when it first came out as well.  It was not until the P-51 was fitted with the Merlin engine by the Brits that it became the top notch fighter of the war.  So when the plane was rushed off to the Brits as a fighter, they quickly shipped it off to the Russians because it couldn't compete at high altitudes with German fighter planes.  The Russians put it to good use as both a fighter and ground attack weapons platform but it never saw the notoriety that the P-51 or Spitfire did.  

An American P-39 probably in New Guinea

The Weapons

The P-39 was also unique when it came to armaments. The outstanding and probably most notable armament that it boasted was the 37mm cannon fired through the propeller.  A cannon fired through the propeller was not new, the German Folke Wulf-190 had a nose cannon and so did the Bf-109.  It was the size of the cannon that was impressive.

The Oldsmobile M4 37mm cannon

37mm installed in the nose of a P-39

  The shells of the 37mm were so large that it was actually possible to watch them drop like an orange baseball after firing the cannon.  It had a slow rate of fire but was deadly to large air planes or ships.  Many pilots hated it because of the huge bullet drop: it was after all a low velocity shell, but against softer targets it was devastating.  The plane also sported two .30 caliber machine guns fired through the propeller blades and two .50 caliber machine guns in wing roots.  Many planes were refitted by the Brits and Russians to eliminate the 37mm cannon and replace it with a 20mm cannon.  The Russians replaced the nose .30 caliber guns with two .50 machine guns as well.  It seems the 37mm was left out in the cold except by the Americans who used it successfully as a ground attack weapon against the Japanese and on PT boats that scavenged the gun from P-39 wrecks on Guadalcanal.  Eventually it was standard on the PT boats as a highly effective anti-shipping weapon.

A P-39 Firing all its weapons at once

Sadly it was not to be the ultimate weapons platform that the U.S. Army wanted at the time.  Even though an American pilot became an ace flying the P-39, Lt. Bill Fiedler who shot down three Japanese A6M Zero fighters in one battle with his P-39, rather it was the Russians who put this warbird to good use.  One Russian pilot scored 53 kills with his P-39.  It was the ideal weapon for the Russians due to the nature of how they were fighting the German army at the time.  They put a bigger engine in it, eliminated the wing guns and were never given any ammo for the 37mm cannon so they installed two .50 cals in the nose and put extra ammo in it. 

Final Thoughts on the P-39

While the P-39 was not the idea fighter for the Americans and certainly not the Brits, it is not the fault of the aircraft that it was not put to its proper use.  It was never designed to be a high altitude interceptor, certainly not after the turbo charged supercharger was removed.  Issues with flat spins and tumbles were documented due to the rear engine placement and the cannon in the nose:  not a ringing endorsement for a front line fighter.  It did however have a lot of things going for it.  It had a high seated cockpit due to the driveshaft under the pilots feet.  The great visibility was certainly helpful to ground attack missions and overall observation.  The tricycle landing gear was a first.  This landing gear allowed the plane to clear tough terrain in the jungles and was far safer than the typical taildragger arrangement.  Most fighter aircraft come with tricycle landing gear now days so that is noteworthy.  It is also important to note that the P-39 was ostensibly built around the 37mm cannon.  This large weapon was primarily put on early WWII tanks as an anti-tank weapon. The 1 lb. bullet that it fired was particularly devastating when used on non hardened targets.  There is perhaps another aircraft that has been designed in this manner:  the A-10 Thunderbolt II.  The A-10 has also been maligned and is under the same scrutiny as the P-39 was in WWII.  It is thought to be outdated, redundant, and too old to accomplish modern day battlefield supremacy.  However it was also designed around the 30mm cannon that takes up most of its fusalage.  It is this weapon that has kept it, along with the extended loiter time it has, in the front lines as no other aircraft can compete with its firepower.

The Steam Engine- Yesterday's technology still in use today

THE STEAM TURBINE ENGINE

The steam turbine is an ancient invention long forgotten by the modern world:  that is unless you work in power stations.  Even the most uneducated person has heard of steam engines but not many realize the enormous power they put out.  The steam turbine was used successfully in early warships to make a ridiculously heavy ship plow through the water at 30 knots(40mph).  No other engine could do this successfully for long periods of time with the same fuel consumption. The amount of torque (twisting force) these turbines put out is second to none.  Today the steam turbine is used primarily in power plants to produce electricity.  Nuclear power plants all use steam turbines.

An idea of the size of a typical steam turbine

The origins of the steam turbine go all the way back to ancient Greece to the inventor Archimedes.  He came up with a simple turbine that used steam to propel a teapot type contraption to spin in a circle.  Why it took centuries to exploit this is unknown, but the power of trapped steam is readily obvious to anyone who has used a pressure cooker on their stove.   Hot water in steam form wants to escape its confinement and will do so even if forced to push on metal blades like the one in the picture above.  This can be exploited to do an amazing amount of work.  Water has amazing properties, not the least of which all life on earth would not exist without, but one of its most useful qualities in the power of steam turbines has been largely ignored. Obviously modern jets use turbines to power their aircraft but that relies on hot gasses from fossil fuels exiting the turbine.  The water of steam turbines is reused (after being cooled) and only needs a heat source.  This is how nuclear power plans operate. Below is an example of a nuclear steam turbine.

It is estimated that 85% of power in the United States is nuclear steam turbine production.  That is a lot of power for an invention that showed up in 1884 in Charles Parsons steam turbine.  How does it feel to be using 1800s tech in the 2000s?  Some things cannot be improved on in terms of originality and the steam turbine is no exception.  It's efficiency can be improved, it's existence cannot.  

The Automatic Revolver.....? Webley-Fosbery Self-cocking Automatic

The Automatic Revolver

Note the zigzag cylinder

The Webley–Fosbery Self-Cocking Automatic Revolver is one of the more unusual revolvers every made. The whole idea that a revolver can fire like an automatic pistol seems, on the surface, somewhat silly.  After all the ultimate automatic handgun was invented by John Browning in his iconic model 1911.  However, this gun predates the 1911 to a time when handguns especially automatics were not that good or numerous.  

The gun works by having the entire top of the revolver slide backwards much like an automatic pistol.  The action cocks itself and the cylinder has zigzag slots in it to move the next round into battery, making the next shot available.  The gun is said to have a very low recoil, probably due to the entire top section moving backwards, and shooters praise its ability to keep the next shot on target.  

The gun used the .455 Webley Mk II or .38 ACP calibers.  It unloads the cartridges in the same snap open mechanism as regular Webley's and unloads quickly.  

Notable movie scenes involving the Webley-Fosbery include the Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. Sam Spades partner in the movie, Miles Archer, was shot and killed with the pistol.  The pistol was also used extensively in the Boer War in South Africa by the British and in World War I.  A total of about 5000 were made and production stopped in the early 1920s.  

There were perhaps some disadvantages to the Webley-Fosbery.  One was that the action needed to be cleaned and was prone to misfires when extremely dirty or dropped in the mud. Another disadvantage was the action had to be slid backwards due to a misfire and this required two hands:  a difficult feat if you only had one available and not very convenient.  It is also important to note that holding the gun firmly with a straight arm was necessary for the action to re-cock itself.  Cushioning the recoil could lead to the action not re-cocking.

While the Webley-Fosbery was not continued after 1939, it still remains a unique revolver.  It puzzles me to no end why no one has tried to reproduce it.  I can see the disadvantages of the gun, but many modern firearms have been produced with far more issues that this one has.  I am a big fan of revolvers for their reliability and safety and would love one of these.  The real mystery of the Webley-Fosbery is why history forgot about it