April 2012 - Argghhh!

Today is ANZAC Day, the Australia-New Zealand equivalent to Memorial Day. New Zealand Website on ANZAC Day. The Australian Equivalent. The Gallipoli Campaign was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, an attempt to force the Dardanelles and reach the Black Sea, freeing up the Russian Black Sea Fleet and opening up new routes of supply and a new thrust at the Austrians and Germans via the Balkans. Churchill really had the hots for the idea that Italy and the Balkans represented the "soft underbelly"...

One of the prevailing myths about the war in Vietnam (aka here at the Castle, “my war”) is that the Son Tay raid was the only attempt we ever made to rescue our POWs. I’ve read it mentioned as an aside or a footnote in a couple of books, and I’ve read it as one of the main points in a couple of scholarly publications, but I’m here to tell you, folks, that it ain’t so. Sometime after we started losing a aircraft and crews over the North and in Laos, DoD established...

The third place winner in last year's Military Photographer of the Year, in the "Illustrative Photography" category. Former Senior Airman Brian Kolfage, a Security Forces Airman, holds his wife, Ashley on his lap as they look out over the water on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Sept. 9. Kolfage was one of the first Airmen deployed to Iraq in 2003 at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During a routine trip to the chow hall, a mortar flew over the walls of his camp and...

It may be a bit lengthy, but well worth the time. But eeesh - I do sound like him. BOQ

...down to the fiddly-bits. The M67 90mm recoiless rifle. A weapon which needed a cheaper way to train gunners than shooting warshots, with the attendant costs and wear and tear to the weapons (not to mention wear and tear on crews). The solution was to devise a rifle-caliber device which would load like a standard round, and use the weapon sights and trigger to shoot.

This time, a Sherman being refueled, a vignette of military activity many of us have memories of (to include some of us... Shermans).