Monday, August 30, 2010

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Flying Mammoth

The Blohm & Voss Bv 238 was the last evolution in the Blohm & Voss flying boat series for Germany during World War Two.
The system was built as the largest aircraft ever produced by any of the Axis powers and was to provide The Reich with extended floatplane capabilities should the series have entered full-scale production. In the end, all the BV 238 project had to show for itself was one damaged prototype and two planned production prototypes started but never finished.
The Bv 238 was powered by a series of six Daimler-Benz piston engines producing upwards of 1,750 each. The powerplants were mounted on a high monoplane wing design with three engines per wing. The initial Bv 238 prototype was airborne by 1944, though it would later be damaged and sunk by allied fighter aircraft while the Bv 238 lay docked.
The Bv 238 offered up tremendous range, payload capabilities and respectable speeds for an aircraft of this size and in this role.

Info & images: militaryfactory.com, flyingboats.ca, Bundesarchiv

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Yersterday and Today

Old Air Ministry building, Paris XVe
Built: 1934
Architect: Léon Tissier
1937 (above) and now (below)
Originally uploaded by RUAMPS© @ Flickr

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Turnpike Lane Tube Station

London
Designed by Charles Holden
Opened September 19, 1932

Originally uploaded by hha124l @ Flickr

Main building:
By Sunil060902

Friday, August 20, 2010

Dieselgirls

ATR 100 diesel-powered articulated train
of the Ferrovia di Stato (Italian State Railways)
1930's

Originally uploaded by vespavbb1963 @ Flickr

Here Come the Sleek

1937

via paul.malon @ Flickr

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Red Warrior

Tommy Gun Teaser

Thompsons are Dieselpunk.
Please see these images as an invitation to visit Redfezwriter @ Dieselpunks.org* -
rifles, machine guns and heavier weapons every week.
* In case you don't see the author's blog (and see the general News page instead) - just join the network. It's free. And worthy.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Monday, August 16, 2010

Montreal Monster

Truck-mounted, gas-electric motor coach
Montreal Tramways Co.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Dieselpunk Brussels

Maison de la Radio
(renamed to "Flagey" in 2002 and now hosting a cultural center)
Designed by Belgian architect Joseph Diongre.
Built between 1935 and 1938

Image by Arenamontanus @ Flickr

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Dive Meter

Every shot is a hit!
Late 1930's Gossen Sixtus light meter advertisement ft. Henschel Hs 123 dive bomber

via x planes

Friday, August 13, 2010

Red Beast

This AEC III Regal with Harrington body (full cab with tail fin) was delivered new to Bevan Brothers Soudley Valley, Gloucestershire, in 1950. It remained with Bevans until 1980, when it was sold to Nick Hellinker of Stroud for preservation.
Images & Info: Buses-Coaches

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Camionetta

Camionetta Desertica SPA-Viberti AS.42, this vehicle, specifically designed to operate in the desert, was a four wheels drive car entered in service with Saharan units in November 1942. It was built on the same chassis of the AB.40/41 armoured car but it was not armoured. It was powered with a 100HP gasoline engine and reached a maximum speed of 85 Km/h. This easily recognizable vehicle, had racks on the sides to carry 24 jerrycans (most fuel) and a spare tire on the front hood. It could carry a crew of six and different kind of weapons like the 20mm Breda cannon, the 47/32 Anti-tank cannon, the 20mm Anti-tank Soloturn rifle and up to three Breda mod. 37 machineguns. The AS.42 was 1,49 meter high, 5,20 meters long and 1,80 meters wide.
Here are some images of Italeri's 1/35 scale AS-42 Camionetta

Originally posted by Warren Zoell @ The Great Canadian Model Builders Web Page

Text: Wiki (EN)

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Mavis

The Kawanishi H6K was an Imperial Japanese Navy flying boat used during World War II for maritime patrol duties. The Navy designation was "Type 97 Large Flying Boat".
The aircraft was designed in response to a Navy requirement of 1934 for a long range flying boat and incorporated knowledge gleaned by a Kawanishi team that had visited the Short Brothers factory in the UK, at that time one of the world's leading producers of flying boats, and from building the Kawanishi H3K, a license-built, enlarged version of the Short Rangoon. The Type S, as Kawanishi called it, was a large, four-engine monoplane with twin tails, and a hull suspended beneath the parasol wing by a network of struts. Three prototypes were constructed, each one making gradual refinements to the machine's handling both in the water and in the air, and finally fitting more powerful engines. The first of these flew on 14 July 1936. Eventually, 217 would be built.
The first major production version, the H6K4 was powered by four Mitsubishsi Kinsei 43 radiais and armed with four 7.7mm machine-guns in bow and midships positions and a 20mm cannon in a tail turret, and was capable of carrying two 800kg bombs or torpedoes, a total of 66 being in service at the time of Pearl Harbor; later aircraft were powered by Kinsei 46 engines. These boats were widely employed, although the initial heavy defeats inflicted on the Allies in the Pacific rendered maritime reconnaissance duties subordinate to the need for air transportation of Japanese troops during the swift conquests in the East Indies and elsewhere.
A number of aircraft, designated H6K4-L, were converted for transport duties and were each able to accommodate about 18 fully-armed troops; lacking armour and self-sealing fuel tanks, however, they were extremely vulnerable to fighter attacks and, after a number had been shot down, a new version entered production as the H6K5 in August 1942; by that time the maritime reconnaissance version had been given the reporting codename 'Mavis' by the Allies, the transport derivative being named 'Tillie'.
Powered by either Kinsei 51 or 53 radials, the H6K5 was intended to eliminate the shortcomings of the earlier versions, but although the open bow gun position was replaced by a single-gun turret immediately aft of the pilot's cockpit, the overall armament was not increased. Only 36 H6K5s were completed by 1943, when production gave place to the greatly superior H8K.
H6Ks served with the 8th, 14th, 801st, Toko and Yokohama Kokutais, and some of the H6K5s were employed as naval staff transports throughout the Pacific in 1943. Eighteen aircraft served on the quasicommercial courier services in South East Asia, a number of them being destroyed by Allied aircraft both in the air and at their moorings.

Sources: Wiki (EN), Virtual Aircraft Museum
Artwork (image #2) © Shigeo Koike

Monday, August 9, 2010

Sunday, August 8, 2010

London Wings

National Audit Office at Buckingham Palace Road
(former Imperial Airways Empire Terminal)
London, 1938

The statue, "Speed Wings over the World" is by Eric Broadbent.

Originally uploaded by Thomas_Ashley @ Flickr

via lnago @ Dieselpunks LJ community

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Friday, August 6, 2010

De Grasse

SS De Grasse, laid down as Suffren, was an 18,000-ton ocean liner built in 1920-1924 by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, United Kingdom for the French Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, and launched in February 1924.
She operated on the CGT Havre-New York service until 1940, when seized by the Germans.
De Grasse was sunk by gunfire at Bordeaux on August 30th, 1944.
The 1947 refit removed one funnel:
She was refitted for Canadian Pacific Steamships in 1953, then renamed in that same year as the Empress of Australia.
She was sold in 1956 to Sicula Oceanica; and after refit, the ship was renamed Venezuela.
The ship was wrecked off Cannes on 16 March 1962; and she was broken up at La Spezia in August the same year.

Tramway Conductor

Artist: Alexander Samokhvalov
1928

via lobgott @ LJ