Tunguska The Mysterious

This is a picture from a 1927 expedition to the site of the Tunguska incident in Siberia. It occurred on June 30th, 1908. It was originally thought to be a meteor impact, but it left a butterfly-shaped area of flattened trees and nothing else. However, some scientists say that a lake nearby could be the real impact crater, although it is rather uncertain. Here's a link to more information:

Tunguska Information

Torbruk: Bren In The Sand

This is perhaps one of my most favorite pictures of the second world war. Not only is that an amazing gun, the Bren, and not only are those some amazing soldiers, the 2nd Aussie Infantry Division, but the action and emotion in the photo are wonderful. You have the gunner, looking out beyond the gun. He probably is just about to bring the gun back up into battery. His spare magazine, loaded by his assistant (who is calmly reloading magazines) is sitting on a sand bag next to him. The picture is worth going over with a fine toothed comb simply to note all the details.

Contrast

The waves of the wind on the sand dunes in the Sahara

Clouds approaching the sun on a snow-laden Moscow evening

A house abandoned in 1866 in the Valley of the Mills, Sorrento, Italy

Center Of The Universe

Indonesian volcano's in the early dawn

On A Ridge

Rochefort Ridge, Mt. Blanc, France

The Edge Of The Sea

This photograph is incredibly beautiful. The billions of stars and galaxies, the interstellar clouds of gas and dust, all forming shapes and lines and colors. However, that is not the beauty I am talking about. The most beautiful part of this photograph is that it is a picture of the past, present, and future all at once. Light from these stars to millions to trillions of years to get here. Right

now, all we can do is look at these stars and dust. All we can do is reach our hand out and touch the waves at the edge of the sea, while the rest beckons us on. And, most amazingly, it is our future. Eventually we will be able to go and see these stars. We will be able to travel to places much more beautiful, and the best part about the whole thing is that we'll never stop dreaming. We'll keep going, we'll keep exploring, we'll keep finding new things that are even more beautiful than this.

My recommendation, listen to this while you look at the picture. Think about how amazing it is. Study it. Think about where we will be in a few years, a few decades, a few centuries......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9oCe-lUzPM

High Flying Ideas

Early Soviet paratroopers jumping from a Tupolev TB-3. The Soviets were pioneers in paratrooper technology.

This is another early Soviet idea that didn't take off very well (yeah, I like puns....I know). It's a T-27 tankette slung under a TB-3. I'm not sure if this was dropped by parachute or if the TB-3 had to land for it to be taken off. Either way, the deployment of a single T-27 to the front lines probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in a battle.

Here's another interesting project. It was called the Zveno project. It was basically fighters that could dock with a bomber. Seen here are two Tupolev I-4s on a TB-1, making up what was called Zveno-1. Some bombers could hold up to 5 fighters. Some of the designs had the fighters take off with the bombers, others had them dock in fight.

This was Zveno-2. It was made up of a TB-3 and three Polikarpov I-5s. The ramp was for loading the aircraft on the wings, while the one in the center was lifted on by hand. Maybe there's a reason why the project failed....

And then there's the Antonov A-40 flying tank concept. This was actually built. It was a solution to the picture above with the T-27 slung under the TB-3. Basically, Oleg Antonov used wooden and cloth biplane wings to solve the problem of having to land the tanks on an airfield (or drop them from a few meters with their gear boxes in neutral). However, during the only test flight in September 1942, the TB-3 that was towing it had to ditch it early because of the extreme drag, even though the T-60s armament, along with almost everything else of combat value, had been removed. The pilot of the T-60 landed safely and drove it back to the airfield. After that, due to the lack of sufficiently powerful aircraft, the project was abandoned.