... and the years zoom by. 153 of them, just like that.
So I have the special limited edition Canada Day Smarties.
...please help yourself ... not available in the USA so take a good handful, I have lots more! Good milk chocolate!
2) Ice! You guys need ice with the heat and all? We have ice, lots of ice, have some.
3) Going forward.
Happy Canada Day to you sir!
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Thank you Penny. May Smarties and Ice be upon you!
This is cool. Wayne will luv it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2_wwxibtWs
Loved it, loved it, loved it!
Makes me want to fix bayonet and charge Vimy Ridge. Or Juno Beach. Or the Scheldt. Or something!
Happy Canada Day Vince, SD70Dude, and all our cousins north of the border!
PS: Bring some of that good Canadian beer and we WON'T be sorry!
I'm just a tad disappointed that you didn't make a maple leaf out of the smarties
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Dude-- Actually there is something to that. This is the first year that they did not stamp the maple on them. Covid cut backs I guess.
Flintlock/Wayne-- yeah now I really want to go curling.
Here's one more for my fellow citizens... get out the Kleenex box.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L7_ZUBjuTi4
Mike sends us his greetings for Canada Day
Why would we be sorry?
Congratulations and ten times 153 more!
Just a goofy thing to say, comedy I suppose. oh wait .. how about an army of Justin Biebers and Celine Dions. Yikes! Everyone gets a Jim Carrey as a neighbour.
Miningman... comedy I suppose. oh wait .. how about an army of Justin Biebers and Celine Dions.
Wouldn't have been comedy if that nit Diefenbaker hadn't thrown Avro under the bus. Imagine where the Orenda engine family might have gotten by now.
Of course we found out that brazed honeycomb construction comes apart wholesale when exposed to the second heat pulse of a thermonuclear device (which is not exactly the surprise it turned out to be, if you think about it), so maybe not quite as bad that he cancelled it ... but still.
MiningmanHere's one more for my fellow citizens... get out the Kleenex box.
Jeez, I had to get the Kleenex box! Glorious! Absolutely glorious!
The issue with the Arrow was that it was an advanced jet fighter built in a country whose Air Force was not large enough to provide profitable orders for the manufacturer.
CSSHEGEWISCH The issue with the Arrow was that it was an advanced jet fighter built in a country whose Air Force was not large enough to provide profitable orders for the manufacturer.
And the U.S. was embarrassed at how advanced it was. So we got those stupid Bomarcs instead. Terrific weapon for the Great White North..... (they weren't exactly suited for our winters)
Miningman Everyone gets a Jim Carrey as a neighbour.
Everyone gets a Jim Carrey as a neighbour.
All righty then!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECx3wKaujOw
Oh, I wouldn't mind Jim Carrey moving in next door, (God knows why he might!) as long as he didn't do that "Fire Marshal Bill" routine he used to do on "In Living Color." Jeez, that bit gave me the creeps!
I wouldn't mind Celine Dion either, although I'd prefer Lara Fabian!
CSSHEGEWISCHThe issue with the Arrow was that it was an advanced jet fighter built in a country whose Air Force was not large enough to provide profitable orders for the manufacturer.
Doesn't change what a glorious achievement it was.
Didn't the Bomarc missiles have a warhead of sand! At least at one point it did.
The Chinese now surpass anything the Soviets accomplished re spying and stealing.
MiningmanDidn't the Bomarc missiles have a warhead of sand!
What would you use for testing?
I assure you that very effective warloads for BOMARCs existed, were deployed, and in at least one instance functioned as expected.
Think of these as ramjet/rocket powered interceptors, comparable to the Arrow but MUCH quicker launching and accelerating, and maneuverable without concern for a human pilot ... armed with a 10-kiloton warhead to take out a whole formation of enemy bombers including via fratricide.
(We nuked part of central New Jersey, ironically around Lakehurst, which some might argue was no particular cause for despondency, but effectively quashes the idea the BOMARCs were Quaker rocketry...)
Overmod-- Good we got that straightened out... so thanks!
Wonder if they could have used popcorn? Feed some birds as a side benefit.
Incidentally, and to give Mike a sussie for once ... how about the delightful Fran Frost?
Not quite the piece of work that Jamie Ginn is, but in that league.
It can't be 153 years. It sems like just yesterday I was at the 100 year Expo in Montreal.
Yeah 1967, I was there too. Pierre Elliot Trudeau shook my hand as he walked along a line of us. Seems like 9:30 yesterday morning!
Well, since we've kind of drifted in to Bomarcs, Avro Arrows, and things that go zooming around, how about a look at a film role that Canadian actor Christopher Plummer insisted on playing as a Canadian?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdl5TaZhU2s
A distinguished Canadian speaks eloquently of the characteristics of the Canadians and citizens of the United States:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebbh-BF7V5E
Does anyone here still think of "Dominion Day"?
Overmod Miningman Didn't the Bomarc missiles have a warhead of sand! What would you use for testing? I assure you that very effective warloads for BOMARCs existed, were deployed, and in at least one instance functioned as expected. Think of these as ramjet/rocket powered interceptors, comparable to the Arrow but MUCH quicker launching and accelerating, and maneuverable without concern for a human pilot ... armed with a 10-kiloton warhead to take out a whole formation of enemy bombers including via fratricide. (We nuked part of central New Jersey, ironically around Lakehurst, which some might argue was no particular cause for despondency, but effectively quashes the idea the BOMARCs were Quaker rocketry...)
Miningman Didn't the Bomarc missiles have a warhead of sand!
My understanding was that as Canada was a non-nuclear nation, the Canadian Bomarcs were fitted with high explosive warheads, although the option to fit nuclear warheads in case of a real war was retained.
Norman Freidman expressed it well when discussing nuclear depth charges fitted to ASROCs "a nuclear warhead makes up for a lack of accuracy in targeting..." One of his books illustrates a live fire test of a nuclear ASROC. The photo was taken from a ship a long way back from the launching Destroyer.
But a problem with the Avro Arrow and contemporary USA and UK aircraft was that the analogue electronics was not sufficiently reliable.
In the Royal Australian Navy there were lots of hare-brained scheemes to tailor weapons for things they were not designed for, the worst of which was a scheme to use the 5" 54 cal Mk 42 as an anti sea -skimming missile weapon. Many thousands of dollars were wasted on this. I tried very hard to explain that the whole concept was fundamentally flawed. One component of this was a local design of fuse for the projectile. This cost maybe twenty times the standard USN VT fuse and it hadn't even passed its trials, too many just disappearing somewhere on the range. But partly this was justified on perceived poor performance of the standard USN VT fuses.
Fortunately, about this time HMAS Brisbane was fitted in Long Beach with a digital fire contol system in place of the previous analogue Tartar system.
Reports of its trials off (Pearl Harbor) reached headquarters. Every shot, gun and missile was a target triggered burst. So the USN VT fuses worked...
The problem had been that the analogue electronic fire control system just wasn't accurate enough to get the projectile or missile near enough to the target.
Despite this, the anti-missile project proceeded to no conclusion at great cost.
We did send one DDG to the first Gulf War, but it was fitted with two Phalanx CIWS systems (which we'd had in service the whole time of the great wasted proposal.)
The point to draw from this for Canada and the Avro Arrow was despite the degree of national pride involved, it would have been money down the drain. By the time the CF-18 was bought, there would not have been an Arrow Mk Vi (or whatever) to compete against it.
I also worked on the Australian F-18 project, and the very best of those are now flying for the RCAF. More than a billion dollars was spent on assembling those in Australia (and similar amounts are being spent now on our F-35s) but I don't think anything was gained long term from that.
Defence is a good source for political pork barreling on a huge scale.
But at the time of the CF-105 Arrow (I'm old enough to have read about it as it happened) almost none of the systems needed by such an aircraft worked as required reliably. More basic systems were better value for money at the time.
But in terms of the day, Canada is a great country and wasn't weakened by good money not being thrown after bad at that time.
I'm surprised that the name RCAF is back: I worked with Canadian navy officers in the period when they wore green and nominally had army ranks. We still have Canadians working with our submarine fleet and they are a good resource to draw upon.
Peter
NKP guy A distinguished Canadian speaks eloquently of the characteristics of the Canadians and citizens of the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebbh-BF7V5E Does anyone here still think of "Dominion Day"?
Maybe I should have been offended, but I laughed along with everyone else!
If you can't laugh at yourself, what good are you?
I believe the Pearson government, despite its initial anti-nuclear policy, ended up reversing its decision and accepted fully operational nuclear-armed Bomarcs.
It should be noted that when the Diefenbaker government decided to cancel the Arrow project and accept Bomarcs the missile only had a operational radius of less than 300 miles. Given the placement of Bomarc sites in the northeastern U.S, this meant that any strikes against incoming enemy targets were likely to occur directly over southern Ontario and Quebec, with significant nuclear fallout directly over the most populated areas of Canada.
Peter/M636C-- Thanks for the good analysis. Puts things in perspective, much needed.
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