The Great "Half Cocked" Debate

I hear people every now and then arguing the merits of using the half cock shelf as a safety, or lowering the hammer down slowly letting it rest on a live round....using the half cock sear as a fail safe for manually cocking the hammer with your thumb, should your thumb slip off. 

 In the patent for the design, JMB referred to the half cock as "The Safety Position"...so initially it was intended as a safety shelf to keep the hammer from resting on the firing pin.

HOWEVER, the patent was 1910. 
The predecessor to the 1911 was the model 1910 which was exactly the same as the 1911 with ONE exception... NO THUMB SAFETY. 
Having the pistol in hand, the only way to have it on "safe" was using that half cock notch.

With the addition of the thumb safety there is NO reason whatsoever to ever lower the hammer slowly on a live round or to the half cock shelf as a "safety". 

And there ya have it.

The 1910, followed by the 1911; 

Hero Type

Don't know how this got past me a couple weeks ago...

Shifty Powers

I posted here about Band of Brothers, the awesome true account of WWII.
I found out this morning that one of the men that the story unfolded around has passed away. Here's a write up from his town's local paper:

Veteran a part of 'Band of Brothers'
Darrell "Shifty" Powers, who died at age 86, was a hero on the battlefield and to his family.
By Neil Harvey
981-3349

In a 2001 interview with The Roanoke Times, Darrell "Shifty" Powers talked about some of his experiences during World War II.

Powers, a United States Army paratrooper and sharpshooter, belonged to Easy Company, part of the legendary 101st Airborne Division. He recalled a bitterly cold day in the Ardennes when he was able to draw down on a German sniper, sighting his target by the misty cloud of the man's breath. He killed him with one shot.

"Right there," he said, touching his forehead. "Between the eyes."

But Powers, of Dickenson County, who died Wednesday of natural causes at age 86, was also reflective about such matters.

In the second-to-last episode of "Band of Brothers," an HBO miniseries that documented Easy Company's wartime exploits, Powers spoke on camera about the soldiers he fought and also hinted at the intrinsic tragedy of combat.

"We might have had a lot in common. He might've liked to fish, you know, he might've liked to hunt," Powers said. "Of course, they were doing what they were supposed to do, and I was doing what I was supposed to do.

"But under different circumstances, we might have been good friends."

Powers, who got the nickname "Shifty" playing basketball as a youngster, served three years in the Army during World War II and later worked as a machinist for Clinchfield Coal Corp. He found renewed notoriety when his military experiences were depicted on film and in the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name.

"He actually hadn't talked about it, his war years, until the book came out," said his daughter-in-law, Sandy Powers. "He gets fan mail from all over the world, and calls."

"For me and my kids, it's just amazing that our regular, sweet uncle was such a hero," said his niece, Cheryl Gilliland of Roanoke. "It sure changed his life in later years. He went places and met people he never would have otherwise."

Darrell Powers met a German soldier in 2005 who had fought against him at the notoriously brutal siege of Bastogne during the winter of 1944.

According to his son, Wayne, he had in September been scheduled to travel to Iraq to meet with U.S. soldiers, but health problems prevented it.

"He was so disappointed. He wanted to meet with the soldiers so badly," Sandy Powers said.

One of his closest friends, Earl McClung, of Colorado, in 2001 called Darrell Powers "a heck of a good soldier and a heck of a good shot."

"And he was there every time I looked up," he added.

"Our family had four boys and one girl, and I'm the only one left," said Powers' sister, Gaynell Sykes of Roanoke, on Wednesday. "He was a great brother. I know he was great at a lot of other things, too -- great father, great son, great husband."

Darrell "Shifty" Powers - March 13, 1923–June 17, 2009

Spy Stuff at the Museum

One of my favorite things at Wright Patterson is the display of spy tools.
These spy “tricks of the trade” were used by members of the Air Force OSI (Office of Special Investigations).
The OSI has been the Air Force’s major investigative agency since 1948 and they report to the Inspector General, located at headquarters in Andrews Air Force Base.
They have 221 locations strategically placed around the globe and provide service to commanders of all Air Force activity by identifying, exploiting, and neutralizing criminals, terrorists, and intel threats to the Air Force, Dept. of Defense, and our government.

Today the techniques the OSI uses are very high tech and employs every kind of technological advancement you could imagine… but the old school spy gear is what fascinates me most.

Here’s a couple of examples of clothing worn by agents. There are fabric “roll up” identification tags sewn into the flaps or pockets of garments. Upon meeting someone, if they wished to identify themselves, they’d simply pull a flap down to display it, and it would retract back into the flap when they let go.
In this photo, the identifying swatches have been pinned down on the “raid jacket” so you could see what they looked like.

Here’s a “Bomb Training” briefcase. These were used in the 80s as a training aid to show various ways of possibly being detonated. There were different switches and triggers under diverse circumstances. If the lid was opened, a light sensitive photocell set it off. X-ray machines would activate a brass sensor and a mercury filled switch would detonate it if the case was moved. Touch sensors could also trigger it. During training, if a real bomb would have exploded, it would be indicated by the speaker making a bomb explosion noise.

Here are some other items with explanatory tags. One of the impressive pieces didn't turn out well so I didn't add it, but it's a piece of baseboard from an office that was hollowed out, filled with listening devices, and replaced to look normal.
Click the picture to make it big enough to read the tags.







I think one of the things that intrigues me most is that specially weighted hollowed out coin for passing secret messages.

I want one!

Museum Stuff Pt. 1

Last weekend we visited Wright Patterson AFB, which is not only a working air base, it is also a museum open to the public.
There's too much stuff to cram into one post, so I decided to break it up in little pieces.
This first entry isn't really as much about the artifacts as it is about the people we encountered.
There was quite a diverse group of visitors checking out the museum that day, and it was also Boy Scout day, or something. There were also a lot of Asian people and they were all wearing flu masks. That was a little unsettling. I'm not sure why, but it just was.
Most of the people visiting were very considerate of others and people sort of kept the foot traffic flow going so that the people behind them would be able to see stuff without waiting long or having to skip it.
Except one family...
I will call them the Skimmer family.
It all started here looking at this piece of the Berlin wall.

Mr. and Mrs. Skimmer and their children Boy Skimmer (about 9 or 10) and Girl Skimmer (around 5 or 6) were admiring the display and while Girl Skimmer was swinging/hanging on the protective barrier that said "do not lean", Boy Skimmer asked Mr. Skimmer "Berlin wall? Where's that from?"
Mr. Skimmer said, "Russia, I think. Isn't it?" (he was looking to Mrs. Skimmer for help. She said, "I think you're right. Let me read the thing under it to answer intelligently... She skimmed the print on the blue case under the display and said, "Well...It don't say, but I'm sure it's Russia because it's a Communist thing and Russia is Communist"
I thought to myself, "No problem. They'll move on to the sign right beside the other one and they'll get it."
So they moved on to:
They skimmed it.
Still no retraction about the Russia thing.
I wonder if they think the Iron Curtain was really a curtain...made of iron.

I don't know what some of it is

Last week we went to a War Museum that is fairly new and still setting up areas for displays. A lot of the artifacts were donated (or loaned) with no description or info about them. We saw a lot of signs like this:


If you know what any of this stuff is, post in the comments and tell me. I'm curious! You can click on the pics to make them bigger.
Like this, which reminds me of my grandpa's pipe stand:


What's this stuff? Particularly the thing that looks like a sushi tray and those metallic things on the far left back corner:


What are these:





And what does the last marking here mean? The first ones are pretty obvious, but I have no idea what the last is:


I liked all the tank stuff, the jeeps, and the amphibians:




I hope this was a "close call" instead of the alternative:


This too:


Check out the manufacturer's label. Go Hoosiers!


Now here's the part where I got really stoopid, but to my credit...I caught myself!
I took a picture of this Omaha Beach exhibit with my flash turned on:


Then I realized that the flash popped the reflector, and I actually got halfway through my stupid statement of the year before I caught myself. I actually started to say, "Do you think that reflector was added after? Or else no wonder they knew where we were..." DERRRR

Anyhow, here are some neat old bike pics:




Hey Sophia! Didn't you drive one of these??


There was also an area for old media venues...radios, televisions, two-way radio:














All in all, most of the vehicles, firepower, and displays in the Normandy area really reminded me of Band of Brothers. It just made something so far removed from me (except in imagination) very real and tangible.
Here are some of the things that brought that home for me:




And this amazed me...I've seen pics similar to it before, but it never dawned on me that in relation to the planes and other parachutes and their proximity, this photo had to be taken by one of the airborne jumpers:


Among other things, here are some models used in the movies:




And finally on a lighter note, some fun stuff.
I give you...the BATMOBILE! (And Robin's bike)



The A-Team Van!


The General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard (complete with cast autographs)!