Plenty of Tankish/Jet firefighting devices here over the years, but I don't recall artillery/AT guns. This thread seemed like roughly the right place. Work of artillerymen of the Central Military District during the liquidation of a fire at an oil well in the Irkutsk region TsVO gunners ensured the liquidation of a fire at an oil well in the Ust-Kutsky district of the Irkutsk region, which arose due to the depressurization of fountain fittings at an oil well. Shots from the 100-mm Rapira anti-tank gun delivered from Samara by military transport aircraft, the military personnel cut the fountain fittings of a burning well at night from the smallest possible distance - 180 meters with jewellery precision. This helped to establish blowout preventive equipment to further seal the well and eliminate the fire.
Re: the oil well, you wouldn't think they could hit anything with all that whip from the barrel. It's always good to see the power of this stuff instead of the puff if smoke you get in the films.
Thought the same. Incredibly violent. Though I was also kind of surprised (pleased) they still have carriaged 100mm AT guns to hand. No idea if it was a slightly relic piece, but not a thing you think of in modern armies.
What it brought to mind for me was the D-Day disjointing of Belgian gates with AP so they could subsequently be flattened by the tanks. With the oil well, I assume they were trying to chisel off a section by the same method.
This may be one of the coolest things I've ever seen. WW2, tools, 25pdr... Got it all really. https://twitter.com/kenrcorrigan/status/1353035190990483456?s=20
Article in the Independent from 1993... Stalingrad blade blunted by time: The sword Churchill gave Stalin is Wiki Article : Sword of Stalingrad - Wikipedia October 2021 article - https://www.realhistoryonline.com/articles/the-sword-of-stalingrad-an-award-from-king-george-vi/
At school, our quite enlightened history master used to provide us with typed notes produced on a cyclostyle machine, commonly used before photocopiers. Interestingly, these notes always required monetary values in Sterling to be typed as ‘Pounds’, rather than making use of a £ symbol. However, when covering the rise of the Nazis, symbology for the SS and where appropriate, umlauts, were curiously readily available. This was because his typewriter had seemingly been sourced, in modern parlance, from the former Gestapo Headquarters in Hamburg. It was, he added, “useful for work”. He never explained what that might have been. A fair example of the swords-ploughshares idiom, perchance, but the typewriter pictured was not our teacher’s (an Adler brand, I vaguely recall). The one here was that used by Derrick Sington in Bergen-Belsen, for the recording of war crimes evidence etc after the War. It is now displayed in the Museum of Military Intelligence, albeit more prominently than it once was: Very arguably something turned from a force for evil into a force striving for good. The typewriter is sometimes displayed with its cover, on which is attached this interesting ‘chit’: Whether my history master’s machine ever bore such an label, I will never know, but I can see why “acquisitions” in a place like Bergen Belsen might have been as strictly controlled as they could be. Also interestingly, our teacher claimed - and plausibly - to possess a pair of Himmler’s spectacles. They were very occasionally displayed in class, but only to emphasize the context of the enormity of awfulness with which they were associated. I recall we viewed them as a macabre curiosity and might have shied from holding them, even if permitted. Perhaps this chimes with some of the ‘killer cardigan’ research undertaken by Professor Bruce Hood at Bristol University, possibly of interest: Would you wear a serial killer’s cardigan? The glasses were sold after our master’s death, with sufficient provenance to satisfy the long established local auction house. I see that the same - or other sets - have reappeared at other sales overseas. By pure coincidence, another set of Himmler’s spectacles is also held in the Museum of Military Intelligence, part of the Noakes bequest. I would have liked to have met Derrick Sington, to get a real insight into his War; the sum of his parts suggesting more than that precised at: D A Sington – Old Wellingtonian Lodge no. 3404 – Masonic Lodge This, for example, does not mention his contribution to “The Goebbels Experiment: a Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine”, first published in January 1942 and his evident association with Arthur (or George or Lord) Weidenfeld, who was then (also?) working for the BBC external services: Propaganda - Better To Tell The Truth? Orwell's Question and I presume rubbing shoulders with the likes of Richard Crossman, of PWE and subsequently Assistant Chief of SHAEF’s Psychological Warfare Division, amongst notable others. The typewriter, like the pen, may be mightier than the sword, indeed.