#midget submarines

[carbone14]

Sous-marin de poche de la classe CB appartenant à la Quarta Flottiglia MAS de la marine royale italienne (Regia Marina) – Campagne de Crimée - Crimée – Union soviétique - 1942

Photographe : Horst Grund

©Bundesarchiv - N 1603 Bild-289

[historyofguns]

The article "German Human Torpedoes — D-Day’s Nazi Suicide Subs?" by Tom Laemlein explores the development and deployment of the Nazi "human torpedo" mini-submarine during World War II. Developed by the Kriegsmarine under Richard Mohr, these manned torpedoes, including the initial Neger and later Marder models, were part of Germany's desperate attempts to counter Allied naval forces during the Mediterranean and Normandy invasions. Despite their simplistic design, these weapons were highly dangerous to both their operators and enemy forces, often resulting in a high mortality rate among pilots. The article details the technical specifications, operational challenges, and significant combat engagements involving these mini-subs, concluding with insights from U.S. Naval Intelligence based on interrogations of captured German pilots.

[rastronomicals]

1:18 AM EDT August 16, 2024:

Swell Maps - "Midget Submarines" From the album A Trip to Marineville (June 1979)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Artpunk

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"MINIATURE SUBMARINES, a Shinto Shrine, chopsticks and Jap characters and wrecked Zeroes were all left behind by the hastily departing enemy on Kiska. American bombs that preceded our troop landings accounted for much of the damage to Jap installations. Sgt. Edmond Birdsell of San Francisco tries out the chopsticks on a bowl of Jap rice, stores of which were found by U.S. forces." - from the Kingston Whig-Standard. September 9, 1943. Page 2.

[casposters]

(via Inspirational Stuff: Mort Künstler and Shark Week -)

[supplyside]

Koryu 'midget' submarines in drydock, Kure, Japan

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for May 1, 2013; #16.

Brian Eno “Third Uncle”

Patti Smith “So You Want To Be (A Rock And Roll Star)”

Iggy Pop “Nightclubbing”

David Byrne & Brian Eno “Strange Overtones”

Parts & Labor “Fake Rain”

Throbbing Gristle “Her Arm Was Her Leg” (live)

M.I.A. “Paper Planes”

Martin Rev “Mari”

NON "Warm Leatherette"

Normal, The "Warm Leatherette"

Kraftwerk “The Robots”

Suckdog “Oh, Mighty Pidgeons”

FFH “Worth Doing”

Einsturzende Neubauten “Styropor”

Foetus “Today I Started Slogging Again”

Sleater-Kinney “Get Up”

Mika Miko “Dear Teen Magazine”

Ms. Les “And Now We Know”

Swell Maps “Midgets / Submarines”

Slits, The “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”

X-Ray Spex “Warrior In Woolworth’s”

Enharjharna “Starka Band”

Pailhead “Ballad”

Crass “Shaved Women”

New Bomb Turks “Dragstrip Riot”

Subhumans UK “The Day The Country Died”

Deluxe industrial, punk, indie, hipster, and marquee sounds.

[captain-price-unofficially]

The USS Ward (APD-16) after being hit by a kamikaze on December 7, 1944.

The USS Ward (DD-139) fired the first shots of war for the United States when she spotted a midget submarine near the entrance to Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. At the time her captain was LCDR William W. Outerbridge, who had taken command of the ship two days earlier.

Exactly 3 years later, the Ward now a high-speed transport was operating off the Philippines when she was struck by a Japanese kamikaze amidship. The ship came to a stop and the crew attempted to fight the fires, but to no avail. They abandoned the ship around 11 am. Later that day the USS O'Brien (DD-725) was ordered to sink the Ward with gunfire. O'Brien's commanding officer at the time was William W. Outerbridge.

[petermorwood]

Based on reality...ish.

After seeing this post, @elizabethgoudge wondered:

"Wasn't there a real prototype like the Hydra plane in Captain America?"

TL:DR -Yes, there was. Indeed there were several, though "real" is a bit bit up in the air (or not, considering that none of these things ever flew...)

*****

"Captain America: The First Avenger" based some of its hardware on four or maybe even five Nazi-era prototypes, "real" in the sense of having a nebulous existence as sketches, blueprints, or concept / wind-tunnel models.

The film's design department clearly knew their stuff. They may have used other things instead or as well (there were so MANY), so the following is just my own speculation, based on many years of making many model kits :->

The Hydra mini-sub...

...seems based on a cross between the (real) "Seehund" midget submarine...

...and the design-concept Focke-Wulf Ta 283 ramjet aircraft.

Red Skull's escape plane, though never clearly visible...

...wasn't just based on but WAS a Focke-Wulf Triebflügel ("powered wings" - meaning the ramjet-driven rotor blades around its waist).

This was a proposed tail-sitter VTOL interceptor where taking off straight up might (?) have been possible, but landing straight down and backwards would invite all sorts of unwanted excitement.

It also made a brief background appearance in "Loki".

The Valkyrie flying wing…

…was based on, and hugely upscaled from, the Horten H.XVIII, one of many pie-in-the-sky "Amerikabomber" projects.

Resemblance to a Northrop YB-35 (props) / YB-49 (jets)...

…is coincidence based on form-follows-function, since - and rather importantly - the Northrop planes were built for use by the US Air Force, not the Luftwaffe (though given the way some plotlines went, their use by Hydra is another matter…)

The flying bombs which it carried...

...seem based partly on a Messerschmitt Me 334 project fighter...

...and partly on a Sombold So 344 bomber-destroyer, which had the same detachable-bomb arrangement.

The So 344's explosive nose was meant to be launched into a formation of Allied bombers, after which - despite aerodynamics now wildly out of whack and a bunch of angry escort fighters in hot pursuit - the piloted part would land safely.

Yeah, right...

*****

Despite "what if...?" suggestions on the "History" Channel that one or other of these contraptions could have "won WW2", they didn't even help to lose it less severely.

IMO their probable main purpose was to keep numerous engineers and designers safe(-ish) with pencil and ruler in workshops and at drawing boards, rather than very much not safe with rifle and grenade on some bomb-and-bullet-swept front line.

*****

Besides the midget submarine, there's one other exception to all this based-on-paper stuff, and that's Red Skull's car...

...whose inspiration seems to have been the Mercedes Benz W31 G4 heavy staff car and a Hispano Suiza H6A limousine custom-built in 1923 for the King of Spain.

All of which goes along with my own notion, that starting with a real - or merely "real" - object is a great way to make fantasy objects look, and sound in description, more convincing.

Or, as @dduane says, "The more truth you mix with a lie, the stronger it gets..."

:->

[siberian-tug]

TW: Mild Blood, Injury.

Humanized Regatta scene with Lillie bleeding and Grampus helping her.

Old artwork inspired by @/l.j.productions3833's video

Video of Speedpaint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWLiQi6XhxM

That kinda sucks, due old artstyle, but overall fine lol. I love how everyone were always dirty minded about it and got joke, and yet I was always thinking of this moment as… Grampus simply helping Lillie medically, and that she bleeds.

(Also Lillie is engineer\technician and operator working on lightship LV 117 Nantucket , while Grampus was naval warrant officer of the US Navy, and operator of midget submarine A-3)

Also everyone wonders how Lillie and Grampus scene would look like, which is obvious tbh, Lillie is injured and Grampus helps her by pressuring wound, wrapping bandage etc...

But I more wonder how the fuck this scene would make any sense, for them in Human AU???

Grampus getting blown up for his war crimes or got crucified lmao.

I actually tried to explain with request for suicide, from Grampus to Boreas (human name for Bluenose), because of pressure he got and stuff. But it ended up sounding too dark, depressing, overexplaining, and kind of cringe...

[youmissedone]

[Sooo... saw that ask about Carlos and clones, and it made Bad Rain wanna say hi] Rain silently assessed the man in front of her from behind the dark-tinted goggles of her gas mask. After her little dinner date in the ocean, her retinal implants started malfunctioning and she could no longer discern if this was a new Carlos or what. "...I thought you were dead," she stated.

Carlos was pretty sure he was the last man standing as far as whoever was still left inside the quickly-failing facility. On their side, that is. There were still plenty of clones running around, and Jill had beaten him to the midget submarines with whoever she still had with her. At least nobody had noticed he was still kicking, or that he'd taken one of them for himself. He barely knew how to work it, but right now it was his only chance. The failing facility was quickly flooding from every angle, so he had to get out of there fast.

Alice and the others were long gone as well - he hoped, anyway - and Barry... Well, Barry hadn't made it. Maybe that was for the best, considering the injuries he'd gotten from that uber licker had probably doomed him anyway unless they could locate some of the antivirus. Carlos had stood by him until the end, hoping they'd bought enough time for Alice and the others to escape.

Carlos wouldn't have figured Alice would agree to leave him behind, but... hey, there was a child involved, and someone had to buy time somewhere. Barry was already screwed and Carlos... was kindof used to taking one for the team. His narrow escape from death back in Nevada was proof of that. He didn't blame Alice one damn bit for taking the opportunity and getting the hell out. At the end of the day, people like her and him were protectors, and sometimes protectors didn't walk away with their lives.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to try. Laying down and dying for no damn good reason wasn't something Carlos was about. He was gonna try to fight his way out of here, or he was gonna make his death useful in some way. So he'd taken one of the midgets subs, donned the trappings of his clone from whatever Umbrella commando attire he could find stored in it, and set out. He didn't know who he was going to run into, after all.

It was a while before he encountered Jill's sub, with any and all communications having been wrecked by all that water. And of course, he didn't have the benefit of any retinal implants. Surfacing so he could get out and see what had gone down, he was met with a disappointing scene. There was no sign of Alice, Becky, Leon, or the rest of the strike team. Except... for Luther. Poor bastard. Luther had been a good guy, and Carlos was sorry to see he'd met his end here. Jill and her clone army wasn't anywhere to be seen either, though. Where did everybody go?

He turned when he suddenly heard Rain's voice, of course knowing she was a clone. Any Rain he ran into anywhere was a clone at this point. He'd heard Alice's tearful accounts of what had happened to the original Rain enough times to know for sure that she was completely dead. Silently, Carlos told himself to be careful, play the part.

When she said she thought he was dead, he had to resist the urge to crack some kind of joke. That was what came naturally to him, something to the effect of , rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated or, I'm a lot harder to kill than that. But clone Carlos wouldn't make jokes. About himself... or the fact that Rain was drenched. What'd you do, decide to take a dip in the ocean? Nope, he had to play it straight.

"No. And neither are you, it seems," he answered flatly, still holding his rifle at the ready, acting like he was suspicious of her for a moment, before lowering it. "Rest of the team is, though. Whatever that explosion was let half the ocean in and took everyone out. I'm blind here, save for the GPS system in the sub. No comms, no maps, no target scanners, nothing. The salt water fucked with all of it," he said, acting annoyed yet also restrained about it. "Where's Project Alice and the rest of the intruders? What about Chief Valentine?" he asked, remembering the various monikers he'd heard the Red Queen use inside the facility.

There just hadn't been enough time, though, to perfect everything before Rain showed up, and Carlos knew these clones were smart. They were engineered that way. So he hoped his outfit was on correctly, that all his major scars were covered, and that he didn't have too much of a haggard five o' clock shadow. Anything like that could give him away, and he knew he couldn't take on a clone version of Rain alone... especially when he knew the clones had access to Las Plagas enhancements that made them damn near indestructible...

[britrockaholic2]

Swell Maps - Midget Submarines

"Video Compiled By Nik Coleman from assorted video archives and super-8 film."

[scotianostra]

Aberlady Bay’s midget submarines.

I took a trip out to Aberlady last night to catch the low tide where these relics from World War Two are left decaying as the tide comes in and out.

In the spring of 1946, two midget submarines were towed to Aberlady Bay and tethered on either side of an anchor point made of one old concrete anti-tank block set on top of four others. There, over two days of trials in the first week of May, they were fired at by aircraft including Mosquitoes and Seafires (the naval version of the Spitfire) in an experiment to judge the effectiveness of 20 mm cannon shells against the submarines’ steel hulls.

The story of the Aberlady Bay midget submarines was uncovered brilliantly by a researcher named Alison Boutland in a report for the Nautical Archaeology Society. She was able to identify the submarines as XT-craft, a training variant of the X-craft mini submarine.

X-craft were about 16 metres (52 ft) long and powered by a diesel engine when on the surface and an electric motor when underwater. They had a crew of four: a commander, a pilot, an engineer (known as the engine room artificer, or ERA) and a specialist diver. They were used in September 1943 in a daring raid on the German battleship Tirpitz in a fjord in the far north of Norway – a mission that inspired the 1955 film ‘Above us the Waves’, starring John Mills.

The XT submarines, built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, were used not just for training X-craft crews, but also to stand in for full-size submarines in training exercises in which they were hunted from air and sea. The XT-craft were simpler than X-craft, since they did not need as much equipment. In particular, they did not have a retractable periscope; the periscope was fixed in a fin-like housing on the top of the submarine. The distinctive eye-shaped attachment point for this periscope housing was clearly identified by Boutland on the two Aberlady Bay wrecks.

Six XT-craft were built, named Extant, Sandra, Helen, Excelsior, Extended and Xantho. When the war in Europe drew to a close, they were no longer needed, and in June 1945 all six were sent to the Naval Construction and Research Establishment in Rosyth. Boutland was not able to figure out which of the six were used for the target trials, although she did conclude that the better-preserved wreck is probably not XT-5, Extended, which, as its name suggests, was modified to be a little longer than the others.

The cannon-fire trials took place on May 1, 1946 and, after the subs were patched up and re-floated, May 6, 1946. The website East Lothian at War, which has the dates as May 2 and May 7, says that the first trial involved armour-piercing shells and the second high-explosive shells, and that the latter proved more effective. Surviving documentation includes annotated photos of the subs showing the damage after the attacks.

Aberlady Conservation and History Society was recently given movie footage of the trials, filmed by a naval officer from the deck of a boat from which the operation was observed, and in 2019 the footage was digitised and posted on YouTube, the footage, although in colour, is not great, I will post it below for you to have a wee look at.

An interesting addition to the story of the submarines comes from Coastkid, a local blogger and Surly fat bike enthusiast, who has evidence that the subs continued to be used as targets for live firing practice by aircraft based at Drem. He recalls working as a greenkeeper at Gullane in the 1980s and finding dozens of spent 0.5 inch shell cartridges as well as 20 mm cartridges, and he was told by a retired tractor driver that aircraft used to line themselves up using a marker pole behind the seventh tee on Gullane No 3 course, and fire when over the rows of anti-tank blocks, near the green of the twelfth hole on No 2 course.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"TINY JAP U-BOAT ABANDONED TO CANUCKS AT KISKA," Vancouver Sun. September 14, 1943. Page 3. ---- Examining the propellers of a miniature Japanese submarine, left in wrecked condition in Kiska harbor, are (left to right) Pte. George E. Verscheure of Chatham, Ont.; Pte. L. J. Bauerlein of Trenton, Ont., and L. Cpl. S. A. Kosior of Fillmore, Sask. They were among Canadians included in units of the task force which re-occupied the island.

[dustedmagazine]

Peace De Résistance — Lullaby for the Debris (La Vida Es un Mus)

Like some doomed lovechild of the later Velvets and Diamond Dogs-period Bowie, with the most hypnotically rocking tunes by the Swell Maps (think “Midget Submarines” or “Secret Island”) as close avuncular relations, Peace De Résistance’s new LP Lullaby for the Debris shuffles into earshot. Louche and low-slung, but also jittery and jumpy; groovy and gravid in equal proportions — the record’s feeling tone can be hard to inhabit, but it’s simultaneously so seductively easy to dance to. It just about demands a tapping foot, a shaking hip and a shimmying pair of shoulders, if you can shed enough of our collective state of existential dread to get up off the floor and shimmy. (Shaking is a simpler prospect these days, if you are willing to do so in fear.) This reviewer enjoys moving in tune with “Coddle the Rich” or “I Am,” songs that realize the variety of mordant delight Peace De Résistance excels at creating. Listening to Lullaby for the Debris won’t solve any of the problems generating all that fearful trembling, but the record can take some of the sting out of things. In our current conjuncture, that’s just about enough.

Listeners familiar with Bits and Pieces (2022), the first LP Moses Brown released under the Peace De Résistance name, will encounter some similar sounds and textures here. Brown hasn’t effected significant changes to the project’s sonic identity: glammy punk with a grimy bit of a funk on it. These new songs are more polished without losing much of the ragged quality that distinguishes the project’s musical atty-tude. Brown sounds sorta jaded, sorta grossed out, but not entirely hopeless. And maybe that’s not such a great thing: it would be so much easier just to shrug and mumble a cynical “fuck it.” Having hope means that you can’t turn entirely passive. What a drag.

So we get songs like “40 Times the Rent” and “Fast Money,” curling their lips at capital’s unjust disparities of wealth and the increasing difficulties of affording space in which to exist and have something like a private life. Those are intractable problems also addressed by Institute, the Austin-based punk project Brown participates in. Peace De Résistance is more glam than anarchic, and Brown’s loose-limbed grooves clash with his sprechtgesang vocal style, akin to a more nasally and dissipated Leonard Cohen, c. I’m Your Man. Like Cohen, Brown makes that relatively flat delivery feel urgent, mysterious and reckless, even as the music strikes more decadent stances.

It's a complicated sound, despite its druggy and dissolute surfaces. The songs’ content demands to be taken seriously, and depending on your politics, you may find the sentiments of smartly written tunes like “Ain’t What It Used to Be” (about gentrification and its historical erasures) and “Pay Us More” (yep) sharp and moving, critical and edging toward something like aspirational struggle. The music is both less sanguine and more oriented toward pleasure. The combination of style and content isn’t jarring so much as weirdly on edge, a pose of careless aloofness that wants to lose its cool. This reviewer enjoys those surface-level pleasures enough to hope that Brown can stave off the hotter affect. But the political won’t wait, and the debris is accumulating noisily, however effective Peace De Résistance’s lullabies might be. Harsh daylight will cut through those black-lensed Ray-Bans soon enough.

Jonathan Shaw

[uneasylisteningradio]

Boats January 14, 2023

Image from Archy & Mehitabel by George Herriman

stream on Mixcloud 

Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night Vashti Bunyan - Where I Like to Stand

DJ speaks over 101 Strings - Skye Boat Song

Rare Breed - Come and Take a Ride in My Boat Heino - Wir lagen vor Madagaskar Go Sailor - The Boy Who Sailed Around the World The Wrecks - Slow Boat to Yuba Tin Tin - Ships On The Starboard

DJ speaks over Uncle Bunt Stephens - Sail Away Lady

Woody Guthrie - The Sinking of the Reuben James The X-Seamen's Institute - Grimsby Town Stan Rogers - The Mary Ellen Carter Brian Eno & John Cale - Empty Frame The Clancy Brothers - Irish Rover

DJ speaks over Zeb - My Own Boat

Deidre Brenner and Sophie Junker - Les Berceaux The Fear Merchants - U-Boat Captain Madness - Night Boat to Cairo Wire - Marooned

DJ speaks over Stevie Wonder - Red Sails in the Sunset

Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir and Ed Trickett - The Sea Wife Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - The Wreck of the "Antoinette" Mekons - Shanty Dick Dale & His Del-Tones - Sloop John B William and Versey Smith - When That Great Ship Went Down Diskonto - Sink the Dept (Not the Ships) Boney M. - Homeland Africa (Ship Ahoi)

DJ speaks over Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage

Swell Maps - Midget Submarines The Carter Family - I Have No One to Love Me (But the Sailor On the Deep Blue Sea) Gentle Giant - Wreck Jimmy Jukebox - Motor Boat Itsuroh Shimoda - ふたつの舟

DJ speaks over Bear McCreary - Theme from Black Sails

Duran Duran - Night Boat Maddy Prior & June Tabor - The Grey Funnel Line Voivod - The Prow

DK speaks over Carolina Eyck - Les Berceaux (theremin and piano)

Brian Eno - Backwater