Earlier this year, we reported on the imminent release of Churchill, a feature length film which covers the impact British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had on WWII during the 96-hour run up to D-Day. Today, we learned of another film based on the life of Churchill entitled Darkest Hour, which takes a more macro look at the Prime Minister, from his appointment just prior to the German invasion of France and the Low Countries to his defeat at the polls following the conclusion of the War in Europe in mid-1945. Darkest Hour is slated to open some time this November.
July 13, 2017
Robo-Wings or Calibre-Tech? You Decide…
Just when you thought you had things figured out comes word that one of our newest manufacturers seems to be headed down an unexpected road. Earlier today, Calibre Wings posted a titillating teaser on their Facebook page which indicated, in rather unabashed form, that they will soon be offering Robotech-related merchandise.
Robotech is a science fiction franchise that began with an 85-episode science fiction anime television series cartoon adaptation produced by Harmony Gold USA in association with Tatsunoko Production and first released in the United States in 1985. It was adapted from three original and unrelated – though visually similar – Japanese anime television series (Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada) to make a series suitable for syndication.
In the series, Robotechnology refers to the scientific advances discovered in an alien starship that crashed on a South Pacific island. With this technology, Earth developed robotic technologies, such as transformable mecha, to fight three successive extraterrestrial invasions. (courtesy Wikipedia)
Presently, we have no idea as to what they plan to offer, although the image does hint that more information is forthcoming at the soon-to-debut Comic Con Convention being held in San Diego from July 20th-23rd.
Product Spotlight: “The Hornet Killer”
“I’m telling you right now, don’t believe what you’re being told. It was that MiG that shot Spike down.”
– A pilot on the same mission as downed pilot, LCDR Scott Speicher, January 17th, 1991
Ordinarily, I’m rather loathe to pointing a spotlight at an adversarial aircraft that shot down one of our own, however, in the case of this particular incident I’ll make an exception due to its wide public nature at the time. Way back on January 17th, 1991, during the opening stages of Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi pilot, Lt. Zuhair Dawood, flying a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25PDS “Foxbat-A” interceptor, successfully downed a Coalition pilot by the name of LCDR Scott Speicher. LCDR Scott Speicher was flying an F/A-18 Hornet fighter, BuNo. 163484, from VFA-81 “Sunliners”, when he was shot down 100 miles west of Baghdad, on the first night of Operation Desert Storm. His plane crashed in a remote, uninhabited wasteland known as Tulul ad Dulaym. He was the first combat casualty for American forces in the war.
The U.S. Navy maintained in a 1997 document that Speicher was downed by a surface-to-air missile. A pilot on the same mission stated: “I’m telling you right now, don’t believe what you’re being told. It was that MiG that shot Spike down.” Subsequently, in an unclassified summary of a 2001 CIA report suggests that Speicher’s aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi aircraft, most likely a MiG-25, flown by Lieutenant Zuhair Dawood, attached to the 84th squadron of the Iraqi Air Force. Speicher was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 0.92 Mach (540 Knots) when the front of the aircraft suffered a catastrophic event. The impact from the R-40 missile threw the aircraft laterally off its flight path between fifty and sixty degrees with a resulting 6 g minimum load.
LCDR Speicher was initially listed as a probable MIA but later changed to KIA, on May 22nd, 1991, several months after the end of the Gulf War. Sadly, Speicher’s status was changed to Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered (KIA/BNR). Navy Commander Buddy Harris, who was a friend and fellow naval aviator of Speicher’s, became a strong advocate for searching for Speicher, often meeting with U.S. officials. On August 2nd, 2009, some 18 years following his status change, the Navy reported that Speicher’s remains were found in Iraq by United States Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines belonging to Multi National Force-West’s Task Force Military Police and Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 271 belonging to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. His jawbone was used to identify him after study at the Charles C. Carson Center for Military Affairs at Dover Air Force Base. According to local civilians, Speicher was buried by Bedoiuns after his plane was shot down. Senator Nelson attributed the delayed finding to the culture of the locality: “These Bedouins roam around in the desert, they don’t stay in one place, and it just took this time to find the specific site.”