You have to love this amazing car, the Citroën P17 Autochenille (‘caterpillar’ or in this case ‘half-track’). It is exactly the sort of thing I would fully expect to see Tintin driving across the Sahara in, wearing an arab headress and with Capt. Haddock floundering around in...
Dondi’s Astrarium is considered to be the very first mechanical planetary clock. It was designed in Italy at the end of the 14th century by Giovanni Dondi (1330-1388) who created this large brass mechanism, roughly a metre tall, to automate the complex calculations necessary to create horoscopes....
This is a bit of fun. What if the world’s most famous fashion houses muscled their way into the automobile industry? How would their distinctive house styles emerge on four wheels? Of course, in real life many of the world’s top fashion designers have been invited to...
This impressive howitzer was designed for the US Army in the inter-war years to fill a requirement for a modern long-range field-artillery piece. Its development was a little sluggish. The first model was produced in 1920, but it wasn’t until 1940 that the bugs were ironed out...
The Bentley Speed 8 was an Autosport Award Winning Le Mans Prototype race car. It was based on the EXP Speed 8* which first raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2001 using a 3.6 litre V8 engine from the Audi R8**. It was Bentley’s...
This giant cannon was cast by the Flemish master gunmaker Remy de Halut* at his foundry in Mechelen, in 1547. The Hercules cannon (El Cañón Hercules) is an extra long culverin – a ‘Royal or Double culverin’ – designed for long range destruction. Its 4.17m (13½ ft)...
The Tiger Tank parked by the side of the road down into Vimoutiers in the Orne dept of Normandy is a well known historic monument left over from WW2. “Wait! You dragged us 20 kilometres off our route to see THIS?” said my partner. “Yes, obvs!” She...
The Wildcat is an amazing aircraft that filled a much needed gap in the U.S. and Allied navies’ arsenal at the start of WWII. Descriptions of it, by pilots and historians often use words like “pugnacious”, “heroic” and “rugged”, which it certainly was, but they all recognise...
The twin-engine Bristol Blenheim was the RAF’s primary light bomber at the start of WW2. This one, a Blenheim IV, is on display at the RAF museum in Hendon. (When we can get to see it!) The Bristol Blenheim – or ‘Bolingbroke’ if you were flying the...
In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, NATO developed ZELL – the Zero-Length Launch system, using rocket-assisted F-104 Starfighters and other primary attack aircraft. Being right on the border with the Eastern Bloc, West Germany in particular had little time to identify and intercept...
The Fouga CM.170 Magister was a 2-seat jet trainer used by the French Air Force (Armée de l’Air) in the 1950s and 60s. Designed & built by the French aircraft manufacturer Fouga, it was instantly recognisable by its slender form and V-shaped tailplanes. It was the French...
This replica of the U.S. Civil War submarine HL Hunley sits outside the Charleston Museum. The HL Hunley (named after her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley) was a Confederate State submarine, built in Mobile, Alabama in 1863 and launched in July 1863. She had a crew of 8...
This was one of the 26 sections destined to be part of Saddam Hussein’s ‘Project Babylon’ Iraqi supergun project started in the late 80s. The project was the brainchild of Dr Gerald Bull, a Canadian artillery expert who had been involved in the US-Canadian HARP project (High...
The Biber (“Beaver”) midget submarine was not Germany’s most successful weapon in WW2. Designed hastily in Feb 1944 in a bid to compensate for the horrendous losses in the U-boat fleet, and in anticipation of an imminent Allied invasion, the Biber was a cheap, one-man submarine, capable...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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