Arnie used to get all worked up about Harold Wilson's defence policy. 

Your own or from a website?

If from a website - find one (on Google images for instance) making sure it's not too big 350 x 350 is about right or smaller. Right click on it and click on Copy Image.

Then place the cursor where you want the image to appear in your post and click on Ctrl and V. It should appear as this magnificent one has. There is a way to reduce them in size, but it's not easy to explain, but I can go in and do it, I used to with some of the HUGE photos Pete would post, lifesize photos of elk that kind of thing. 

Britney is better looking.

The Soviets got their jet engine design from GB as well. How did that happen?

Yes, it's all your fault.

This ugly monster is the Kalanin K7 and if you think it has Russia written large all over it, you'd be right. You can see from these photos, it actually has an elliptical wing, exactly the same shape as the Spitfire. It took two years to build, which is not hard to imagine when given its dimensions, 92ft long with a wingspan of 174ft and a 40ft high, double the size in one go of anything flying in its time

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It had a twin boom because no single boom could have taken the weight. The crosswing on the end of the booms was as wide as a Spitfires entire wing. Empty it had the weight of almost three fully loaded DC3's. This was a civil airliner but who on earth would be allowed to fly in it in Stalin's regime I don't know, considering it could take 124 people and a crew of 19. You will notice that the shields around the landing gear make it look like a seaplane but it wasn't, what they did hold was a staircase which went up into the wing itself where the passenger seats were situated, with windows in front of them. In the military version they carried gunners, who stood up in them with machine guns. As a bomber it could carry almost double what the B29 did, although how they shifted them from the bomb bay I don't know, but knowing the Russians they probably just opened up a trap door and rolled them out. It is notable for being the first aircraft built of Russian made steel actually produced in Russia. It won't come as any surprise for you to know that it soon crashed when part of its rear wing fell off due to vibration, although sabotage by its main competitor, Tupolev, was suspected but never proved. As for Kalanin himself, he fell victim to the Stalinist purges and was shot in 1938.

Well, Britney does have more passenger capacity.

Incredible to think that this photo was taken in Russia in 1913, a Sikorski S-22 Ilya Muromets. 

Have a guess just how many different models of military gliders were produced around the world in the 30's and 40's? A staggering 60 but the largest pre war model was the Messerschmidt 321 Gigant, a true giant of a glider that came with giant problems. The nose of this glider could open up and fit a large truck through it but it's all very well building something like this but then they embarrassingly found they couldn't get it into the air so that required one of the strangest planes ever produced, the Heinkel HE 111 Zwilling.

Before this Frankenstein of an aircraft came along they were using three individual BF 110's flying suicidally side by side, all with tow ropes and the Giant glider with a rocket strapped to its back. So terrifying was this for those involved that a different solution had to be found and so Heinkel was approached to solve the problem and this was the result, the Zwilling. They already had a successful design in the H6 bomber and it really wasn't too difficult to come up with a method of joining them together and stick another engine in the middle for good luck and this is why it has two cockpits. It had limited success and only 12 were ever built with none surviving the war. As for the Gigant, they stuck six engines on that airframe and used that instead.

You mean it actually got off the ground!

You mean it actually got off the ground!

It flew alright but not for long

That is a good thing & certainly an improvement. The Merlin made the P-51 second to none in WWII.

When Malcolm Maclean (Yank) first introduced containerisation into the shipping industry in 1956 it truly revolutionised it. Where did he get the idea? Well I like to think off one of the world's most innovative aircraft makers ever, Fairchild, and their brilliant concept, the XC120 Packplane in 1950. It's an unusual fact about Fairchild that they have produced so many models that had such low build numbers and it was the same with this plane, there was only one ever made, which defies logic really until you hear the reason for its demise, it was unstable without its pod and the test pilot hammered it but were the faults an insurmountable problem? I think not and I wonder what the true reason was, maybe we'll never find out. Its uses were numerous, cargo plane, troop carrier, flying hospital and operation room, gunship, spotter, surveillance, command and control etc. Even its undercarriage was a unique design with twin booms both sides which could be raised or lowered to accommodate different cargo pods, which also had retractable wheels, amazing! The pods themselves had had twin opening doors for fast unloading which could also be parachutists.