Thursday, March 10, 2016
There are some auctions today that remind me of the hazards that pilots would have faced during the war. If mechanical trouble or enemy efforts forced the pilot to abort over foreign lands then the blood chit (one listed below) would have been used to try and communicate with the civilian population to render aid.
Some of us are getting kinda spoiled when it comes to navigating in the car. I have sometimes found myself turning on the GPS on a trip even when I don't need directions to keep up with how many miles to go. So with the German pilot's navigation map bag below it struck me what an incredible challenge it would be to navigate over the horizon in a propeller driven airplane in a war time environment.
I heard an interesting story on the radio last night that the United States was assisting the Russians in recovering important and historical documents that were stolen during the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union. I wonder if they give out medals for that too?
My 7th graders have really enjoyed studying WWI but now it's time for us to move on. Every time I put together this block I'm reminded of some of the events we studied in that unit.
Monday, March 7, 2016
The United States category is the largest of them all. That might be because as the big boy it does attract some listings that probably don't belong there. But either way diving in to this batch of thousands of auctions my job is to pull out maybe 15-20 that are at the top of the field.
The German block contains almost a dozen of the top auctions in that category that have bids and are endings soon. Ever since I started writing this newsletter I've only featured listings with bids because that is how I know the pricing is realistic and it's going to sell.
The final round up of WWII listings includes items from the U.K, Russia, Japan, and other countries that took part in the war.
My 7th graders have been studying WWI so seeing the naval demonstration ships below was cool. We studied the Battle of Jutland as an example of how the new technologies of war collided at the turn of the century.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
I had an interesting conversation Sunday in church with a reenactor. This man had just been to a living history program at a Revolutionary War site in North Carolina. I knew him as a Civil War reenactor so we started talking about those communities. He didn't realize I've been writing this newsletter for several years.
He was describing how in the reenacting community there is a spectrum of people who take it very serious and try to be authentic versus on the other side guys who view it as a good excuse to get together and drink beer on the weekend. He is hoping that in our area more people will start taking an interest in the Revolutionary War as we are approaching a major anniversary.
Apparently I've had my head in the sand because the booming aspect of reenacting is indeed WWII. He was describing a huge D-Day event that happens in Michigan complete with amphibious assault craft. I've been spending my free weekends camping with the Scouts so I was clueless that all this was going on.
It would make sense for there to be WWI stuff going on since we are still in the middle of the centennial of this conflict. However, since there is a much smaller footprint in WWI I can see where it might not be as popular as the later WWII.