Actually, that’s incorrect. It took over 606 take to film this. The only CGI used was in the final scene of the car to get the lighting on the windows correct.

But even at the start of the war with the US, the A6M wasn’t untouchable. It certainly outperformed the USN’s F4F, but the speed and firepower of the Army’s P-38 dominated the Zero from the get-go, to the extent that it was able to tangle with them (not being carrier based and only possessed by the Army, it was never a decisive player).

The Lightning, used with proper tactics, could also force the Zeros to turn LEFT, something they couldn’t do well. The relative prop torque to craft weight was amazing in the A6M’s, which made right-banking turns a snap, but banking left, against the prop torque was much slower and more energy-draining, nullifying their primary advantage. Being a twin-engine aircraft, the P-38′s turned just as well left or right, and with the guns in the nose pod they didn’t have to be synchronized with the props. Always loved those birds.

If I need wacky and Japanese, nothing beats Katamari Damacy. Damn that game is fun.

Bad Candy on June 24, 2007 at 6:34 PM

I never would have thought it, but that is the most fun, most addictive game I have played in a long time.

It’s not so much that we had better weapons than the Germans or Japanese, but we certainly built more of them.

More true of the war in Europe than Japan, though. At the beginning of the war the A6M was a successful plane, as much due to its surprising qualities as its sheer performance (the plane’s vast range was often difficult for adversaries to comprehend). Their ships were good, but not world-beating, with the exceptions of Yamato and Musashi–which were obviously impressive, but by virtue of historical progression, ultimately nigh-irrelevant.

But even at the start of the war with the US, the A6M wasn’t untouchable. It certainly outperformed the USN’s F4F, but the speed and firepower of the Army’s P-38 dominated the Zero from the get-go, to the extent that it was able to tangle with them (not being carrier based and only possessed by the Army, it was never a decisive player). And while adequate, a number of the most critical Japanese ships, the carriers, were conversions from cruiser and battleship hulls and never were quite laid out to facilitate damage management as well as their American contemporaries (compare the performance of IJNS Akagi at Midway to that of USS Yorktown at both Coral Sea and Midway).

By the time the F6F Hellcat started showing up on carrier decks, the A6M’s weren’t only outnumbered, but outclassed utterly. Not only were there too many Hellcats, they were too fast, climbed too well, bore too much armor, and packed too much firepower. Meanwhile below, the Essex class carriers being pumped out by the US were, arguably, simply the best warships ever designed. Not only did each ship bring a massive amount of aerial firepower to bear, but despite bearing the brunt of many a late-war Kamikaze attack, not a single Essex was ever sunk in combat (the story of the USS Franklin stands out as testament to the design’s battleworthiness).

None of that has any bearing on modern Japanese consumer and industrial technology, of course, which is obviously quite good. :)

The pure genius of that game escaped me until I got older and started exploring “cause and effect” which always seems to boil down to Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion…”For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

In my opinion, that’s the Law of Motion that was at the core of putting us in the air on jet engines and even onto the moon and beyond. Burn something fast enough and hot enough to produce extremely rapid exhaust and channel that exhaust in a specific direction, and what do you have? A rocket (or a jet engine).

These clips may seem simplistic to a lot of folks, but keep in mind one thing…the only propulsion is gravity. Doubtless, it’s some type of science fair going on; but the participants have come up with some ingenious ways to put gravity to work no matter how silly they look to the average person. Nobody I know will bitch about the person who figures out how to use the Earth’s natural gravitational force to power automobiles.

Mock if you will, but these folks are the future engineers that will build better, stronger, faster, safer products for the world. When I think back, I wish I’d had their understanding of physics when I was their age.

It’s not so much that we had better weapons than the Germans or Japanese, but we certainly built more of them. While the Spitfire, Mustang, Thunderbolt and B series bombers were formidable, the Germans definitely had better tanks, sidearms and machine guns, and the Mitsubishi Zero was a pretty good fighter as was the M-109.

The difference was that Germany built about 23,000 tanks during the war and the US built about 90,000. Under fascism, the Nazis controlled production and assigned tank production to traditional heavy equipment manufacturers who were used to making small production runs. In the US, entrepreneurs competed for military contracts. Henry Kaiser turned commercial cargo hulls into escort carriers, Ford built B-24 bombers at Willow Run, and Chrysler built tanks.

I’m glad you took my advice to search on “Pythagoras Switch”. Now if you can hunt up how I can get legit DVDs of this show, I would be most grateful. I’ve found other crazy stuff from that show beyond the marbles and marches, on YouTube, but I’d like some better quality video of this stuff.

“Ita Po na Su-i chi!”

I have no idea what that means.

wearyman

I think it means “Look Al, no carbon footprint”

“Ita Po na Su-i chi!”

I have no idea what that means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xodq44iWv5Y