The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

A quaterly magazine on Allied military aviation during WWII, Steve Darlow’s Fighting High e-magazine provides a more personal look into the airmen whom served in the Allied air forces, from fighter pilots to the crewmen of the massive bomber armadas over Germany than most general history books offer. Fighting High was given a glowing recommendation on the official Osprey Publishing blog where I first read about this e-magazine.

© Steve Darlow

In each issue, there’s mission reports from the actual pilots and crewmen who participated in them as well as recollections and memories in words and pictures by Allied veterans. I especially liked reading the accounts by the crewmen of two RAF Lancasters’ participation (550 Squadron and 625 Squadron) in the nightime raids over Germany near the end of the war. I first read about these raids years ago from one of the Airplane issues by Orbis Publishing and was quite pleased to read more about these missions.

© Steve Darlow

Another article which I thoroughly enjoyed was the account of pilot Eddie McCann when a Luftwaffe fighter pilot graciously broke off the engagement after noticing the badly shot up wing of his potential opponent, leaving him to nurse his Spitfire back to base.

On top of these first hand accounts of combat, little known salvage and restoration projects are also highlighted, including a look into the efforts by Beech Restoration in restoring and rebuilding WWII aircraft to flying condition. For the book enthusiasts, there’s a fair number of military aviation book reviews in each issue.

© Steve Darlow

There’s also a competition in each issue in which the winner walks away with an book upon guessing the squadron of a WWII aircraft from its serial or insignia. While the deadline for the previous contest is long over, you might want to practice your identification and Googling skills in preparation for the coming contest in next issue available from 15 July 2008 (hey, that’s today! ).

© Steve Darlow

The last issue showed a four engined bomber with a bold black H in a white circle close to the wingtip (above). Should be relatively easy to deduce the aircraft type since there weren’t too many four engined bombers in service with the Allies during WWII. Identifying the squadron number would be significantly harder since I’ve seen several squadrons with the H letter emblazoned in almost the same area as in the photo.

Download Fighting High.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Armed Forces Handbooks (DPRK, PLA)
Osprey Publishing’s Military Art “Advent Calendar”
DIA Military Art Collections

A collection of over 100+ tiny firearms illustrations from the Vickers machineguns of the early 21st century to the modern firearms like a M16 with attached M203, a Barrett M82A sniper rifle and iconic submachine guns like the FN P90, H&K MP5 and IMI Uzis.

© Java The Fox

Created by Java The Fox (deviantART gallery) where I found this image months ago. It’s no longer in the gallery but you can download the original picture here. (Didn’t manage to contact Java The Fox since there wasn’t any contact info at the time of writing )

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
H&K MP5 Vexel Art by John Norris (donbenni)
2nd Amendment Fonts (Firearm Silhouettes) & Other Cool Dingbat Fonts
Assault Rifle Basics Vidcasts
APB Character Designs

Found this nice screensaver featuring 10 AK-type semi-automatic rifles and light machineguns from Arsenal, Inc. Some of my favourites below:

© Arsenal, Inc

Screensavers aren’t really useful for me since I don’t use them on my desktop and it seems a waste not to be able to use these photos in the screensaver as wallpapers. I fiddled with the screensaver a bit to see if I could somehow extract these photos from the screensaver as standalone images and below is a short summary of my findings. It’s slightly on the technical side, so do feel free to skip it and head for the download link at the bottom if you don’t want to bother with it

Running the screensaver installer under Sandboxie (an short intro here) reveals that four files are extracted into the windows\system32 folder in your sandbox.

Since photos are usually saved as JPG files, I resolved to search for the JPEG header or more specificially the Start of Image (SOI) marker (two bytes - 0xFFD8 - more about the JPEG header) in the SPF file with my trusty HxD hex editor. Each occurrence is followed by JFIF bytes which further confirms that the images are stored in this file as JPEGs and without any compression (ZIP, RAR, etc)

While I could write a parser which could spit out the JPEG images from the SPF images, I’m a bit too lazy for that at the moment and decided to use Marco Pontello’s excellent BitmapRip which extracts images in JPEG, PNG or GIF format from any binary file. Simply drag and drop the SPF file over BitmapRip and you’re all done!

Download the Arsenal Inc AK Screensaver and BitmapRip.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Zacca 1/6 Guns Collection & World Weapon Collection
Oleg Volk’s High Resolution Firearms Photos
Modern AKs
H&K MP5 Vexel Art by John Norris

A French artist specializing in military and police art (not unlike Dick Kramer), illustrating mainly the police and counter-terror units of his native country such as the famed Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) and Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID) as well as the special forces of several other European countries (Greek EKAM, Spanish GEI, etc).

© David Andro

Found his website several months back while looking for information on the exotic Matra-Maurhin MR-73 revolver after seeing it being equipped on a Hot Toys 1/6th GIGN figure at a day in the life of a BE@RBRICK. From David Miller’s Illustrated Directory of Special Forces, it appears that only the French counter-terror units are frequently equipped with revolvers (amongst other weapons of course), other contemporary units favouring (usually silenced) semi-automatic pistols for close-range work.

© David Andro

Also apparently for most enthusiasts, the 1/6th figures are the closest you can get to a special forces trooper and his weapons, but David has access to the real thing which also explains the realism and authenticity of his work.

© David Andro

Here’s David with the GIPN - Groupe d’Intervention de la Police Nationale.

© David Andro

Visit David Andro’s gallery.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Dick Kramer’s Promotional Art for FN SCAR Rifles
Call of Duty 4 Mini-Artbook PDF
Scenes of War
Armada International’s Complete Guides
2008 Military/LE Firearms PDF Catalogs

A couple of recently de-classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) handbooks on the miltary forces of China and the elusive North Korea regime. The People’s Liberation Army handbook dates back to 1984 whereas the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) book is a more recent 1997 edition. Being published over 10 years ago (nearly 25 for the PLA book), both books definitely do not reflect the current status of the armed forces of the respective nations although they still retain some value for military history enthusiasts, wargamers and the like.

In 1984, the PLA was primarily a infantry based force utilizing relatively conventional tactics and doctrine with a special emphasis on infilitration tactics based on their guerrilla roots during the Chinese Civil War. The doctrine sections of the handbook therefore reads a little like an US Army field manual. Almost every tiny bit of information on the PLA that you probably need, from tactics and strategy, weapons and equipment to unit organization and even the typical diet of the Chinese soldier is in there.

The DPRK handbook is a much more interesting read since the DPRK relies heavily on its substantial special forces of over 60,000 personnel to conduct operations behind enemy lines or even create a second front via clandestine insertions by air, sea or underground tunnels under the DMZ. Sections on doctrine are of course included, together with weapon & equipment photos, unit organization as well as a brief look at the geography of the Korean peninsula.

It’s interesting to note that the DPRK Army still counts WWII armoured vehicles like the T34/85 and SU-100 in its inventory along with a massive 170mm self-propelled gun, the M-1978 (below). While it has an impressive range of 40 km, it looks extremely vulnerable to aerial attack due to its bulk and low speed. The DPRK does have some impressive numbers of AAA guns (over 8,800) and SAMs to protect assets like this though. For more info, you might want to check out this link to an analysis of the DPRK’s anti-air defenses @ The Firearms Blog.

Both handbooks can be downloaded in PDF format at Defense Intelligence Agency (PLA - 142 pages (14.9 MB), DPRK - 429 pages (5.4 MB))

More information and PDFs on the DPRK’s military forces can also be found at nautilus.org.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
The Complete Wargames Handbook PDF
Lessons from BBC History Channel Games
War and Game - Military History Blog
FM 3-90 - Tactics
People’s Tactics - Freeware Operational-Level Wargame