Macabre metalworking

Recycling. Don't eat the Soylent green.

That is just sick. Reminds me too much of the mining that went on in the Nazi death camps.

Wes

I thought that they were collecting that gold from ash piles. They did not kill those people after all.

I watched a show on the Holocaust some years ago, they showed one open crate, maybe 12"x12"x24, full of gold crowns. There were many such crates.... The numbers of those killed in the death camps is staggering, but hard to picture. Even accounting for many people having multiple crowns, to see them boxed like that really drove it home.

Jon

Picking over the dead just turns my stomach. And if the family wants the ashes for an urn, it is just plain stealing.

Wes

citibank took care of all of the nazi gold.

Jon,

I saw that show, too, and IIRC, that was gold from FRENCH Jews who were assessed that gold by the (FRENCH) government to keep from turning them over to the Nazis.

Flash

Interesting note in that - the Spanish paid for a telephone system from ITT with Nazi Gold via the independent company called Reserve Board.

Yes the Reserve board is a band of Bankers that tell banks and the US what to do. Buys money at paper/cost and sells it to the banks at USD. There has to be some payback somewhere - but one wonders...

Mart> J>>> That is just sick. Reminds me too much of the mining that went on in the Nazi death

Might be the same film clip recycled into another show. Maybe I missed it or just forgot the narrative, I sure don't recall that bit of info. There's some classic WWII scenes that I've seen in half a dozen or more movies.

Jon

Yes, staggering, but not sufficient for the world to learn a lesson as there have been many more genocides since then.

You are too squeamish. By that logic, since "Nazi" scientists invented things , we should ditch synthetic lubricants, destroy all rockets, and go back to piston engined aircraft. Ever buy a "Bayer" brand asprin? Parent company I.G. Farben made "Zyclon B" and backed such physicians doing clinical evaluations as Josef Mengele.

Get over it. A lot of my family never left the camps, but I own a Mercedes.

Eh? - The jet engine was invented by (Sir) Frank Whittle in 1928 and patented in 1930. He was born in Coventry, England. See

They still have an example flying. The trouble is the thing isn't scalable in modern airframes. The German designs were problematic because materials lagged behind but the concept was more useful. Whittle's got fatter as the output increased. The kraut design just got longer.

PBS did a great one hour special on all of this.

JC

Whittle did have ideas for axial flow turbines and what we now know as the turbo fan, if only the British government had given him more backing. IIRC Whittle had to try at times and find private investment finance but because the work was being done for the government he couldn't tell the investors what is was for.

"The Airplane Engine", by Lionel S. Marks, 1922, page 442:

"Gas turbines have been under active development for over fifteen years but the difficulties inherent in them have not as yet been overcome without sacrificing their potential efficiencies. The principal troubles are those resulting from the high temperatures to which the combustion chambers, nozzles, and buckets are subjected....Over-all thermal efficiencies are usually about 5 per cent, although an unsubstantiated value of 20 per cent has been claimed for a 1,000-h.p. unit....Its simplicity and light weight have attracted many inventors, but there are no indications that it is ever likely to become practically available."

There are drawings of piston engines showing up to six valves per cylinder and double overhead cams, plus some really exotic multiple- crankshaft arrangements including a supercharged, direct injection, opposed piston two stroke that became the WW2 US submarine engine. The best specific gas consumption was apparently a little under 0.5 Lb / Hp-Hr with compression ratios held down by the low octane rating to

Jim Wilkins

I remember seeing one of those early German engines sectioned many years ago in either the Science Museum in London or the German Museum in Munich. It showed the hollow blades used at the time and the reason given was that the Germans were very short of strategic materials to make the high temperature resisting alloys so the blades were made of sheet rather than solid. Maybe the beer cans were used in the compressor section but I doubt they would last long in the hot bits. IIRC lifespan wasn't such an issue as the planes would most likely get shot down before engine failure.

As I understood it they were relatively invulnerable until one engine failed (often) or they slowed down to land. Allied fighters swarmed around Me262 airfields, which were defended by the best versions of the FW190.

jw

"IG Farben" was not a company. It stands for "Interessen gemeinschaft Farben", it translates literally as "special interest group for dyestuffs manufacturers". It was a legal cartel set up by the incredibly powerful German dyestuffs makers, who practically invented modern chemistry in the 19th century. Bayer, BASF, and a whole host of other familiar names today were the industrial powerhouses of the 1870's to 1930's, and pretty much "owned" the German government like the military-industrial complex or other powerful special interests today. I'm not sure who actually made the Zyklon B used in the gas chambers. Zyklon was a potent, synthetic insecticide gas used for fumigating buildings. Zyklon B was the same stuff without the required odor that told people to stay away from the fumigation area. But, I don't think it was Bayer. Isn't Bayer actually Swiss, anyway?

Jon