Vespa 150 TAP (Troupes Aéroportées)

In the late 1950’s the French Airborne Forces devised a system to transport a USA-sourced 75mm recoilless rifle via scooter.  A two-man team, each with his own scooter (one carrying the rifle, the other ammunition), would be dropped via parachute (into Algeria, mainly).  This is an excellent example of choosing the minimum vehicle and system required to accomplish the goal.  (I suspect that ‘roadside bombs’ and the like were somewhat less common in the theatre of operations, however.)

 

Coffman Engine Starter

These devices were (are) a study in cleverness.  The goal: start a large (generally aircraft) engine without incurring a large weight penalty vis-a-vis an electric motor and battery set.  The cardboard cylinders are, roughly speaking, blank-type shotgun shells.  They contain a fairly slow-burning propellant.  When the operator desires a start, a shell is discharged, the gas spinning up a small turbine.  A gear reduction unit and engageable pinion couples this energy into the engine’s flywheel or similar.  The pictured unit is a multiple-discharge-type, allowing convenient retries in the event of a failure to start, or subsequent stall.

 

We do hope that the pilot made a safe and prompt egress.

 

The Ineffable Allure of the Foreign

Perhaps the only way to improve this artifact would be to convert it to a giant, wall-mounted ‘where shall we have breakfast, dear?’ spinning selector wheel.  Karachi? Nome? The Azores?

There are a lot of places on here that people only went because they were on the way to somewhere else - it wasn’t always possible to fly directly to Hong Kong!