The Feuerwehr (German: fire defence) is a number of German fire departments. The responsible bodies for operating and equipping fire departments are the German communities ("Gemeinden") and cities ("Städte"). By law, they are required to operate fire-fighting forces. In cities, this is usually performed by the Fire Prevention Bureau, one of the higher-ranking authorities. There are three kinds of firefighters in Germany: the predominant number of Germany's 1,383,730 firefighters are members of voluntary fire brigades (Freiwillige Feuerwehr), a lesser number are working in professional fire brigades and the smallest are the drafted members of a Compulsory Fire Service (Pflichtfeuerwehr), established just in a few places nationwide. Here we look at some of their flashy vehicles. We hope you will enjoy our selection of photos.
This book presents over 300 photographs showing the service of German fire fighting vehicles in World War II, with the emphasis on the various vehicles, manufacturers, and the organization of the German fire fighting regiments.
Winner of the Engineer-Historian Award from the International History and Heritage Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award given by the Society of Automotive Historians Recent attention to hybrid cars that run on both gasoline and electric batteries has made the electric car an apparent alternative to the internal combustion engine and its attendant environmental costs and geopolitical implications. Few people realize that the electric car—neither a recent invention nor a historical curiosity—has a story as old as that of the gasoline-powered automobile, and that at one time many in the nascent automobile industry believed battery-powered engines would become the dominant technology. In both Europe and America, electric cars and trucks succeeded in meeting the needs of a wide range of consumers. Before World War II, as many as 30,000 electric cars and more than 10,000 electric trucks plied American roads; European cities were busy with, electrically propelled fire engines, taxis, delivery vans, buses, heavy trucks and private cars. Even so, throughout the century-long history of electric propulsion, the widespread conviction it was an inferior technology remained stubbornly in place, an assumption mirrored in popular and scholarly memory. In The Electric Vehicle, Gijs Mom challenges this view, arguing that at the beginning of the automobile age neither the internal combustion engine nor the battery-powered vehicle enjoyed a clear advantage. He explores the technology and marketing/consumer-ratio faction relationship over four "generations" of electric-vehicle design, with separate chapters on privately owned passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Mom makes comparisons among European countries and between Europe and America. He finds that the electric vehicle offered many advantages, among them greater reliability and control, less noise and pollution. He also argues that a nexus of factors—cultural (underpowered and less rugged, electric cars seemed "feminine" at a time when most car buyers were men), structural (the shortcomings of battery technology at the time), and systemic (the infrastructural problems of changing large numbers of batteries)—ultimately gave an edge to the internal combustion engine. One hopes, as a new generation of electric vehicles becomes a reality, The Electric Vehicle offers a long-overdue reassessment of the place of this technology in the history of street transportation.
The German war machine resulted in many innovations in jet engine and gas turbine development. The most noteworthy was the Me262, the world's first operational jet fighting aircraft.
Following on from 'My Early Life', we observe John Reddisson from thirty-five to eighty (1968-2013). Initially, he spends three memorable years as the British Liaison Officer to a Soviet Military Mission (SOXMIS) in West Germany at the height of the Cold War. Returning to London, he meets and marries the fragrant Maria but not before completing an intelligence assignment in Hong Kong. Disillusioned by Army life, John retires and joins an English language school on the Kent coast, later becoming the Principal. Retirement to an Andalusian villa brings problems. John and Maria return to England, settling in Lincolnshire.
