Free Republic

Henry Darrow, the pride of Puerto Rico who starred as the charming Manolito Montoya, the son of a wealthy Mexican land baron, on the 1967-71 NBC Western The High Chaparral, has died. He was 87.

On July 12, 1970, a white Chevrolet pickup truck towing a trailer pulled into the paddock at Watkins Glen International Raceway for the third Can-Am race of the season. A small crowd gathered to watch the team unload. The small white race car atop the trailer looked like nothing else: no wing, no velocity stacks, no scoops or side pods or wild cutaways or NACA ducts, hardly a curve of any kind. The rear wheels were encased in bodywork as flat and unadorned as a diner kitchen. "Like the box it came in," the crowd observed. They moved to the...

The U.S. Defense Department announced on Dec. 9, 2016 that the U.S. Army had awarded an Alabama-based company $23 million to build components for the Taiwanese militaryÂ’s Chaparral air-defense missile systems. The contract award was routine. What was news to many observers is that Taiwan still operates Chaparrals. The 1960s-vintage missiles probably wonÂ’t make a dent in Chinese forces in the event China invades the island country. The U.S. Army launched development of the MIM-72 Chaparral air-defense system in 1965 after a more ambitious surface-to-air missile launcher, the MIM-46 Mauler, proved to be impractical. The Chaparral was an expedient. It...

A force to be reckoned with Posted on 9 August 2010 in Defence The Egyptian Air Force (EAF) or Al Quwwat Al Jawwiya Il Misriya, is one of the largest air arms in the region and is also one of the longest established. Formed in 1930 as the Egyptian Army Air Force, it became fully independent in 1937. Initially it had close links with the British Royal Air Force and was primarily equipped with British-supplied aircraft. Spitfires gave way to Meteors and Vampires before the 1952 revolution, after which the new president, General Gamal Abdel Nasser, turned to the Soviet...