Is that a Pensy class Battleship you used in the background?

Close. North Dakota.

Very nice.

Thanks.

No problem.

Thanks. As I was rendering up the image I was trying to figure out a simple way to make the image roll up and down slowly and set the flags fluttering like the beginning of the old Warner Bros. Cartoon "Conrad the Sailor."

such a pity the navy has done away with all of this... or so I understand. I hope I am wrong - for what shall they do when the power fails?

V.

One big reason is security anyone who can see it can read it, and it was useless at night or in heavy fog or rain so they went with Morse code
--Rick

That's gone too now.

V.

...Much to the chagrin of fixed wing and experimental pilots everywhere.

But those flags ARE still in use! I saw them in use only a few days ago on the walls of my local Red Lobster(R)

Hee Hee! Yeah. and I'm still puzzling over the meaning of the "R-I (2nd?) U-K" message prominently displayed on the Krusty Krab restaurant in almost every episode of "Spongebob Squarepants" too.

When in FT Huachuca the Signal corps would still practice the "wig wag" partly for nostalgia and partly to convey urgent non classified information in the event of an emergency.

I.E. "Happy Birthday whoever" or "communications down" to let the others know to expect a messenger with relevant classified information.

cool... but what's FT Huachuca?

V.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Huachuca

We would call it Ft We goctha once one is stationed there its hard to get out from what i'm told
my stationing there was my last before finial deployment and ETSing

way cool... thanks for the info...

V.

Yeah! I had to do a little research and thanks to you I found out more about the "Wig wag" method of communicating with flags that hadn't ever read about before. It's kind of like writing code in binary, but not as complicated. One just has to keep a sharp eye out and count the "Zeros, Ones, Twos and threes to figure out the messages.

looks like you were going for "B L A N K"
but from my reading it reads B L (stop/space) N K
but i am more than a bit rusty having been over two score of years since i waved semaphore flags in the scouts
--Rick

Heh. Okay. I might just have goofed with the Semaphore flags as the illustration I used for reference was the size of a postage stamp, but I do recall the signal for "A" was closely similar for "Space" or "Stop." I'm pleased to read you were able to learn the skill in the Scouts though. I feel there might be some advantage to teach interested youngsters "Archaic arts of communication" as this computerized country could be severely crippled in a case where the electrical power goes out.

.-. .. -.-. -.- -.-- --- ..-'.-. . .-. .. --. .... - " .- " ... .... --- ..- -.. .... .- ...- . - .... . .-.. . ..-. - ..-. .-.. .- --.
.- .-.. .. --. -. . -.. .-- .. - .... - .... . ... .. --. -. .- .-.. -- .- -.' ... .-.. . ..-. - .-.. . --. .-.-.

(Harry McNaughton) Here, watch your language! There are sailors in the house! [episode of "It Pays to Be Ignorant," CBS, 1945]

LOL! How about in "Daffy Duck, Sooper Sales Duck" where Daffy holds up a flatiron to intercept the Brass Knuckles he's just sold to "Killer" McCloud, shattering the knucles and severely injuring the Bulldog's hand? I could never quite catch the "... .... . .-.-.-..!" message he bleeps out with the injured paw stuffed in his gob.

Oh! Forgot. Chief Boombah a' Ray Ellington heyah! Yoo Watch Yours! There's Ladies present!

I never really got semaphore, and have long forgotten how to spell with flags. What are you saying here? This is a blank page?

Yes. It's a "BLANK" page for North American Fur fanzine which needs lots of "White space killer" to round out the page count. NAF is changing their size format with issue #32 so I'm "Recycling" the image.

And the signal flags to the sides spell out "NAF32" and "BLANK".

Now I'm glad I was able to fix the Numeral Pennants.

Awww, that one is (atm) not in WoW...just the USS South Dakota (BB-57).

People build ships in WoW?

WoW = World of Warships (still closed beta)

I know, that acronym will be culprit of some confusions.

Ooooh! I Am So Going to check that out! I wonder if they've got anything on Merchant Vessels like Liberty Ships?

As fas as i know only combat ships, but also ships which never made it off the drawing board.

Say hello to the 16 inch guns of the USS Montana (BB-67)

Rumble RumblE RUmbLE RUMBLE FWWOOOOOOMMMMmmmmm mmmm! BLAAAM!

(Quickly hauls down colors and raises white flag.)

One of the joys of my library is a book by the U.S. Naval Institute Press which is about all of the Dreadnought and Super-Dreadnought battleships the U.S. Navy built or proposed to build. They have enormous detail on the proposed Montana Class.

Then again, one of the odder classes was the Alaska-class large cruiser/battle cruiser. A very obscure class, when you consider its size. Neither fish nor fowl, really, and in the final analysis, a bit of a waste.

That's odd and interesting. Is there anything on the "Dazzle" camouflage used in the later part of WW I through to the late 1920s?

Okay... It's cool. I like The Blues Bros., and the Matrix too.

Reminds me a bit of the opening to Chuck Jones' "Conrad the Sailor" (1942), which allegedly borrowed a bit from Eisenstein. Bright blue sky, angled ship, &c. (I see that you cite to Conrad as well, above.)

Similar to what one person noted above, signal flags had some serious problems. In point of fact, I was watching an episode of "Battlefield Detectives" on the Military History Channel some weeks back, and they were discussing Jutland. One of the key problems the Grand Fleet had was the misreading of some signal flags which caused some critical ships to not follow at one point, and they demonstrated how in foggy conditions, they weren't very visible over long distances.

With the advent of coded radio signals and of high-powered signal lamps, this ancient method of communication went by the boards, at least as far as practical military usage is concerned.

I consider you something of an expert on old cartoons from the 1940s. Was it ever explained in the beginning of "Conrad the Sailor" why the Gobs were happily singing "The Marines Song?" Was it catchier and less politically inclined than "Anchors way?" I only recently read of that fact, and it makes the cartoon all the more funnier, especially when Conrad, voiced by "Pinto" Colvig, (The voice of Walt Disney's Goofy.) picks up the tune and then looks to the audience, wipes his brow and says, "An' we're Shovin' Off too!"

I've checked: "The Song of the Marines" was a WB-owned song written by Warren & Dubin, so its use in a WB cartoon would have been "free." So, for that matter, would "Anchors Aweigh," but I think that "Song of the Marines" fits both the tempo and what was to be done in the cartoon. Namely, the first bit that's almost like a sea shanty, including the (animation-doubled) crew singing the song, and later on when Conrad, through gritted teeth, sings the song. Wouldn't have been as funny with "Anchors Aweigh."

Of course, certain writers and/or Carl Stalling may have simply liked the song, and it was their go-to bit for anything nautical.

Vance Colvig was in a few WB cartoons around this time. He's also in the largely forgotten b/w cartoon "Hop and Go." I think he broke with the Disney studio around this time, as did John McLeish, who ironically did the narration for many of the "How To" Goofy cartoons. I'm uncertain if Colvig ever went back to Disney.

I do know he voiced Bozo the Clown in the Animated cartoons later on. At least those I saw once a week in afternoon cartoons from the mid to late 1060s.

Thanks for the info on "The song of the Marines" too. I recently found out that Warner Bros. would use only the copyrighted music they had on hand from their movies and also stuff that was written only for the Studios in their cartoons. I can't help but agree with you about the Marines song being more apt for the cartoon, and I couldn't help but laugh when I thought of Conrad singing "Anchors Away" through gritted teeth. He'd be voicing the opinion of every "Swabbie" in the Navy for certian with that.

I still cringe every time I see that Conrad has just swabbed the deck with #4 Hull Red thanks to Daffy's "Help" too.

The original purpose of the Looney Tunes and, slightly later, the Merrie Melodies was to promote WB's music library. In the late 1920s, WB bought a number of music publishing companies. It was felt that this was one additional stream of revenue for the company; you could have songs in a movie, and promote the songs via sheet music. WB also owned for a while Brunswick records (because its presses could be used to make the sound-on-disc items Vitaphone needed).

The three major firms that WB owned were M. Witmark & Sons, Remick, and T.B. Harms.

The WB cartoons of the 1930s were contractually obligated to include at least a chorus of a WB-owned song, which is why you had cartoons like "Page Miss Glory," for example. Eventually, it was felt that the music was getting in the way of the cartoons, and by about 1937-1938, the outright interruption of the cartoon for a song had pretty much died out.

However, with the advent of Carl Stalling in 1936, WB's massive music publishing operations (which were far larger than those available to Fleischer/Famous/Paramount, Terrytoons/Fox, Disney/Columbia/UA/RKO, or even Harman-Ising/MGM) gave WB cartoons a large tactical advantage, suited to Stalling's style. Stalling had been a theatre organist in the silent era, and thus was very highly skilled in the rapid-fire mixing and matching of music, syncing it to the action on the screen. This called for many "code" type musical cues.

"The Lady in Red" (e.g. the music over the credits of "Little Red Riding Rabbit") is one well-known example. The song was originally composed for the WB film "In Caliente," but may well be better remembered for its cartoon usage.

I've often found it curious that Stalling didn't use more Jerome Kern and George Gershwin; a number of their compositions were owned by WB (for example, "Look for the Silver Lining" and "Embraceable You").

Some older songs were also used. "King Chanticleer," for example, memorably used in "Drip Along Daffy" in the bar scene, was written in the teens (and is, I think, a Remick song).

It is extremely rare, to my knowledge, for a non-WB, non-public domain song to be used. The only concrete example I know of is in the Snafu short "Snafuperman," when Stalling interpolates a brief bit of Sammy Timberg's "Superman March" -- from the Paramount cartoons! I can't recall who owned the song "Begin the Beguine," which is beautifully used in another Snafu short, "Pay Day." It's the only usage of that song I know of.

Aside from various bits of incidental music, I only know of two songs that were specifically composed for WB cartoons: (1) "Beauty and the Beast," for one of the very early colour Merrie Melodies, and (2) "The Penguin Parade," for Avery's cartoon by the same name.

I realize this is getting off the topic of your drawing, but I think you'll forgive me for that.

Nice perspective on this!!

Yeah, and in the process I learned a bit about the former animator and movie director, Frank Tashlin. It was a "Bug Bear" getting the lines to look right, even with photo references, but I'm pleased with the results. After I get a little more experience with Photoshop, I'm sure I'll be able to put a "Proper" shine on a Battleship.

AWESOME AND EXCELLENT WORK

I'm pleased you like it. Coming from a talented artist such as yourself, it's a nice compliment.

thank you very much,