“Highballing to Victory” 1944 War Department; Tires & Transportation in World War II04:33

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Published on April 24, 2017

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“Transportation in wartime.”

Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.

Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

A tire (or tyre) is a ring-shaped covering that fits around a wheel rim… The word itself may be derived from the word “tie,” which refers to the outer steel ring part of a wooden cart wheel that ties the wood segments together.

The fundamental materials of modern tires are synthetic rubber, natural rubber, fabric and wire, along with other compound chemicals…

The first practical pneumatic tire was made by John Boyd Dunlop while working as a veterinarian in May Street, Belfast, Ireland in 1887 for his son’s bicycle, in an effort to prevent the headaches his son had while riding on rough roads… In terms of materials, the vulcanization of natural rubber is credited to Charles Goodyear and Robert William Thomson. Synthetic rubbers were invented in the laboratories of Bayer in the 1920s. Today, over 1 billion tires are produced annually in over 400 tire factories…

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or WW2), was a global war that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved a vast majority of the world’s nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in military units… Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it resulted in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities. These deaths make World War II by far the deadliest conflict in all of human history.

Although the Empire of Japan was already at war with the Republic of China in 1937, the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and most of the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Germany set out to establish a large empire in Europe. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or subdued much of continental Europe. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the nominally neutral Soviet Union fully or partially invaded, occupied and annexed territories of its six European neighbours, including Poland. The United Kingdom and its Commonwealth remained the only major force continuing the fight against the Axis, with battles taking place in North Africa as well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest land theatre of war in history, which tied down the major part of the Axis’ military forces for the rest of the war. In December 1941, the Empire of Japan, which aimed to dominate East Asia and Indochina, joined the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the West Pacific.

The Axis advance was stopped in 1942, after Japan lost a series of naval battles and European Axis troops were defeated in North Africa and, decisively, at Stalingrad. In 1943, with a series of German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Fascist Italy, and American victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. The war in Europe ended with the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. During 1944 and 1945 the United States defeated the Japanese Navy and captured key West Pacific islands, dropping atomic bombs on the country as the invasion of the Japanese archipelago became imminent. The Soviet Union then followed through on negotitations by declaring war on Japan and invading Manchuria. The Empire of Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, ending the war in Asia and cementing the total victory of the Allies over the Axis…

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