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Chief Loretto Perfectus Walsh (1896-1925) First woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy First woman to serve as Chief Petty Officer Birth: April 22, 1896, in Olyphant, PA Death: August 17, 1925, in White Haven, PA Burial: St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Olyphant, PA Branch of Service: United States Naval Reserve (USNR) Rate/Rank: Chief Yeoman (F) Dates of Service: March 21, 1917 – August 7, 1919 Awards: World War I Victory Medal Occupation: Stenographer Spouse: Frederick Bowman Chief Loretto Perfectus Walsh, 1917 Early LifeThe daughter of James J. Walsh and Catherine Cummings Walsh, Loretto Perfectus Walsh was born on April 22, 1896,...

Here's a way overdue and exciting update on the BMC Toys Plastic Army Women project: It's been an incredibly hectic and productive couple of months since the last blog update. The plastic injection molds went through several rounds of testing and refinement and finally arrived at the factory in Scranton a couple of weeks ago. They were tested again for pre-production and after just a small adjustment to a couple of ejector pins have been happily molding the final production figures.  Here's one of the molds installed with water lines connected and a bin of the initial test factory shots:...

BMC Toys has been able to operate without too much interruption throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Orders within the USA have been arriving with occasional minor delays or tracking errors, but longer delays are expected as we get closer to the holiday shopping season. Shipments to Canada through USPS seem to be arriving in a reasonable amount of time so normal service has resumed. USPS shipments are still experiencing extended delays to overseas locations so I've enabled FedEx as the only option for shipping outside of North America. The cost of International shipping has gone crazy, so I don't recommend it...

There's a lot of exciting Plastic Army Women news to report. The plastic injection molds have been built and will be tested next week. This is a major milestone for the project and gets us a big step closer to final production. Testing is followed by further adjustments and refinements to the molds. This process of testing and refinements may have to be repeated a couple of times.  After all the refinements have been completed the molds get  shipped to the local factory. The factory will install the molds in a plastic injection molding machine for testing and dialing in...

The latest production order of the BMC Toys American Hero product line has just arrived and will be ready for orders this week (March 28th). The order includes restocks of all the popular boxed playsets and just a couple of new color variants: WW2 Iwo Jima Marines Figures 36pc Tan Blockhouse Walls Accessory Tan I'm about to book the next American Hero production order that will include restocks for the holiday season and some new items. One of the new items I'm most excited about is the WW2 German Bunker Shoebox Playset I've been working on for a couple of...