Wasn't the Zero a rejected American design or something? Can you tell me anything about that?
Most of the aircraft was built of a new top-secret 7075 aluminum alloy developed by Sumitomo Metal Industries in 1936. Called Extra Super Duralumin (ESD), it was lighter and stronger than other alloys (e.g., 24S alloy) used at the time, but was more brittle and prone to corrosion which was countered with an anti-corrosion coating applied after fabrication. No armor was provided for the pilot, engine or other critical points of the aircraft, and self-sealing fuel tanks, which were becoming common at the time, were not used. This made the Zero lighter, more maneuverable, and the longest range single engine fighter of WWII, which made it capable of searching out an enemy hundreds of miles away, bringing them to battle, then returning hundreds of miles back to its base or aircraft carrier. However, that trade in weight and contruction also made it prone to catching fire when struck by enemy rounds.
Cool.
Those Corsairs were fine-looking aircraft - that was a non-trivial portion of the show's appeal.
It gave you sense of hope seeing some of the taller buildings, as burned out as some of them were, still standing strong and proud with our soldiers manning guns and artillery pieces setup in them. Because if something that withstood so much pain and suffering can still standing strong, it made you think we can outlast and survive this.
Thanks for sharing, JarlWolf. I often wondered how non-religious people endured that horror that nobody should have to endure.
On another note; even though I was more of a foot slogger later in life, I really like the look of Yak 130. It's mostly a trainee plane but I really like the compact design. I saw some of them recently in an airshow during the October celebrations in formation, was a pretty cool sight.
On another note; even though I was more of a foot slogger later in life, I really like the look of Yak 130. It's mostly a trainee plane but I really like the compact design. I saw some of them recently in an airshow during the October celebrations in formation, was a pretty cool sight.
Btw, that Yak 130 eerily reminds me of the Alpha jet used in NAYO for training purposes. ;)
Btw, that Yak 130 eerily reminds me of the Alpha jet used in NAYO for training purposes. ;)
You mean the F-5 "Freedom Fighters" ( there's a cold war name if there ever was one ) / T-38 Talon trainer
You mean the F-5 "Freedom Fighters" ( there's a cold war name if there ever was one ) / T-38 Talon trainer?
The F-5 Phantoms made the most smoke by far.The Phantom was F-4. The F-5 was Freedom Fighter (A/B) or Tiger II (E/F).
The gunner must have had some impressive goggles to do that at all. Good way to lose a head, too.
I do love the Russians - they're clever at reverse-engineering, and they do some first-rate design work of their own when they're on their game.
-And I don't know who's to blame, but I hear some of those early MiG designs were sweet marvels of good performance and simple design.
He claimed he was being oppressed or something...
Artifacts Ahoy! Old Cannon, Saddam's Gold AK-47 Among Naval Treasureshttp://news.yahoo.com/artifacts-ahoy-old-cannon-saddams-gold-ak-47-095850996.html (http://news.yahoo.com/artifacts-ahoy-old-cannon-saddams-gold-ak-47-095850996.html)
LiveScience.com
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer 13 hours ago
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A close view of a gold-plated AK-47 captured in Iraq.
The U.S. Navy is organizing its deep archives — and highlighting bizarre artifacts such as a gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle and a mini-cannon dating back more than three centuries.
The Collection Management Division of the Naval History and Heritage Command is conducting an "artifact baseline reset," a detailed process that involves combing through the entire naval archives to make sure each item is correctly labeled, catalogued and preserved. Most of these items are not on public display, but part of the process includes photographing each artifact and putting nearly every photo online. The result is a fascinating array of items, from guns and ammunition to medals and even model ships.
"Our goal is to see more of our artifacts being used to illustrate stories about the Navy's history and heritage, and to have these images available to the public once they are all digitized," Karen France, the curator branch head of the division, said in a statement. [See Photos of the Naval Artifacts (http://www.livescience.com/45936-weird-artifacts-naval-archives.html)]
Curious collection
The Navy's collection includes artifacts from many of the country's conflicts, including medals from the Revolutionary War, a case of nastily sharp tools that were used to perform amputations during the Civil War, and even a conch-shell lamp painted with an image of the USS Enhance MSO 437, a mine-sweeping ship that was launched in 1952.
The jewel of the collection, however, is the Navy's set of historic weapons, France said. This collection dates back to the late 1800s, when Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren set up the Navy's first research and development program. Dahlgren liked having an archive of old weapons for reference when inventing new ones.
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Julie Kowalsky holds up an experimental minigun designed by Capt. John A. Dahlgren. This mini-machine gun never went into production.
"We have weapons that are pre-American Revolution to current operations, and that collection also includes weapons made for the Navy, its allies and adversaries," France said.
Among the oldest weapons is "San Bruno," a 6-pound (2.7 kilograms) bronze cannon cast in 1686 for King Charles II of Spain. The cannon was named after an 11th-century monk and scholar, Saint Bruno.
Another oddity in the collection is a gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle from Iraq, likely used in formal ceremonies under dictator Saddam Hussein. U.S. forces seized the gun during the Iraq War.
Military experiments
Other weapons in the collection were designed for the Navy itself. These include a .69 caliber percussion rifle designed by Dahlgren himself and an experimental mini-machine gun that never reached the production stage.
Some items in the archive are decidedly low-tech, such as a ceramic grenade taken from Japan during World War II. These grenades were made near the end of the war, when metals were scarce. Artifacts from the Vietnam War include a left sandal, made from an old car tire, which was worn by a Vietcong soldier.
Several items in the collection reflect recent history. The archive holds a crumpled laptop that survived the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon, as well as fragments of stone and window glass from the building.
UK's Royal Air Force Recreates Iconic D-Day Photoshttp://news.yahoo.com/uks-royal-air-force-recreates-iconic-d-day-150344139.html (http://news.yahoo.com/uks-royal-air-force-recreates-iconic-d-day-150344139.html)
LiveScience.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer 26 minutes ago
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A wartime Mustang aircraft from 2 (Army Cooperation) Squadron in flight (library image).
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An RAF Tornado GR4 flies over the Normandy coast ahead of the D-Day 70th anniversary commemorations.
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Top: RAPTOR electro-optical image from a modern-day Tornado GR4 and bottom: F-24 photographic mosaic created from a Mustang sortie in 1944 during the D-Day landings.
In honor of this month's 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, pilots from Britain's Royal Air Force recreated the first images taken of the fateful landings on the beaches of Normandy by their counterparts during World War II.
Two Tornado jets used modern technology to recreate the images of the French beaches Gold, Juno, Utah and Sword, where the Allies landed on June 6, 1944. On that day, Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, flying a 2 (AC) Squadron Mustang, snapped the first pictures of the D-Day landings. Two other aircraft, piloted by Flight Lieutenant R. H. G. Weighill and Flying Officer H. J. Shute, were also flying overhead at the moment when the Allies first landed on the Normandy beaches, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence.
The squadron flew 36 sorties, or single-aircraft missions, on D-Day in order to monitor for naval bombardment. Almost 70 years later, RAF Wing Commander Jez Holmes flew one of the Tornados over France.
"After imaging the D-Day beaches from 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) using the same type of reconnaissance pod that we were flying with in Afghanistan only a fortnight ago, we flew down the beaches at 1,000 feet (300 meters), replicating Air Commodore Geddes' flight," Holmes told the U.K. Ministry of Defence. "It is difficult to imagine the apocalyptic vision that [Commodore Geddes] was faced with."
During World War II, the British squadron took these images using large, bulky cameras attached to the bottom of the aircraft. More than 30 flights would have been required to produce a panorama of the beaches of Normandy. Today, these images can be captured in a single flight, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Today, Tornado jets are equipped with a suite of precision-guided weapons and some of the best reconnaissance sensors, including the RAPTOR (short for reconnaissance airborne pod for Tornado), which can read the time on the face of London's iconic Big Ben clock from the Isle of Wight, located nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.
The 70th anniversary of D-Day falls on Friday, June 6.
Cunning Krauts back then? ;)
Rusty, do you get into historical minis? That seems to be the rage down here and has chased off any RPGs that used to be dominant. Sad, too. The RPGers were much better partiers than the war gamers.
I have seen A LOT of naval combat minis battles. Particularly WW2 and 1700s era wooden. Mostly WW2.
Is the battlefield preserved? Is there a cemetery?
With all of the wars fought in Belgium, I wouldn't think they could afford to preserve historical space. Weren't the WW I battlefields pretty much leveled and planted?
that said, I am thinking of attending Bayou Wars if I can get around having my own minis. I really need to get some old fashioned gaming going. Even if this means getting with the times.
I heard someone is going to set up some massive naval Battle of Midway with folks managing different groups of ships. You would be acting basically like the old fashioned Commodores (rear admiral lower half now).
Those tables they bring are friggin HUGE!!!
The Nazi smart bomb that inspired China's most dangerous weaponhttp://theweek.com/article/index/264760/the-nazi-smart-bombs-that-inspired-chinas-most-dangerous-weapon (http://theweek.com/article/index/264760/the-nazi-smart-bombs-that-inspired-chinas-most-dangerous-weapon)
The rise and fall of Nazi anti-ship missiles offer lessons for the U.S. and China alike
THE WEEK
By Michael Peck, War is Boring | July 31, 2014
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Smart bombs pushed the war into a new era. (Michael Nicholson/Corbis)
What is that strange bomb in the sky?
That's what the sailors of the Italian battleship Roma must have wondered in the final moments before they died.
Naval warfare changed on Sept. 9, 1943. Dictator Benito Mussolini had been deposed, the new Italian government was abandoning a lost war and its doomed Nazi ally and the Italian fleet was sailing to Malta to surrender. But the habitually treacherous Nazis, who had always suspected their Italian allies of similar trickery, detected the Italian ships leaving port.
The Luftwaffe dispatched a force of Dornier Do-217 bombers to deal with the Italian ships.
As the bombers approached, the Italians were unsure whether the Germans meant to attack or just intimidate. They were relieved to see the German aircraft appear to drop their bombs into the ocean. Perhaps with uncharacteristic gentleness, the Germans were just firing warning shots.
But then something unexpected happened. Instead of plunging straight down into the sea, the bombs headed toward the Italian ships. One slammed into Roma's hull, exited out the other side and exploded in the water, destroying an engine room.
A second bomb penetrated the deck into the forward magazine, where shells for the ship's big 15-inch guns were stored. The battleship exploded, killing 1,253 members of her crew.
The age of the ship-killing missile had dawned.
The first anti-ship smart bombs, invented like so many other weapons by the dark scientists of Nazi Germany, were not just deadly. They seemed inhuman. A "Wellsian weapon from Mars," was how one newspaper reporter described an early attack.
Smart bombs have become so common in modern warfare that we take them for granted. Yet 70 years ago, a bomb that could chase a ship seemed as exotic and frightening as the muskets of the conquistadors must have seemed to the Aztecs. The Germans "made them [the missiles] turn corners," an Allied sailor complained.
Anti-ship guided missiles have been used for decades now. Missiles sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967 and the British destroyer Sheffield in 1982. Today, China hopes that weapons such as the DF-21D ballistic missile, with a range of a thousand miles, can sink U.S. aircraft carriers and thus neutralize American naval power in the Pacific.
But these weapons did not materialize overnight in a Beijing weapons lab. They are the fruits of Nazi research from more than 70 years ago.
A smart bomb named Fritz
The weapon that sank Roma was known by the very German name Fritz-X. It was not a powered missile but a 3,000-pound armor-piercing gravity bomb meant to be dropped from a bomber at 20,000 feet.
Battleships were armored to survive multiple bomb hits — in 1944, the Japanese super-battleship Musashi was hit by 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes before sinking. But a bomb dropped from high enough should have enough kinetic energy, imparted by gravity, to smash through thick deck armor.
The problem was hitting the battleship in the first place. High-flying bombers in the 1940s had scant chance of hitting a warship frantically weaving through the water at 30 knots. That meant aircraft had to come in low to attack, which made them easier targets for the ship's antiaircraft guns and also robbed the bombs of kinetic energy.
The 11-foot-long Fritz-X, slung under the wing of a bomber, had radio-controlled fins that could change the munition's glide path. A tail-mounted flare enabled the operator on the bomber to track and adjust the weapon's course. Tests showed that 50 percent of bombs would land within five meters of the target — astounding accuracy for the 1940s.
Does this sound familiar? It should, because the concept endures in modern weapon such as America's Joint Direct Attack Munition, a kit that makes dumb bombs smart by adding fins and satellite guidance.
The Hs 293 missile
The Fritz-X was an awesome battleship-killer, but only under the right conditions. A glide bomb has only gravity rather than a rocket motor for propulsion. The steerable fins on the Fritz-X could adjust its trajectory only slightly, meaning the bomb had to be dropped within three miles of the target.
While deadly to heavily armored warships, the armor-piercing Fritz-X was actually too much bomb for small ships. It would slice all the way through unarmored destroyers and transports and explode in the sea.
The Nazis had another weapon, a genuine anti-ship missile called the Hs 293. The 12-foot-long weapon looked like a miniature airplane with a rocket motor slung underneath.
The radio-controlled Hs 293 could be launched from 10 miles away, out of range of shipboard anti-aircraft guns. Its 2,300-pound high-explosive warhead detonated on contact with a lightly armored ship.
"In a typical deployment, the attacking aircraft would approach the target to within 12 kilometers (6 miles), then fly a parallel course in the opposite direction," writes Martin Bollinger, author of Wizards and Warriors: The Development and Defeat of Radio Controlled Glide Bombs of the Third Reich.
"When the ship was about 45 degrees off the forward right side, the aircraft launched the HS-293," Bollinger continues. "The Walther liquid-fueled rocket, running for 10 or 12 seconds, would accelerate to about 600 kilometers per hour (325 knots), at which point the operator had turned the missile into the target."
"Once the rocket burned out," Bollinger explains, "the missile continued with its forward momentum, maintaining a glide by virtue of short wings, until the operator steered it into the target."
The electric razor missile defense
The British and Americans were gravely worried. By the fall of 1943, Allied forces had captured North Africa and Sicily, the U-boat threat was diminishing and the Luftwaffe faded before growing Allied air strength. Now the Brits and Americans could focus on the dangerous task of landing their armies on the European continent.
First they had to thwart the new German ship-killers. The Allies could mostly protect the vulnerable amphibious invasion fleets from regularGerman air attacks. But if German aircraft could stand off at a distance and lob bombs with pinpoint accuracy onto the soft-skinned transports and their escorts, then the Third Reich might stave off invasion.
Fortunately, a disgruntled German scientist had warned the Allies about the smart bombs in 1939, and Ultra code-breakers had intercepted German communications regarding the weapons.
The British outfitted the sloop Egret with special equipment to identify the radio frequencies used to control the German munitions. Some 13 days before Roma was sunk, Egret joined a convoy sailing within range of German bombers based in France.
As hoped, the Germans attacked the convoy with Hs 293 missiles. Unfortunately, one of the ships sunk was Egret.
The Allied landing at the southern Italian port of Salerno on Sept. 3, 1943 was a wake-up call for alliance. The Germans counterattacked and almost drove the Anglo-American troops into the sea. Gunfire from Allied warships saved the landing force … and the entire operation.
But at a terrible cost. The Luftwaffe launched more than 100 Fritz-X and Hs 293 weapons. A Fritz-X struck the famous British battleship Warspite and put the vessel out of commission for months.
Another Fritz-X hit a gun turret on the U.S. light cruiser Savannah and "penetrated through the two-inch armored surface of the turret, tore through three more decks and exploded in the ammunition handling room deep in the bowels of the ship," Bollinger writes.
Miraculously, Savannah survived — but 197 of her crew did not. German guided weapons sank and badly damaged around a dozen ships off Salerno.
Convoys sailing the Atlantic and Mediterranean also suffered. Convoy KMF-26, whose escort included included two U.S. destroyers equipped with the first anti-missile jammers, was attacked off the Algerian coast on Nov. 26, 1943.
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(Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
An Hs 293 slammed into the troop transport Rohna, carrying U.S. soldiers to India. At least 1,149 passengers and crew died in what Bollinger describes as the "greatest loss of life of U.S. service members at sea in a single ship in the history of the United States."
It was not until the 1960s that U.S. authorities even admitted that Rohna had been sunk by a guided missile rather than conventional weapons.
Rumor spread among desperate sailors that switching on electric razors would jam the radio frequencies of the "Chase Me Charlies," as the British called the guided munitions.
An urgent and massive anti-missile effort ensued. Ships were told to lay down smokescreens so Germans aircrews couldn't see their targets — and to take high-speed evasive action under attack. But how could anchored transports unloading troops and supplies, or warships providing naval gunfire, maneuver at high speed?
The Allies pinned their hopes on electronic warfare, another class of modern weaponry originating in World War II. The British were already dropping aluminum foil decoys to jam German radars. Less well-known are the Allies' intensive efforts to disrupt German anti-ship missiles.
Allied agents interrogated captured Luftwaffe aircrew. Recovery teams sifted through missile fragments from damaged ships and examined remnants of bombers left behind on airfields in Italy.
The most intensive work took place in labs across Britain and America including the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where scientists worked feverishly to jam the radio frequencies used by German missile controllers. operators to control the missiles.
The British chose barrage jamming of multiple frequencies, while the Americans opted for what they considered a more efficient technique of jamming only specific frequencies. The U.S. installed the first jammers on two destroyers in September 1943.
The first anti-missile jammers were primitive and cumbersome by today's standards. American equipment required multiple operators and devices to identify the correct frequency and match the jammer to the frequency — and do it all in 10 or 20 seconds before the missile hit its target.
Early jammers didn't work. Based on faulty intelligence, the Allies guessed that the German missiles were controlled by High Frequency signals under 30 MHz. The German actually used the Very High Frequency band of around 50 MHz.
The missiles kept coming.
Yet by August 1944, the Germans missile campaign was over. Some of the last Hs 293s were not even launched at ships, but against French bridges used by Patton's advancing tank columns. Less than a year after its dramatic debut, the German smart bomb threat disappeared.
No wonder weapon
It's hard to estimate losses caused by the guided weapons. German air raids saturated Allied defenses by combining smart bomb attacks with conventional dive bomber and torpedo assaults, so it is always not clear which weapon hit a ship.
The Allies also tried to maintain morale by attributing guided weapon losses to conventional weapons.
Bollinger counts 903 aircraft sorties that carried around 1,200 guided weapons. Of those 1,200, almost a third were never fired because the launch aircraft aborted or were intercepted.
Of the remaining 700 weapons, another third malfunctioned. Of the approximately 470 whose guidance systems worked, at most 51 — or just over 10 percent — actually hit their targets or landed close enough to damage them.
Bollinger calculates that just 17 to 24 ships were sunk and 14 to 21 damaged.
"At most, only one weapon in 24 dispatched from a German airfield scored a hit or damage-causing near miss," Bollinger writes. "Only about one in 14 of the missiles launched achieved similar success, and at most one in nine of those known to respond to operator guidance was able to hit the target or cause significant damage via a near-miss."
"This is very different from the 50-percent hit rate experienced during operational testing," Bollinger points out.
To be fair, the technology was new. There were no lasers or fire control computers. The Fritz-X and Hs 293 were manually guided all the way. Operators had to track both missile and target through cloud, fog and smoke, without the benefit of modern thermal sights.
"It was virtually impossible to hit a ship that was steaming more than 20 knots and could fire back," Bollinger tells War is Boring. "Almost all of the hits were against slow and/or defenseless targets."
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(Berliner Verlag/Archiv/dpa/Corbis)
Bollinger hypothesizes that a phenomenon called "multi-path interference," unknown at the time, may also have hampered the performance of the Hs 293. Radio command signals sent from the bomber to the missile might have overshot the weapon, bounced off the ocean surface below and interfered with the missile guidance signal.
The early jammers were ineffective, but Bollinger believes that by the time of the Normandy assault in June 1944, the equipment had improved enough to offer a measure of protection — and partly explains why German missiles performed poorly later in the war.
Strangely, while the Germans took measures to counteract Allied jamming of their air defense radars, they never really addressed the possibility that their anti-ship missiles were also being jammed.
It's wrong to blame the bomb for the faults of the bomber. The real cause for the failure of German smart bombs was that by the time they were introduced in late 1943, the Luftwaffe was almost a spent force.
Already thinly spread supporting the hard-pressed armies in Russia and the West, the German air arm suffered relentless bombardment by U.S. B-17s and B-24s. The Third Reich could never deploy more than six bomber squadrons at a time equipped with the Fritz-X and Hs 293.
When the Luftwaffe ruled the skies over Poland and France in 1939, this might have been enough. By late 1943, a guided-bomb run was practically suicide.
German bombers making daylight attacks had to run a gauntlet of fighters protecting Allied ships in the daytime. Night attacks were marginally safer for the bombers but still exposed them to radar-equipped British and American night fighters. The Allies aggressively bombed any airfield suspected of harboring the smart bombers.
"Allied fighter air cover was by far the most important factor," Bollinger tells War is Boring. "Not only did it lead to large numbers of glide-bombing aircraft getting shot down, it also forced the Germans to shift missions from daylight to dusk or nighttime. This in itself lead to a major and measurable reduction in accuracy."
Many raids would cost the Germans a few bombers. By the standards of the thousand-bomber raids over Germany, this was trifling. But for the handful of specially trained and equipped Luftwaffe squadrons, it was catastrophic.
Of the 903 aircraft sorties, Bollinger estimates that in 112 of them, the bombers were lost before launching their weapons. Another 21 were shot down or crashed on the return flight, for an overall loss ratio of 15 percent.
"Each time a pilot departed on a glide bomb mission, he had almost a one-in-seven chance of never returning in that aircraft safely," Bollinger says. "Put another way, the probability that a pilot would return safely after each of the first 10 missions was only 20 percent."
Learning from history
The rise and fall of the Nazi anti-ship missiles offers lessons for the U.S. and its opponents in the present day. American planners worry that smart anti-ship weapons in the hands of China, smaller nations like Iran or even insurgent groups could threaten U.S. warships and amphibious forces.
One lesson from the 1940s is that passive defenses such as jamming have limited utility against access denial weapons. The best defense is to destroy the launch vehicle before it can fire. "Kill the archer" is the term the Pentagon uses.
China stands to learn the most profound lesson. For all the power and terror of the German anti-ship weapons, they could not compensate for the inability of the German navy and Luftwaffe to confront the Allied navies on the open seas.
Smart bombs did worry Allied commanders, but the new munitions couldn't prevent the amphibious invasions of Italy and France. Chinese missiles might disrupt U.S. operations, but they are no substitute for countering a powerful navy with an effective navy of your own.
Perhaps the biggest lesson of all is that what is new is old. With each passing year, the weapons of World War II seem closer to the era of Gettysburg and Jutland than the high-tech warfare of today. That perception can encourage an unjustified smugness.
The problems modern navies and air forces struggle with — anti-ship guided missiles, jamming, operations in contested airspace — were the same that German pilots and Allied sailors faced.
The terror that the crew of an Italian battleship, British cruiser or American merchant ship felt at the sight of German missiles might not differ from what a U.S. destroyer or carrier crew might feel while being targeted by Chinese ballistic missiles.
The US government considered using the Skyhook to rescue the Dali [sic] Lama from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959, but he was extracted by yak instead.;lol
Navy's Secret to Building a Stealth Ship (Op-Ed)http://news.yahoo.com/navys-secret-building-stealth-ship-op-ed-212101841.html (http://news.yahoo.com/navys-secret-building-stealth-ship-op-ed-212101841.html)
LiveScience.com
By Nikhil Gupta and Steven Zeltmann, NYU 55 minutes ago
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USS Zumwalt Navy Destroyer
Nikhil Gupta is an associate professor and Steven Zeltmann is a student researcher in the Composite Materials and Mechanics Laboratoryof the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at New York University's Polytechnic School of Engineering. Gupta and Zeltmann contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The USS Zumwalt, the United States Navy's latest and largest destroyer, is a stark contrast to the ironclad ships of old. The gray angular deckhouse may bring back memories of Civil War-era battleships, but the technology of the deckhouse and what lies inside is anything but old-fashioned.
The Zumwalt, or DDG-1000, is the first of three ships of the Zumwalt class to be completed. This project is a huge undertaking by the U.S. Navy and represents the single largest line item in its budget. But the new technologies being developed as part of the program will make the Zumwalt class years ahead of any other current warship — one profound example is the deckhouse material.
The Zumwalt makes extensive use of composite materials in the deckhouse structure — not only to make the structure lighter, but also to control the ship's radar profile and achieve a high level of stealth.
One of the most important and advanced composites used in the deckhouse is a material known as syntactic foam, which incorporates hollow particles that entrap air in a polymer. The hollow particles are microscopic, sometimes as small as 10 microns (about one-tenth the thickness of a human hair), and made of stiff materials like glass. The hollow, particle-filled polymer composite of the Zumwalt's deckhouse acts like a lightweight sponge, but one that doesn't absorb water because the pores are enclosed inside the glass particles. The glass shell of the particles also reinforces the voids, and creates a material that is lightweight, but strong.
Syntactic foams have already seen widespread use in civilian and commercial deep-sea vehicles, including the remote-operated submersible currently being used in the search for MH370, or the Challenger craft used by James Cameron in the solo dive to the deepest part of the ocean. This is because syntactic foams overcome two of the major disadvantages of traditional polymer foams: low stiffness and high water absorption.
But in the Zumwalt, the choice of syntactic foam was not based just on its light weight and low water absorption. The ship makes use of one other unique property of syntactic foam: its highly tailorable radio-transmission characteristics. The Zumwalt uses more than 3,500 cubic feet of syntactic foam to achieve the radar profile of a small fishing boat, despite being the largest destroyer in the Navy's fleet. The syntactic foams used in much of the deckhouse are designed to absorb and attenuate radar signals rather than reflect them, thereby confusing the enemy's tracking systems.
It's easy to notice that the complex radar and antenna structure common to all Navy ship decks is absent on the Zumwalt. The antennae are enclosed within the ship's "invisible" syntactic-foam deckhouse. The foam is designed to transmit the signals from the ship's own radar systems, but instead of having a complex shape on the exterior of the ship — which is easy to spot on radar — the clean-slab sides mask the profile of the antennae from enemy radar.
Research on syntactic foams and other advanced functional materials is essential to keeping the U.S. naval fleet ahead of the competition. Our lab works closely with the Navy to develop new materials and to gain a greater understanding of how the existing materials function at the microscopic level. We're also exploring how nanoscale fillers, like carbon nanofiber in syntactic foams,might improve the materials' strength and electromagnetic radiation interference signatures —possibly for use in the next generation of advanced ships.
SOUTH GLENS FALLS [NY] -- The three blasts that shook up residents in Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties were caused by 12-pound Civil War-era cannon balls — 186 of them — destroyed in controlled detonations Tuesday in a quarry in South Glens Falls.
The cannon balls were not a major explosive threat, authorities said Wednesday, but they had no explanation for why the public was not warned about the controlled blasts — three booms moments apart at about 5:30 p.m. — that rattled buildings and startled people for miles.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Kieran Dollard of the 725th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit based in Fort Drumm said the cannon balls were dug up at the Watervliet Arsenal, the nation’s oldest arsenal, many years ago and were taken Tuesday from the cast iron warehouse where the Watervliet Arsenal Museum is being revamped.
Earlier reports stated incorrectly that Civil War-era explosives had washed up on the bank of the Hudson River. The arsenal is located on the west bank of the Hudson.
The 725th Explosive Ordnance Disposal team was called in. The Army team contacted the State Police Bomb Disposal Unit to help find a location where the softball-sized cannon rounds could be safely blown up.
“Some contractors were there working trying to clean up some stuff for the museum, and they wanted them out of the museum,” Dollard said.
He said the cannon balls were transported in a specialized trailer to the quarry in South Glens Falls. They were divided into three piles for detonation.
“There’s not a lot of explosives in them, maybe some black powder residue, which is dangerous. They can still be hazardous,” Dollard said. “There’s enough to cause damage and hurt people, but they were not major explosives.”
In 19th century warfare, the balls would have been used in 12-pound cannons, called Napoleon cannons during the American Civil War, when they were widely used.
Dollard said the quarry, located off Ferry Boulevard in the village, was the safest, nearest place to detonate the cannon balls.
Residents reported windows rattling and houses shaking.
Denny Kobor, who lives on Moreau Drive near the quarry, said he is used to hearing low thunderous blasting from the quarry, but the three explosions Tuesday sounded “more shrill.”
“The pit’s right there, so you hear it all the time, but this was different. That sounded like an explosion,” Kobor said. “I thought a house blew up, to tell you the truth.”
During the explosions, Kobor was headed over to his son’s house on Harrison Avenue to meet his wife and check on their son’s two dogs
“They were flying all around,” Kobor said of the reactions of the dogs — a husky puppy and German shepherd and Irish setter mix.
“I told my wife if we hear a fourth one, I’m getting in my car and going to find out what that is,” Kobor said.
The only role played by State Police was finding a safe place for the detonation, according to State Police spokeswoman Darcy Wells. After the blasts, dispatch centers in all three counties were bombarded with calls from concerned residents. The blasts shook windows in houses across a wide region, including South Glens Falls, Glens Falls and Queensbury.
South Glens Falls Village Police Chief Kevin Judd said his department wasn’t warned about the blasts.
People who live near the quarry are used to hearing blasts from the quarry, “but they’re usually during the middle of the day, and they’re not as loud as the ones we heard last night,” Judd said.
Darlene Winslow, who lives in Midtown Apartments on Riverview Street, said her neighbors, many of them elderly, were scared when the building shook from the force of the explosions.
“Everyone came out of their apartments ... It was scary because we didn’t know if we were having an earthquake or if something close by blew up,” Winslow said.
Wells said she could not explain why the public wasn’t alerted, but she said State Police have a protocol of notifying 911 centers about controlled demolitions, and that was followed in Warren and Saratoga counties.
“This way, if anyone called, they’d have an answer right away as to what was happening,” Wells said.
She said State Police haven’t used the South Glens Falls quarry in the past for its own controlled detonations. She said State Police don’t generally disclose the locations of controlled detonations, which are usually conducted in less populated areas.
Dollard said he didn’t know why the public wasn’t notified, but said that’s not his team’s responsibility.
“We can’t take care of it (controlled detonations) without permission from the local authorities, which was the State Police Bomb Disposal Unit in this case,” Dollard said.
The State Police Bomb Disposal Unit often assists other agencies with calls to deal with improvised explosive devices, recovered military ordnance, commercial explosives and fireworks throughout the upstate area.
History 2.0: Civil War Journals & Historic Letters Go Digitalhttp://news.yahoo.com/history-2-0-civil-war-journals-historic-letters-134001119.html (http://news.yahoo.com/history-2-0-civil-war-journals-historic-letters-134001119.html)
LiveScience.com
By Laura Geggel, Staff Writer 59 minutes ago
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The public can help the Smithsonian digitize historical documents online, such as the notes Martin Moynihan made on gulls in South America during the 1950s.
Armchair historians with a knack for reading scratchy handwriting can now help the Smithsonian Institution with a giant effort to preserve thousands of historical letters and journals online.
The newly launched Transcription Center invites the public to read and digitally transcribe documents ranging from Civil War journals to notes on bumblebee specimens to letters from famous artists, such as Mary Cassatt and Grandma Moses.
"We are thrilled to invite the public to be our partners in the creation of knowledge to help open our resources for professional and casual researchers to make new discoveries," Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough said in a statement. "For years, the vast resources of the Smithsonian were powered by the pen; they can now be powered by the pixel."
Once the documents are transcribed online, anyone with a historical penchant or research goal will be able to access them on the Smithsonian's website (https://transcription.si.edu/).
The Smithsonian has thousands of handwritten texts that cannot be decoded by computers. Only careful transcription by human volunteers can make these notes readable and searchable online, experts said.
This past year, the Smithsonian demonstrated the power of such crowdsourcing, when nearly 1,000 volunteers helped the Transcription Center tackle more than 13,000 pages of transcription. Among the historical documents that were digitized were field reports written by one of the Monuments Men who rescued artwork during World War II. Once a document is transcribed and uploaded online, another volunteer reviews the words and a Smithsonian expert certifies it.
Another project from this beta-test phase included the digitization of notes on almost 45,000 bumblebee specimens. Each note had information about the bees and the date and location of their collection, according to Smithsonian representatives. Researchers interested in studying the rapid decline of bees over the past few decades can access this information online, which may help them understand the bees' population history and decline.
Within two weeks, volunteers had also typed up the 121-page diary of Earl Shaffer, the first documented man to walk the Appalachian Trail. Hikers, naturalists and researchers can now read the journal online without handling its delicate pages.
Volunteers interested in joining the Transcription Center project can register online (https://transcription.si.edu/user/register) and browse a range of texts on art, history, culture and science.
Book Talk - Retracing the steps of the Great War's 'Trigger'http://news.yahoo.com/book-talk-retracing-steps-great-wars-trigger-151951303.html (http://news.yahoo.com/book-talk-retracing-steps-great-wars-trigger-151951303.html)
Reuters
By Ed Stoddard 1 hour ago
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A man takes pictures as he is reflected in poster with of Gavrilo Princip before a ceremony in East Sarajevo, June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - In June 1914, a Bosnian Serb teenager named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, setting in motion a train of events that led to the start of World War One.
Cape Town-based author and adventurer Tim Butcher retraces Princip's steps in his just-published book "The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War."
Starting from Princip's remote home village in present-day Bosnia, Butcher hiked through rugged wolf and bear country and even managed to pursue some trout in his quest to unlock the assassin's secrets.
Along the way, he enjoyed central European peasant hospitality and found previously unknown school reports for Princip in obscure archives where historians had failed to peer.
Butcher argues that Princip was not the Serbian nationalist he has been portrayed as, but a patriot striving for a greater Yugoslavia.
His journey ended in Sarajevo, where Princip fired the shots that changed the course of 20th century history.
Butcher, who covered the Balkan conflicts as a reporter in the 1990s for the Daily Telegraph and has previously written two adventure travel books set in Africa, spoke to Reuters by phone about his new work and his historical quarry.
Q: What motivated you to write the book?
A: The primary motivation is still not understanding where the First World War comes from, how we came to lose so many millions of people around the world. That's really the genesis of this book. I wanted to go back to the founding sequence of the First World War narrative.
Q: As a South Africa-based writer, what lessons do you think this country's transition offers to places such as the Balkans?
A: I think it's a lesson of hope. In the Balkans, we haven't had many Mandelas. Having worked as a journalist in both environments, the Balkans and in South Africa, I know which place has divisions that are more charged. And that's the Balkans. Which place thinks more about tomorrow than yesterday, that's South Africa.
Q: How do you think Princip would have reacted to the events he unleashed if, say, he had lived to see Tito's Yugoslavia after World War Two?
A: A complicated question because, of course, he unleashed events that led to world war ... I think he would have been shocked, and let's be absolutely honest: Princip is not the cause of the First World War, he is but the trigger. The cause is about the strategic rivalries between the great powers, the willingness to go to war. I mean, they wilfully accepted an assassination on a street corner in the Balkans as a reason to go to war in Belgium, for crying out loud. How insane is that?
I argue very strongly in this, and I think he has been misunderstood by history, (that) he was a Yugoslav nationalist. And people have missed that, partly because they're ignorant, partly because they haven't done the research, and partly because Yugoslavia is out of fashion. It became pretty unfashionable in the 1990s. But if you take those goggles off from the 1990s and put on goggles from 100 years ago, Yugoslavia was a very romantic, positive, utopian idea. So he had a lot of romance about him, to be brutally honest. I don't think he would have been totally into Tito. But he would have appreciated what Tito did, which was to bring everyone together.
Q: What is your next book project?
A: I can't really say at the moment. I'm trying to work out the right balance of history and travel.
(Editing by Ayla Jean Yackley and Mark Trevelyan)
Dig at Colonial battleground turns up artifactshttp://news.yahoo.com/dig-colonial-battleground-turns-artifacts-152852094.html (http://news.yahoo.com/dig-colonial-battleground-turns-artifacts-152852094.html)
Associated Press
By CHRIS CAROLA 18 minutes ago
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Volunteer Heather Engwer of Lake George examines an artifact during an archaeological field school dig at Lake George Battlefield Park on Friday, July 11, 2014, in Lake George, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) — An archaeological dig at a Colonial military site in the southern Adirondacks of New York has turned up thousands of artifacts, from butchered animal bones to uniform buttons, along with a lime kiln used to make mortar for a British fort that was never completed.
The six-week project that ended Friday at the Lake George Battlefield Park also uncovered a section of a stone foundation and brick floor of a small building likely constructed alongside a barracks in 1759, during the French and Indian War.
"That's the sort of clear-cut structure archaeologists love to see," said David Starbuck, leader of the State University of New York at Adirondack's annual archaeology field school.
Starbuck said the majority of the artifacts found were bones from butchered cattle and pigs, the main food sources for the American provincial soldiers and redcoats manning the wilderness outpost in the 18th century. But the team of some two dozen volunteers and college students conducting the first dig at the park since 2001 also turned up numerous uniform buttons, musket balls, gun flints and pottery shards.
Lake George was the scene of heavy military activity over a 25-year span beginning with the start of the French and Indian War in 1755 and running through the end of the American Revolution. Thousands of American and British soldiers and American Indian warriors passed through the forts built along the lake's southern end, and many of them left stuff behind, either lost or discarded in trash heaps at their encampments.
University of Vermont student Emilee Conroe of Ballston Spa, didn't expect to find much during her two-week stint digging for college credit. She wound up uncovering piles of animal bones and a set of cufflinks that likely belonged to an officer.
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Volunteer Heather Engwer of Lake George removes dirt from an artifact during an archaeological field school dig at Lake George Battlefield Park, Friday, July 11, 2014, in Lake George, N.Y. The summer project is focusing on a site that saw heavy military activity during the 18th century, with American, British, French and American Indian forces battling for control of the region’s waterways. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
"I really came in to just learn about archaeology," said the 19-year-old sophomore. "I expected to find one or two items."
Starbuck said the lime kiln was found next to the ruins of Fort George, located in the park. The British abandoned the fort in mid-construction at the end of the French and Indian War.
Many of the artifacts were found in shallow pits excavated just yards from a road that runs through the state-owned park and connects to another busy road. Clearly visible from both, the excavations drew thousands of visitors from among the throngs that descend on this popular tourist destination every summer, Starbuck said.
Many left with a better understanding of the site's significance in American history, he said.
"One of our goals was to make it a public education project, and we definitely had that," Starbuck said.
The south end of Lake George is about 5 miles from my house :)Well, then you have an advantage in this case.
Sometimes it's neat to know you live near where history was made.I get your point, but even as a USAian, I find it somewhat amusing. If you live in the Old World, there's a lot more history.
If you live in the Old World, there's a lot more history.
Fighter Jets and Drones Practice Rapid-Fire Launcheshttp://news.yahoo.com/fighter-jets-drones-practice-rapid-fire-launches-123601419.html (http://news.yahoo.com/fighter-jets-drones-practice-rapid-fire-launches-123601419.html)
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer 12 hours ago
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The U.S. Navy's unmanned X-47B lands aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
The U.S. Navy recently conducted its first successful tests of drones and jets operating together aboard an aircraft carrier. The test flights, which took place Sunday (Aug. 17) aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, focused on assessing whether unmanned drones could be deployed quickly and safely alongside manned fighter jets.
Despite tight space and time constraints, the X-47B drones and the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets performed well in the tests, according to the U.S. Navy.
In urgent situations, fighter jets must take off and land in quick succession. That means that when one jet is taking off, another is close behind it, shielded from the blast of the first jet's engines by huge metal shields called "jet blast deflectors," according to online defense magazine Breaking Defense. As soon as one jet takes to the air, these metal walls are retracted and the next jet taxis onto the aircraft carrier's catapult.
When landing to refuel, a jet must automatically disconnect from the cables that help it come to a stop. This makes it possible for an aircraft to get out of the way quickly so that another jet can land behind it.
For manned aircraft, the Navy has the precise timing needed to deploy a whole squadron of fighter jets down to science. But in the past, getting a drone to fall into this hectic rhythm has been a challenge, according to Breaking Defense.
"Our goal was to minimize the [X-47B's] time in the landing area and improve the flow with manned aircraft in the landing pattern," said Lt. Cmdr. Brian Hall, the flight test director for the X-47B drones. Hall said that to achieve this goal, the X-47B aircraft, which flew for the first time in 2011, needed a few upgrades.
Most of the X-47B's improvements focused on decreasing the time it takes for the drone to get out of the way of piloted aircraft after landing on the aircraft carrier. This is no easy feat, since a drone has only about 90 seconds to clear the landing area before another aircraft comes speeding down behind it.
For the recent test flights, the drone's operating software was updated, thus speeding up the time it takes for the aircraft to fold its wings and clear the landing area. Other improvements to the physical design of the plane also help move the drone out of the way as quickly as possible.
Getting drones and jetsto work seamlessly and safely together is crucial to the success of the Navy's so-called carrier air wings — naval aviation units comprising aircraft carriers and the different kinds of aircraft they carry — said Capt. Beau Duarte, program manager for the Navy's unmanned carrier aviation office.
"Today, we showed that the X-47B could take off, land and fly in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft while maintaining normal flight-deck operations," Duarte said.
This type of cooperation between drones and jets will be tested several more times, according to a statement from the U.S. Navy. The next challenge includes performing all of these same tasks in the dark of night— a procedure known as "night deck handling."
Beyond Bulletproof: New 'X-Vehicles' Take Stealth to the Extremehttp://news.yahoo.com/beyond-bulletproof-x-vehicles-stealth-extreme-131956978.html (http://news.yahoo.com/beyond-bulletproof-x-vehicles-stealth-extreme-131956978.html)
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer 5 hours ago
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An artistic rendering of what the new generation of armored vehicles might look like under the DARPA X-vehicle guidelines.
Imagine an armored truck that can drive itself, is invisible to enemies and can travel at extreme speeds. That's the type of truck the Pentagon is hoping to develop through its new ground X-vehicle (GXV-T) program.
Ever since the U.S. military started using armored ground vehicles over a century ago, the process for making these transports safer for soldiers has remained more or less unchanged, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the Pentagon tasked with developing new technologies for the military.
The basic formula for building better bulletproof trucks, it seems, is simply adding more armor. But DARPA researchers say this decades-old approach isn't cutting it anymore. Piling on armor makes vehicles heavier and more expensive, and offers little extra protection for soldiers, the agency said. [See what these stealthy armored trucks could look like]
To make ground vehicles both safer and better suited for the battlefield, these machines need to take advantage of other technologies, such as those that can help troops avoid detectionby enemy forces, DARPA said.
"GXV-T's goal is not just to improve or replace one particular vehicle — it's about breaking the 'more armor' paradigm and revolutionizing protection for all armored fighting vehicles," Kevin Massey, a program manager for DARPA, said in a statement.
Massey said that the ground X-vehicle program was inspired in part by the success of DARPA's X-plane programs, which he said have improved the U.S military's aircraft capabilities significantly over the past 60 years.
Based on the same principles of experimental design inherent in the new X-vehicle program, the agency's X-plane programs have given rise to an array of cutting-edge aircraft over the years. DARPA's most recent X-plane program awarded contracts to private companies to build an unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Another recent program is aimed at developing a next generation space plane for both military and civilian use.
"We plan to pursue groundbreaking, fundamental research and development to make future armored fighting vehicles significantly more mobile, effective, safe and affordable," Massey said.
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An artist's rendition of what the new X-vehicle might look like.
Successful proposals for the armored vehicle of the future must achieve the following goals, as outlined by DARPA:
· Reduce vehicle size and weight by 50 percent
· Reduce onboard crew needed to operate the vehicle by 50 percent
· Increase vehicle speed by 100 percent
· Access 95 percent of terrain
· Reduce "signatures" (like noise and infrared) that enable enemies to detect and engage vehicles
DARPA also outlined four areas in which the X-vehicle program presents an opportunity for the development of new technologies. These areas include:
· Better mobility: DARPA defines this as the ability of the armored vehicle to handle diverse off-road terrains, including slopes and different elevations. This ability would require advanced suspensions and different track or wheel configurations.
· Greater agility: Rather than adding more armor to the outside of the vehicle, DARPA wants designers to build a vehicle capable of avoiding threats altogether. The agency is looking for agile machines that can dodge bullets and reposition armor as needed during an attack.
· Crew assistance: The army truck of the future needs sensors and other equipment that keeps track of the vehicle's surroundings keeping people inside the vehicle aware of what's going on outside the vehicle. DARPA is also looking for semi-autonomous control systems that allow the vehicle to drive itself at least part of the time.
· Evading radar: By avoiding enemy detection altogether, future vehicles can get safer without adding armor. The X-vehicle aims to reduce the visible, infrared, acoustic and electromagnetic footprint of these trucks so they can evade enemy radar.
DARPA said it plans to award the first contracts for the X-vehicle program before April 2015. A proposers' day is scheduled for Sept. 5, 2014, at DARPA's offices in Arlington, Virginia.
For some history enthusiasts, World War One tributes go furtherhttp://news.yahoo.com/history-enthusiasts-world-war-one-tributes-further-104637079.html (http://news.yahoo.com/history-enthusiasts-world-war-one-tributes-further-104637079.html)
Reuters
By Sarah Young August 22, 2014 6:46 AM
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Factory landlord Lawrence Taylor poses in the factory he rents to Enfield Speciality Doors in Enfield, north London, August 12, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
LONDON (Reuters) - For some people fascinated by World War One, the poppies and wreath-laying of Remembrance day services and the commemorative events of solemn anniversaries like this year's centenary are not enough.
Lawrence Taylor, a 55-year old businessman, is one of them. He is part of a group of people across Britain who spend their weekends paying tribute to the Great War fallen.
Taylor acts as a senior non-commissioned officer in the Rifles Living History Society, a 35-strong group which stages displays and sometimes mock action at dozens of events in Britain and across the Channel in Belgium and France.
His interest in the "war to end all wars" began at school.
"I asked my headmaster, 'why did we win World War One?' And he said to me 'Taylor, you stupid boy, because we had the better soldiers and the better generals,' and that stuck with me," he told Reuters.
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Factory landlord Lawrence Taylor (L), portraying a Colour Sergeant from the King's Royal Rifle Corps, part of the Rifles Living History Society, performs a drill with Connor Young (R) of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Living History Group as they recreate the life of a First World War soldier at the Eden Valley Museum in Edenbridge in southeast England May 10, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Ten years ago he decided to join the Rifles society.
The group, whose day jobs range from lorry driver to construction manager and nurse, set up camp and get into character, ready to provide crowds with an idea of life on the Western front.
Attention to period detail extends right down to the way men talked to each other in the trenches.
"You have to watch (against) using modern terms like 'guys' - it's blokes, chaps and chums," says Taylor.
When not showing visitors around the traditional army bell tents that they erect at the camp, the group performs marching and gas-mask drills in front of visitors, as well as mounting displays of infantry tactics plus occasional demonstrations of skirmishes using blank ammunition.
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Custom silicone technician Corin Watts, portraying a Lance Corporal in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, part of the Rifles Living History Society, participates in a rifle drill whilst recreating life as a First World War soldier at the Colchester Military Tournament in Colchester, eastern England July 6, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
PASSING OF THE VETERANS
Education is all part of the hobby, says technician Corin Watts, 43.
"A number of teachers have said to me they're grateful to us for the way we put it across, because kids are able to see the stuff, talk to people who know something about it, and learn directly through access more perhaps than they could in a few lessons," he said.
In a strange way too, the passing of the veterans has prompted more people to ask questions of what happened.
"When I was a kid in the 70s, it was very much mud, blood and horror. It was very much the dark side of history. There were still so many veterans around and they didn't want to talk about it," Watts said.
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Theatre nurse Ciaran Dukes (C) portraying a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps marches with other re-enactors depicting World War One drills at the Eden Valley Museum at Edenbridge in south east England May 10, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
The silence of many of that generation means visitors at events often approach the group after displays and ask questions around what their relative's experiences might have been, Watts said.
He reads diaries, memories, letters and poetry to help answer their questions.
"It was known as quite a literary war with people like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, famously, and at the other end of the spectrum you've got other ranks by which we mean non-officers, the serving soldiers," said Watts.
Part of the appeal of World War One for him is the ability to read stories from different parts of society. Earlier conflicts, such as the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, produced some accounts from outside the officer class but these became more common in World War One.
One of his favorite accounts of the war, is Frank Richards' 'Old Soldiers Never Die', a former coalminer's tale of the four years he spent as a signalman in some of the most famous battles at Mons and Ypres.
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Carpenter Richard Helad, portraying a Lance Corporal of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Living History Group, participates in a mock WWI battle at the Colchester Military Tournament in Colchester, eastern England July 5, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
AUTHENTIC KIT
For their displays, the Rifles are often able to use authentic equipment but modern practicalities sometimes force them to fall back on replicas.
Metal helmets for example, issued to soldiers from 1916 onwards, offered better protection than the cloth hats they formerly wore, or so thought the men braving the muddy trenches and artillery bombardments. But the helmets were lined with asbestos, a toxic material which has since been banned in Britain, so Taylor and his comrades opt for modified versions.
One hundred years ago, men were also about three inches shorter, meaning men of average build today require custom-made uniforms which cost upwards of eight hundred pounds ($1,300).
These unofficial experts in the ways of the British Army - Taylor is familiar with 25 different War Office manuals from the time - can portray rifleman in any of the years between 1914 and 1918.
"We owe it to that generation to keep them in people's memories," said Taylor.
"You listen to those chaps who fought in World War One, they all said we don't want medals, we don't want to be called heroes, we just want to be remembered and it's as simple as that."
(editing by Stephen Addison)
Replica of 18th century ship tests French watershttp://news.yahoo.com/replica-18th-century-ship-tests-french-waters-194817179.html (http://news.yahoo.com/replica-18th-century-ship-tests-french-waters-194817179.html)
Relaxnews
September 7, 2014 3:48 PM
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Cheered by tens of thousands, a life-size replica of the Hermione, the French navy frigate that shipped General Lafayette to America to rally rebels fighting British troops in the US war of independence, began its maiden voyage on Sunday.
Spectators lined the port in Rochefort in southwestern France to see the reproduced vessel, which took 17 years to build, set sail.
A cannon boomed as the ship passed the arsenal at Rochefort, as spectators applauded wildly and sailors gathered on its deck cried "Hurrah!"
The Hermione was accompanied by 120 boats. She will sail up the Charente river to Rochefort's commercial port. From there, the frigate will head to the Atlantic Ocean island of Aix for several weeks of sea trials.
The vessel will make a public stop in Bordeaux in October before returning to its home port a month later for final preparations.
The 65-metre (210 feet) ship is due to set sail for the United States in April 2015, following the route from Rochefort to Boston made by French General Gilbert du Motier -- the Marquis de Lafayette -- in 1780 to bolster American revolutionaries in their fight against British troops.
Sunday's launch is a major milestone in the journey undertaken by a group of restoration enthusiasts who in 1997 embarked on the arduous task of recreating the three-masted vessel using only eighteenth-century shipbuilding techniques.
- 'An important step' -
"It is an important step to sail Hermione at sea, which no one has ever done," said Benedict Donnelly, president of the Hermione-Lafayette Association.
"We were often told that it wouldn't work. But we have always said that she will cross the Atlantic and we are going to do just that," he added.
"It's all very impressive," said a man watching Sunday's launch. "We will continue to follow her adventures."
Since its foundation the association has attracted artisan craftsmen from France, Britain, Germany, Spain and Sweden and now comprises some 8,000 members.
"There is real pride in the collective force behind this project. There have been tense moments, but we remained united," Donnelly said.
The project cost 25 million euros ($32 million), financed by more than four million visitors to the shipyard -- also home to Rochefort's original arsenal -- as well as through crowd-funding initiatives for specific parts of the ship.
Yann Cariou, the ex-naval officer who will captain the frigate for its voyage to Boston, said the next weeks of testing would give the 72-strong crew a chance to "get their sea legs".
"Above all there will be emotion. It's still the Hermione and nobody has navigated a ship like this for two centuries," Cariou said.
It took Lafayette 38 days to cross the Atlantic, a voyage that confirmed his renown as a military mastermind and a hero of the American Revolution.
Lafayette's noble charm and strategic genius during the American revolutionary war have earned him the honour of having at least 42 US counties and cities and hundreds of streets and squares -- including Lafayette Square opposite the White House -- named after him or his ancestral home in France, La Grange.
Official history of Hirohito dodges controversieshttp://news.yahoo.com/official-history-hirohito-dodges-controversies-150507293.html (http://news.yahoo.com/official-history-hirohito-dodges-controversies-150507293.html)
Associated Press
By MARI YAMAGUCHI and KEN MORITSUGU 8 minutes ago
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In this 1928 file photo, Emperor Hirohito poses in the imperial robes that he wore when he succeeded his father to Japan's throne in Kyoto, western Japan. Japan’s longest-serving emperor has received one of the longest-ever official histories, but despite being 24 years in the making and 12,000 pages long, scholars and journalists say the annals of Emperor Hirohito are still incomplete. In a tradition that dates back 14 centuries, the Imperial Household Agency released a 61-volume history on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014 that includes childhood letters to his parents while stepping gingerly around what many really want to know: Hirohito’s thinking on issues such as his responsibility for World War II and the Yasukuni shrine for the war dead. (AP Photo/File)
TOKYO (AP) — A 12,000-page history of Emperor Hirohito released in Japan on Tuesday includes childhood letters to his parents but steps gingerly around what many want to know: his thinking on issues such as his responsibility for World War II. The record took 24 years to create, but scholars and journalists say it is still incomplete.
The official annals released by the Imperial Household Agency, a tradition dating back 14 centuries, provide a detailed timeline of Hirohito's life but don't appear to shed much new light on a 62-year reign that spanned Japan's brutal invasion of much of Asia and its reconstruction and emergence as a global economic power in the postwar years.
The 61-volume record "hardly contained anything new that reverses conventional wisdom and history," the liberal-leaning Mainichi newspaper said in an editorial. "We must keep asking ourselves why that catastrophic war could not be avoided. ... The question is hardly resolved."
The conservative Yomiuri newspaper noted that the annals left out Hirohito's own words on Yasukuni Shrine, where war dead are deified, and criticized the palace for attempting to avoid trouble.
Instead, the official history cites a 2006 scoop by the Nikkei newspaper, which obtained a memo written by a former head of the Imperial Household Agency that quoted Hirohito as expressing displeasure over the shrine's decision to include Class-A war criminals. The memo itself, which some researchers and journalists were hoping to see, was left out of the record, according to Japanese media reports.
Chris Winkler, a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, said giving an official imprimatur to Hirohito's remarks would have risked enraging Japan's vocal right-wing.
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In this May 19, 1988 file photo, Japanese Emperor Hirohito waves as Crown Prince Akihito, left, looks on during the imperial garden party at the Akasaka Imperial Gardens in Tokyo. Japan’s Imperial Household Agency has compiled a 61-volume biography of the former emperor that portrays him as being distressed that he could not stop his country from going to war, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency. Hirohito died on January 7, 1989. (AP Photo/File)
"They don't want any trouble," he said of the Imperial Household Agency. "They just want the emperor or the imperial institution to stay out of trouble. That's their primary concern."
The record conveys some of the frustrations Hirohito felt early in his reign, through some of the 10,000 "waka" poems he is believed to have written. Only about 900 of the poems are known, including three new ones discovered during the project.
In one, written a few years after ascending the throne in 1926, he lamented that his ideas were not being reflected in palace policies, according to Japanese media reports. Two other poems from 1929 refer to "a missing fruit," an allusion to the frugal life at the palace during the global economic slump.
The history says Hirohito was first notified of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima nearly 12 hours after the blast on Aug. 6, 1945, according to Japanese media reports.
It says Hirohito judged on the evening of Aug. 8 that it had "become impossible to continue the war" and expressed hope that the war would be concluded "as swiftly as possible," according to the reports. The United States dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki the next day, and Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on Aug. 15.
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In this Sept. 27, 1945 file photo, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, left, poses with Japan's Emperor Hirohito during the latter's visit to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo for their first meeting. Japan’s Imperial Household Agency has compiled a 61-volume biography of the former emperor that portrays him as being distressed that he could not stop his country from going to war, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency. The 12,000-page record also cites MacArthur, who led America’s postwar occupation of Japan, as saying Hirohito had said he accepted full responsibility for the war. (AP Photo/File)
The practice of documenting an emperor's reign follows a Chinese tradition, though in earlier times the records were intended mainly for the imperial household.
The annals of Hirohito's grandfather, the Meiji emperor, didn't start coming out until 1968, more than 50 years after his death. The record of Hirohito's father, the Taisho emperor, was only released in 2002 after the Asahi newspaper filed a public records request, and parts were blacked out, triggering criticism.
Hirohito's official history was completed this year and presented to his son, current emperor Akihito, in August. The 24-year project cost 200 million yen ($1.9 million), not including personnel costs for a staff that averaged about 26 people.
The release of the history was the lead story in Japan's major newspapers Tuesday, playing bigger than tennis star Kei Nishikori's bid for the U.S. Open championship.
The relatively quick release of Hirohito's record, 25 years after his death in 1989, was welcomed as progress by the media and scholars. It's also the first time the annals were written in modern Japanese, instead of a less-accessible archaic form of the language. None of the annals was blacked out, though that left many wondering what was left out.
Hirohito "is a first-rate witness of his era, which is an extremely turbulent part of Japanese history, and historical studies of that era are moving forward beyond views that tend to see the royals as taboo," the Nikkei newspaper said Tuesday. "But we should remember that the record is not a complete documentation of his accounts and try to read the Imperial Household Agency's intentions."
Canada finds 1 of 2 explorer ships lost in Arctichttp://news.yahoo.com/canada-finds-1-2-explorer-ships-lost-arctic-142332900.html (http://news.yahoo.com/canada-finds-1-2-explorer-ships-lost-arctic-142332900.html)
Associated Press
By ROB GILLIES 32 minutes ago
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1845: The ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror used in Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to discover the Northwest passage. (Photo by Illustrated London News/Getty Images)
TORONTO (AP) — One of two British explorer ships that disappeared in the Arctic more 160 years ago has been found, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday.
The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the late 1840s. Canada announced in 2008 that it would search for the ships led by British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin.
Harper, speaking in Ottawa, said it remains unclear which ship has been found, but images show there's enough information to confirm it's one of the pair.
Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men vanished on an expedition begun in 1845 to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Franklin's disappearance prompted one of history's largest and longest rescue searches, from 1848 to 1859, which resulted in the passage's discovery.
The route runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago. European explorers sought the passage as a shorter route to Asia, but found it rendered inhospitable by ice and weather.
"This is truly a historic moment for Canada," said Harper, who was beaming, uncharacteristically. "This has been a great Canadian story and mystery and the subject of scientists, historians, writers and singers so I think we really have an important day in mapping the history of our country."
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Sir John Franklin, c1860s. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Harper's government began searching for Franklin's ships as it looked to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting Arctic ice has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin was after.
The original search for the ships helped open up parts of the Canadian Arctic for discovery back in the 1850s.
Harper said the ship was found Sunday using a remotely operated underwater vehicle.
The discovery comes shortly after a team of archeologists found a tiny fragment from the Franklin expedition. Searchers discovered an iron fitting that once helped support a boat from one of the doomed expedition's ships in the King William Island search area.
Franklin's vessels are among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology. Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew.
Tantalizing traces have been found over the years, including the bodies of three crewmen discovered in the 1980s.
The bodies of two English seamen — John Hartnell, 25, and Royal Marine William Braine, 33 — were exhumed in 1986. An expedition uncovered the perfectly preserved remains of a petty officer, John Torrington, 20, in an ice-filled coffin in 1984.
Experts believe the ships were lost in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island and that the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety.
The search for an Arctic passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497. Eventually it became clear that a passage did exist, but was too far north for practical use. Cabot, the Italian-British explorer, died in 1498 while trying to find it and the shortcut eluded other famous explorers including Henry Hudson and Francis Drake.
No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip from 1903-1906.
US Military's New Laser Gun Zaps Droneshttp://news.yahoo.com/us-militarys-laser-gun-zaps-drones-132903413.html (http://news.yahoo.com/us-militarys-laser-gun-zaps-drones-132903413.html)
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer 1 hour ago
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Boeing's High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD).
The U.S. military is now one step closer to having a laser gun that can shoot down enemy drones in the blink of an eye.
Boeing recently announced that its mobile laser weapon, dubbed the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD), successfully shot down more than 150 drones, rockets and other mock enemy targets in a third round of tests. The trials prove that the laser weapon is reliable and capable of consistently "acquiring, tracking and engaging a variety of targets in different environments," according to Boeing.
The most recent demonstration of the 10-kilowatt, high-energy laser took place at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The laser was installed on a military vehicle, making it the first mobile, high-energy laser built and demonstrated by the U.S. Army, according to Boeing.
Directed-energy technologies like the HEL MD could soon be used by the military to augment what are known as kinetic strike weapons, such as missile interceptors, that don't contain explosives but destroy targets by colliding with them at extreme speeds.
Kinetic strike weapons are expensive, and the HEL MD could offer "a significant reduction in cost per engagement," Dave DeYoung, Boeing's directed-energy systems director, said in a statement.
This push for laser weaponry is part of the U.S. military's Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move (GBAD) program. The goal of the program is to provide what officials from the Office of Naval Research call an "affordable alternative to traditional firepower," to guard against drones and other enemy threats.
The recent demonstration of Boeing's mobile laser weapon is just a prelude of things to come. By 2016, the military plans to have a 30-kilowatt laser gun ready for testing, according to the Office of Naval Research.
And Boeing isn't the only defense contractor working with the military to develop high-powered laser weapons. In August, the Office of Naval Research awarded Raytheon an $11 million contract to build a vehicle-mounted laser device capable of shooting down low-flying enemy targets. The system will reportedly generate at least 25 kilowatts of energy, which will make it more than twice as powerful as the laser recently tested by Boeing.
Rusty, do you get into historical minis? That seems to be the rage down here and has chased off any RPGs that used to be dominant. Sad, too. The RPGers were much better partiers than the war gamers.
I have seen A LOT of naval combat minis battles. Particularly WW2 and 1700s era wooden. Mostly WW2.
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I was not exactly rural, but lived in a capital city. Unfortunately, in the days before internet, I was unwise to things happening in more liberal places like Biloxi. Maybe things would have been different, I do not know. I did not find out till my mid twenties whn I moved to New Orleans.
Nowadays, though, those guys put the wives to work. The lovingly crafted minis they put out are half painted by the wife. Beauties they are, too. But the last time I went to these things, I went for character sheets and twenty sided dice along with the drunken parties and elf dressed LARP lezzie chicks to go with it. I was quickly reminded I was not with the program. 300 USD in minis and wife or GTFO!!!!
********************************************************************888
that said, I am thinking of attending Bayou Wars if I can get around having my own minis. I really need to get some old fashioned gaming going. Even if this means getting with the times.
I heard someone is going to set up some massive naval Battle of Midway with folks managing different groups of ships. You would be acting basically like the old fashioned Commodores (rear admiral lower half now).
Those tables they bring are friggin HUGE!!!
There are also computer naval games and Avalon Hill style die-cut cardboard table game versions.
What It Felt Like to Test the First Submarine Nuclear Reactorhttp://news.yahoo.com/felt-test-first-submarine-nuclear-111500881.html (http://news.yahoo.com/felt-test-first-submarine-nuclear-111500881.html)
The Atlantic
By Robinson Meyer October 8, 2014 7:15 AM
In the middle of last century, out in southern Idaho, amid the sagebrush and the steppes, the Navy kept a secret site. In that place—dry and arid, far from the sea and very much unlike it—scientists and engineers simulated a nuclear-powered submarine.
It was more than a mere war game. The scientists and engineers had created one of the first nuclear reactors ever. That reactor—and their simulation—would then essentially be replicated inside the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine.
The Nautilus turned 60 last week, and the U.S. Navy celebrated both its anniversary and six decades of a nuclear navy. That nuclear navy now encompasses some 80 ships. All of the navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered.
To celebrate that anniversary, we’ve dug up an article from the archives of The Atlantic: “Admiral Rickover’s Gamble,” by Commander E.E. Kintner. The title of the piece references Admiral Hyman G. Rickover—at the time of writing, only a vice-admiral—who is now known as the “father of the nuclear navy,” but that epithet didn’t come easy. As the 1959 account details, Rickover bet much on the success of his test reactor, risking even his men’s lives.
Kintner, the author, was responsible directly to Rickover. In the story, he first details why a nuclear submarine was such a remarkable innovation, and why a nuclear reactor aboard a submarine meant so much more (and was so much more challenging to build) than one aboard a ship:QuoteThey realized that the installation of an atomic power plant would be much more difficult in a submarine than in a surface ship, but they made the decision—the first example of the daring aggressiveness of Rickover’s methods—because the rewards of success would be greater in a submarine than in a surface ship. A nuclear submarine, not requiring air for combustion of fuel in its engines, would be able to divorce itself from the earth’s atmosphere and thus would be a true submarine rather than a surface ship which could submerge only for short periods. It would be an “underwater satellite.”
Rickover further ordered that the test reactor be built to the configurations of a submarine. The team could have built it “breadboard”—that is, could have splayed its contents across a room so that they would be easier to fix—but Rickover wouldn’t have it. He knew, writes Kintner, that the nuclear submarine team needed to finish ASAP. He was on a tight deadline: “Eight years had passed since Hiroshima and […], except for the Navy’s program, no U.S. atomic power project was anywhere near fruition.”
“And so,” writes Kintner, the test reactor, the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I, “although located almost as far from sea water as possible in the North American continent, was a true seagoing power plant—no shore-based engineering short cuts were allowed in its construction.”
The story picks up in the spring of 1953, when construction of the “Mark I” was completed. But "many serious problems” remained, and we'll let Kintner take it from here:QuoteThe pumps and valves and heat exchangers, turbines, electrical generators, thermometers, control panels—all the many hundreds of items which made up the complex and interrelated systems of the plant—had been mechanically and electrically tested until they were as nearly perfect as they could be made. The crews had practiced for a week at carefully opening the main turbine throttle from an oil-fired boiler so as to disturb the reactor as little as possible. They were rehearsed in casualty drills, and STR Mark I was ready for an attempt at power operation.
Captain Rickover, who had followed preparations on an hourly basis, flew to Idaho in company with Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas E. Murray, a man who had contributed much support to the Navy's nuclear propulsion program and who was to have the honor of opening the turbine throttle valve, admitting steam generated by a power reactor into a turbine for the first time. Murray knew that eight years had passed since Hiroshima and that, except for the Navy's program, no U.S. atomic power project was anywhere near fruition. He knew also that the Navy and the AEC were committing almost one quarter of a billion dollars to the project whose success was now to be determined.
That first operation was amazingly successful. After a two-hour run, during which power levels of several thousand horsepower were achieved, the reactor was shut down. Six years of study, organization, planning, conniving, fighting for funds, building laboratories, manipulating people, developing new materials and devices had paid off. The first day of Mark I had surprised its most optimistic proponents.
There were many happy people in the Idaho desert the night of May 31, 1953. The happiest was Captain Rickover, who had had the vision, constantly forced the program against opposition, and provided the technical judgment to steer it through areas far beyond those previously known.
Then followed a month of careful, precise building up in power level. Test operations went on night and day, seven days a week. Power was increased in small steps. What could happen on these increasing steps could only be conjecture until the trial run had been completed. Every man at the desert site knew the danger associated with each increase in power.
The first feasibility question to be answered affirmatively was that of safety. Mark I turned out to be a calm and stable machine and even when treated roughly, as its inexperienced operators often treated it, showed no tendency to become an atomic bomb. There was no indication of any dangerous overheating in the reactor fuel elements. The shield designers were surprised to find that radiation levels were less than half of those which they had calculated, indicating that the Nautilus could easily carry her radiation shield. As additional physics data became available, the estimate of reactor life was greatly increased.
The major difficulty was with the numerous safety circuits, any one of which could cause the reactor to shut down suddenly. These circuits were meant to be extremely tender in their operation; they were, in fact, so sensitive as to provide a serious difficulty to the operators. A submarine propulsion plant not capable of operating without emergency shutdowns under sea motion and depth-charge attack would not be satisfactory, yet the Mark I had a constant plague of "scrams" from such slight causes as vibration from a crew member's walking through the reactor compartment or a bolt of lightning striking a Montana power line three hundred miles away.
As the crew gained operating experience, and as additional information was obtained concerning safety, the number of signals causing "scram" was selectively reduced to less than twenty. By this means, and by intensive crew training, the problem was licked. As a result, the Nautilus experienced very little difficulty of this sort.
On June 25, 1953, full design power was reached. Not one part of the plant indicated failure to meet the rigid specifications. In less than a month after power generation by the world's first nuclear power plant, Mark I was running smoothly at its maximum rating. The one remaining question was whether the machinery could withstand long high-power running.
The operating crews began a forty-eight-hour test at full power to obtain important physics information. At the twenty-four-hour point the data obtained seemed sufficient, and the engineers intended to shut down the plant. Rickover, who was at the site, inadvertently learned of this plan and immediately overruled it. He had visualized that if the forty-eight-hour run turned out well, they should continue on a simulated cruise across the Atlantic. He reasoned that such a dramatic feat, if successful, would end the doubts in the Navy that nuclear power was a feasible means for propelling ships. It would give the project the momentum and breathing space needed to carry on the development without constant harassment until the Nautilus could get to sea.
I was the senior Naval officer at the site. I felt that extension of the run was unwise considering the many uncertainties, and told Rickover that beyond forty-eight hours I could not accept responsibility for the safety of the $30 million prototype. Rickover directed me to proceed with the simulated voyage.
Charts of the North Atlantic were posted in the control room and a great-circle course to Ireland plotted. The position of the ship after each four-hour watch was computed and marked on the chart. For watch after watch, the course plotted in the control room crawled toward Ireland. No submarine had covered more than twenty miles submerge at full speed. A propulsion unit, even for a surface ship, need steam only four hours at a full power to obtain acceptance for Naval use.
At the mid-point of the Atlantic crossing, the operation seemed to be going well. As one of the Nautilus crew members standing watch in the hull state, "She just sits there and cooks." A veteran marine engineer, familiar with the large quantities of fuel oil which would have been required to drive a ship so far with a conventional propulsion plant, pointed to the propeller shaft and then to the reactor and said, "So much comes out back here, and nothing goes in up there!"
At the 60th hour, however, difficulties began. Carbon dust from the brushes depositing in the windings caused difficulty in the vital electrical generating sets. Nuclear instrumentation, operating perfectly at the beginning of the run, became erratic, and the crews could not be sure what was happening within the reactor core. One of the large pumps which kept the reactor cool by circulating water through it began making a worrisome, intermittent whining sound. We had not had any check on "crud" build-up; we feared that heat transfer would be so reduced by this point that the core would burn up. The most pressing problem, however, was caused by the failure at the sixty-fifth hour of a tube in the main condenser into which exhausted turbine steam was being discharged. Steam pressure fell off rapidly.
The Westinghouse manager responsible for the operation of the plant strongly recommended discontinuing the run. In Washington, the technical directors of the Naval Reactors Branch was so concerned that he called a meeting of all its senior personnel, who urged Rickover to terminate the test at once. But the Captain was adamant that it should continue until an unsafe situation developed. "If the plant has a limitation so serious," he said, "now is the time to find out. I accept full responsibility for any casualty." Rickover had twice been passed over by Naval selection boards for promotion to Rear Admiral. As a result of congressional action, he was to appear within two weeks for an unprecedented third time. If the Mark I had been seriously damaged, Rickover's prospects for promotion and his Naval career were ended.
The tensions surrounding the test increased the challenge to the crews, and as each watch came on duty it resolved it would not be responsible for ending the run prematurely. Crew members worked hard to repair those items which could be repaired while the plant was in operation.
Finally, the position indicator on the chart reached Fastnet. A nuclear-powered submarine had, in effect, steamed at full power non-stop across the Atlantic without surfacing. When an inspection was made of the core and the main coolant pump, no "crud" or other defects which could not de corrected by minor improvements were found. It was assured that the Nautilus could cross an ocean at full speed submerged.
A month after nuclear power was first produced, the most doubting among those who had participated in the STR project knew that atomic propulsion of ships was feasible, that it was only a matter of time before the technology developed for Mark I would bring about a revolution in Naval engineering, strategy, and tactics. We knew, too, that industrial nuclear power could be built on the same technological foundations. The Pressurized Water Reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania—the world's first solely industrial power reactor—was in fact developed from STR experience under Admiral Rickover's direction.
To those of us who had participated in the STR project, who knew how many chances were taken, how far previous engineering knowledge had been extrapolated, the fact that all the unknowns had turned out in our favor was a humbling experience. Rickover, paraphrasing Pasteur, put it this way: "We must have had a horseshoe around our necks. But then Nature seems to want to work for those who work hardest for themselves."
STR Mark I is now a flexible facility providing much of the experimental information for the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, which today includes thirty-three submarines, a guided missile cruiser, and the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It provides the practical training for all the hundreds of officers and enlisted men who will man our nuclear fleet. The courage, the will, the judgment and resourceful which went into STR Mark I have made the United States Submarine Nautilus an outstandingly successful venture in man's long struggle with nature.
NORAD's Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sporthttp://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2045 (http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2045)
NPR Staff December 19, 2014 4:02 AM ET
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Terri Van Keuren (from left), Rick Shoup and Pamela Farrell, children of Col. Harry Shoup, commander of the Continental Air Defense Command, visited StoryCorps in Castle Rock, Colo., to talk about how their dad helped to create the U.S. military's Santa Tracker.
This Christmas Eve people all over the world will log on to the official Santa Tracker (http://www.noradsanta.org/) to follow his progress through U.S. military radar. This all started in 1955, with a misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper and a call to Col. Harry Shoup's secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD.
Shoup's children, Terri Van Keuren, 65, Rick Shoup, 59, and Pam Farrell, 70, recently visited StoryCorps to talk about how the tradition began.
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The Santa Tracker tradition started with this Sears ad, which instructed children to call Santa on what turned out to be a secret military hotline. Kids today can call 1-877 HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to talk to NORAD staff about Santa's exact location. Courtesy of NORAD
Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. "Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number," she says.
"This was the '50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States," Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. "And then there was a small voice that just asked, 'Is this Santa Claus?' "
His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.
"And Dad realized that it wasn't a joke," her sister says. "So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho'd and asked if he had been a good boy and, 'May I talk to your mother?' And the mother got on and said, 'You haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's in the Sears ad.' Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus."
"It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, 'The old man's really flipped his lid this time. We're answering Santa calls,' " Terri says.
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Col. Harry Shoup came to be known as the "Santa Colonel." He died in 2009. Courtesy of NORAD
"The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them," Pam says.
"And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole," Rick says.
"Dad said, 'What is that?' They say, 'Colonel, we're sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?' Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, 'This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.' Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, 'Where's Santa now?' " Terri says.
"And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, 'Thank you, Colonel,' for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information," she says. "You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he's known for."
"Yeah," Rick says, "it's probably the thing he was proudest of, too."
America's new military...blimps?
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14936.msg66163#msg66163 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14936.msg66163#msg66163)
Let in the Light: Ancient Roman Fort Designed for Celestial Show
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=15158.msg66731#msg66731 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=15158.msg66731#msg66731)
Napoleon skewered by cartoonists in British exhibitionhttp://news.yahoo.com/napoleon-skewered-cartoonists-british-exhibition-100401908.html (http://news.yahoo.com/napoleon-skewered-cartoonists-british-exhibition-100401908.html)
AFP
By Edouard Guihaire 10 hours ago
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An 1803 hand-coloured etching shows Napoleon "Little Boney" in the hand of King George III, on display at a new exhibition: "Bonaparte and the British - prints and propaganda in the age of Napoleon" at the British Museum in London (AFP Photo/Adrian Dennis)
London (AFP) - Depicted roasting in hell or as a spider spinning a web around Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte is the subject of a colourful exhibition of historical satire opening at London's British Museum on Thursday.
Published in 1808, "The Corsican spider in his web" by Thomas Rowlandson is one of dozens of drawings, posters and other prints on display until August 16.
The exhibition, "Bonaparte and the British: prints and propaganda in the age of Napoleon" charts the rise of the young general, ending with the downfall of the Emperor who once had Europe at his feet.
Bonaparte, who lived from 1769 to 1821, was a "charismatic enemy" with a reputation as a short, angry man: an irresistible subject for caricatures, according to historian Tim Clayton, a Napoleon expert.
"He had the misfortune to come along at exactly the wrong moment," Clayton said.
"I don't suppose anybody in history had been vilified and ridiculed in the way that Napoleon was vilified and ridiculed ever before."
Flattering portraits and memorabilia collected by British admirers in the 1790s gives way to mockery, as Napoleon becomes more of a threat to Britain.
By the time the two countries are at war in 1803, noted British cartoonist James Gillray portrays Napoleon being roasted over a fire by the devil in "The Corsican pest or Belzebub going to supper".
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A hand-coloured etching published by Lacroix in 1815 shows Napoleon being held in a dustbin with Wellington pressing down on the lid, on display at a new exhibition on Napoleon at The British Museum in London (AFP Photo/Adrian Dennis)
Mocking Napoleon as "Little Boney" and perpetuating the idea he was small in stature helped diminish the feeling of threat.
"Because you were frightened of him, you had to belittle him, make him seem not so frightening," said curator Sheila O'Connell.
"So you made him a little tiny person. And that is how he's remained in the British consciousness ever since."
- Propaganda tool -
"Little Boney" appears again in 1812 as Napoleon's Russian campaign turns into a disaster.
A cartoon by William Elmes called "General Frost shaving Little Boney" shows the cold as a monster crushing the French armies and trapping Napoleon's feet in ice.
Sold for an average of between 1 and 4 shillings each, the drawings were particularly popular in shops frequented by the London elite.
Used as a propaganda tool and sometimes controlled by the government, the satires helped forge a sense of British unity and shaped the way Napoleon was perceived through generations.
"They do have an influence on shaping people image of Napoleon. The idea that Napoleon is a little, angry chap sticks," Clayton said.
"The fact that he was actually of average height seems to have escaped everybody's attention."
Cartoonists are kinder when Napoleon is less of a threat, and at times some Britons displayed admiration for the emperor.
One example is a bronze bust of Napoleon, carved in the style of a Roman emperor with idealised features, and installed in 1818 in a British aristocrat's garden.
Featured at the entrance to the exhibition, the bust has a call for the emperor to return from exile in Saint Helena engraved at its base.
I don't know how he saved the revolution - more like turned it upside down. All that killing for nothing, in the end.
..., which had to be a big improvement for all those French people who didn't want to be killed - foreign wars tended to select for those French willing to take the risk.
Feel free to post your other military historical pictures in my thread.
Side by side you would see that the Hellcat is bigger than the Wildcat: about 5' longer, about 5' more wingspan, and a little over a foot taller. Otherwise, check for how many guns: Wildcat, 4; Hellcat, 6. Then there's the wheels: narrow on the Wildcat, retracting into the fuselage; wider on the Hellcat, retracting into the wings.
At a distance, though, both Grumman planes look similar. Before I looked more closely (and read the sign), I was thinking of the more common Hellcat.
#4 looks like a Lockheed T-33 (T-Bird) Shooting Star trainer (at least I think there's room for a second seat in the cockpit), a variant of the Lockheed P-80 (F-80) Shooting Star (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star). Straight-wing design limits speed (as you approach Mach 1), so the Shooting Star was outclassed by the swept-wing MiG-15. Rough comparisons from Wikipedia specifications: P/F-80C version top speed 600 mph, Mach 0.78 vs MiG-15bis version 658 mph, Mach 0.86.
I believe the key survival skill in this contest is seeing the enemy before he sees you.
I believe the key survival skill in this contest is seeing the enemy before he sees you.
Right now I'm wondering if that isn't the key survival skill in most kinds of combat, not just early biplanes.
The one who sees the enemy first has the options to plan, attack, maneuver, or flee.
Wow.
Makes me wonder if any WWI pilot ever saw combat in WWII.
"You can't kill an enemy you can't see. The inverse is also true." - Rejinaldo Leonardo Pedro Bolivar de Alencor-Araripe, Principles of modern war.
Of course the Germans were also hard pressed, and I found that many of the survivors had leadership roles at the Colonel/ General levels. It seems that military service for surviving WWI pilots was commonplace, but I didn't find any fighter pilots among the ones I checked.
I did find this Nazi bomber pilot who appears to have been vigorous in both World Wars. In his case, he was a Colonel leading from the front.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fiebig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fiebig)
He was executed for war crimes in Yuguslavia? Sounds a bit weird.
In hindsight, I was wondering about concussions and air pressure when noticing all those old machinegun posts near the main battery guns of the Missouri. Those were 16 inch guns, weren't they?
Also, the main armament wouldn't normally be used at the same time as the other weapons, so maybe the anti-aircraft guys were ordered below during firing.Seems to me if the ship were in a naval battle while also being attacked by planes, it would be all hands on deck.
Also, the main armament wouldn't normally be used at the same time as the other weapons, so maybe the anti-aircraft guys were ordered below during firing.Seems to me if the ship were in a naval battle while also being attacked by planes, it would be all hands on deck.
Historians ponder future of Revolutionary War relichttp://news.yahoo.com/historians-ponder-future-revolutionary-war-relic-175819985.html (http://news.yahoo.com/historians-ponder-future-revolutionary-war-relic-175819985.html)
Associated Press
By WILSON RING 6 hours ago
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In this Aug. 18, 1991 file photo, a replica of the Revolutionary War gunboat, the Philadelphia, fires guns during its launch on Lake Champlain in Vermont. A similar gunboat, the Spitfire, has been on the bottom of the lake since it was sunk in 1776 during the Revolutionary War, while being used by Benedict Arnold to help hold off the British in the key naval Battle of Valcour Island. Historian Art Cohn is developing a management plan for the future of the Spitfire, fearing the possible threat of an invasive species that could destroy the wreck if it is not raised and preserved. (AP Photo/Craig Line, File)
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — When it was built late in 1776 the gunboat Spitfire wasn't meant to be the pride of the American fleet. It was built to fight and fight it did, helping slow down the larger British fleet that sailed south out of Canada onto Lake Champlain as part of an effort to crush the colonial rebellion.
The 54-foot Spitfire sank a day after the critical Oct. 11 Battle of Valcour Island, settling into deep water where it went unseen for more than 200 years.
Now the historian who led the search that found the Spitfire nearly two decades ago is developing a management plan for the future of the boat that today sits on the lake bottom, its mast upright and its bow cannon pointing straight ahead, just as it was when it was abandoned by its crew.
"This is not a sexy boat," said Art Cohn, the emeritus director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum who is now writing a management plan for the Spitfire that he will submit to the U.S. Navy. "It was relatively small, flat-bottomed and quickly built, but that's not its value."
"The principal value, in my opinion, is it connects us to 1776 and the formative years of this country," he said.
For years, the bottom — Cohn won't say exactly where the Spitfire rests or how far down — has been thought of as the safest place for the Spitfire, thanks to the protection of the cold, deep water above it. Now the fear is of a looming threat from the invasive species quagga mussels, which could destroy the wreck. They haven't arrived yet in Lake Champlain, but experts fear it's only a matter of time.
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In this June 30, 1997 file photo, a replica of the Revolutionary War gunboat Philadelphia floats at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vt., Monday, June 30, 1997. A similar gunboat, the Spitfire, has been on the bottom of the lake since it was sunk in 1776 during the Revolutionary War, while being used by Benedict Arnold to help hold off the British in the key naval Battle of Valcour Island. Historian Art Cohn is developing a management plan for the future of the Spitfire, fearing the possible threat of an invasive species that could destroy the wreck if it is not raised and preserved. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
Cohn's plan will include recommendations for the future of the Spitfire, including possibly leaving it where it is or raising it, preserving it and then displaying it in a museum. He hasn't chosen a course yet, but his worry over the mussels is clear.
"Our concern over the length of this study has really been elevated based on what we're learning about the implications of the mussel invasion. That information is sobering and a concern," Cohn said. "As we move toward final recommendations our goal is to try to develop a strategy so that this shipwreck survives for future generations."
The 50-man Spitfire was part of a small fleet that was assembled in the late summer of 1776 by Benedict Arnold before he turned traitor. The fleet was built at Skenesborough — now Whitehall, New York — to counter the larger British fleet being built on the Richelieu River in Quebec.
The British commanders intended to sail down the lake as part of a broader campaign to split New England from the rest of the fledgling United States of America and end the rebellion. Arnold anchored his fleet on the western side of Valcour Island, just south of Plattsburgh, New York, forcing the larger British force to attack him in the narrow confines between the island and the shore.
By all accounts the battle was a British victory. In the dark of night after a day of heavy fighting, Arnold famously slipped his remaining fleet through the British lines and retreated south. It was during that retreat that the Spitfire, leaking badly, was abandoned and sank, not to be seen again until 1997.
Even though the British won the day, the battle delayed their advance down the lake until 1777, giving the Americans much-needed time to prepare for the assault, ultimately leading to the American victory at Saratoga. That battle led to French recognition of the new country, key to the eventual defeat of the British.
Paul Taylor, a spokesman for the Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command, said the organization was looking forward to receiving Cohn's management proposal.
The usual preference is to leave vessels, especially in cold, fresh water, on the bottom where they will be preserved. Taylor said he was unaware of the mussel threat, but the Navy agrees with the need to protect its historic resources.
"We take preserving the history of our Navy very seriously," Taylor said. "The history of the Navy is the history of the nation."
Japanese warship broke up as it sank near Philippines, researchers sayhttp://news.yahoo.com/japanese-warship-broke-sank-near-philippines-researchers-235634010.html (http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-warship-broke-sank-near-philippines-researchers-235634010.html)
Reuters
By Alex Dobuzinskis March 13, 2015 7:56 PM
(Reuters) - Some of the first video taken of the sunken Japanese battleship Musashi, newly discovered by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's exploration team, reveals that the vessel broke apart before coming to rest on the sea floor near the Philippines in 1944, researchers said on Friday.
Footage of the wreck was shot this week by a remotely operated underwater vehicle exploring what remains of the World War Two battleship, one of the largest ever built, at the bottom of the Sibuyan Sea.
The research team, sailing aboard Allen's yacht, the M/Y Octopus, used historical records, detailed undersea topographical data and advanced technology to find and photograph the Musashi on March 2, ending a decades-long mystery about the shipwreck's exact location, according to his website.
The discovery attracted international attention because the Musashi and its sister ship, the Yamato, to this day rank as the heaviest and most heavily armed battleships ever built.
Historians had expressed interest in how much of the ship had remained intact.
The latest findings indicate that the Musashi rests in multiple pieces on the sea floor, and the size of the debris field shows it broke up during its descent, a spokeswoman for Vulcan, a company founded by Allen that is handling the expedition, said in an email.
The impact of torpedoes caused the breakup, according to the spokeswoman, Alexa Rudin.
U.S. forces sank the Musashi on Oct. 24, 1944, killing more than 1,000 Japanese, or about half the vessel's crew. The sinking occurred at the outset of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval engagements in history, pitting American and Australian forces against the Japanese.
The Musashi, named after a province in Japan, was commissioned in August 1942. It measured 863 feet (263 meters) in length and weighed nearly 73,000 tons when fully loaded with nine main guns, along with aircraft and other features.
The Yamato was sunk on April 7, 1945. Its wreckage has been photographed a number of times over the years.
Allen and his research team are mindful that the wreckage is a war grave and they have worked with the governments of Japan and the Philippines to ensure the site is treated with respect, Rudin said.
Allen, who had been searching for the Musashi for eight years, was not present on his yacht when the team aboard the vessel discovered the Musashi, according to the billionaire' s website.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham)
Wreck of 18th-century slave ship confirmedhttp://news.yahoo.com/wreck-18th-century-slave-ship-confirmed-194158060.html (http://news.yahoo.com/wreck-18th-century-slave-ship-confirmed-194158060.html)
The discovery of the São José, off the coast of South Africa, is believed to be the first sunken slave ship ever recovered.
Christian Science Monitor
By Henry Gass June 1, 2015 3:41 PM
In late December 1794, the Portuguese ship São José-Paquete de Africa found itself caught in a storm rounding the southern tip of the African continent. Seeking protection from the fierce winds the ship hugged the coastline, but this was ultimately its undoing, as the São José crashed into a submerged reef and broke apart in a matter of hours.
The captain and all his crew survived the shipwreck, but 212 slaves perished – roughly half the number of people who had been packed into the São José at Mozambique 24 days earlier.
Historians and archaeologists from around the world have been working quietly since 2010 recovering artifacts from the São José, after a years-long search to identify the ship and its cargo. The discovery will be announced at a ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa, tomorrow, and various artifacts from the ship will be displayed in museums around the world over the coming months.
Some of the artifacts are destined for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open on the National Mall in the fall of 2016.
The São José is believed to be the first slave ship ever discovered that wrecked while carrying slaves.
"They have found ships that were once slave ships but didn’t sink on the voyage. This is the first ship that we know of that actually sank with enslaved people on it," said Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the museum, in an interview with the Smithsonian Magazine.
The wreckage was first discovered by treasure hunters in the 1980s, who misidentified it as the Dutch merchant ship Schuleynburg, which had sunk in 1756. The divers had to report their findings to the South African government, per the regulations at the time, and this alerted historians from around the world to the ship's existence.
But the true history of the ship – and the cargo it had been carrying – wasn't confirmed until just a few years ago.
The discovery was led by the Slave Wrecks Project, a coalition of researchers from George Washington University, the Iziko Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resource Agency, the US National Park Service, and others. Divers have been quietly excavating the wreckage – which lies barely 100 meters from the South African coast, near Cape Town – since 2010. Their work had to be kept secret, they said, so more treasure hunters wouldn't come to the site.
That year divers found copper fastenings and copper sheathing in the wreckage, artifacts that hadn't come into common use on ships until the late 18th century, meaning it couldn't be the Schuylenburg.
The biggest clue, however, was the discovery of iron blocks in the wreckage. Jaco Boshoff, a maritime archaeologist with the Iziko Museum, found the blocks himself in 2012. He said he "knew immediately" the significance of the find, according to The New York Times.
The blocks were used at the time as ballast to counterbalance the variable weight of human cargo, which can shift up and down over the course of a long Atlantic voyage as some slaves die and others experience weight fluctuations. The more living cargo a ship carries, the more ballast it needs.
"That people were calculating the weight of human bodies that way – it’s difficult to imagine," said Stephen Lubkemann, an associate professor at George Washington University and a member of the Slave Wrecks Project.
By 2012, researchers for the Slave Wrecks Project had found the São José's manifest, which detailed the ship's departure from Lisbon to Mozambique. According to the manifest, the ship had left Europe with 1,500 iron blocks of ballast destined for Mozambique, a relatively new market compared with the West African coast, which slave traders had been visiting for centuries. The ship left Mozambique Island with between 400 and 500 slaves, according to records from the time, and was destined for Maranhão on the Brazilian coast. The voyage ultimately lasted 24 days.
"The Sao Jose slave shipwreck site reverberates with historical significance and represents an addition to our underwater heritage that has the potential to advance knowledge and understanding of slavery, not only at the Cape but on a global level," said Rooksana Omar, CEO of Iziko Museums, in a statement.
The ship was so close to shore it was able to fire off a cannon blast to signal for help. During a court inquest into the wreck – discovered by researchers in 2011 – the ship's captain, Manuel Joao Perreira, described the ship being torn apart in the turbulent coastal waters. The captain and crew worked to save as many slaves as they could. Some were able to reach the shore on a barge, but the fierce weather prevented the barge from returning, he testified.
In all, some 212 slaves died. Two days later, the surviving Africans were resold into slavery in the Western Cape.
The press conference on Tuesday will be preceded by a memorial ceremony, for both the people who perished in the shipwreck and those who were resold into slavery afterward. Divers will also place soil from Mozambique Island on the underwater site, memorializing those who drowned and representing their last footfall on the continent before the São José went down.
"We hope to bring the memory of those enslaved Africans back into consciousness,” said Paul Gardullo, historian and curator at the Smithsonian African-American museum, in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine.
Bunch, who will attend tomorrow's ceremony, said there is likely still more to find at the site. The turbulent surf that helped sink the São José has complicated the recovery process, researchers say. The waters are so rough divers said working on the site was like working in a washing machine. Some objects were buried six to eight feet under the sand. Items would be uncovered, documented, and then covered over by sand again just a few hours later.
The artifacts – which will include some of the iron blocks used as ballast – will be on a 10-year loan to the African-American museum, according to the Smithsonian Magazine. The museum, he added, will be part exhibition, part memorial, to "help people get a better understanding of the slave trade."
"It’s really a place where you can go and bow your head, and think about all those who experienced the middle passage, all those who were lost," said Bunch. "It’s both a scholarly moment, but also, for many people, it will be a highly personal moment."
Kamau Sadiki, vice president for the National Association of Black SCUBA Divers, who worked with the Slave Wrecks Project, described his experience as "extremely emotional [and] humbling."
"Just to be able to dive that site, to find a tangible piece of artifact, or information, something to raise their silent voices, to tell their story, is an extraordinary thing," he said on a video on the Slave Wrecks Project web site.
If Napoleon won Waterloo, French-speaking Europe, no world wars?http://news.yahoo.com/french-speaking-europe-no-world-wars-napoleon-won-053256366.html (http://news.yahoo.com/french-speaking-europe-no-world-wars-napoleon-won-053256366.html)
AFP
By Phillipp Saure 10 hours ago
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An empire as far as China, French will be spoken across the continent, and in the 20th century a global war between the great powers will be avoided; just some alternate histories imagined if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)
Brussels (AFP) - It is the evening of June 18, 1815 and an exultant Napoleon Bonaparte surveys the field after winning the Battle of Waterloo, planning his next conquest.
Within years his empire will stretch as far as China, French will be spoken across the continent, and in the 20th century a global war between the great powers will be avoided because of the stability his rule created.
These are some of the alternate histories that writers and experts have envisaged had Napoleon really been victorious in the battle 200 years ago, which actually ended in his humiliating defeat and exile at the hands of British and Prussian forces.
Historian Helmut Stubbe da Luz said that had Napoleon beaten generals Wellington and Bluecher on the plain of Waterloo, he would have carried on his march as far as northern Germany.
"Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck would have become French again," da Luz told AFP.
That scenario, however, should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, da Luz added, as the European monarchies of the time would not have let a defeat at Waterloo go unavenged.
As Belgian historian Philippe Raxhon, a specialist in the Battle of Waterloo, puts it: "Waterloo was a total victory for the allies but it would not have been a total victory for Napoleon."
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Historian Helmut Stubbe da Luz believes Napoleonic rule across continental Europe, balanced by Britain's enduring maritime supremacy, would not necessarily have been that bad for the world (AFP Photo/Jeff Pachoud)
- First Russia, then China -
But if one imagines that Bonaparte had eventually defeated his European enemies in the long-term, his ambitions afterwards would have been demonstrably larger, historians said.
"If Napoleon followed his original plans for 1810, he would have invaded Russia again and potentially extended his empire as far as China," Helmut Stubbe da Luz said.
An even more radical scenario was put forward in the 19th century by the French writer Louis Geoffroy. In his novel "Napoleon and the Conquest of the World, 1812-1832" he described how Napoleon was able to overrun China, turning it into a mere "Asian province".
The 1836 alternate history novel -- a literary genre that imagines parallel realities and includes classics such as Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" about a United States beaten by Japan and Germany -- Geoffroy takes the story back to three years before Waterloo.
"I wrote the history of Napoleon from 1812 to 1832, from Moscow in flames to the universal monarchy and his death, 20 years of incessantly increasing glory which elevated him to an all-powerful level above whom there is only God," he wrote in the introduction to the novel.
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Fp.a6Qf.GJtxx985dYYxHg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTY2MDtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/8d091918990bd0e3070613f491b79c84a6aa738c.jpg)
Belgian historian Philippe Raxhon, a specialist in the Battle of Waterloo, points out that while Waterloo was a total victory for the allies it would not have been a total victory for Napoleon (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)
But what would an all-powerful Napoleon have been like to live under?
For Stubbe da Luz, "Napoleon was a dictator but not a reactionary dictator like the Tsar of Russia."
Napoleonic rule across continental Europe, balanced by Britain's enduring maritime supremacy, would not necessarily have been that bad for the world, he said.
"The dictatorship that Napoleon exported to the countries under his domination was a regression compared to the progress of the French Revolution, but it wasn't bad for his new subjects in Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain," he said.
He cited the "equality of rights for religious minorities and rural populations, the right to vote for men, a new judicial system and an expanded economic area".
- A less-powerful Germany -
Cautiously looking further into the future, the historian imagines a "continental Europe dominated by France" throughout the 19th century.
Had that happened Germany would not have become so strong during that period, he says.
"Germany would therefore probably not have been in a position to provoke a First and Second World War," he said.
But imagining parallel histories is risky business for historians.
"The causes of events are innumerable," said Raxhon, the Belgian historian, from the University of Liege.
He limited himself to scenarios directly linked to the fates of the main protagonists. For example, a defeated Duke of Wellington would no doubt have returned by sea to England via Ostend, because Wellington himself had "envisaged losing the battle", he said.
Novelists of course have freer rein. In his 1992 best-seller "Fatherland", British writer Robert Harris imagines a Germany in 1964 that is preparing for a visit of the American president "Joseph Peter Kennedy" (JFK's father) to Adolf Hitler, the winner of World War II.
That of course is a war that according to some scenarios would not have happened... if Napoleon had won at Waterloo.
Still, I think his various reforms did lay the groundwork for the European Union.
Which is worse? Or is the compromise which gives you both the worst case?
Still, I think his various reforms did lay the groundwork for the European Union.
A bit far-fetched. I could as well state the trade unions did more for equality then anything else at the onset of the 20th century.
Originally Posted by Elok
Briefly: our settler-types out west kept stealing land from the Indians, in spite of endless treaties by the Brits that we would stop. This irritated the Indians and led to wars and massacres, which in turn irked the Brits. Said Brits lacked the manpower to police such an enormous frontier, but they repeatedly ordered the bumpkins to knock it off with the land theft. This merely made the locals ornery, and defense costs for the colonies kept rising.
So they tried to recoup their losses on the colonies by raising taxes, which made smuggling more profitable. Most of the northern FFs had at least partial ownership in smuggling schemes, and got mad when the Brits cracked down on their activities. These taxes were "without representation," but that is irrelevant since our population was too low for any fair representation to make a difference. Anyway, lots of angry northern smugglers. Unrest grew quite violent in the north, especially in Boston; many of the "outrages" cited in the DoI refer to purely local issues there, brought on by royal attempts to restore law and order.
Southern planters were also resentful of the Brits, but in a passive way. They thought of themselves as aristocrats, but their slave estates weren't profitable enough to let them live that way, so folks like Washington and Jefferson always thought their British purchase agents were cheating them on all the fancy imported crap they bought. This got generalized into a dislike of all things British. But they didn't get rowdy until the idiot governor of VA, Lord Dunmore, threatened to arm their slaves against them if they didn't cut out the seditious talk. That drew them into the fight.
The war itself was prosecuted with great ineptness. The British took over a couple of Northern cities, then hung around scratching their balls. At one point we had the opportunity to kidnap an enemy general--I think it was Howe, not sure. Washington and his men conferred over whether to try it, but Hamilton said no, on the grounds that, if we took that general out of the picture, the king would have great difficulty finding someone equally incompetent to replace him. That's almost verbatim what he said, we have the original letter.
It lasted about five years anyway because we were hampered by the same revolutionary ideals we now celebrate. The colonists were too leery of authority to allow any government to tax them, so everything was funded by endlessly printed money. Cue hyperinflation. Our troops were paid in Monopoly money, when they were paid at all. Said troops were mostly militia, because we were also reluctant to have a standing army. Our experienced soldiers kept leaving once their twelve months were up. It drove Washington nuts. Good thing we were endlessly bankrolled by the French government, huh?
Basically, our whole concept of our founding is preposterously whitewashed. I don't see the point of getting angry because Texas replaced our stupid secular myth with a stupid religious myth. We had something that served to flatter us one way; they made it into a different kind of lie. Big deal.
Hopefully this is my last word on the 'Southern" thing, absent anyone wanting to discuss, but I left out that we're lazy and alcoholic and have hillbilly feuds. -Also the superhuman strength, the only positive one, but standard for rural hicks everywhere.
-Does ignorant, prone to sexual deviance and substance abuse and violence, lazy, stupid, inexplicably and implacably hostile, and granted some animalistic superpower sound familiar to anyone?
-It's a standard litany of prejudice, save towards the Jews. If I could swap the strength for enlarged genitals, I'd be black, judging from the bigots' dictionary. Give THAT one a good think.
You wrote me a Fake PM yesterday, BTW. Go look.
Please spare me.? Not a fan of my comedy libel stylings? Who knew? I told mom about what you wrote, FWIW, so not vulgar this time.
You've been to this before, I believe - care to share impressions of previous events?
Please spare me.? Not a fan of my comedy libel stylings? Who knew? I told mom about what you wrote, FWIW, so not vulgar this time.
You wrote me a Fake PM yesterday, BTW. Go look. I'm very tired, myself, today.
Sorry about all the OT in here lately, Rusty.
Rusty - a little guidance here; I fancy your main historical interest is roughly Napoleonic-Victorian and military/naval. How interested in me linking stuff like this?
Ancient Greek 'Antikythera' Shipwreck Still Holds Secrets
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16576.msg74170#msg74170 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16576.msg74170#msg74170)
Briefly; I’m from North Carolina, and it’s been a heavy-wincing week or so for me on the internet. Annoyance (embarrassment) at people defending a symbol that’s been irreparably soiled, annoyance at SC government for not taking it down the day of the incident -if it’s only a raised finger facing North, even if that’s all and no racism or Skynard fandom, today is not the day, not that any day is- a lot of lose talk in the other direction about “The South” (itself a term so poisoned forever that I wince internally every time I see it) and Confederate this and that and actual related use of the terms “traitors” and “treason” like it’s still 1870. I breathlessly await the hillbilly jokes sure to follow. :('Mericans sometimes have no idea how ethnocentric they are, and it's especially hard to take from the liberals who should do better at that, speaking as a left-leaner (depending) myself. The class and regional prejudice against me and my people is certainly not a matter to raise lightly or casually to that crowd when they're oh so very sure of themselves, but rather with enormous thought and care.
…Circa 2003, I saw the president of some Arab-American organization comment that the very first thing he thought when he heard about the thing that happened in New York was “Oh God, please don’t let it be one of us.” That man is a brother of my heart, and I would like to meet him and shake his hand.
- See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/06/je-suis-charleston/#comment-189695 (http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/06/je-suis-charleston/#comment-189695)
Yeah. Cool. I'm not sure about the population comparison. Philadelphia was one of the larger English speaking cities back in the day, but that generally sums it up.
Hey Rusty - you ain't had much to say since you came back. Still resting up from your vacation?
No submarines in coastal waters? What are those drug gangs then using to smuggle their stuff in the US? Atm they're 'only' semi-submerged, but that won't last. The US Coast Guard sure can use a reliable sonar for shallow waters.
Wouldn't sonar buoys work? Frankly, I'd rather National Security had people passively listening to our coastal waters than reading masses of e-mails without warrants..
I'd love to discuss this with a German - I intuit with my enormous buncle powers that a German would get it for some mysterious reason.Well, being a German, I indeed do feel with you on this.
I really hope you too found something you can identify with and be proud of. If I had to guess Buster is someone you're proud of but I don't know you well enough to make any more educated guesses.I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.
That wasn't short at all. I apologize.
I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.;b;
(Fortunately, Rusty doesn't seem to have a problem with this line of talk so far, it having so much to do with history, not least military history...)
I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.
(Fortunately, Rusty doesn't seem to have a problem with this line of talk so far, it having so much to do with history, not least military history...)
P.S. South Carolina sux, and if any state needed wrecking forever, it was SC, NC's New Jersey.
Britain's frontline WWII tunnels rediscoveredhttp://news.yahoo.com/britains-frontline-wwii-tunnels-rediscovered-042435795.html (http://news.yahoo.com/britains-frontline-wwii-tunnels-rediscovered-042435795.html)
AFP
By Robin Millard 8 hours ago
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A hidden tunnel complex that formed Britain's first line of defence in World War II opened to the public this week after six decades buried as a forgotten time capsule (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
Dover (United Kingdom) (AFP) - A hidden tunnel complex that formed Britain's first line of defence in World War II opened to the public this week after six decades buried as a forgotten time capsule.
The underground labyrinth is inside the White Cliffs of Dover, an iconic symbol of England on its southeastern tip and a natural coastal defence at the closest point to continental Europe.
Standing at the clifftop entrance, tour guide Gordon Wise looked across the busy Channel.
"You can actually see France, 21 miles (34 kilometres) away, just 70 seconds flying time for a shell," he said as he surveyed the lights, buildings and beaches visible on the other side.
"You get some idea that this was really the frontline. This was where the defence of Britain had to start."
The tunnel network, 75 feet (23 metres) down inside the chalk cliffs, supported the 185 troops and their four officers who manned three gun batteries and slept in bunks.
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Visitors look at some of the original wartime documents relating to the Fan Bay Deep Shelter within the cliffs overlooking Dover, England, on 23 July, 2015 (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
The digging began after prime minister Winston Churchill visited Dover in July 1940 and was enraged to see enemy German ships sailing unopposed through the straits between Britain and Nazi-occupied France.
The Fan Bay Deep Shelter tunnels were constructed within 100 days.
The 3,500 square feet (325 square metres) of tunnels were abandoned in the 1950s and filled in with debris in the 1970s. Only a metal cover plate on the grassy clifftop gave any clue as to what lay beneath.
- Trap door into the past -
The National Trust conservation body rediscovered the shelter after purchasing this section of the cherished cliffs in 2012, and began a mission to revive the tunnels.
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/JJsgDqkWhgkcPMY.BFXBqw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYwMDtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/00132597f91f06772668916cc189ec822c39c605.jpg)
Fifty volunteers spent 3,000 hours over 18 months removing by hand 100 tonnes of rubble tipped down the surface entrance to the Fan Bay Deep Shelter within the cliffs overlooking Dover (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
Fifty volunteers -- Wise among them -- spent 3,000 hours over 18 months removing by hand the 100 tonnes of rubble tipped down the surface entrance.
"It's an important piece of wartime heritage and it's also a piece of forgotten history," said Jon Barker, the site's project manager.
"The story of the cross-Channel guns was largely forgotten," he told AFP.
Some 125 steps down, the tunnels are damp with condensation due to the moist, warm summer air. They smell of the creosote on the wooden support beams.
The tunnels are lined with rusting corrugated steel arching, some of which was removed for scrap in the 1950s, revealing the fossil-filled pristine white chalk behind it.
(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/GBgo7fMuqg1lfh5Oiiqt1w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYzOTtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/c66352b59a6b084a2879d34524553dd1343de619.jpg)
Volunteers clearing the Fan Bay Deep Shelter found traces of the soldiers' lives like graffiti from the latrines making light of the lack of toilet paper; "Parade is due I dare not linger / here goes I'll use my finger," reads one (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
The temperature remains a cool 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) all year round.
"Today the tunnels are abandoned, they feel quite spacious and they're very quiet," said Barker.
"But during the 1940s, it would have been an extremely busy place. It would have been quite hot, noisy and smelly."
- Saucy graffiti -
The project's volunteers found abundant traces of the long forgotten soldiers' lives.
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/UWVZaknr0oyxltAmkhV_wA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYzOTtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/431e898024b9ccba60d8e98d91e7200f25281051.jpg)
A WWI acoustic mirror which concentrated sound waves and gave an early warning on the direction of incoming aircraft, shipping and enemy fire (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)
Cigarette packets, telegrams, improvised clothes hooks, football betting coupons and rifle rounds were discovered, while a copy of "The Shadow on the Quarterdeck," a 1903 raunchy naval adventure, had been stashed on top of an air duct.
The chalk walls are etched with graffiti, usually the names of troops, such as "Nobby Clark 7/11/42."
Elsewhere there is a game of noughts and crosses, a tiny carved face, and some bawdy graffiti on bricks from the latrines, making light of the lack of toilet paper.
"Parade is due I dare not linger / here goes I'll use my finger," reads one example.
Later graffiti carvers left their mark, including adventurous cavers and locals. "Nick and Julie" snuck inside for many enjoyable visits in the 1970s.
"It was very difficult and dangerous to get in. Because of that, it's kept the tunnels in fantastic condition, which is why they're a time capsule from the 1940s," said Barker.
The dig also uncovered two rare World War I acoustic mirrors built into the cliff face.
Before the advent of radar, the 15-foot (4.6-metre) diameter concave sculptures concentrated sound waves and gave an early warning on the direction of incoming aircraft, shipping and enemy fire.
Hosted by volunteer enthusiasts, a torchlit guided visit down the tunnels costs £10 ($15.50, 14 euros).
Telephones from the 1940s connect the shelter to the surface. The handset in the tunnel suddenly rings and a jovial volunteer answers, "Hello? Winston?"
My own tangent, and forgive me if I go ahead and go off on a thing now that I introduced the subject, 'cause I read an article a few days ago on a rather far leftist site I follow, about a ceremonial burial of a Confederate flag in Florida (not part of "The South", BTW, except in the far northern part) that set my teeth on edge, and I'd be crucified if I spoke up there, however diplomatically. The performance art/political cremation and burial of a long-dead symbol I could care less about, and even approve of on several levels, but the article, written by an associate professor of history who therefore ought to know better than to make such bald and un-nuanced assertions about the history in question in passing, really bugged me.
(This isn't aimed personally at anyone here, because the Civ community has been pretty cool to me about my origins with me not having to hide that I'm North Carolinian at all and never even got MUCH static about it from the trolls of 'poly when it once came up - it's a rhetorical cry to the Yankees of the world and everyone who's bought their propaganda that's. still. going. on. [today and seemingly forever, the winners writing the elementary school history texts starring the Divine Lincoln Who Died to Save us From Our Sins and all])
All that stuff that happened 151(+) years ago? I wasn't there, I wasn't involved, and I don't happen to approve of either side - so stop insulting me. Stop insulting my mother. Stop insulting whatever shreds of pride I can salvage from the tatters of my heritage. From The Beverly Hillbillies to Hee Haw to Momma's Family to whatever's out there right now that I don't know about since I stopped watching TV while I was in Texas - but I'm sure there's SOMEthing. From critically-acclaimed stuff like the plays of Tennessee Williams (good but entirely alien to my experience in every way, and I resent being lumped in with his degenerate characters so, alas identified with "Southerness") to the movie of In the Heat of the Night (the TV adaption was nuanced with bigots and good people, smart and ignorant and all in-between, and it gets the BU "Southern" militant seal of approval for being true and good in its complexity - we are not so different than everyone else, save some stuff a very long time ago we will never be allowed to live down.)
This is tiring. This is a subject so long and involved that it needs a book to begin to cover it all. This is a subject with the game so profoundly loaded that it is a really bad idea to bring up at all -ever- to anyone but fellow victims of the systematic oppression and bigotry. Pretty much only bigots (sure we have some - doesn't everyone?) angry young white men from the southeastern US (the same sorts who may or may not be bigots but definitely don't know what insensitive, impolitic, perspective-lacking jerks they're being when they wail of superficial unfairness like recent race riots or the stuff men's rights activists go on and on about) and absolutely no public figure a millimeter to the left of the late Lewis Gizzard would ever dream of raising in public. I wouldn't dream of it in a crowd any larger than this for all that I love you guys and trust you to think and be cool.
I'd love to discuss this with a German - I intuit with my enormous buncle powers that a German would get it for some mysterious reason. The changes in South Africa were too recent to be applicable, I think, though when Buster's Daddy was a missionary in New York City in the 90s, he knew a white girl from SA who later admitted she'd been surprised at how much he exceeded the expectation she'd had the second he first spoke in front of her and gave his regional origins away.
This is my life. I used to travel a lot for my work - and I might still be out there in tights, making bank flirting outrageously with women avec renfair cleavage if I hadn't gotten my start with a crowd of Minnesota bigot-hypocrites who thought they were in Mayberry and provided me with a textbook example of a hostile working environment. Here's how it works, whether you're black, fat, a woman or "merely" of a despised geographic origin: they make (hateful) jokes (and treat you in general like you're nothing in whatever way occurs to them, which part escalates if you ever object) until you get pissed off, then hold your attitude against you while also collecting anything else they can run to the boss with. Being disliked because abused is a hole I have absolutely no notions -even in far-fetched theory- how you could possibly ever climb out of. They got the impression that I was an angrier person than I actually am, which is really saying something.
(Also what they did to me at WPC, BTW, though because nerdz doing institutional gang-up bullying, not because bigotry. I don't think it's something people plan out to get you, but it IS a kind of groupthink thing that happens once the group decides they don't like you strongly.)
Mayberry. Y'know, I'm not stupid, and smart as I am, not a sport, either - that's part of the myth, the Andy, who explains the exceptions that aren't all that hard to find. My college-graduate parents are smart, and all my grandparents, none of whom were educated beyond high school and some not that, read for pleasure in their spare time. They were not terribly unusual for that. I'm not in the Klan, haven't, to my knowledge ever known anyone who is, and I'm not related to myself for about four generations back. Momma checked, despite the Yankees burning down a lot of courthouses and a great deal of the records of my decent. Not a lot of slaveholders in the family tree, which in one case goes back to 15-something in Saxony. Nobody's family tree is clean on that count -sorry Ben Affleck - it's only a matter of how far back.
Those ignoramuses with the Confederate battle flag on the back of their coat or otherwise on public or private display? God, do I ever wish they'd stop for a long list of reasons, only some of which don't relate to this rant. Yeah, it's a totally jerk-ass thing to do, who anyone over the age of six should avoid for the obvious reason of the message it tends to send. And I do not deny for a second that that symbol that has been irretrievably soiled so badly by a worst element almost as bad as Nazis is nothing any decent person not in a historical movie should ever have anything to do with EVER - and some of them with the flag are saying exactly what all you outsiders think. -But let me point out some other things it sometimes says, not that strongly related to the first meaning. A lot of times it's a great big ol' raised middle finger to our conquerors who still vigorously oppress us, with an eternal barrage of insults and jokes and contempt forever, if nothing else. You wouldn't think that was a non-problem if it happened to you. -All your. life. And Neal Young - oh. my. God, Neal Young and his song The Southern Man. Look it up if you never heard the song -I'll wait- and enjoy the story you'll find about how the classic Sweet Home Alabama was a direct result/reaction. (It's a rockin' good song, for all that as far as I can see, Alabama sucks. Mr. Young, that parts really true about the "Southern" man not needing you.)
Some of them pitiful Joe Dirt doinks in their denim Confederate-from-the-back jackets ain't sayin' a thing in the world but that they like Skynard. Honest to God.
I am a citizen of the United States of America by force, for all that I think we're all better off in our imperfect, hypocritical, oppressive, union. I am a conquered subject tired of being punished for stuff I wasn't in on, even the stuff around the time I was born. And the first time I traveled out of state working renfairs, I got pulled into nearly as many conversations about the Late Unpleasantness, the War of Northern Aggression (a self-serving label, sure, but still with some truth attached) as the rest of my previous 30 years on this planet combined. It is not a subject of any great interest to me, and I assure you that I am not unusual in that. That is another of those myths perpetuated against us, possibly with the justice that someone talking to a Yankee would tend to be in mind, possibly bringing it up as an expression of hostility, overt or otherwise. It honestly looks from my seat like we're not the ones most guilty of holding onto it, given all the crap I've mentioned having to live with, not least the winners' propaganda history.
Incidentally, accents are a thing. I have one, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I think you talk funny too, but consider bringing it up appallingly rude. I don't even have a normally-strong local accent, I've been told, but it's certainly been strong enough that the sin of talking has rebounded on me to my displeasure far too often in my travels, ever being too often and it's been more than that. Please world-ruled-by-Yankees, stop singling me out as a comedic figure for something everybody is guilty of. It's beyond old, and I don't want to have to insist you respect my boundary twice - this being about the millionth time, and it seeming a bit abusive by now from over here.
Americans have collectively never made their peace with losing that war in Vietnam, because when you've got a pretty solid record, you don't want to admit to the marginal cases. We took a real beating in 1812, but the British went home without achieving their war aims, so win. Korea was horrible, scarred my daddy to his deathbed, but South of the 49th is still not communist, so war aims and win. We don't like to admit Vietnam --- because it hurts. It does something to you as a society. And my people already knew that hurt, a hurt we can't expect the winners to understand, but wish they would stop rubbing it in, stop endlessly forever and ever claiming it was about one single [inexcusable] thing with which we are tarred and shamed with poor justice after all these years when any sensible close reader of even faintly objective history knows it was the violent stage of a cultural and economic power struggle older than this nation. Slavery was always in that mix, but stop lying that slavery was all - because if I don't have any problem admitting the truth that my people were way behind the curve of civilization on a horrible and inexcusable matter, I think it's reasonable you, oh my tyrannical northern masters, to admit that it's a bullcrap excuse for a democracy of the people that kills you by the millions and erases your heritage forever for some Old Testament seven generations of guilt bullcrap vengeance stuff, and the lie that a very complex thing was only about one thing is a cover for an illegal war of conquest, with no angels, even the Divine Martyr Lincoln. It was 151 years ago, and now safe to admit.
Where I sit, the bones of my ancestors are pretty much all buried within 200 miles, going back 500 years. Nobody very far at all in the past is in any position to throw stones, and all that Washington-owned-slaves/the-Emancipation-Proclamation-only-applied-to-slaves-in-states-rebelling/race-riots-in-New-York-City-during-the-war stuff. You go ahead and have your pride in your place and your people, whatever you can manage, and leave me mine in peace. Please. Let it go and stop assuming -or EVER saying; that's rude- ugly things about my mother, a decent woman who didn't choose her place of birth, but embraces it, nonetheless, as is only human nature. It just isn't right that I, a man at least as imperfect and flawed as the next, but who has struggled to understand the other and be kind and better than his sinful nature and prejudices for his entire adult life has it so bad that his back goes up from the very mention of The South.
The South, message being that I am an ignorant inbred three-toothed retarded KKK racist, and so's my mother who is probably also my sister. The South, where they had to censor this or that in a racist way or our theaters wouldn't show it, and absolutely not an excuse for racism on the part of the non Southern racists. The South, font of all that's bad in the United States that forced it to stay in and must regret it by now. The South, which was not still behind the curve when I was born because we were conquered impoverished occupied and oppressed -still oppressed 100 years later- and angry about it, bucking the federal government possibly more on general principals -because screw you and your tyranny of the majority- than on (undeniably) backwards ideas about the issue at hand. The South, which is bad because they's just bad and has everything in common with Germany in 1938 and nothing in common with Germany in 1920 (look it up; it made me want to launch a revenge war and conquer France, too). The South, which is at total fault and not kicked-around people pissed and acting out because of being angry at abuse and engaged in all-too-human regrettable-but-still-common scapegoating (seriously - go read the Wikipedia about the Weimar Republic and give it a good long deep think - yes, I did just try to blame the lingering of my people's racism on the Yankees, and no, I don't really stand behind that, but I'm not kidding about what a harsh and hateful occupation after a lost war, combined with generally awful hard times and the most insane inflation that you just won't believe how bad it was did to the German zeitgeist - Hitler was a product of his times, I swear.)
I just have to ask; in this nation of the people for the people and by the people --- if it wasn't time yet when everyone involved in the Civil War and slavery and all that was dead --- when exactly do I get to be just one of the people, distinguished only by my own merits and accomplishments and acts, or lack thereof, and not despised, even in South Africa while still under apartheid, for the accident of my birth?
I don't want that flag back, but how about the fair chance and the human dignity everyone deserves? Let me be an American, just another American at last, like everyone else, not a Southerner assumed guilty - and please lay off my mother.
No submarines in coastal waters? What are those drug gangs then using to smuggle their stuff in the US? Atm they're 'only' semi-submerged, but that won't last. The US Coast Guard sure can use a reliable sonar for shallow waters.
Key to Survival Found for Russian Sailors Shipwrecked in Alaska in 1813 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=16927.msg81559#msg81559)
Oh I got tags and medals and stuff, but his whole wing...well, there's not a lot of history on it, as not many survived.
There's a nice blacked out section of his official record that would seem to line up with the bay of pigs as well, and he died shortly thereafter having retired from the airforce and working locally to investigate some strange goings on locally for some local gubment agency. His neighbors strongly suspect he was killed by the gubment. Either for what he was investigating or what is blacked out in his files. Officially died of the flu, but I was told there was something fishy with how the doctors handled, or refused to handle it.
Russian who 'saved the world' recalls his decision as 50/50http://news.yahoo.com/russian-saved-world-recalls-decision-50-50-062250867.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-saved-world-recalls-decision-50-50-062250867.html)
Associated Press
By LYNN BERRY 9 hours ago
(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/T0ZHaKTXYl.SC951YYAbEQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NjQwO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTk2MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/442bb399d89d3c29820f6a706700e1b9.jpg)
In this Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015 photo former Soviet missile defense forces officer Stanislav Petrov poses for a photo at his home in Fryazino, Moscow region, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015. On Sept. 26, 1983, despite the data coming in from the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellites over the United States, Petrov, a Soviet military officer, decided to consider it a false alarm. If he had decided otherwise, the Soviet leadership could have responded by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
FRYAZINO, Russia (AP) — The elderly former Soviet military officer who answers the door is known in the West as "The man who saved the world."
A movie with that title, which hits theaters in the United States on Friday, tells the harrowing story of Sept. 26, 1983, when Stanislav Petrov made a decision credited by many with averting a nuclear war.
An alarm had gone off that night, signaling the launch of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it was up to the 44-year-old lieutenant colonel to determine, and quickly, whether the attack on the Soviet Union was real.
"I realized that I had to make some kind of decision, and I was only 50/50," Petrov told The Associated Press.
Despite the data coming in from the Soviet Union's early-warning satellites over the United States, Petrov decided to consider it a false alarm. Had he done otherwise, the Soviet leadership could have responded by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States.
What made this even more dangerous was that the Soviet Union appears genuinely to have feared a surprise U.S. nuclear attack during what was an exceptionally tense period of the Cold War. That month, the Soviets had shot down a passenger plane flying to South Korea from the U.S., suspecting it of spying. The United States, after a series of provocative military maneuvers, was preparing for a major NATO exercise, called Able Archer, which simulated preparations for a nuclear attack.
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/518toBDLBXMsUpUKqCQ_Ag--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NjQwO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTk2MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/55bf1b6dd89d3c29820f6a706700299e.jpg)
In this Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015 photo former Soviet missile defense forces officer Stanislav Petrov poses for a photo at his home in Fryazino, Moscow region, Russia. On Sept. 26, 1983, despite the data coming in from the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellites over the United States, Petrov, a Soviet military officer, decided to consider it a false alarm. If he had decided otherwise, the Soviet leadership could have responded by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
In the movie, "The Man Who Saved the World," by Danish director Peter Anthony, actors portray the events of that night in 1983. The dramatic scenes are interwoven with footage of the real Petrov as an older man at his home in Russia, and on a 2006 trip to the United States, where he receives an award at the United Nations and meets with movie stars, including Kevin Costner, Matt Damon and Robert De Niro.
In his homeland, Petrov's role in history has won him little fame. He still lives in Fryazino, a town on the outskirts of Moscow, in a simple, unkempt apartment that looks much as it does in the movie, down to the long strip of yellow fly paper hanging from the ceiling. Unlike in the movie, where Petrov is shown angrily chasing out foreign journalists who have come to hear his story, he proves a gracious host, welcoming guests into his kitchen.
When Petrov, now 76, looks back on that night at the secret Serpukhov-15 control center, he remembers the sound of the alarm that shattered the silence shortly past midnight.
"It was this quiet situation and suddenly the roar of the siren breaks in and the command post lights up with the word 'LAUNCH,'" he said. "This hit the nerves. I was really taken aback. Holy cow!"
He stood up and saw that the others were all looking at him in confusion. "My team was close to panic and it hit me that if panic sets in then it's all over." He needed to make a decision.
(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/.3JdQ4_dUpwKg7LjEObP1A--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NjQwO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTk2MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/4fe37b3ad89d3c29820f6a706700e18f.jpg)
In this Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015 photo former Soviet missile defense forces officer Stanislav Petrov poses for a photo at his home in Fryazino, Moscow region, Russia. On Sept. 26, 1983, despite the data coming in from the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellites over the United States, Petrov, a Soviet military officer, decided to consider it a false alarm. If he had decided otherwise, the Soviet leadership could have responded by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
In the movie, Petrov speaks of not wanting to be responsible for setting off a nuclear war. But in the AP interview he suggests this was more of the filmmakers' poetic license.
"Sorry, I didn't have time to think about whether I would be the one who started World War III," he said. "I had to decide how reliable the information sent by the computer was."
Within minutes of the first alarm, the siren sounded again, warning of a second U.S. missile launch. Soon, the system was reporting that five missiles had been launched.
Petrov reported to his commander that the system was giving false information. He was not at all certain, but his decision was informed by the fact that Soviet ground radar could not confirm a launch. The radar system picked up incoming missiles only well after any launch, but he knew it to be more reliable than the satellites.
The false alarm was later found to have been caused by a malfunction of the satellite, which mistook the reflection of the sun off high clouds for a missile launch.
Petrov was not rewarded for his actions, most likely because doing so would have brought to light the failure of the Soviet's early-warning satellites. Although his commanding officer did not support Petrov at the time, he was the one who revealed the incident after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. If Col. Gen. Yury Votintsev had not spoken out, Petrov said he himself "would have forgotten about it like a bad dream."
Ret. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, an expert on Russia's strategic nuclear forces, played down the importance of the decision forced on Petrov, saying the Soviet leadership in any case would have waited for confirmation from the radars before launching a retaliatory attack.
What's more, Dvorkin said, Russia no longer even has full satellite coverage of the United States, and relies fully on its radar network to monitor U.S. nuclear forces.
"The situation in Russia today is such that the satellite system doesn't work at all, and this doesn't frighten anyone too much," he said. "As you can see, everyone is living peacefully, without panic."
A good officer has a situational awareness of the limitations of his equipment and tactical intelligence - by his own account, he seems to have been that good officer.I agree 100%.
Lots of little things in the military aren't
what you would expect. Especially as far as security is concerned. Tanks for instance don't even have keys.
Army. A child could drive an Abrams. Literally. It has the same controls as a motorized tricycle.
All it has is handles that move you forward or back and the brake. The brakes btw can go from
60 to zero in the length of the tank itself. Hacking in the military like in WARGAMES is pretty much
impossible for a very simple reason. Theres no outside connection to anything vital. So if you want
to hack something you have to get to the facility itself.
I know someone that actually served in a missile silo btw.
I imagine they're simply never left unattended if operational, and keys take seconds that could get people killed in a tight spot in the field.Bingo. Sometimes they padlock the hatches but thats about it. Theres a button to start it. Thats it.
Most military doctrine makes eminent sense, if only you understand the reasoning.The design of military equipment often differs from that of civilian production because they have different application enviroments and concerns.
U.S., China agree on rules for air-to-air military encountershttps://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/u-china-agree-rules-air-air-military-encounters-162828215.html (https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/u-china-agree-rules-air-air-military-encounters-162828215.html)
Reuters
By Phil Stewart September 25, 2015
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday announced agreements with China on a military hotline and rules of behavior to govern air-to-air encounters, just days after the Pentagon criticized China over an unsafe intercept of a U.S. spy plane.
The agreements were unveiled following talks in Washington between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama and seek to lessen the chance of an accidental flare-up between the two militaries, despite tensions in the South China Sea.
"We agreed to new channels of communication to reduce the risks of miscalculations between our militaries," Obama told a White House news conference with Xi standing beside him.
The new agreement on rules of behavior for air-to-air encounters was broad in scope, addressing everything from the correct radio frequencies to use during distress calls to the wrong physical behaviors to use during crises.
"Military aircrew should refrain from the use of uncivil language or unfriendly physical gestures," read one provision of the agreement. (http://1.usa.gov/1G7zxTW (http://1.usa.gov/1G7zxTW))
Another agreement created formal rules to govern use of a military crisis hotline, a move that aims to speed top-level communication. (http://1.usa.gov/1iAw9vu (http://1.usa.gov/1iAw9vu))
The Pentagon says two Chinese JH-7 fighter jets intercepted an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane, with one passing within just 500 feet of the U.S. aircraft. The intercept took place on Sept. 15, about 80 miles (130 km) east of the Shandong peninsula in the Yellow Sea.
The Pentagon reported a far more dangerous intercept last year, when, in August 2014, a Chinese warplane flew as close as 20 to 30 feet (7 to 10 meters) to a U.S. Navy patrol jet and conducted a barrel roll over the plane.
One U.S. defense official said, the United States will expect "full compliance" with the agreement.
The intercepts are examples of moves seen as an assertion of the expanding reach of China's military. This month, five Chinese Navy ships sailed in the Bering Sea off Alaska.
Closer to home, China's territorial claims have stoked tensions. Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.
The agreement sidesteps such territorial disputes by being "geographically neutral," the U.S. defense official said.
But Obama said he had a "candid" discussion with Xi.
"I indicated that the United States will continue to sail, fly and operate anywhere that international law allows," Obama said as Xi stood beside him.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Bernard Orr)
New York explorers find 1862 shipwreck in Lake Ontariohttp://news.yahoo.com/york-explorers-1862-shipwreck-lake-ontario-235246396.html?nf=1 (http://news.yahoo.com/york-explorers-1862-shipwreck-lake-ontario-235246396.html?nf=1)
Reuters 16 hours ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A team of shipwreck explorers has discovered a mid-19th century sunken steamship, believed to be the oldest of its kind ever found in Lake Ontario, one of its members said on Tuesday.
Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski found the wreck off the lake's southern shore in upstate New York in August after months of fruitless exploring using a sonar system.
"We were thrilled," said Kennard, a diver and lake shipwreck expert. "It had been a really bad season for us because of wind and waves and then long hours on the lake and finding nothing."
Kennard and his partner first spotted the ship when they passed over it in their own vessel while scanning the lake, which reaches depths of 800 feet (74 meters).
They measured the wreck using sonar and identified it using a database Kennard created of 600 ships that have sunk or been wrecked on Lake Ontario over the past 350 years.
The vessel, measuring 137 feet (42 meters) with a beam of 26 feet (8 meters), was known as the Bay State, according to the database, which used local newspaper articles published at the time.
It was near Oswego, New York in November 1862 during the U.S. Civil War when a violent storm hit, sinking the ship and killing as many as 18 people aboard.
General merchandise aboard and bits of the wooden vessel itself washed ashore in Oswego in the days following, according to the news articles. Locals helped themselves to the goods.
Some 6,000 to 8,000 ships have been wrecked in the Great Lakes, often by being driven ashore, burned in harbors or smashed to pieces. Today, about 200 ships remain in Lake Ontario, which borders Canada to the north.
Over the past four decades, Kennard has found more than 200 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, New York's Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Only one older propeller-driven steamship is known to have disappeared in Lake Ontario. It has never been found.
So little is known about the steamships that maritime researchers are eager to study the find, Kennard said.
"We're really bringing maritime history to the surface," he said.
The wreck itself, which is considered historic and belongs to the state of New York, will remain in place. Researchers will study images captured by Kennard and Pawlowski.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Littoral Combat Vessel: The US Navy's Great Re-learning
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/littoral-combat-vessel-the-us-navys-great-relearning-13262 (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/littoral-combat-vessel-the-us-navys-great-relearning-13262)
Littoral means close to shore.
This is about the navy trying to find a futuristic replacements for the Perry class frigates, largely used for Anti-Submarine Warfare, but usable as a supplement to the destroyer screens. Given recent problems with piracy, and the terrorist attack against the USS Cole, and other asymmetrical warfare issues, they came up with a revolutionary concept from scratch. A light, high speed, shallow draft, stealth vessel.
So, it would be protected from torpedoes and missile launched torpedoes by being mostly out of the water, and radar guided missiles by being stealthy.
It would be automated, with a small 40 man crew. It would be affordable- say 200 and some million $ each. It would be expendable, that is, if it were actually hit it could be abandoned or scrapped.
That makes a certain amount of sense. During WWII the USN used quantities of attack subs, PBY patrol bombers, Patrol Torpedo boats, and carrier based dive bomber much the same way. Quantities of small, expendable weapons working from an advanced island or tender ship. It worked!
Sounds like it's filling a niche, maybe not the ASW category of the ship class it's replacing, but it could have it's uses. Laying mines, landing marines, chasing pirates, drug traffickers & terrorists, mine sweeping/mine countermeasures.
Well, they incorporated a module concept, to attach equipment to specialize it for a mission- air defense, RC vehicles, Ship to ship combat, carrying marines, etc. Even ASW!
But they were finding that the cost was increasing, and the speed was decreasing with added weight. Well, maybe it should be more durable for that price, and better protect the trained specialists and equipment...best make it more sturdy. That crew is kind of bare-bones minimal, the loss of a single man, even to illness, could cause a mission to be aborted. Better beef it up from 40 to 50. Of course increasing crew size by 20% will affect those operating cost assumptions upon which the whole program concept was approved, so I doubt that they will be re-visited.
Somewhere along the way the new class became two similar designs of the same concept.
Also the rated sprint speed was reduced from 40 knots to 30.
Although as far as I know, they aren't designed to have tender ships or oiler ships stocked with tools, parts, and machinists the way subs and sea planes were in WWII. YET.
"Has the U.S. Navy become the Haight-Ashbury of sea power? In a way. Service leaders, it appears, sometimes succumb to the urge to start from zero—dispensing with long-accepted verities. Exhibit A: the newfangled littoral combat ship, or LCS. Ever notice how often you hear about “new” innovations relating to these fledgling surface combatants? This week over at DOD Buzz, for instance, Kris Osborn reports on how USS Fort Worth is “launching a new expeditionary maintenance capability designed to improve the ship’s ability to conduct repairs in transit while on deployment in the Pacific theater.” The world is made new.
Except no. It turns out that Fort Worth is innovating by … carrying spare parts for its machinery. And tools to install those parts! Who’d ’ve thought the crew of a 3,400-ton ship—bigger than a World War II destroyer—could make routine repairs and conduct maintenance without putting into port?"
[/" wise conservatives—the guardians of fixed truths about human competition and war—should turn out in force when radicals maintain that the nature of war has changed, that high-tech wizardry can dispel the fog of war, or what have you. Devil’s advocates should do their damnedest when proponents of gee-whiz technology claim to have been liberated from fundamental principles that rule naval warfare. Naval warfare has not been made anew. No one can start out from zero. That’s the lesson from the littoral combat ship."b]
The US Navy would be better off stop spending money on high tech junk and actually build vessels that don't melt when they get hitI have to agree that I'm no fan of aluminum hulls, whether they're Humvees, Bradley protoypes, or ships simply because of the dangers they pose to their crews when hit.
because the hulls are made of aluminum.
Annihilated by whom?The Russians for a start. The main reason we haven't started a war with Iran is point blank we'd lose even against them.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/russia-would-annihilate-us-army/
Russia and the U.S. have not indulged in a direct confrontation in decades. While NATO is conducting its biggest military drills in decades in Europe as a show of strength, Russia aims to hold 4,000 exercises this year. What if a direct war breaks out between Russia and the United States? The possibility is very high given the escalating tensions in Europe and Syria.
Russia vs US
US Army is not as strong as many think
In a direct confrontation, Russians would “annihilate” the US Army, says retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor. Pentagon may have the world’s largest defense budget, but the US Army is not as strong as many think, Macgregor told the Politico magazine. He said the deployment of the US Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Bavaria to Hungary was intended to assure NATO members that the US military was fully prepared to respond quickly to any threat from Russia.
But the movement of troops wouldn’t help in real-life fighting. Macgregor believes the Stryker parade “won’t fool anyone in Moscow.” The Russians may not do many things well, but they have been actively destabilizing, subverting, and invading their neighbors for decades. Vladimir Putin’s aggressively military moves in Syria and Ukraine have stunned the Western world.
US forces can’t face an equally strong army like that of Russia
Macgregor holds a Ph.D. in international relations. He is recognized for destroying an entire Iraqi Armored Brigade, including 70 armored vehicles, in just 23 minutes while suffering only one American casualty in 1991. However, he calculated that if his unit came in a direct confrontation with a better trained and armed enemy like the Russians, his army would have lost it.
Macgregor is a vocal advocate for reform of the US Army. He described the US defense spending as “wasteful,” US Army weapons as “obsolescent,” and its top leaders as “self-interested.” He said the US Army was poorly organized, and if it had to face another equally strong army like that of Russia or China on a conventional battlefield, the US forces would be “annihilated.”
Traffic analysis was important even before the code was broken. It showed that British troops were surrounded in France, so they evacuated at Dunkerque before the noose was pulled tight.
I'm currently reading a sort of WWI memoir. It was supposed to be about sniping, but it has many digressions, and not much about sniping. I'll decide if I want to give it an entry when I finish.
Several competing theories explain why one of the Medusa heads is sideways at the base of a column and the other is completely upside-down. The heads may have been removed from an ancient building called the Forum of Constantine, where similar ones have been found. While The Guardian writes that the upside-down head is “proof that Byzantine builders saw Roman relics as little more than reusable rubble,” other historians point to the early Christian practice of putting pagan statues upside-down to make a bold statement about their faith.
How stealthy is Navy’s new destroyer? It needs reflectorshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-stealthy-is-navys-new-destroyer-it-needs-reflectors/2016/04/10/c763daa6-ff26-11e5-8bb1-f124a43f84dc_story.html (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-stealthy-is-navys-new-destroyer-it-needs-reflectors/2016/04/10/c763daa6-ff26-11e5-8bb1-f124a43f84dc_story.html)
Associated Press
By David Sharp | AP April 10 at 12:33 PM
(https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/Wires/Online/2016-04-10/AP/Images/StealthDestroyer-36350.jpg?uuid=xtHXlv8mEeWLsfEkpD-E3A)
In this March 21, 2016 file photo, Dave Cleaveland and his son, Cody, photograph the USS Zumwalt as it passes Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Phippsburg, Maine, as it heads to sea for final builder trials. The ship is so stealthy that the U.S. Navy resorted to putting reflective material on its halyard to make it visible to mariners during the trials. (Robert F. Bukaty, File/Associated Press)
BATH, Maine — The future USS Zumwalt is so stealthy that it’ll go to sea with reflective material that can be hoisted to make it more visible to other ships.
The Navy destroyer is designed to look like a much smaller vessel on radar, and it lived up to its billing during recent builder trials.
Lawrence Pye, a lobsterman, told The Associated Press that on his radar screen the 610-foot ship looked like a 40- to 50-foot fishing boat. He watched as the behemoth came within a half-mile while returning to shipbuilder Bath Iron Works.
“It’s pretty mammoth when it’s that close to you,” Pye said.
Despite its size, the warship is 50 times harder to detect than current destroyers thanks to its angular shape and other design features, and its stealth could improve even more once testing equipment is removed, said Capt. James Downey, program manager.
During sea trials last month, the Navy tested Zumwalt’s radar signature with and without reflective material hoisted on its halyard, he said. The goal was to get a better idea of exactly how stealthy the ship really is, Downey said from Washington, D.C.
The reflectors, which look like metal cylinders, have been used on other warships and will be standard issue on the Zumwalt and two sister ships for times when stealth becomes a liability and they want to be visible on radar, like times of fog or heavy ship traffic, he said.
The possibility of a collision is remote. The Zumwalt has sophisticated radar to detect vessels from miles away, allowing plenty of time for evasive action.
But there is a concern that civilian mariners might not see it during bad weather or at night, and the reflective material could save them from being startled.
The destroyer is unlike anything ever built for the Navy.
Besides a shape designed to deflect enemy radar, it features a wave-piercing “tumblehome” hull, composite deckhouse, electric propulsion and new guns.
More tests will be conducted when the ship returns to sea later this month for final trials before being delivered to the Navy. The warship is due to be commissioned in October in Baltimore, and will undergo more testing before becoming fully operational in 2018.
Rusty - I notice your post count is WWII for two more posts...
Stealthy destroyer ready to set sail to join US Navy
AP September 7, 2016
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Capt. James Kirk, skipper of the future USS Zumwalt, stands in front of the destroyer at Bath Iron Works on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, in Bath, Maine. The ship is due to depart the shipyard on Wednesday to be commissioned in Baltimore. (AP Photo/David Sharp)
BATH, Maine (AP) -- The largest and most expensive destroyer ever built for the U.S. Navy once headed to sea in a snowstorm during builder trials. Now, it's heading into the remnants of a tropical storm as it leaves Maine for good.
The skipper is watching the weather as the stealthy Zumwalt destroyer prepares to depart from Bath Iron Works on Wednesday en route to its commissioning in Baltimore, and then to its homeport in San Diego.
Capt. James Kirk said what's left of former Hurricane Hermine was creating some strong waves in the North Atlantic, but he said it wouldn't prevent the ship from departing from the Navy shipbuilder.
He said sailors enjoyed their time training while the ship was being built, but now it's time to get down to business.
"It's time for us to do our job at sea," he said.
The 610-foot destroyer may have some port visits en route to its formal commissioning ceremony next month.
The sleek warship looks like no other ship in the fleet.
It features an angular shape to minimize its radar signature, an unconventional wave-piercing hull, electric propulsion and a composite deckhouse that hides the radar and sensors. It boasts a powerful new gun system that fires rocket-powered shells up to 63 nautical miles.
There are inevitable lighthearted comparisons of the futuristic-looking ship to the Starship Enterprise and the skipper to the mythical Captain Kirk.
The real Kirk, who was named for his grandfather, is used to the Starfleet jokes.
"Certainly I have been ribbed every now and then with someone saying, 'Yes, you're going where no man has gone before, on this class of ship,'" Kirk joked, referring to the line from the "Star Trek" TV series.
-Poor Captain Kirk...
Would a ground-based railgun be likely, or does the power requirement quash that?
Missed this article in the course of political things-
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a23440/zumwalt-destroyer-railgun/ (http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a23440/zumwalt-destroyer-railgun/)
The Zumwalt Destroyer Is Here, Now What About the Railgun?
The U.S. Navy has said the destroyer could be the first equipped with railguns. Where are they?
By Kyle Mizokami
Oct 19, 2016
The USS Zumwalt, lead ship of a new class of advanced stealth destroyers, was commissioned on Saturday, October 15th with great fanfare. The knifelike ship, armed with two 155-millimeter guns and 80 vertical launch silos, has no shortage of firepower.
The Navy hopes to install a railgun in place of the one of the main guns of the third Zumwalt, USS Lyndon B. Johnson. The railgun prototype was scheduled to be tested aboard the USNS Trenton right around now, but there hasn't been any news on the tests. As the Zumwalt ships enter the fleet it raises the obvious question: When, if ever, will we see these futuristic weapons at sea?
Railguns use electricity and magnetism to accelerate projectiles along rails to extreme speeds. And like lasers, they are the kind of energy-intensive weapons that have always been on the cusp of development but have hit a number of unexpected hurdles on the way to operational status. When it comes to the railguns, the chief issue is their mammoth energy requirements.
The U.S. Navy's prototype railgun requires 25 megawatts to function properly. That's enough electricity to power 25,000 American homes. But the USS Zumwalt can generate 78 megawatts, which, after onboard systems and propulsion, leaves an excess 58 megawatts. So, if the U.S. Navy wanted to replace the Zumwalt's twin 155-millimeter long range guns, the power is there.
The question is less whether it's possible, but whether its worth it, at least with railguns in their current form. For the moment, there are several problems with the idea, not all of which are the railgun's fault.
According to The National Interest, the railgun projectile is a fairly paltry 20 kilograms, or approximately 40 pounds. The projectile is non-explosive and does damage solely by transferring its kinetic energy to the target—which is not inconsiderable when you're traveling at Mach 6. Still, while a kinetic energy round traveling at Mach 6 is devastating, it likely does a lot less damage than the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) which packs a 1,000 pound high explosive warhead.
The second problem is that, even at Mach 6, it might be difficult for railgun rounds to hit a moving ship. Let's say that a railgun-equipped ship is firing on an enemy ship at maximum range—111 miles. The railgun projectile travels at 1.26 miles per second, so it will reach its target in 88 seconds. The enemy ship, however, is traveling 49 feet per second, and in 88 seconds will have traveled 4,312 feet—the better part of a mile. The problem becomes even worse if the enemy ship is zig-zagging.
The railgun's rounds are guided, but only in the sense that they can home in on a fixed location, adjusting their direction in flight. They do not seem guided in the sense that they can pick out moving targets at the destination and adjust course to hit them—a method that is critical towards giving them an anti-ship capability.
LRASM, by contrast, is a guided missile that can avoid air defenses, home in specific targets, and at 580 miles has a much longer range than the railgun. In punch, accuracy and range, the LRASM beats the railgun every time.
The railgun is also envisioned as a missile-killer, downing anti-ship missiles before they can hit the Zumwalts. The problem is that the Zumwalts already have a layered anti-missile system for self-protection, starting with the Standard SM-2MR missile for longer range threats and Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles for closer range threats. A railgun would just provide the backup defensive capability that the U.S. Navy apparently does not believe it needs.
So is that it for the railgun-on-Zumwalt combination? Not necessarily. If the Navy can build a ship-hitting guided round for the railgun, one that can detect enemy ships and steer itself into the ship's path, that could overcome the weapon's issues hitting distant moving targets.
Another possible scenario that saves the railgun is that if the U.S. Navy does adopt LRASM, it will need somewhere to put it. The Zumwalt class destroyers will have 80 vertical launch tubes, each of which can carry one LRASM, one SM-2MR, Tomahawk, or four ESSM missiles. The Zumwalt can carry LRASMs only at the expense of its air defense missile inventory. So, it might make sense for railguns to take on the anti-missile role, opening up space in the silos for anti-ship missiles.
Whatever the case, in this era of fiscal austerity, the U.S. Navy must do railguns right or risk losing funding and enthusiasm—particularly congressional enthusiasm—for the technology. The U.S. seems to have a commanding lead in the technology, with little news about parallel programs in Russia or China so there isn't much chance the Navy will fall behind her peers. We may see railguns entering Navy service within five years, or the technology may go back in the oven.
-Poor Captain Kirk...
;-)
Certainly an indignity, but it's kind of the point of a shakedown cruise, to find the flaws and train the crew on the job. Even in WWII, bringing a ship or sub ( that had been built scores of times before) from the construction yards on the East Coast to the West was likely to uncover problems.
Being Captain of a first in it's class warship is a mixed blessing. It's a prestigious vote of confidence and a major headache. He could end up a hero or a scape goat.
Would a ground-based railgun be likely, or does the power requirement quash that?
Well, the test models have been ground mounted. This is the limitation- "The U.S. Navy's prototype railgun requires 25 megawatts to function properly. That's enough electricity to power 25,000 American homes." Very few current USN ships have the spare power to operate it.
The gun itself could be truck mounted. It's just a matter of power outlets. I don't think anybody would permit a railway-based nuclear power plant, unless somebody was shooting nukes at their city and they actually needed a rail gun. There could be coastal installations, for example. I think the prime application is mounted on a ship in the Sea of Japan for when North Korea has nuclear weapons that actually work.
The creation of a nuclear arsenal in the country of North Korea remains a frightening concept for the civilian populations. The peremptory dictatorship would employ the weapons in a brash manner when the foreign nations attempt to coerce the country into a negotiation or seizure.Would a ground-based railgun be likely, or does the power requirement quash that?
Well, the test models have been ground mounted. This is the limitation- "The U.S. Navy's prototype railgun requires 25 megawatts to function properly. That's enough electricity to power 25,000 American homes." Very few current USN ships have the spare power to operate it.
The gun itself could be truck mounted. It's just a matter of power outlets. I don't think anybody would permit a railway-based nuclear power plant, unless somebody was shooting nukes at their city and they actually needed a rail gun. There could be coastal installations, for example. I think the prime application is mounted on a ship in the Sea of Japan for when North Korea has nuclear weapons that actually work.
I tried to look some stuff up and do some calculations, and a dozen dedicated locomotives should provide enough power if they aren't used for pulling. So, I don't see why that couldn't work. You could disguise the appearance easily enough, the noise and heat when powering up would be hard to conceal. It also occurs to me that there is the matter of electrification in the Northeast corridor, from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, and north to New Haven and south to DC. Plenty of power there. The trouble is that the overhead cables would cramp the ability of a 30 foot barrel to elevate and swing.
Scientists explore sunken mini sub near Pearl Harborhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/expedition-eyes-sunken-mini-sub-pearl-harbor-anniversary-211844330.html (https://www.yahoo.com/news/expedition-eyes-sunken-mini-sub-pearl-harbor-anniversary-211844330.html)
Associated Press
DAN JOLING December 7, 2016
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Ocean waters are taking a toll on a sunken mini submarine 5 miles off the entrance to Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese Imperial Navy vessel with a two-man crew — the first casualties of shots fired by U.S. forces in World War II — lies at 1,100 feet. The hull, a host for barnacles and coral, is coming apart in three places.
An underwater remote vehicle operated from the Okeanos Explorer, a ship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, viewed the sub Wednesday 75 years to the minute after it was struck by a shell from a Navy destroyer, the USS Ward. The location is maintained as a gravesite, said Hans Van Tilburg, a historian with NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Visiting the site and livestreaming images at the precise moment it was struck raises awareness of the attack on defenses at Oahu, Van Tilburg said.
"The science objectives are what we've been doing for a while now — monitoring the status of what is an extremely historic property," he said.
The Japanese mini subs were 78 feet long and 9 feet, 10 inches high. Batteries supplied power for single 600-horsepower electric motors. They could reach 20 knots. Their only armament was two torpedoes.
Five Japanese subs took part in the attack, according to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
They were transported on the decks of full-size "mother" submarines. They planned to enter the harbor by closely tailing other ships to avoid anti-submarine nets. They were to surface and fire torpedoes at Navy ships during the Japanese aerial attack, then dive and escape.
At least one submarine reached the harbor. The USS Monaghan, a destroyer, spotted the intruder, rammed it and dropped depth charges.
A second sub washed ashore at Bellows Beach on east Oahu. The sub was put on tour to promote the sale of war bonds.
A third mini sub, with torpedoes intact, was found east of Pearl Harbor at Keehi Lagoon. The Navy raised it in 1960. The section containing the torpedoes was dumped at sea. The other two sections were restored and put on display in Japan.
A fourth lies in three pieces several miles from the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The sub had been scuttled with an explosive charge inside the vessel. It could have sunk after firing torpedoes outside the harbor at the USS St. Louis, said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for the National Marine Sanctuaries program.
It also could have entered Pearl Harbor, fired torpedoes and escaped to West Loch on the west side of Pearl Harbor, Van Tilburg said. An explosion and fire in 1944 in the loch destroyed multiple ships preparing for the invasion of the Mariana Islands. Remains of the mini sub were found where debris from the West Loch Tragedy was dumped, Van Tilburg said. The Navy later raised the mini sub and moved it farther out to sea.
The Ward destroyed the fifth mini sub.
The morning of the attack, just before 4 a.m., as the Ward patrolled outside Pearl Harbor, another Navy vessel spotted a periscope. The Ward began searching, and more than two hours later saw a periscope and part of a conning tower behind a cargo ship, the Antares.
The Ward attacked at 6:53 a.m. A gun crew manned by members of the Minnesota Naval Reserve fired a 4-inch, 50mm shell that penetrated the conning tower and exited through the hull. The submarine flooded and sank.
The skipper of the Ward sent a report of the attack to the Naval Command on Oahu. Roughly an hour later, the devastating Japanese aerial attack began.
Mini subs were built in three sections. Since NOAA's last visit to the site in 2014, the gaps have formed between the sections, cameras revealed Wednesday.
"It's slowly deteriorating over time," Van Tilburg said.
___
Online:
Okeanos Explorer live stream: http://bit.ly/1hSTyQt (http://bit.ly/1hSTyQt)
Remember the thread started off with some book reports about PBY Catalinas ?
I came across a newsreel about the black cats. It doesn't give away the tactics and technology, but it does point out that these obsolete aircraft were able to sink a ton of Japanese shipping for every pound of bombs they dropped. That sounds pretty effective to me.
Electro-magnetic energy module developed for Railgun (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=18996.0)
http://www.carolinacountry.com/issues/2017/departments/feature-story/a-lost-shipwreck-found (http://www.carolinacountry.com/issues/2017/departments/feature-story/a-lost-shipwreck-found)
This is the discovery of a Confederate blockade runner. It reminds me of the story of "Phantom of the Blockade" by Stephen W. Meader, which illustrated some of the tactics of the blockade runners. Hardcover- http://southernskies.com/Books-and-Shop%20/Phantom-Of-The-Blockade (http://southernskies.com/Books-and-Shop%20/Phantom-Of-The-Blockade)
Electro-magnetic energy module developed for Railgun (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=18996.0)
I'm still hoping it's the military solution to North Korean missiles.
A senior Naval source told the Mirror: "Hypersonic missiles are virtually unstoppable. The whole idea of the carrier is the ability to project power. But with no method of protecting themselves against missiles like the Zircon the carrier would have to stay out of range, hundreds of miles out at sea. Its planes would be useless and the whole basis of a carrier task force would be redundant."
Then again, somebody may be deliberately screwing with GPS satellites.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05cgy61 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05cgy61)
It would make sense. It gives the USA quite an advantage in warfare, and we depend upon it now.
He probably has leave that he can apply towards it, or he will have other some other busywork until retirement.
I'm reading a book entitled- "the Mosquito Fleet". ( I'll update this post when I finish the book ). It's an operational history of American Patrol Torpedo boats in all theaters of WWII. I'm not finished yet, but I get the distinct impression that serving in one was unnecessarily dangerous, and not just because their primary weapon was the crappy MK VIII torpedo.
Why? Because their main national identifier was the stars & stripes flying from a pole at the back. No prominent white stars on the foredeck, or sides. Yes, they had a flares as a recognition signal, but they were usually mistaken for tracer fire. So they took a lot of friendly fire, from the Allies, from aircraft of all service branches, and from navigation mistakes getting forces from Nimitz's command and MacArthur's in the wrong zones. Sometimes they got frustrated and fought back, and they shot down planes because they carried twin 40mm Bofors on the stern, and plenty of .50 cal machine guns for their size.
'Play Ball': See the Message That Launched American Soldiers Into World War IIhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-play-ball-apos-see-153002238.html (https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-play-ball-apos-see-153002238.html)
Time
Lily Rothman •November 8, 2017
(https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/xc4aDC848IdCe5MIQmftiQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAw/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/time_72/392459105261ca0a74e887e20bfc79b5)
The mission began on Nov. 8, 1942
When the message was decoded, it was only two words long, and it could have referred to almost anything: PLAY BALL.
In the context, however, the meaning was clear — and more complex than its brevity would suggest. The recipient, after all, was Maj. Gen. George Patton, who was on a ship off the coast of Casablanca, waiting for word from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the future president and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This message, from Eisenhower, was the go-ahead he needed to launch the invasion known as Operation Torch, which he did 75 years ago, on Nov. 8, 1942. With that, American forces were officially engaged in their first World War II combat on foreign soil.
The decision to help the Allies concentrate on Germany first was not a foregone conclusion for the U.S., given the attack on Pearl Harbor, but it quickly paid dividends in North Africa. “The occupation of French North Africa had been accomplished with Blitzkrieg briefness, utilizing expert coordination of planes, ships, tanks, trucks, guns and courageous men. In spots it was easy. In others resistance was bitter, though brief,” TIME summarized in the aftermath:
In Morocco tough, muscular Major General George S. Patton Jr. ran into just the kind of opposition for which he had prepared. Months ago, on the deserts of southeastern California, he had drilled his men to fight in blazing heat over terrain such as they would meet in North Africa. Patton had insisted that they keep their sleeves rolled down, that they get along on a minimum of water. He had forbidden that vehicles, moving or standing, be within 50 yards of one another, lest they provide a bunched target. Not long after his men reached Africa, their grumbles turned to praise for what the Old Man had taught them.
Two nights before the U.S. struck, Hans Auer, German Consul General in Casablanca, had called a meeting of twelve Nazi armistice commissioners at the Hotel Plaza to warn them that an Allied invasion was imminent. De Gaullists followed the Germans, set up machine guns covering the hotel’s exits. When the meeting broke up, a blaze of gunfire silenced the Germans.
Though De Gaullist guns thus disrupted Nazi preparations, Casablanca still managed to put up the stiffest of all resistance to the U.S. invasion. Foresighted George Patton shoved three tank columns ashore east and west of the sprawling city and hit first for an outlying reservoir. With that in his hands, he could cripple Casablanca if necessary. Soon parachutists seized the city’s main airdrome and the tank force advanced.
Off Casablanca, U.S. warships commanded by Admiral Henry K. Hewitt knocked out a bitterly resisting French cruiser-destroyer force while Navy flyers bombed the 35,000-ton battleship Jean Bart into a blazing hulk. The U.S. fleet moved inshore and soon was heaving shell after shell into the Moroccan coast.
By the time Patton’s three tank columns had pierced through to Casablanca, all coastal French Morocco, from Agadir in the south to the Spanish Moroccan border on the north, was in American hands.
Said General Eisenhower succinctly: “I do not regard this as any great victory. I regard these people as our friends. We had a misunderstanding, but fortunately it ended in our favor. The job now is to get this thing organized and go after the enemy.”
The copy of the decoded message seen above will be on display starting Wednesday as part of the exhibition The Real and Reel Casablanca; American Troops Enter World War II, Landing in North Africa at the International Museum of World War II in Natick, Mass. It ended up in the collection, explains museum director Kenneth W. Rendell, via an aide to Patton. “Patton read it and handed it back to him, and said, ‘Save this, it’s an important souvenir,’” Rendell says. He did, and the museum later acquired the message from his family.
This invasion was, Rendell says, “really the beginning of the Patton legend.” It was also the beginning of awareness, for many Americans, of where Casablanca was and what was going on in North Africa. That’s part of the reason why the movie Casablanca is also part of the story, as it was rushed to theaters within weeks of the invasion and helped inform American audiences at home, Rendell says, “showing people where their husbands and sons were fighting and what it was like there.”
Interesting. I'm reading a history of American antitank battalions & tank destroyers in WWII, and reading about Operation Torch landing preparations.
I also stumbled across a bit of information that said FDR attended a conference in Casablanca in 1943. There were still enough Vichy and Nazis there to make it unsafe, but the intelligence in Berlin translated the Casablanca summit location literally as "white house" and took no action.
Interesting. I'm reading a history of American antitank battalions & tank destroyers in WWII, and reading about Operation Torch landing preparations.
I also stumbled across a bit of information that said FDR attended a conference in Casablanca in 1943. There were still enough Vichy and Nazis there to make it unsafe, but the intelligence in Berlin translated the Casablanca summit location literally as "white house" and took no action.
You did hear about the Yalta conference in '45, right? Right??!
I think they did that more than once, now that I think about it.
Interesting. I'm reading a history of American antitank battalions & tank destroyers in WWII, and reading about Operation Torch landing preparations.
If the 'back of the line' doctrine was kept throughout deployment, it also meant the train (rear) of an army colonne also had better armored (protected) personnel transport available.
I've read some other military history this year, but nothing worth talking and writing about.
I've read some other military history this year, but nothing worth talking and writing about.
Old history is a limited resource, its true. ;)
Old history is a limited resource, its true. ;)
Okay, I read one that made me think. It was the memoir of a British aristocrat, son of a R.N. captain, who graduated from the naval academy shortly before the war. A lot of it was correspondence. He didn't have the stomach for destroyers, so he spent the war in cruisers and capital ships, and was aboard the Prince of Wales for it's entire commission. He had lots of connections, and was good about writing for wounded and deceased under his command, and for informing other aristocrat and military families of the last time he saw their son or whoever. Likewise, his mother would inform him of his friends and relatives who were killed. There were a lot. They had volunteered in regiments, and as pilots and so forth. He had less competition with the girls as the war went on.
That made me think about the disruption to the social order. All of those guys with social status and leadership ability removed from the gene pool. Meanwhile, the girls left behind were probably making up their minds that they didn't want to endure the separation and the risks of becoming a military wife, even in peacetime. I wonder how many nerds became dads who might not have otherwise.
On the technical front I learned that the British decided to put armored flight decks on their aircraft carriers, the trade-off being that the extra weight meant fewer aircraft carried compared to American carriers. I also learned that they used mostly American planes on British carriers in the Pacific, the implication being that they were designed for longer ranges. Of course, that made them easier to repair and re-supply if they had to divert to an American carrier, too.
How complete? Is it solely for the US Navy, or does it include the other significant navies at the time (Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, Imperial Navy,...)?
And does it stop at warships, or are convoys included?
"... It belongs on the nightstand (reinforced for weight) of every student of history’s ..."
;lol ;b;
Wonder what the misses would have to say about that. :D
I've been reading historical fiction rather than fiction, since. Haven't felt the urge to revisit the complete naval history of WWII. It seems to me that it should have been divided into Atlantic and Pacific theaters and been 2 books.
Oh well. I guess it will be this year's project to read it and summarize it here. Maybe starting in February.
I've been reading historical fiction rather than fiction, since. Haven't felt the urge to revisit the complete naval history of WWII. It seems to me that it should have been divided into Atlantic and Pacific theaters and been 2 books.
Oh well. I guess it will be this year's project to read it and summarize it here. Maybe starting in February.
I think the naval skirmishes around Gualdacanal would be plenty to fill your appetite.
Chapter 2 is about German surface raiding in the Atlantic, the Deutschland in the North, and the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic.
A comic for you, I think, Rusty; good art, lots of love for warplanes and large bosoms...
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Angel-Wings/Issue-1?id=151216#1 (https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Angel-Wings/Issue-1?id=151216#1)
https://www.navalgazing.net/
It only just now occurred to me that this might be of interest to you. Run by an acquaintance of mine from another forum. Total military-industrial nerd.
The hornets have advanced tech, but they still have 2 engines, 2 tails, and a Gattling gun, things the warthog pilots are used to. It's an economical way to preserve the experience of the wart hog units while upgrading their capabilities when the planned F-35s didn't materialize. That is if the Air Force doesn't think supporting the US Army, or an allied army is an obsolete mission, and if they can swallow their pride and fly a navy model plane.
I think the air supremacy situation would be a nightmare for US generals. They're so used to it. ;nod