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This Date in Naval Aviation History – Pacific Theater and Guided Missiles

BySteeljawscribe

12 Jun 1944: In the first deployment of a guided missile unit into a combat theater, elements of Special Task Air Group 1 arrived in the Russell Islands in the South Pacific.  (ed: and in case you’re wondering – yes, there was a Flightdeck Friday on the subject. – SJS)

Project Valour-IT Naval Aviation Factoid: 17 November

BySteeljawscribe

17 Nov 1924–Langley reported for duty with the Battle Fleet, thereby ending over 2 years in experimental status and becoming the first operational aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy. On 1 December she also became the flagship of Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet. Valour-IT Fundrainsing Update (through 14 Nov): Here are the official totals through Day…

3 Comments

  1. That bombing saved millions of lives. Had Truman not given the orders to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a million American men and ten million Japanese civilians would have died in the invasion. Sometimes the most merciful option is the one which seems the most brutal.

  2. Agreed and on two fronts. On the one hand, the research I have conducted on just the naval side of the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland affirms this with the lives saved on both sides from not having to deal with a kamikaze counterassualt that would have made the acion at Okinawa pale in comparison.

    A second, and more subtle point, is that in the post-war years, whenever one wanted to highlight the potential cost of nuclear war, the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were always at the ready. The destruction of manequins and occupant-less buildings in a remote desert location, or even the vaporization of part of an island in the Pacific fail to convey the potential human toll as exemplified by those two cities. And that, perhaps, is their enduring legacy.

    -SJS

  3. I feel sorta sheepish posting this after two serious comments, but…What The Hell, eh?

    The last company I worked at was a small IT start-up in SFO, staffed primarily by stereotypical flaming, politically-correct SFO liberals, and I do NOT jest. By my count there were three conservatives in the whole company, which, at its high-water mark, had a total of 300+ folks. Anyway… We got the usual complement of Federal and State holidays, five sick days, and one “Diversity Day,” which one could use to celebrate an occasion of personal importance. But you had to designate the day in advance. I informed my superiors that I intended to take August 6th as my “DD.” When asked what the occasion was… I replied “Hiroshima Day. It’s a celebration of American Power.” And I did take it, too, to the delight of the company’s other two conservatives and the shock of the PC Brigade.

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