Just a few noteworthy quote: – I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. – It is…
As a Student NFO back in the late 70’s (OK, 1978) in P-cola, we tended to spend a certain amount of our free time over at the (then) new-ish Naval Aviation Museum (the ‘National’ appellation still some several years off) and while our attention was drawn to some of the indoor exhibits, nicely finished and…
One of the all time great things about writing a blog is the mail one gets offline – some genuinely interesting stuff comes our way that we may have missed out on in the comings and goings of a standard day. The Flightdeck Fridays in particular generate more than their fair share of folks sharing…
“War Is The Unfolding of Miscalculations” That quote, attributed to author Barbara Tuchman, is generally ascribed to the events that ran up to the First World War. However, it, along with other illuminating principles such as the Rule of Unintended Consequences find a wider, and sadly, more common range of applications including those events presently…
Breathes there a soul so dead that these words don’t send a chill through the spine? When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to…
Lead ship of the next class of LHA’s: Navy Names New Amphibious Assault Ship America The Navy’s newest class of large-deck amphibious assault ship, LHA 6, will bear the name USS America, Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter announced while speaking at the USS America Carrier Veterans Association reunion in Jacksonville, Fla. This ship…
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)
“I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success.“ – Fleet Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto In racing there is a saying – ‘luck is where preparation meets opportunity’ Perhaps there is no truer an example than the Battle of Midway. Popular literature seems to emphasize the American forces stumbling…
EUROPE: Britain launches its first 1000-plane bomber raid – the target: Cologne, Germany. CHINA-BURMA-INDIA: Myitkyina, Burma is again hit by B-17’s. Again no activity is observed and the attacks are discontinued. HQ 7th Bombardment Group transfers from Karachi to Dum-Dum, India. ALASKA: 77th Bombardment Squadron (Medium), 28th Composite Group, based at Elmendorf Field, Anchorage, Territory…
Pacific Theater: ALASKA (11th Air Force): A B-17 flies the first armed reconnaissance from the secretly constructed airfield at Unmak, Aleutian Islands over the Aleutian Chain, but finds no sign of the enemy. XI Fighter Command elements are not deployed at Unmak (P-40’s and P-38’s), Cold Bay (P-40’s), Kodiak (P-39’s), and Elmendorf Field [P-38’s and…
