Lex Anteinternet: February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.

Lex Anteinternet: February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.: 

February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.

Short Stirlings, bombed Rotterdam, their first combat use. The four engine bomber first flew in 1939.

The British, on this day, engaged in their first airborne commando type raid, dropping paratroopers in Calabria, Italy, to destroy on aqueduct.  I learned that here:

Today in World War II History—February 10, 1941

All 35 paratroopers were captured.

The operation was called Operation Colossus.

The men of the unit had all been drawn from No. 2 Commando of the Special Air Service and were in fact commandos, so they were not a conventional paratrooper unit.

More on the raid:

First British Airborne Raid

The RAF raided Rotterdam.  The Luftwaffe raided Iceland.

Green Aviation

Boeing announced that it's aircraft will be 100% capable of flying on biofuel by the end of the decade. For reasons that I don't grasp, biofuel would reduce aviation's carbon emissions.

This follows Airbus announcing some months ago that it intends to be 100% emission free by 2035, with hydrogen as the eyed fuel.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less lo...:   

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally.

 

Recent scene in Laramie Wyoming during the Mullen Fire.

* * *

January 17, 2021

Flights from the Natrona County International Airport are down 50% compared to a year ago.

Lex Anteinternet: January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.

Lex Anteinternet: January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.:   

January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.

 

Amy Johnson.

Pioneering aviatrix Amy Johnson died on this day in the service of the British Transport Auxiliary, the British air ferrying service that was created in order to allow civilian pilots, including women, preform this service during war time.

She was flying an Airspeed Oxford in poor weather when it went off course and is generally believed to have run out of fuel.  She bailed out over the Thames Estuary and was sighted descending by vessels of the Royal Navy, which went to help.  She was sighted in the water in heavy seas and the commander of one of the vessels, Lt. Cmdr Walter Fletcher went over the side to rescue her but was unable to, soon becoming unconscious himself.  He died a few days later.  Her body was not recovered.  

Her loss remains controversial in the UK.  In 1999 a crewman of a wartime anti aircraft batter claimed his gun had shot her down when she had failed to reply to an identification signal and that the crew had believed they had shot down an enemy aircraft until they read of her death the following day, at which time an officer ordered them not to speak of the event.  That's possible, but in my view unlikely as the claim of a hit would have been made at the time and likely records of it might still remain.

And a crewman of the ship that was nearest to her claimed many years later that she was sucked into the ship's screw which killed her, although the crewman did not witness it.  Given the way that ships generally work and the depth of the screws, that's also quite unlikely.

In any event, two heroes, Johnson and Fletcher, who lost their lives that day.

More on events of this day including the Commonwealth victory in Bardia.

Today in World War II History—January 5, 1941

Day 493 January 5, 1941

Practice Fire Suppression Airplane Mock Up, Casper Wyoming

These are all photographs of a very realistic looking mock up of a mid sized passenger jet being built out of steel at Pepper Tank in Casper, Wyoming.

Upon completion, it will be located at a fire practice facility at the Natrona County International Aiport.

 

Lex Anteinternet: December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, C...

Lex Anteinternet: December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, C...: 

December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, Committees, Soviet Subjugation, the Roar from the 20s.

On  this day in 1920 a young Amelia Earhart rode in an airplane piloted by Frank Hawks at the California State Fair in Los Angeles.  She was 23 years old and her father paid the $10.00 charge for the ten minute flight.

Earhart in 1928.

It was the beginning of her interest in aviation.

We're all familiar with the Earhart story, of course, so I'll not go into it here.  Frank Hawks, however, is likely less well known to a modern audience, and of course there's no enduring mystery surrounding his death.

Frank Hawks.

Hawks had been an aviator in World War One and then was a record setting aviator after the war.  He retired from air racing in 1937 to become an executive in the Gwinn Aircar Company, being in charge of sales.  He flew around the country in that capacity demonstrating the safety features of the aircraft, but died in 1938 piloting one.

Gwinn Aircar.

Only two of the aircraft was ever made, and the Gwinn company subsequently folded.

Women in Washington D.C. who were on the inaugural committee were photographed.

Unlike now, the inauguration was in March at the time.

On the same day the Ukrainian communist party surrendered its independence to Russia's, which it probably had little choice but to do, in the Workers Peasant Union Treaty.  

Self determination of nations was a declared policy of Lenin's, but it was clearly not one that the Russian Reds meant.  At this point in time they were busy reassembling those portions of Imperial Russia that they could grab, and Trotsky was already proposing that the revolution should be taken to neighboring states.

General John T. Thompson received the first of his patents on his submachine gun.  The gun would go into production the following year but initial sales were poor.  The U.S. military did buy some, and it was intended as a military weapon, but overall it was a new gun in an era which didn't seem to require it.  The first real military application by the United States of the initial model, the M1921, came at the hands of the Marines in the Banana Wars.  The United States Postal Service bought some for guards and there were some police sales.  An early indication that it might acquire some infamy came in the form of sales that ended up being for the Irish Republican Army.

1921 advertisement for the expensive Thompson Sub Machine Gun.   While the gun may have been advertised as "sold only to law and order", it quickly came to be used by the unlawful and disorderly.

It would be the spate of Prohibition related crime, followed by Depression era crime, that would make the gun famous and which would in part lead to the National Firearms Act regulating the sales of automatic weapons.  A new improved version was introduced in 1928 which is the most famous various of the gun, outside the M1 version used during World War Two.

Lance Corporal of the British East Surry Regiment with M1928 Thompson Sub Machine Gun.

Of interest here, in redesigning the weapon for military use during World War Two it was discovered that part of the patented mechanism in the gun was unnecessary and it was omitted.  By that time soldiers were stripping the "H piece" from the earlier variants and leaving it out given that this slightly reduced the weight of a very heavy weapon.  M1A1 Thompsons remained expensive to produce and the military sought to supplant them during the war, but some remained in use as late as the Vietnam War.

And the Laramie Boomerang (from Wyoming Digital News Paper Collection) let the public know that it was flu season.

Lex Anteinternet: December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disaster

Lex Anteinternet: December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disa...:

December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disaster.

On this day in 1940, a photo was taken of some new construction benefiting aircraft at a Naval Air Station in Rhode Island.

On the same day, famous aviator August Eddie Schneider was killed in an aviation accident.

Schneider was a well known daring aviator and had won multiple aviation speed records.  He'd also flown for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.  On this day he was training a student when his plane was struck by a Navy aircraft, taking it down and killing him.

And of course the war raged on:

Day 480 December 23, 1940

Today in World War II History—December 23, 1940

On this day in the war, Winston Churchill addressed the Italian people and urged them to rebel against Mussolini and take Italy out of the war.  The overall poor performance of Italian troops in combat was already effectively achieving that result.

Lex Anteinternet: Some controversial topics for a new Biden Administion.

Lex Anteinternet: Some controversial topics for a new Biden Administ...: 

Some controversial topics for a new Biden Administration. The Space Force is stupid and ought to go.

Joe Biden will not, I'm sure, take advice from me.  I've offered him some already, but I doubt he's one of the 200 to 800 people who stop in here on any particular day.

Still, if he is. . . 

Star Trekesque emblem of the U.S. Space Force.

If you want to read an enthusiastic view of the Space Force read the Smithsonian's Air & Space magazine.  It's an excellent publication anyway and it loves the space force. The last issue had an article on the "black hat squadron" of the now one year old Space Force and what it does.

My view?

M'eh.

The Space Force was basically the Air Force's Space Command and it should revert to it.  The Space Force can't and won't be doing any real mission that Space Command was not, but it will have its own budget, its own seat at the Joint Chiefs, and its own bloated budget.  Given the habit of the current U.S. military, it won't share anything that it could in terms of obviously common items with the other services, and will have to have its own unique everything.

The Space Force/Space Command really has a mission that's simply auxiliary to the Air Forces and therefore the creation of what essentially is a branch of the military that does nothing other than to deal with menacing Russian satellites and the potential militarization of space is really grossly overweighting that mission and massively trespassing on something the Air Force already does and does well.  The Air Force has been in space, frankly, in a militarized way since the launch of the first ballistic missiles that excited the atmosphere and so they've been at this a long, long time. If the Space Force having a seat at the Joint Chiefs makes sense, and its own very special budget, giving the Civil Air Patrol a seat there does as well.

Moreover both balkanization and mission inflation is a problem in the U.S. military as it is.  The Air Force itself was once, and rightly, part of the Army but has been busy trying to forget its ground support role ever since it became a separate service, which was a massive military mistake in the first place.  Double balkanization of a role that should have just remained with the Army is not help.

Moreover, this recalls the example of the Marine Corps, which I have another thread in the hopper on.  I'm not opposed to the Marine Corps by any means and I worry about its current direction towards a new role, but its hard not to recall that the Marine Corps is properly part of the Department of the Navy but since the Second World War its freakishly expanded into its own service in a way.  And its one that has developed the habit of never using anything, right down to boots, that other branches of the service do.

All these services, moreover, get a chair with the Joint Chiefs of Staff which now is starting to look as large as a high school graduating class.  The Army, Air Force, Space Force, Marine Corps, and the Navy all have seats at the Joint Chiefs and the National Guard gets its own as well.   

This is now way overdone.   The Marines ought to really revert fully to being part of the Department of the Navy.  If they can't do that, they're really just a second Army in disguise.  The Air Force ought to revert to being part of the Department of the Army.  I'm so so about the National Guard having a seat at the table, but I'd leave that alone for the time being.

At a bare minimum, the Space Force ought to go and on day one of the Biden Administration.  If I were he, I'd not only sign an executive order doing away with it immediately on day one, but I'd frankly reduce any officer in grade by one grade if they were foolish enough to go along with this silliness and I'd shift those enlisted men who volunteered for this transfer (and not all of them did) over to the Army rather than the Air Force.  They'd have their same jobs, but if they want to be playing musical services they can be in one that might, perhaps, have to call on them to be a "guardian" in the old fashioned way.

Chuck Yeager passes at age 97.

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager died yesterday at age 97.

Yeager entered the United States Army Air Force in 1941 as a private.  He was an aircraft mechanic at first but volunteered for flight training and was promoted to Flight Officer, a rank more or less equivalent to warrant officer.  He flew P51s during World War Two and was stationed in the ETO.  He became a test pilot following World War Two and famously broke the sound barrier in that role flying the X1 "Glamourous Glennis", which was named after his wife.

Yeager had a long Air Force career which was likely somewhat arrested, as famous as he was, by the fact that he was not a college graduate, having entered the Air Force at a time in which it was still possible to become a pilot without a college degree.  The movie The Right Stuff, in which Yeager was played by Sam Shepard (and in which Yeager had a cameo role as a bar tender), based on the book by Tom Wolfe, asserted that he was ineligible to become an astronaut for that reason.  Whether or not that is true, he certainly was a justifiably famous character and in some ways his passing on December 7 was oddly symbolic.

 

Lex Anteinternet: November 25, 1920. Thanksgiving Day

Lex Anteinternet: November 25, 1920. Thanksgiving Day: The day wasn't limited to team sports.  On the same day the Pulitzer Prize Trophy Race was held, which is mentioned in the newspaper above, and which you can read about on this blog here:

This Day In Aviation:  25 November 1920

Aviation was a new thing as well, as we have been tracking, and things associated were still so novel as to make the front page in newspapers.

Lex Anteinternet: Dueling Agendas

Lex Anteinternet: Dueling Agendas: 

Dueling Agendas

November 23, 2020

The United States has withdrawn from the Open Skies Treaty.  The 2002 treaty allows for unmanned areal flights over member nations territories, a concept first proposed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1955.  The treaty allows such flights under controlled conditions.  Interestingly member nations avail themselves of them much less than might be supposed, and each flight is extremely expensive.  Both the US and the USSR have accused each other of cheating on the treaty.

As a practical matter, the treaty matters less and less every year as intelligence satellites get better and better.  Indeed, it's notable that it was drafted in 2002 at which point intelligence satellites were already excellent.  Therefore the treaty is really of more value to the less advanced nations that are part of it.