Sarah Sundin's blog reports:
Today in World War II History—May 22, 1943: USS Bogue’s TBF aircraft damage German U-boat U-569, which is scuttled by her crew, the first victory for an Allied escort carrier unassisted by surface ships.
She also noted that Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland flew the ME262 on this day and was impressed by it, as anyone would have had to have been.
While the raids caused civilian loss of life, German civilians regarded the destruction of the hydroelectric generating dams as legitimate. German authorities accurately reported the resulting loss of civilian lives. Albert Speer wrote of the attack; "employing just a few bombers, the British came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieved hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers. But they made a single mistake which puzzles me to this day: They divided their forces and that same night destroyed the Eder Valley dam, although it had nothing whatsoever to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr."
While enormously celebrated as a British success by the population, perhaps the reaction of Harris, who seems to have had a particularly cold view of the destruction of Germany from the air, isn't too surprising. In reality, however, the raid demonstrated a very clever deployment of British resources with a real understanding of how industrial infrastructure worked.
The raid did cause the British to switch aerial munitions, going thereafter for massive "Earthquake Bombs" which caused a seismic effect when detonated.
Eight of the British aircraft were lost in the raid.
I've posted about this elsewhere, when I was really miffed about it, but Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis has introduced a bill in the Senate to raise mandatory airline pilot retirement ages up to age 67.
Lummis is 68.
Let's note the trend here. Lummis is 68. Wyoming's John Barasso is 70. Wyoming's Congressman Harriet Hageman, at age 60, could nearly be regarded as youthful.
Joe Biden is 80. Donald Trump is 77. Chuck Schumer is 72. Mitch McConnell is 81.
This is, quite frankly, absurd.
The United States is, without a doubt, a gerontocracy.
Okay, what's that have to do with airlines?
We repeatedly here there's a pilot shortage. What is obviously necessary to, in regard to the shortage, is to recruit younger pilots into the field. That requires opportunity and a decent wage.
Vesting the good paying jobs in the elderly is not the way to achieve that. Indeed, depressing the mandatory retirement age would be.
Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews, for whom Andrews Air Force Base is named, died in the crash of the B-24 Hot Stuff in Iceland, when it went down in bad weather.
He had been on an inspection tour in the United Kingdom.
Only the plane's tail gunner, SSgt George A. Eisel, survived the crash. Eisel had survived a previous B-24 crash in North Africa. He'd live until 1964 when he died at age 64. Married prior to the war, he and his wife never had any children.
Hot Stuff was the first B-24D to complete 25 missions, well before, it might be noted, the B-17 Memphis Belle did the same. Hardly anyone recalls Hot Stuff, as the Army went on to emphasize the Memphis Belle following the crash of Hot Stuff and the death of all but one of its crew. Of note, Hot Suff, predictably, had a much more salacious example of nose art than Memphis Belle, and it's interesting to speculate how the Army would have handled that had the plane been popularized. At any rate, the story that Memphis Belle was the first US bomber to complete 25 missions is a complete myth.
Andrews was the CO of the ETO at the time of this death. A West Point Graduate from the class of 1906, he had been in the cavalry branch from 1906 to 1917, when he was assigned to aviation over the objection of his commander. A prior objection had prevented his reassignment in 1914.
U.S. Army Air Service pilots Lt. John A. Macready and Lt. Oakley G. Kelly commenced the first nonstop North American transcontinental flight on this day in 1923. Their flight in a Fokker T-2 took them from Roosevelt Field, Long Island to Rockwell Field, San Diego in 27 hours with much of the nighttime flight through storms in uncertain territory.
McCready, who had joined the Army in 1917, held a string of early aviation records but left the service in 1926 and became the head of the Aviation department of Shell Oil. He reentered the Air Force in 1942 and held several combat commands, leaving again in 1948. He died in 1969 at age 91, an accomplishment in and of itself given that he was an early record-breaking aviator.
He is the only three time recipient of the Mackay Trophy.
Oalkey G. Kelley had a long flying career as well. He also retired in 1948, passing away at age 74 in 1966. Both men retired to California, although McCready was from there.
