Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, April 17, 1945. Flak Bait.: The B-26 Marauder Flak Bait, which completed 200 missions on this day. Winston Churchill eulogized the late Franklin Roosevelt in Parliame...
Huff Daland Dusters Inc., a crop dusting company, which would ultimately become Delta Airlines, was founded.
The United States and Estonia signed an agreement for mutual most-favored-nation treatment in customs.
Last edition:
The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force. So as president, I will sign historic legislation creating a space National Guard.
Donald Trump, yesterday, at the National Guard Association Convention.
The Space Force is frankly absurd and ought to be abolished, with its enlisted men folded back into the Air Force and its officers assigned permanent duty at Tasty Freeze drive up windows.
But a Space Force National Guard?
Please, no.
Of course, if a bill like that passes through Congress, and as goofy as Congress has been in recent years, it probably would, no State Governor is going to turn down the chance to have the Mos Eisley Space Guard station put in their state, so every state will end up with a squadron of "Guardians".
The Space Force is flat out dumb. It's duties belong in the Air Force. One of the unfortunate legacies of the Trump administration, however, is this absurd new branch of the service.
Would that sanity would reign and it would go away.
The German built, due to reparations, USS Los Angeles made its first flight.
Last edition:
The French First Army advanced on German forces near Sarrebourg, Lorraine, France.
Albanian rebels attacked Durrës, the capital of Albania, but were driven back by Romanian volunteer forces, showing how confusing the Great War already was.
The first real bomber, the the French Voisin III, made its first combat run. An attack on German airship hangars at Metz-Frescaty Air Base in Germany.
The United States Army accepted the delivery of a Wright Military Flyer.
The Wright brothers were hired at the same time to train the first two pilots, Lts. Frank P. Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys
It was just six years after the first flight, and less than a decade before airplanes would become a major weapon of war.
The jet fighter the Gloster Meteor entered active service with No. 616 Squadron RAF. It would be the only jet aircraft to see active service during the war for the Allies.
Argentinian pilot Pedro Zanni and mechanic Felipe Beltrame began their rather belated attempt to fly around the world.
Congress created the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps, effectively creating what would become the Air Force.
1st Lt. Russell Maughan made the first dawn-to-dusk transcontinental flight across the United States.
Landing at Crissy Field in San Francisco one minute before technical sundown, he had started the day off at Mitchel Field, Long Island and had flown his Curtiss P-1 across the country with stops in Dayton, Ohio; St. Joseph, Missouri; North Platte, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming and the Bonneville Salt Flats at Salduro
Last prior edition:
The first V-1 rockets were launched on London.
V-1s are, basically, a pulse jet drone, and therefore heralded an advance in weaponry which we're only now seeing the full application of in combat. One of a variety of late war German "Wunderwaffe", they were primitive in their category and while they affected terror, they stood no chance of being war altering. The same can not be said of the V-2, which was a ballistic missile and truly revolutionary.
Armed drones would be revolutionary, but it would not really be until the advent of cruise missiles that they'd become effective. With advances in targeting, they're now a massive dangerous weapon which has been one of the things which has allowed Ukraine to disproportionately take on Russia in the ongoing Russo Ukrainian War.
