TheList 5293

The List 5293 TGB


Good Sunday Morning April 26

Regards,

skip

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN



This day in Naval History April 26

1869 As a post-Civil War push for re-enlistments, the Good Conduct Medal, then called Good Conduct Badge, is authorized by Secretary of the Navy Adolphus E. Borie.



1918 USS Stewart (DD 13) collides with an unidentified steamer near Brest, France. Just days earlier, Stewart crew members attacked a German submarine and saved the SS Florence H crew when she exploded internally.



1944 USS Frost (DE 144), USS Huse (DE 145), USS Barber (DE 161) and USS Snowden (DE 246) sink the German submarine U 488 northwest of the Canary Islands.



1952 While steaming at night in formation 700 miles west of the Azores, USS Hobson (DD 464) and USS Wasp (CV 18) collide as Hobson crossed the carriers bow from starboard to port and was struck amidships, breaking her in two. Hobson and 176 of her crew are lost, including her commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. W. J. Tierney.



1960 USS George Washington (SSN 598) conducts a Polaris missile test firing in Long Island Sound in the Atlantic Ocean.



2002 The Watson-class vehicle cargo ship USNS Soderman (T AKR 317) is launched at National Steel and Shipbuilding Co., San Diego, Calif.




Thanks to CHINFO



No CHINFO on the weekend



This day in World history April 26







757



Stephen II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.


1478

Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de' Medici.




1514

Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.




1564

William Shakespeare is baptized.




1607

The British establish a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia.




1865

Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to General William T. Sherman.




1915

Second Lieutenant William Rhodes-Moorhouse becomes the first airman to win the Victoria Cross after conducting a successful bombing raid.




1929

The first non-stop flight from England to India is completed.




1931

New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits a home run but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake ultimately costs him the home run record.




1937

The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes.




1941

The first organ is played at a baseball stadium in Chicago.




1968

Students seize the administration building at Ohio State University.




1983

The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1,200 for first time.




1986

The world's worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union.




1994

Nelson Mandela wins the presidency in South Africa's first multiracial elections.





NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

More on corona isolation

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/two-california-emergency-room-covid-doctors-may-start-a-revolution-with-calm-science-data-based-press-conference-questioning-of-extreme-measures



Two California doctors may start revolution with calm, science/data-based questioning of extreme measures | Blogs | LifeSite

April 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Two California doctors may have started a revolution against the Wuhan virus extreme mitigation policies with their calm, very sincere, caring, scientific-based ...

www.lifesitenews.com

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

The Pentagon will have to live with limits on F-35's supersonic flights

Thanks to Shadow...

Received this article and comments from a friend…



My thoughts…



We have met the enemy and they is us. Lonny and I have been screaming for decades that the penalty for stealth is not worth the cost… more than one way to skin a rabbit. I wonder if any of the big aerospace manufacturers every consult with aviators when they begin a design… and even more important to me as a Marine (former Grunt and Aviator)… consult the end user on the ground? My priorities would always have been ordinance load first, range and time on station second, gun on board to use when all the bombs are gone… You don't need a five to six hundred million dollar airplane with all kinds of exotic and unfixable systems in the field... when they break… What you do need is common sense. And frankly, I ain't a genius… but I still think electronic jammers is a better way to defeat the radars, especially when it comes to the CAS mission and other related systems than stealth (I'll concede I may be wrong). But my gut thinks there has to be a better way.



I have long felt that, as my old pappy used to tell me… "Just because you can do something… doesn't mean you should". With the advance of exotics as a solution in aviation… what could have been a five to ten million dollar airframe and engine combination… now runs into the hundreds of millions (and Detroit seems to follow the same pattern… a ten to fifteen thousand dollar car now runs fifty to seventy thousand dollars). KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid)… might seem an arcane acronym… but there's a bit of practical genius in there too.



As I saw the number of aircraft in inventory get reduced every year… and by necessity the number of aviators… I voiced my concern to some of my friends and associates. I opined that maybe we were forgetting the lessons of the last Great War… where technology was not what carried the day… but numbers. Our industrial might, overwhelmed the most advanced technological nation on earth at the time (of course we've pissed that advantage away, beginning with NAFTA). We've become a nation of consumers and ideas… but we then take those great ideas and have them produced and manufactured somewhere else in the world… in pursuit of profit… to the detriment of our industrial base. Think about it.

There's got to be a better way… Shadow



NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Thanks to Dr. Rich


https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a32240193/kc-135-windshield-wipers/?utm_source=digg

Tweak the KC-135 Stratotanker's Windshield Wipers And Save Millions.

Aerodynamics is everything.

By Kyle Mizokami

Apr 23, 2020



Justin SullivanGetty Images

The KC-135 Stratotanker has been in service since 1954.

Using computation fluid dynamics, the Air Force discovered it can improve the plane's aerodynamic efficiency by one percent simply by changing the direction of the windshield wipers.

The improvement could save the service $7 million a year in fuel costs.






The Air Force has discovered a simple engineering change to the venerable KC-135 Stratotanker could save it up to $7 million a year. Using computer modeling, the Air Force realized it could increase the aerodynamic efficiency of the converted jetliner by one percent by changing the orientation of the windshield wipers. The increased efficiency translates into greater fuel savings.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The KC-135 tanker is one of the longest serving aircraft in the world. Originally derived from the Boeing 707 commercial jetliner, the first KC-135 entered service in 1954. The tankers have served in every crisis and war since—from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the war in Afghanistan. The Air Force bought its last KC-135 in 1965, making the youngest of the jets an astonishing 55 years old.



A KC-135 Stratotanker refueling a flight of four F-105 Thunderchiefs in the skies over Vietnam. It is possible, even probable, that this particular KC-135 is still flying.

BettmannGetty Images

The tanker's windshield wipers were originally configured so they rested in the horizontal position, but aviation aerodynamics have come a long way in the last half century. Now researchers at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base have used computational fluid dynamics to model the nose of the KC-135, as well as the aerodynamic efficiency of wipers resting in both the horizontal and vertical positions.

The researchers discovered that changing to a resting vertical position increases efficiency of the overall aircraft by 0.8 percent during cruise flight. Additionally, switching to a new, slimmer windshield wiper increases efficiency by a further 0.2 percent.



Computational fluid dynamics analysis, conducted by Air Force Research Laboratory and Southwest Research Institute, shows the nose of a KC-135 Stratotanker, as the wiper blades are positioned horizontally, left, and vertically, right. The red indicates an area of high aerodynamic drag.

U.S. Air Force

That may not seem like a lot, but there are 396 KC-135s flying with the active Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard. Together, the planes consumed 290 million gallons of fuel in 2018-2019. The Air Force believes that a tanker fleet fitted with the improved windshield wipers could save up to $7 million a year in fuel costs. Had the changes been made when the last tanker joined the fleet in 1965, the service would have saved around $385 million.

It's not clear if the Air Force is going to actually implement the changes to the KC-135 fleet. More than 100 of the oldest Stratotankers are supposed to be replaced by the KC-46A Pegasus tanker, but technical problems and defects have delayed full integration of the new plane into the Air Force by several years.

The remainder of the KC-135 fleet is supposed to be replaced by yet another tanker, KC-Z, that will supposedly enter service in the 2030s. If the KC-135 ends up flying for 70 years, it might be worth it to switch windshield wipers after all.

Source: U.S. Air Force



Greg Finch



NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN



A repeat from last year

Thanks to Carl



https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/new-book-reveals-truth-behind-this-famed-fall-of-saigon-photo/



Almost everything you thought about the famed Fall of Saigon photo isn't true



By Reed Tucker April 23, 2019





Helicopter pilot O.B. Harnage reaches out to help Vietnamese evacuees escape Saigon on April 29, 1975.



It's one of the iconic images of the Vietnam War. Hubert van Es' snapshot shows a military helicopter perched atop the US Embassy in Saigon as Americans stream up a stairway, desperately boarding the last flight out.

Except that isn't a military helicopter, that's not the US Embassy, those aren't Americans and that wasn't the last flight out.

And, perhaps most surprising of all, the photo is not about defeat.

"As I was researching it, I found that almost everything I had assumed about that photo was wrong," historian and author Thurston Clarke tells The Post.

The surprising tale of that photo, along with a complete story of the last days of the Vietnam War, is told in Clarke's new book, "Honorable Exit: How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War" (Doubleday).

It's a nearly minute-by-minute account of the United States' pullout from the quagmire conflict, and much of the story is encapsulated in that single photo, taken on April 29, 1975.

By early 1975, America's prospects in Vietnam were looking bleak. The communists continued to push south, capturing territory and sending thousands of refugees fleeing for safety.

After Da Nang fell, World Airlines, a government contractor tasked with flying troops and equipment in and out of the country, attempted that March to evacuate people from the city, leading to a chaotic scene as panicked Vietnamese tried to push their way on.

The plane, under heavy fire, managed to get airborne, but stowaways and those clinging to the side plummeted to their deaths, leaving corpses littering the runway.

When President Gerald Ford saw footage of the fiasco, he remarked to a friend, "That's it. It's time to pull the plug. Vietnam is gone."

"The news reports, photographs, and films of Da Nang … received wide coverage in the United States," Clarke writes. "Instead of unleashing Americans' charitable impulses, the news convinced them that the United States should avoid becoming reinvolved in the war, even on a humanitarian basis, and opinion polls showed a majority of Americans opposed to accepting Vietnamese refugees."

Yet American leaders took a different path. They quickly began planning to evacuate as many Vietnamese as possible and resettle them in the US.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued at an April 2 State Department staff meeting that it was America's duty "to get the people who believed in us out."

A list of potential Vietnamese evacuees was compiled. It included high-ranking officials, translators and others at high risk.

Kissinger wired the US Vietnamese ambassador, Graham Martin, that failure to address the "difficult question of evacuation" could result in the loss of American "lives, national dignity, and a common sense of confidence that we can manage whatever crisis the future may hold."

By April 27, 1975, North Vietnamese troops had surrounded Saigon and it became clear an attack was imminent. Chaos erupted as residents scrambled to flee. They tried to push their way into the US Embassy in hopes of escaping.

"Women outside the walls wailed and wept," the author writes. "Some rolled on the sidewalk in hysterics, crying out the names of the American servicemen, businessmen and diplomats whom they had served as clerks, drivers, cooks, cleaners, bodyguards and interpreters. Mothers tried to pass their babies to Marines."

The US finally initiated an operation known as Frequent Wind, which would helicopter evacuees out of Saigon to US ships offshore for eventual transport to America.

In early April, the Americans had scouted rooftops as potential helicopter landing sites, choosing 13 across Saigon. US contractors arrived to remove flagpoles and laundry lines, and built whatever infrastructure was needed.

On April 29, copters fanned out across the city, picking up the hopeful. The Hueys were operated by Air America, a line covertly run by the CIA. The 31 pilots flying the hazardous missions were volunteers. Nearly everyone who was asked stepped forward.

Besides the embassy, one of the pickup points was the Lee Hotel at 6 Chien Si Circle. There, the ambassador had assembled a group of VIPs for evacuation.

Manning one of the copters was O.B. Harnage, a macho, cigar-smoking, hard-drinking CIA officer who wore an eye patch after he was wounded by shrapnel in World War II.

Harnage's helicopter landed at the Lee Hotel, and the aircraft was quickly mobbed by desperate Vietnamese. One South Vietnamese soldier pushed toward Harnage and pulled the pin from a grenade, telling him, "We go with you or I drop the grenade."

Harnage shoved the barrel of a machine gun in the man's face and responded, "Go ahead. You'll never hear it go off." The soldier backed off.

After the Lee Hotel became unsafe, the CIA station chief urged Harnage to start picking up at 22 Gia Long Street. The apartment building's top floor served as quarters for CIA employees.

VIPs and other Vietnamese had been gathering at the location in hopes of a rescue. Wooden stairs had been built to the top of the roof's elevator shaft to aid the evacuation.

Harnage made three pickups, packing 20 people onto each flight. To make room for them all, he rode outside the bird, standing on the skid while gripping a machine gun.

"Remember, he wasn't taking people he worked with or he knew," the author says. "They were perfect strangers and he was risking his life."

The station chief had ordered him to concentrate on the VIPs, but Harnage decided to board on a first-come, first-serve basis. Some parents handed him their children with heartbreaking notes pinned to the kids' clothes, such as, "My son wants to be a doctor" and "My daughter is very musical."

When a burly Korean diplomat tried to elbow other evacuees aside to make it onto the chopper, Harnage punched the man, leaving him bloody and chastened. (He was allowed on a later flight.)

Harnage refused to let anyone board with more than one small bag, tossing everything else over the side of the building — including what was likely millions of dollars of hoarded gold.

On the fourth touchdown at Gia Long Street, van Es was sitting in the offices of United Press International about four blocks away when a colleague called out, "Van Es, get out here! There's a chopper on that roof!"

Van Es grew up in the Netherlands and decided to become a war photographer after seeing Frank Capra pictures. He first worked in Hong Kong for the South China Morning Post before heading to Vietnam to work for NBC, then UPI.

He grabbed his Nikon and a 300mm lens and began snapping.

The shot that went around the world showed Harnage, dressed in a white shirt and clutching a cigar between his teeth, reaching down the stairs to grab Thiet-Tan Nguyen, a young doctor who would ultimately become an anesthesiologist in California.

Next is Tong Huyhn, another doctor who would eventually settle near Atlanta. The slender teenage girl is Tuyet-Dong Bui, who would go on to earn a degree in microbiology before becoming a biotech researcher.

Just below her is her brother, who had traded his motorbike to the driver of a high-ranking military official in exchange for being shown to the building.

Also on the ladder is South Vietnamese Minister of Defense Tran Van Don.

O.B. HarnageCourtesy of Melissa Urreiztieta

The photo marked the last trip Harnage was able to make to the location, leaving dozens of people behind, watching the skies for a helicopter that would never appear.

Flights continued elsewhere through the night. In the end, the airlift extracted some 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese from Saigon in less than 24 hours.

Harnage returned to America and became a real estate salesman. He died in 2008. Van Es was paid a one-time bonus of $150 for the photo. He continued covering conflicts, and died in 2009.

Clarke says he hopes van Es' famous photo will be viewed in a new light.

"At the time, this photo seemed to be a metaphor for Vietnam — our first lost war and us scrambling away from the roof of the embassy," the author says. "It was a damning photo that fit into the narrative of the time.

"Honorable Exit" by Thurston Clarke



NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN


1954


Polio vaccine trials begin




In the summer of 1953 I contacted polio while I was at a summer camp on Fort Hood, Texas. I spent the summer in the hospital but the disease never got a good hold on me for some reason. So I got to get the vaccine. In fact every time they came out with a new vaccine my mother had me in the front of the line to get the thing. Needles were not my favorite thing after taking a rabies series earlier that year after a dog got into our second grade school yard and bit 4 or 5 us. The dog bit me on butt as I was climbing the fence to get away. They could not find the dog so we all got the long needle in the stomach as I remember.



NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS

FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS FOR APRIL 26

THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY



1934: Boris Sergievsky carried 16,608 pounds to 2,000 meters (1.24 miles) in altitude at Bridgeport,

Conn., to set a world seaplane record. (24)



1945: Eighth Air Force fighters raided over 40 Luftwaffe installations in Germany and Czechoslovakia

and destroyed a record 747 German fighters in one day. (4)



1948: The Northrop XB-49 set a record by flying 9 hours 30 minutes without refueling in a test flight.



1949: At Fullerton, Calif., Bill Barris and Dick Riedel set a new world endurance record of 1,008

hours 2 minutes in an Aeronca sedan, the Sunkist Lady. During the flight they picked up food

and fuel four times a day from a jeep. (24)



1951: KOREAN WAR. At night, over the western sector, a B-29 close air support strike against

enemy troops forming for an attack on the U.S. Army IX Corps broke up the assault. (28)

The Boeing B-47B first flew.



1952: KOREAN WAR. In air-to-air operations, Maj. William H. Wescott, 51st Fighter-Interceptor

Group, destroyed his fifth MiG in four weeks to become the war's twelfth ace. (28)



1956: Naval Aircraft Factory at Philadelphia renamed as the Naval Air Engineering Facility (Ships

Installations). Its mission changed to add research, engineering, design, development, and limited

manufacturing of devices and equipment for launching and recovering aircraft and guided

missiles.



1962: The US and Great Britain launched Ariel I, the first international satellite, on a Thor-Delta

booster from Cape Canaveral. The 132-pound NASA-built satellite carried British equipment

for six experiments. (24) NASA launched a Nike-Cajun rocket from Wallops Island to begin a joint US-Japanese threeshot test series on atmospheric phenomena. (24)



1963: An advanced Atlas F carried a slender, pointed reentry vehicle from Cape Canaveral over a

5,000-mile course down the Atlantic Missile Range.



1966: Using Sidewinder missiles, an F-4C crew shot down a MiG-21 over North Vietnam, the first to

be destroyed in combat. Major Paul J. Gilmore and 1Lt William T. Smith were escorting F-105

Thunderchiefs near Hanoi when the MiGs attacked. (16) (26) Col Joseph F. Cotton and Lt Col Fitzhugh L. Fulton, Jr., became the first Air Force crew to fly the XB-70A bomber. (3) The Air Force selected the Martin Company to develop a manned lifting body vehicle--a rocket plane without wing--to explore atmospheric maneuverability of future spacecraft. (16) SECDEF Robert S. McNamara approved a joint Air Force and Navy recommendation to discontinue

the Navy's participation in MAC. (16)



1971: Charleston AFB received its 16th C-5A aircraft to complete the first operational C-5A squadron.

MACKAY TROPHY/HARMON INTERNATIONAL TROPHY. Lt Col Thomas B. Estes

flew an SR-71 to a record speed at high altitude in a 10-hour 30-minute flight from Beale AFB.

He flew 15,000 miles at speeds over Mach 3 above 80,000 feet. The SR-71 used inflight refuelings

to make two round trips across the northern and central US and a complete circle of the

western states. Colonel Estes and his reconnaissance systems officer, Maj Dewain C. Vick, later

received the 1971 Mackay Trophy and the Harmon International Trophy. (1)

Operation CONSTANT GUARD II (see 7 April): Through 1 May, MAC moved personnel

and cargo from Homestead and Eglin AFBs to Thailand. (2) A SAM shot down an O-2 flying northwest of Ban Karai Pass, Laos. It was the first US aircraft lost over Laos. (17)



1983: The first GLCM training class graduated from Davis-Monthan AFB. (26)



1999: Operation ALLIED FORCE. Secretary of Defense William Cohen ordered 30 tankers, their

aircrews and support personnel, to deploy by 1 May 1999 from active duty and Air Reserve components.

They were sent overseas in response to General Wesley Clark's 13 April 1999 request for

additional U.S. military aircraft. (32)