Good Tuesday Morning April 6.
Folks a bit of admin stuff. We are experiencing a bit of a problem with the List. For some reason we are getting a number of folks that have been bounced. I do not delete anyone from the List. Well maybe 2 over the last 21 years for over stepping the bounds of decency. So I will not delete you. The new placement of the Remove me from the List message may have led to a couple inadvertent ones but not as many as we have had. Cowboy is working the problem. If you do not receive the List each day then send me a note and I will address the problem for you.
sleonard001@san.rr.com
619-610-8166
Regards,
Skip.
This Day In Naval History – April 6
1776
The Continental Navy Squadron, commanded by Commodore Esek Hopkins, is attacked by the British frigate HMS Glasgow and her tender while entering Long Island Sound.
1862
Naval gunfire from gunboats Tyler and Lexington protect the advanced river flank of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's army at the Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing).
1909
Cmdr. Robert E. Peary reports reaching the North Pole, dropping a note in a glass bottle into a crevice in the ice that states: "I have this day hoisted the national ensign of the United States of America at this place, which my observations indicate to be the North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally taken possession of the entire region, and adjacent, for and in the name of the President of the United States of America."
1917
Following the sinking of U.S. merchant vessels by German U-boats, the U.S. declares war on Germany, entering World War.
1945
The first heavy kamikaze attacks begin on ships at Okinawa.USS Bush (DD 529), USS Colhoun (DD 801), USS Emmons (DMS 22) and LST 447 are damaged beyond repair.
1945
USAAF B-25s attack Japanese convoy HOMO-03 and destroy a Japanese destroyer, minesweeper, a cargo ship and other ships. USS Besugo (SS 321) and USS Hardhead (SS 365) also sink Japanese ships.
1968
USS New Jersey (BB 62) is recommissioned for shore bombardment duty at Vietnam.
2013
The commissioning ceremony for USS Arlington (LPD 24) is held at Naval Station Norfolk, the ship's homeport. The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship joins sister ships USS New York and Somerset to be named for the sites attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Steel salvaged from the Pentagon, based in Arlington, are showcased in the ship's museum.
Thanks to CHINFO
Executive Summary:
• The Day reported on Acting SECNAV's visit to Electric Boat facilities in New England, accompanied by members of Connecticut's congressional delegation.
• USNI and other trade press covered Fleet readiness topics after CNO's conversation with the Defense Writer's Group yesterday.
• Multiple outlets reported on China sailing an aircraft carrier strike group near Taiwan, Okinawa as part of expected increase in South China Sea naval presence.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
On this day in history (April 6):
1199 English King Richard I is killed by an arrow at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus in France.
1789 The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions at Federal Hall in New York City.
1814 Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau. He is allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830 Joseph Smith and five others organize the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Seneca, New York.
1862 Confederate forces attack General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1865 At the Battle of Sailer's Creek, a third of Lee's army is cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.
1896 The Modern Olympics begin in Athens with eight nations participating.
1903 French Army Nationalists are revealed to have forged documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dreyfus.
1909 Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917 The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on Allied side.
1924 Four planes leave Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.
1938 The United States recognizes Nazi Germany's conquest of Austria.
1941 German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes the use of ground troops in combat operations.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
Thanks to Shadow
I would liked to have known his dad…skip
To Bear... and Everyone Else....
Gents,
My dad had very little formal education, went into the Navy without a high school degree just before Pearl Harbor. But he was a voracious reader... most nights he'd be found with a book, siting in the living room after dinner. By the time I came along, he'd gotten his GED and eventually made Chief. He encouraged me to be a reader too and b eight I was reading novels I'd check out from the base library and others I'd read after him. About the time I was in my teens was when he first started talking to me about politics. My opinions of politicians today... pretty much mirrors my dad's opinions he expressed in the past.
Dad was a patriot... he'd made a career out of the Navy. He found a sense of home and belonging there; especially since he'd come from a broken home and been shuffled around from one relative to another as he grew up. Again, it was in my teens when he started to open up about his thoughts on life and his personal beliefs. We had a few seminal moments over my teen years that I remember vividly. One was his comments about Kennedy's inauguration speech and the catch line of "Ask not what your country can do for you... but what you could do for your country". Dad was not a Kennedy fan, but embraced that segment of his speech. And as we discussed it, he told me what he thought this country owed all of us. Dad broke it down into four things.
First he said the country owed us protection from foreign aggression... "That's why we have a military". Second, it owed us protection from internal aggression... "That's why we have police and law enforcement". Third (this one surprised me as dad wasn't a church goer, believed in a private relationship with God)... "It owes us the freedom to worship, or not... to the dirty of our own choosing". And fourth... "Our country owed us the opportunity... but not a guarantee, to succeed or fail on our own". That was followed with... "Your only chance in life is through hard work and a good education... simple as that". Funny, I didn't realize it at the time... but my old man, who came from a long line of Middle Georgia; "Yellow Dog Democrats"... had somehow morphed into a Republican! Go figure?
From that time forward, we had more such discussions. One time in discussions about the Soviet Union and Dictatorships around the world, he made a point that has always stuck with me... out of no where he comes out with the following: "One of the great things about this country... is our military has never been a threat to our civilian government". Somehow, I've always felt that was a profound statement! Certainly had never crossed my simple mind at the time.
Well, what all of my little melancholy story above is leading to... is an observation and fear... that this Political Correctness, Woke, Diversity and Cancel Culture bullshit is a real threat to our freedoms and opportunities, unless we start a movement to stand up to this insanity. More than that, they (Democrats and Marxist) are laying the ground work to subvert our military from its' primary mission of protecting us from external aggression and pushing it to becoming a national police force to enforce their political agenda. Think I'm kidding? They're now in complete control of the active duty Flag Community, since they control the selection process, and they are rushing headlong into indoctrination of the troops, with forced lectures on diversity, critical race theory and cancel culture. All it takes is one unverified accusation to ruin the career of any Officer, Non-com or Petty Officer.
One thing the Communist know for sure, as acknowledged by Mao and Stalin... whoever controls the guns (the military) has absolute control over the population. As my father used to say... the strength of communism is through the barrel of the gun!
Think about it... We're at a tipping point. For the first time in our lives... it is possible that the one thing my father was most proud of about our military... could turn out to be a false promise.
Shadow
Sent from my iPad
On Apr 5, 2021, at 4:54 PM, Dutch R <flyboy@helndutch.com> wrote:
thanks to THE Bear -
Dutch.... Toad sends.... the truth hurts...("...diversity now trumps military effectiveness as the goal of military policy.")... read and weep for our Motherland... Bear
Begin forwarded message:
From: Toad
Subject: FW: The U.S. military is at a crossroads
Hear him!
Mackubin Owens is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and author of U.S. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain .
The U.S. military is at a crossroads. It is clearly living off of the accumulated capital of earlier generations of soldiers
War goes woke
Washington Examiner · by · April 2, 2021
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson recently ignited a firestorm when he mocked President Joe Biden's comments about the Pentagon's newly developed flight suits for pregnant women. "So, we've got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits — pregnant women are going to fight our wars," Carlson said. The mockery was directed at Biden for what appeared to be his usual pandering, prioritizing optics over warfare concerns.
But the Pentagon took it personally and fired back with a concerted attack on Carlson, accusing him of belittling servicewomen. "What we absolutely won't do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military," responded Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. "Now, maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove; that's on them."
The Carlson-Pentagon exchange revealed something troubling about the current state of the U.S. military: the extent to which the military, which claims to be motivated by a professional ethos, has become just another self-interested bureaucracy, and a politicized one to boot. It also reveals that today's military has chosen "diversity" over military effectiveness. After all, the only purpose of a military in a republic is to keep the country secure. Yet, while war games indicate that the United States would lose a military confrontation with China, the Pentagon seems to be focusing on trivialities.
Polls reveal that the military continues to be respected and trusted by the public. Indeed, it is more trusted than business and higher education and far more trusted than other departments of the U.S. government and Congress, despite the fact that it has failed to prevail in the post-9/11 wars.
But recent events should concern military leaders. The very public criticism of President Donald Trump during his tenure by active and retired officers seriously undermined the view of the military as nonpartisan. The Pentagon's over-the-top response to Carlson's comments feeds the impression that the military is becoming just another "woke" institution.
Of course, the military has changed over time. In my own work on the topic, I describe U.S. civil-military relations as a "bargain" that must be renegotiated periodically in response to changes in strategic, geopolitical, political, technological, and social conditions. There are three parties to the bargain: the uniformed military, the civilian political leadership, and the public. The bargain provides answers to several questions: Who controls the military and how? What is the purpose of the military? What is the acceptable level of influence of the military in a liberal republic? And who serves? The questions have been answered differently at different times as the civil-military bargain is renegotiated.
What has happened to the military can be explained by reference to two individuals: the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington and the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. In his classic study of civil-military relations, The Soldier and the State, Huntington identified three variables affecting the relationship. The first is what he called the functional imperative, the ability of the military to respond to external threats to the U.S. The military must be capable of deterring war or winning it if it comes. The key is military effectiveness.
The second and third variables are components of what Huntington called the social imperative, "the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society." The first of these components is our constitutional structure, the legal institutional framework that guides American politics and military affairs. The second is the dominant ideology shaping political affairs, which Huntington identified as liberalism, "the gravest domestic threat to American military security," due to its anti-military character. The problem for Huntington was that in the long run, the social imperative would prevail over the functional imperative, undermining the military virtues necessary to ensure military effectiveness.
Huntington argued that America's anti-military liberal ideology tended to produce two outcomes. When the external threat was low, liberal ideology sought "extirpation," the virtual elimination of military forces. When the external threat was high, liberal ideology pursued a policy of "transmutation," refashioning the military along liberal lines by stripping it of its "particularly military characteristics."
Some degree of transmutation is to be expected in a liberal republic such as the United States. A positive example of transmutation occurred after World War II when the Uniform Code of Military Justice replaced the old military justice systems, as the U.S. maintained a large standing army of citizen-soldiers for the first time in its history. But today, we have transmutation on steroids. The Pentagon's response to Carlson's comments is merely an illustration of this reality.
The latest manifestation of transmutation is the military's worship of "diversity." Indeed, diversity now trumps military effectiveness as a goal of military policy. The clearest example of this phenomenon occurred during the Obama administration as the issue of the integration of women into direct ground combat units heated up.
In 2015, the Marine Corps, under mounting pressure to accept the integration of women into ground combat units, conducted a nine-month, $36 million study that indicated that all-male units performed better in the field than integrated ones. The unprecedented study suggested the all-male ground combat squads were faster, stronger, and more lethal in most cases than units that included women. The women also suffered higher injury rates during physically demanding training.
Advocates of integration were quick to respond to the Marine study. In an interview with NPR, Ray Mabus, Barack Obama's secretary of the Navy and a proponent of integration, rejected the Marine study and indeed questioned its integrity, saying that it "started out with a fairly large component of the men thinking this is not a good idea and women will not be able to do this," which predetermined its conclusion. Ironically, he essentially criticized the Marines for doing what we would expect that all of the services should have been doing: attempting to determine military effectiveness in an objective way by comparing all-male and integrated units on a simulated battlefield. As I wrote at the time, I could not imagine any previous secretary of the Navy so gratuitously insulting one of the services that his own department oversees.
The fact is that the battlefield mocks "diversity." It doesn't care about the equality of the sexes. The battlefield cares only about who will prevail. It is interesting that many of the most powerful and insightful articles opposing women in the infantry and special operations have been penned by female soldiers and Marines. This is most likely because they have been exposed to war, even if not as members of the infantry.
Recent events illustrate that transmutation in the quest for diversity continues apace. The problem is that the military seems to have stopped trying to defend itself. For instance, no senior officer has stepped forward to defend the military against the latest calumny directed against it: that the institution dedicated to the security of the republic has become a hotbed of "right-wing" extremism and racism. In acquiescing in this slander, the military has succumbed to the same disease that has afflicted American universities, corporate boards, newsrooms, and the entertainment industry.
What has happened to these institutions, now including the military, recalls the project of Gramsci, the father of "cultural Marxism." In the 1930s, he called on socialists and communists to subvert Western culture from the inside in order to prepare the soil for the overthrow of the bourgeois state. Gramsci argued that the socialist revolution that Marx had predicted in Europe had not occurred because bourgeois "cultural hegemony," which extended beyond the capitalist economic order to the social institutions and cultural values of bourgeois society, constituted a massive impediment to revolutionary change. To overthrow the bourgeois state, the revolutionary had to undermine bourgeois cultural hegemony. In the 1960s, the German activist Rudi Dutschke dubbed this project "the long march through the institutions."
But until recently, the military had been one bastion of resistance to this transformation. Perhaps it resisted as long as it did because, as Huntington argued, the "military mind" was essentially "conservative." The virtues associated with the military were also "conservative" in the sense of being traditional — honor, duty, sacrifice — and these virtues appealed to the public. The fact that the military has fallen prey to the "long march" can be traced to the erosion of those virtues.
Things have only gotten worse with the new charge that the military has become a hotbed of racism and "right-wing extremism." In response, the government has put forth a new effort to indoctrinate military personnel according to the tenets of critical race theory. Writing in Newsweek last month, Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Aaron Reitz recounted the new training instruction missives produced by the Marines and Navy that are dedicated to eradicating "extremism" and "domestic terrorism" ideologies from the ranks, as well as all "racists, bigots, homophobes and bullies." Religious belief in traditional marriage is now akin to disloyalty, apparently. Nothing is more destructive of the trust that is necessary to ensure military effectiveness than "identity politics," which tends to divide people by suggesting that justice is a function of attributes such as skin color rather than one's identity as an individual.
The U.S. military is at a crossroads. It is clearly living off of the accumulated capital of earlier generations of soldiers. As Adam Smith once observed, "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." But today, the margin of error is smaller than during earlier times. It is up to the country's political and military leadership to take a stand against the "long march."
The choice is between military effectiveness and "wokeness." If our leaders fail to correct the military's drift, the result will be catastrophic defeat on a future battlefield.
Mackubin Owens is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and author of U.S. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain .
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear
Tuesday, 6 April 2021... Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER JOURNAL post of 6 April 1966...
From the archives of http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com
"We Were Blue Chips"...
http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com/rolling-thunder-remembered-6-april-1966/
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
This Day in U S Military History…….April 6
1909 – Explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole along with 4 Eskimos. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. Robert E. Peary used Ellesmere Island as a base for his expedition to the North Pole. The north coast of Ellesmere lies just 480 miles from the Pole. He was accompanied by Matthew Henson, an African-American, who had spent 18 years in the Arctic with Peary.
1938 – Roy Plunkett, a DuPont researcher in New Jersey, discovered the polymer, polytetrafluoroethylene, later known as teflon.
1945 – On Okinawa, the US 3rd Amphibious Corps continues to advance in the north, but the US 24th Corps is held by Japanese forces along the first defenses of the Shuri Line. There are numerous Kamikaze attacks on shipping during the day, as part of Operation Kikusui. The aircraft carriers USS Jacinto and HMS Illustrious are hit as well as 25 other ships including 10 small warships.
1945 – During World War II, the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day.
1968 – The 77 day siege of Khe San is officially relieved when elements of the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division link up with Marines.
2001 – US officials announced some progress toward the release of 24 military personnel in China and hoped to establish a joint US-China commission to examine the April 1 collision of a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
2003 – US forces near Baghdad reportedly found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range Rockets, BM-21 missiles, equipped with sarin and mustard gas and "ready to fire." David Bloom (39), NBC correspondent, died of a pulmonary embolism south of Baghdad.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
LANE, MORGAN D.
Rank and organization: Private, Signal Corps, U.S. Army. Place and date: Near Jetersville, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Allegany Mich. Birth: Monroe, N.Y. Date of issue: 16 March 1866. Citation Capture of flag of gunboat Nansemond.
LANFARE, AARON S.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company B, 1st Connecticut Cavalry. Place and date: At Sailors Creek, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Branford, Conn. Birth: Branford, Conn. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag of 11th Florida Infantry (C.S.A.).
LARIMER, SMITH
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company G, 2d Ohio Cavalry. Place and date: At Sailors Creek, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Columbus, Ohio. Birth: Richland County, Ohio. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag of General Kershaw's headquarters.
MATTOCKS, CHARLES P.
Rank and organization: Major, 17th Maine Infantry. Place and date: At Sailors Creek, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Portland, Maine. Born: 1840, Danville, Vt. Date of issue: 29 March 1899. Citation: Displayed extraordinary gallantry in leading a charge of his regiment which resulted in the capture of a large number of prisoners and a stand of colors.
McDONALD, JOHN WADE
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 20th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., 6 April 1862. Entered service at: Wayneville, DeWitt County, Ill. Birth: Lancaster, Ohio. Date of issue: 27 August 1900. Citation: Was severely wounded while endeavoring, at the risk of his life, to carry to a place of safety a wounded and helpless comrade.
McELHlNNY, SAMUEL O.
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 2d West Virginia Cavalry. Place and date: At Sailors Creek, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Point Pleasant, W. Va. Birth. Meigs County, Ohio. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.
McWHORTER, WALTER F.
Rank and organization: Commissary Sergeant, Company E, 3d West Virginia Cavalry. Place and date: At Sailors Creek, Va., 6 April 1865. Entered service at: Harrison County, W. Va. Birth: Lewis County, W. Va. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag of 6th Tennessee Infantry (C.S.A.).
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
This Day in Aviation History" brought to you by the Daedalians Airpower Blog Update. To subscribe to this weekly email, go to https://daedalians.org/airpower-blog/.
April 5, 1962
NASA pilot Neil A. Armstrong flew an X-15 to a speed of 2,830 miles per hour and an altitude of 179,000 feet at Edwards AFB, California. The Naval aviator achieved the marks during a test of an automatic control system intended for incorporation in Apollo spacecraft and the DynaSoar rocket-boosted hypersonic glider used in the development of a manned orbital vehicle for bombing and reconnaissance. The Dyna-Soar program was subsequently cancelled. Armstrong made seven flights in X-15s from December 1960 to July 1962, attaining a maximum speed of 3,989 mph in X-15-1 and a peak altitude of 207,500 feet in X-15-3.
April 6, 1938
Testing begins on the radically different Bell XP-39 at Wright Field, Ohio. The XP-39's engine was midway down the fuselage, behind the pilot's compartment, with a 37mm cannon mounted to fire down the fuselage centerline. During World War II, nearly 5,000 P-39s are sent to the Soviet Union, where Russian pilots praised its heavy firepower and rugged construction.
April 7, 1916
Lt. Herbert A. Dargue, Daedalian Founder Member #1738, and Capt. Benjamin D. Foulois, Founder Member #321, are fired upon over Chihuahua City, Mexico, as they deliver dispatches to the U.S. Consul. This is the first American airplane to receive hostile fire.
April 8, 1940
An Army Air Forces Douglas B-18 Bolo bomber flies nonstop for the first time between Denver, Colorado, and Miami, Florida.
April 9, 1918
The first American fighter unit, the 94th Pursuit Squadron, was assigned to the front in World War I.
April 10, 1913
The Secretary of the Navy approved performance standards for qualification as a Navy Air Pilot and the issuance of a certificate to all officers meeting the requirements. Capt. Washington I. Chambers of the Bureau of Navigation described these requirements as being different from those of the "land pilot," and more exacting than those of the international accrediting agency, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
April 11, 1908
Lt. Frank P. Lahm, Daedalian Founder Member #211, assumes responsibility for the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Army Signal Corps.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for April 6, 2021 FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
6 April
1917: The US declared war on Germany. Army and Navy air strength included 179 officers, 1,317 enlisted men, about 350 aircraft, and a few balloons. A day later, the Army's Aviation Section boasted 65 officers, including 35 pilots. The De Havilland DH-4 bomber was the only US produced airplane used in combat, mostly in an observation role, during the war. (4) (12)
1924: KEY EVENT--FIRST AROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT/MACKAY TROPHY. Four Army Douglas Biplanes took off from Seattle on the first global flight. Only two crews completed the 26,345-mile flight after 363 hours flying time in an elapsed time of 175 days. When the flight ended on 28 September, the two crews received Distinguished Service Medals and the Chevaliers of the Legion of Honor of France. This was the first transpacific flight and first westbound North Atlantic flight by plane. The crews included Maj Frederick L. Martin and SSgt Alva L. Harvey; 1Lts Lowell H. Smith, and Leslie P. Arnold; 1Lt Leigh Wade and SSgt Henry H. Ogden; and 1Lts Erik H. Nelson and John "Jack" Harding. Additionally, the group became the first military recipients of the Collier Trophy and won the Mackay Trophy for 1924. (9) (18)
1938: The Bell XP-39 Airacobra first flew. 1949: Curtiss-Wright announced that the Bell X-1 rocket plane with a Curtiss-Wright engine flew at a world record speed of 1,100 MPH for piloted planes. (9) (24)
1952: KOREAN WAR. In air-to-air operations, Capt Iven C. Kincheloe, Jr., 25 FIS, destroyed a MiG, becoming the war's tenth ace. (28)
1953: The 306 BMW Commander, Col Michael N. W. McCoy, flew a B-47 3,120 miles from MacDill AFB via Limestone AFB, Maine, to RAF Fairford, UK, in a 5-hour, 38-minute record time. (1)
1955: A B-36 dropped an experimental atomic air-to-air missile warhead in a Mark 5 ballistic casing from 42,000 feet. Retarded by parachute, the bomb exploded six miles above Yucca Flat, Nev., at the highest known altitude of any nuclear blast by that date. (16) (24)
1959: Cmdr L. E. Flint flew a F4H-1 Phantom II to a new world altitude record by reaching 98,560 feet over Edwards AFB. The Snark completed its first full-range flight test. From Cape Canaveral, the missile flew 5,000 miles down the Atlantic Missile Range and hit the target area on 7 April. (6)
1965: Early Bird I, the first commercial communications satellite, launched from Cape Kennedy to set up communications between North America and Europe. 1966: The USAF and Army signed an agreement on aircraft use. The Army relinquished intratheater, fixed-wing airlift operations and gave the USAF all CV-2 Caribous and CV-7 Buffalos. They were designated the C-7A Caribou and C-8A Buffalo, respectively. In return, the USAF agreed to not use rotary-wing aircraft for intratheater movements, fire support, or supply of Army forces. (16) (26) MAC C-141s began flying aeromedical evacuations from Europe. They replaced the bi-weekly C-135 flights. (18)
1967: RYAN'S RAIDERS. Flying modified F-105F Wild Weasel aircraft, capable of both night radar bombing and Wild Weasel missions, Ryan's Raiders went into action at night, striking a target deep inside North Vietnam. (17)
1972: American aircraft and warships began heavy, sustained attacks on North Vietnam, the first time since the October 1968 cessation of bombing. (16) (26)
1975: Operation EAGLE PULL: To support the evacuation of Americans and other nationals from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, MAC flew more than 1,400 US Marines and 1,561 tons of equipment from Kadena AB to Cubi Point, Philippines, in 29 C-141, 8 C-5, and 2 commercial contract missions. On 12 April, USAF and Marine Corps helicopters, with escorts from USAF fighters and gunships, evacuated 287 people in the final airlift from Phnom Penh. The city fell to communist forces on 17 April. (16) (18) (21)
1980: The first air refueled C-141B mission flew from Beale AFB to RAF Mildenhall. An aircrew assigned to the 443 MAW made the flight in 11 hours 12 minutes with one refueling. (2) (16)
1983: SCOWCROFT COMMISSION. A special President's Commission, led by retired Lt Gen Brent Scowcroft, suggested several ICBM Modernization efforts. The suggestions included: (1) developing a small single warhead ICBM; deploying 100 Peacekeeper missiles in Minuteman Silos, (3) studying the silo and shelter hardness basing modes, and (4) continuing other strategic programs--anti-ballistic missiles, Trident, bombers, ALCMs and command and control. (1)
1984: FIFTH CHALLENGER/ELEVENTH SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION. Astronauts made the first successful capture and repair of a satellite, the sunwatching Solar Maximum Mission satellite, in space. They returned to earth on 13 April. (3) The 375 AAW accepted the first Lear Jet C-21A. It was the first of 80 Learjets to be delivered to the USAF as replacements for the CT-39 Sabreliner. (16) (26)
1994: Operation DISTANT RUNNER. Through 10 April, USAF airlifters moved 148 Americans and 82 other foreigners from Bujumbura, Burundi, to Nairobi, Kenya, when ethnic violence broke out. (16)
2007: After 42 years of serving as the primary pilot instructor training aircraft at Randolph AFB, Tex., the T-37 Tweet turned over its responsibilities to the T-6 Texan II in a special ceremony. While at Randolph with the 559th Flying Training Squadron, the Tweet flew more than 597,000 sorties and 813,000 hours to train 7,737 T-37 instructor pilots. (AFNEWS, "Tweet Closes 42-Year Randolph Career," 9 Apr 2007.)
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
World News for 6 April thanks to Military Periscope
Please see the attachment
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.