To All
Good Wednesday Morning August 9 2023.
A bit of history and some tidbits
Regards,
Skip
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This Day in Navy and Marine Corps History:
August 9
1842 The Webster-Ashburton Treaty is signed. In the treaty, the United States and Great Britain agree to cooperate in suppressing the slave trade.
1867 One officer and 46 Marines and Seamen from the steamer, USS Wachusett, land at Shanghai, China, to assist in fighting a fire.
1942 A Japanese force runs through the Allied forces guarding Savo Sound, sinking three American heavy cruisers, USS Quincy (CA 39), USS Vincennes (CA 44), and USS Astoria (CA 34), along with other damaged Allied vessels. As a result of the loss, the sound gains the nickname, Iron Bottom Sound.
1943 TBF aircraft from Composite Squadron One (VC 1) based onboard USS Card (CVE 11) sink German submarine U 664, 570 miles west of Fayal, Azores.
1945 Following the Aug. 6 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan at Nagasaki, eventually resulting in Japan's unconditional surrender.
2008 USS Sterett (DDG 104) is commissioned at Baltimore, Md., the birthplace of the ships namesake: Master Commandant Andrew Sterett, who fought in the Quasi-War and Barbary Wars for the Navy.
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Today in World History August 9
480 BC The Persian army defeats Leonidas and his Spartan army at the Battle Thermopylae, Persia.
48 BC Julius Caesar defeats Gnaius Pompey at Pharsalus.
1483 Pope Sixtus IV celebrates the first mass in the Sistine Chapel, which is named in his honor.
1549 England declares war on France.
1645 Settlers in New Amsterdam gain peace with the Indians after conducting talks with the Mohawks.
1805 Austria joins Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the third coalition against France.
1814 Andrew Jackson and the Creek Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23 million acres of Creek territory.
1842 The Webster-Ashburton treaty fixes the border between Maine and Canada's New Brunswick.
1859 The escalator is patented. However, the first working escalator appeared in 1900. Manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the Paris Exposition, it was installed in a Philadelphia office building the following year.
1862 At Cedar Mountain, Virginia, Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson repels an attack by Union forces.
1910 The first complete, self-contained electric washing machine is patented.
1930 First appearance of the animated character Betty Boop ("Dizzy Dishes").
1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in track and field events at the Berlin Olympics.
1941 President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The meeting produces the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the two countries on war aims, even though the United States is still a neutral country.
1944 Fictional character Smokey Bear ("Only you can prevent forest fires") created by US Forest Service and the Ad Council.
1945 The B-29 bomber Bock's Car drops a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.
1965 Singapore expelled from Malaysia following economic disagreements and racial tensions; becomes independent republic.
1969 Charles Manson's followers kill actress Sharon Tate and her three guests in her Beverly Hills home.
1971 Le Roy (Satchel) Paige inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame.
1974 Gerald Ford is sworn in as president of the United States after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
1975 First NFL game in Louisiana Superdome; Houston Oilers defeat New Orleans Saints 13-7.
1979 England's first major nude beach established, at the seaside resort of Brighton.
1992 Twenty-fifth Olympic Summer Games closes in Barcelona, Spain.
1999 Russian president Boris Yeltsin fires his prime minister and, for the fourth time, fires the entire cabinet.
1999 The Diet of Japan establishes the country's official national flag, the Hinomaru, and national anthem, "Kimi Ga Yo.".
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ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear … Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
Thanks to THE BEAR
Subject: ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED… 8 AUGUST
Skip… For The List for Wednesday, 9 August 2023… Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post for 9 August 1968…
Remembering BGEN David Winn, USAF, Retired (RIP)
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear's Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
This is a list of all Helicopter Pilots Who Died in the Vietnam War
. Listed by last name and has other info
https://www.vhpa.org/KIA/KIAINDEX.HTM
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Thanks to Carl N
https://www.history.com/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs
The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was preparing to leave Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell. The 29-year-old naval engineer was on a three-month-long business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and August 6, 1945, was supposed to be his last day in the city. He and his colleagues had spent the summer working long hours on the design for a new oil tanker, and he was looking forward to finally returning home to his wife, Hisako, and their infant son, Katsutoshi.
Around 8:15 that morning, Yamaguchi was walking to Mitsubishi's shipyard a final time when he heard the drone of an aircraft overhead. Looking skyward, he saw an American B-29 bomber soar over the city and drop a small object connected to a parachute. Suddenly, the sky erupted in a blaze of light, which Yamaguchi later described as resembling the "the lightning of a huge magnesium flare." He had just enough time to dive into a ditch before an ear-splitting boom rang out. The shock wave that accompanied it sucked Yamaguchi from the ground, spun him in the air like a tornado and sent him hurtling into a nearby potato patch. He'd been less than two miles from ground zero.
"I didn't know what had happened," he later told the British newspaper The Times. "I think I fainted for a while. When I opened my eyes, everything was dark, and I couldn't see much. It was like the start of a film at the cinema, before the picture has begun when the blank frames are just flashing up without any sound." The atomic blast had kicked up enough dust and debris to nearly blot out the morning sun. Yamaguchi was surrounded by torrents of falling ash, and he could see a mushroom cloud of fire rising in the sky over Hiroshima. His face and forearms had been badly burned, and both his eardrums were ruptured.
Yamaguchi wandered in a daze toward what remained of the Mitsubishi shipyard. There, he found his coworkers Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, both of whom had survived the blast. After spending a restless night in an air raid shelter, the men awoke on August 7 and made their way toward the train station, which they had heard was somehow still operating. The journey took them through a nightmarish landscape of still-flickering fires, shattered buildings and charred and melted corpses lining the streets. Many of the city's bridges had been turned into twisted wreckage, and at one river crossing, Yamaguchi was forced to swim through a layer of floating dead bodies. Upon reaching the station, he boarded a train full of burned and bewildered passengers and settled in for the overnight ride to his hometown of Nagasaki.
Yamaguchi arrived in Nagasaki early in the morning on August 8 and limped to the hospital. The doctor who treated him was a former school classmate, but the blackened burns on Yamaguchi's hands and face were so severe the man didn't recognize him at first. Neither did his family. When he returned home afterwards, feverish and swaddled in bandages, his mother accused him of being a ghost.
Despite being on the verge of collapse, Yamaguchi dragged himself out of bed on the morning of August 9 and reported for work at Mitsubishi's Nagasaki office. Around 11 a.m., he found himself in a meeting with a company director who demanded a full report on Hiroshima. The engineer recounted the scattered events of August 6—the blinding light, the deafening boom—but his superior accused him of being mad. How could a single bomb destroy an entire city? Yamaguchi was trying to explain himself when the landscape outside suddenly exploded with another iridescent white flash. Yamaguchi dropped to the ground just seconds before the shock wave shattered the office windows and sent broken glass and debris careening through the room. "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," he later told the newspaper The Independent.
The atom bomb that hit Nagasaki was even more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, but as Yamaguchi would later learn, the city's hilly landscape and a reinforced stairwell had combined to muffle the blast inside the office. His bandages were blown off, and he was hit by yet another surge of cancer-causing radiation, but he emerged relatively unhurt. For the second time in three days, he'd had the misfortune of being within two miles of a nuclear explosion. For the second time, he'd been fortunate enough to survive.
After fleeing from the skeleton of the Mitsubishi building, Yamaguchi rushed through a bomb-ravaged Nagasaki to check on his wife and son. He feared the worst when he saw a section of his house had been reduced to rubble, but he soon found both had sustained only superficial injuries. His wife had been out looking for burn ointment for her husband, and when the explosion came, she and the baby had taken refuge in a tunnel. It was yet another strange twist of fate. If Yamaguchi hadn't been hurt at Hiroshima, his family might have been killed at Nagasaki.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi wasn't the only person to endure two atomic blasts. His coworkers Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato were also in Nagasaki when the second bomb fell, as was Shigeyoshi Morimoto, a kite maker who had miraculously survived Hiroshima despite being only a half-mile from ground zero.
All told, some 165 people may have experienced both attacks, yet Yamaguchi was the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as a "nijyuu hibakusha," or "twice-bombed person." He finally won the distinction in 2009, only a year before he died at the age of 93.
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The USS Pueblo….A bit of history
by Sebastien Roblin
July 21, 2020
Here's What to Remember: The capture of the Pueblo marked a worst-case disaster scenario for U.S. intelligence, as the ship had carried a dozen top-secret encryption machines and coding cards.
A U.S. Army light freighter launched during World War II, the fifty-four-meter-long Pueblo had been recommissioned by the Navy in 1966s to serve as an "environmental research ship," with two civilian oceanographers on board. This was a flimsy cover for the truth: the Pueblo was a spy ship, charged with intercepting and recording wireless transmissions and monitoring electronic emissions. Periodically, the Pueblo would transmit its findings using a sixteen-foot parabolic antenna on its deck to beam a signal towards the moon, where it would reflect back to the Earth for reception by Navy antennas in Hawaii and Maryland.
The lightly armed and ponderous Pueblo—capable of a maximum speed of only thirteen knots (fifteen miles per hour)—was not supposed to place itself in real danger, however. Like other "technical research ships," it could sail safely within international waters—no closer than twelve nautical miles from shore—and still listen in. The Soviet Union had its own spy ships, and so both sides of the Cold War had to tolerate the presence of the others' electronic spies.
Today, signals intelligence remains a common form of espionage—and a basically legal one, so long as the ships involved do not stray into territorial waters and aircraft stick to international airspace. Recently, the Russian spy ship Viktor Leonov was observed thirty miles off the U.S. East Coast. U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft routinely intercept signal traffic from North Korea and other nations. However, these electronic spies can only operate so long as the nations they are spying on respect the norms of international law—a risky proposition when tensions are high and the nation in question is governed by a capricious regime.
That January, the Pueblo was assigned by the NSA to intercept signal traffic from Soviet ships in the Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea, and gather intel on North Korean coastal radars and radio stations. Her mission proceeded uneventfully until it encountered a North Korean subchaser (a corvette-sized vessel) on January 20. Two days later, it was spotted by two North Korean fishing trawlers, which passed within thirty meters of it. The Pueblo's captain, Lt. Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, informed the U.S. Navy and proceeded with the final phase of his mission.
Bucher was left unaware, however, that tensions between the two Koreas had just escalated dramatically. Near midnight on January 21, thirty-one disguised North Korean infiltrators came within one hundred meters of the South Korean presidential residence, the Blue House, in an attempt to assassinate President Park Chung-hee before being confronted and dispersed in a blaze of gunfire and exploding hand grenades. A shaken President Park put his troops on high alert and pressed for the United States to retaliate.
At noon on January 23, the Pueblo once again encountered another SO-1–class subchaser. The cannon-armed vessel closed on the Pueblo at high speed and challenged its nationality, to which Bucher raised the American flag. Next, the smaller boat transmitted: HEAVE TO OR I WILL FIRE. Bucher replied I AM IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS. In fact, the U.S. Navy stipulated that he keep his vessel several miles outside the boundary.
The subchaser's captain was not satisfied, and continued to close on the Pueblo. Soon afterwards, two North Korean MiG-21 fighters swooped low over the 890-ton spy ship, and three P-4 torpedo boats joined the subchaser to surround the American vessel. Bucher turned the ponderous Pueblo around and made full speed eastward, managing to worm his ship away from a torpedo boat that attempted to land a boarding party toting AK-47s. The North Korean boats began raking the Pueblo with heavy machine-gun fire and blasting at it with the fifty-seven-millimeter cannon on the subchaser. Shrapnel sprayed across the bridge, wounding Bucher.
The Pueblo's only weapons were two unloaded .50 caliber machine guns wrapped up in ice-coated tarps. (The spy ships were supposed to keep their defensive weaponry discrete.) The machine guns lacked gun shields and only one crewmember had been trained in their use. Bucher judged that any crew members attempting to load and fire the weapons would be massacred by the nearby boats, and that a few .50 caliber machine guns would not be of much use against an adversary armed with torpedoes and cannons.
Bucher was in radio contact with the U.S. Navy, but it had no forces ready to come to his ship's aid. The four F-4 Phantom fighters on alert on the carrier USS Enterprise, roughly six hundred miles away, were not loaded with antiship weapons and would take an hour to rearm. Eventually, the U.S. Air Force scrambled a dozen F-105 fighter bombers from Okinawa. "Some birds winging your way" was the last message Bucher received. The aircraft never arrived, however; it turned around while over South Korea.
Meanwhile, a second subchaser and a fourth torpedo boat had joined the assault on the Pueblo. Reluctantly, Bucher ordered his crew to begin destroying the classified documents and encryption gear on his ship, and signaled the North Korean ships that he would comply with their instructions. He turned the Pueblo back towards North Korean waters, but proceeded at only four knots to buy his crew—and the promised air support—more time.
But progress was slow. The crew had only two paper shredders and a single incinerator purchased by Bucher before the mission, using money from the crew's recreational fund after the U.S. Navy refused his request for a rapid-destruction device. The crew tried its best anyway, tossing top-secret documents into the water, bashing sophisticated encryption machines with fire axes and sledgehammers, and attempting to create a bonfire out of yet more classified material.
There were simply too many documents. Bucher halted the Pueblo just before entering North Korean waters in an attempt to delay. The North Korean vessels promptly opened fire again, and a fifty-seven-millimeter shell nearly tore the leg off of fireman Duane Hodges, causing him to bleed to death. Ultimately, Bucher turned the ship back on course. At 3 p.m., North Korean sailors finally boarded the ship, blindfolding and beating the crew and piloting the Pueblo into Wonsan harbor. The crew was then paraded through a mob of enraged civilians into captivity.
The North Korean attack came at the worst possible moment. Seoul feared renewed attacks across the demilitarized zone, and threatened to withdraw South Korean troops from Vietnam. The war in Vietnam was heating up, as a North Vietnamese forces embarked on a series of preliminary attacks culminating in the epic Tet Offensive. A CIA A-12 spy plane from Project Blackshield located the Pueblo in Wonsan harbor on January 28. CIA director Richard Helms thought the North Koreans had launched the attack as part of a Soviet plot to relieve pressure on Vietnam.
Declassified documents reveal that President Johnson considered options ranging from mining Wonsan harbor or organizing a naval blockade, to launching a battalion-sized ground attack on part of the demilitarized zone and air strikes. Ultimately, however, he chose to go with a show force, deploying hundreds of combat aircraft and three aircraft carriers to South Korea, and mobilizing fourteen thousand Air Force and Navy reservists. Soon the Soviet Union offered to aid in securing the release of the Pueblo's crew if the United States drew its forces back down. Not wanting to get drawn into a second Korean War just as fighting was intensifying throughout South Vietnam, Johnson decided to draw down his forces, and offered Seoul additional military aid on the condition that it did not instigate a clash with North Korea.
Pyongyang, for its part, trumpeted its capture of the Pueblo, which it falsely claimed had intruded in North Korean waters. (North Korea defines "international waters" as beginning fifty nautical miles, rather than twelve, from its shores.) In time, North Korea began issuing photos of the captured American crew and a signed confession from Captain Bucher, causing the CIA to assemble a psychological profile of the Pueblo's commander in an attempt to gauge his loyalty. The crew's plight evoked an outpouring of sympathy in the United States, and even inspired a Star Trek episode.
In truth, the Pueblo's crew was being brutally tormented, subject to daily beatings and undergoing hours of interrogation. Captain Bucher in particular was battered until he urinated blood, made to sit through his own mock execution, and shown a mutilated alleged South Korean spy as a warning of the consequences of not cooperating. At one point he went on a five-day hunger strike to protest the wretched food provided to his crew, which was so inadequate that one petty officer lost 40 percent of his bodyweight and nearly went blind. Finally, a North Korean interrogator threatened to execute the Pueblo's youngest crewmember, nineteen-year-old Howard Bland, in front of Bucher if he did not sign a confession, to be followed by the rest of his crew. This threat finally moved Bucher to sign the confession.
The American crew was eventually moved to a better facility, where they were inundated with propaganda videos. The sailors attempted to clandestinely resist by formulating oddly worded confessions and flipping their middle fingers when posing for photos, which they explained was a "Hawaiian Good Luck" sign to their interrogators. Unfortunately, a Time magazine article eventually gave this ploy away to their captors, who subjected the prisoners to a week of brutal torture as a punishment.
Meanwhile, U.S. diplomats were slogging through months of negotiations at the border village of Panmunjom—talks slowed down by the North Korean negotiator being forced to read his points from cards, lacking the permission to formulate his own replies to American offers. Pyongyang was completely unwilling to return the Pueblo, and would only return the crew in exchange for a signed apology, a confession of guilt from the U.S. government, and a promise never to spy on North Korea again.
U.S. negotiator Gen. Gilbert Woodward struck on a way of making this demand palatable: in a gesture of mutual bad faith agreed upon in advance, the United States told the North Koreans it would sign such a document with the understanding it would retract the confession as soon as the crew of the Pueblo was returned. Kim Il-sung's negotiator found this acceptable.
The eighty-two surviving crew members and one body were bussed down to the border crossing at the Bridge of No Return on December 23, 1968, exactly eleven months after the North Korean attack, where they walked back into American hands. As promised, Washington promptly rescinded its apology.
The crew was given a jubilant reception upon their return to the United States, but Captain Bucher was made to sit before a Navy court of inquiry. "Don't give up the ship!" is an unofficial rallying cry of the U.S. Navy, and to the admirals of the court, Bucher had committed a cardinal sin when he surrendered his nominally armed vessel—even though attempting to shoot back would simply have led to the slaughter of the Pueblo's crew. The admirals recommended a court martial, perhaps unmindful of an earlier classified report that found the U.S. Navy leadership culpable for sending the Pueblo, unprepared and unsupported, into a dangerous situation. Navy Secretary John Chafee, however, declined to press charges, telling the press that "they have suffered enough."
The capture of the Pueblo marked a worst-case disaster scenario for U.S. intelligence, as the ship had carried a dozen top-secret encryption machines and coding cards. North Korea is believed to have flown eight hundred pounds of equipment from the Pueblo to Moscow, where it was reverse engineered, allowing the Soviets to tap into U.S. naval communications. The U.S. Navy was erroneously comforted by the belief that the Soviets lacked the new codes necessary to decrypt those signals, not realizing that the John Walker spy ring had just begun to furnish these to Moscow. This left U.S. naval communications compromised for nearly two decades.
The assumption that the Pueblo incident was orchestrated by Moscow was ill founded, however. Though the Soviet Union was committed by treaty to come to North Korea's defense, the Brezhnev government made clear it would not enter into war with the United States over a provocation from Pyongyang. Diplomatic communiqués released after the end of the Cold War reveal that Moscow was upset by the North Korean attack, which may have been egged on by promises of support from China, which was attempting to secure Pyongyang's loyalty in the bitterly divided Eastern Bloc. A week after the Pueblo was captured, Kim Il-sung demanded additional economic aid from Moscow—a request which was reciprocated in a bid to pay off the North Korean leader into deescalating tensions with the United States.
Although Pyongyang profited from playing one patron against the other, its attack on the Pueblo was probably primarily motivated by the failure of its assassination plot in South Korea. Anticipating possible attacks from South Korea or the United, it may have seen taking the Pueblo as a preemptive move in an imminent conflict, or as a means to gain leverage over Washington and sow dissension between the United States and South Korea.
Many of the Pueblo's crew went on to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and lifelong physical injuries. Over time, however, the crewmembers put up their own website testifying to their experiences, successfully lobbied for status as prisoners of war after it was initially denied to them, and sued North Korea in U.S. court for their treatment. As for the Pueblo itself, technically the second oldest ship still commissioned in the U.S. Navy, it remains in North Korean custody to this day. It is currently moored off the Potong River in Pyongyang, where it serve as an exhibition of the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum.
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Thanks t0 Carl
Please WATCH! NOT Field of Dreams but Fields of EV waste! Unbelievable info in this video!
https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rwg9hqtzvV1zlxqpx.mp4
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Thanks to Mugs and Dick
Something (or maybe one of many things) that I have not heard of before.
To see the video, go to the link below.
French soldiers fill in the letters on tombstones of fallen Americans with sand from Omaha Beach (msn.com)
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French soldiers fill in the letters on tombstones of fallen Americans with sand from Omaha Beach
Story by Komal Banchhor •6h
Something (or maybe one of many things) that I have not heard of before.
To see the video, go to the link below.
French soldiers fill in the letters on tombstones of fallen Americans with sand from Omaha Beach© Provided by Scoop Upworthy
French soldiers fill in the letters on tombstones of fallen Americans with sand from Omaha Beach
Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 17, 2023. It has since been updated.
Omaha Beach, one of the landing sites of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, is a place of deep historical significance. It was here on June 6, 1944, that American soldiers faced tremendous odds to secure a beachhead and begin the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation. The sacrifice of the soldiers who fought and died on the beaches that day is honored by a unique tradition that has been carried on for many years by French soldiers and civilians alike.
While attending an event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, Congresswoman Jackie Speier documented a powerful and emotional moment at the Normandy American Cemetery. Speier was visiting the grave of a friend's father during her 2019 visit when she witnessed a soldier rubbing sand onto a white headstone in order to make the letters more visible.
In a tweet sharing a video of the soldier's actions, Speier explained the purpose behind the sand rubbing. She wrote, "The letters on the white crosses almost disappear in the brightness of the stone, so a soldier fills the indentations with sand from Omaha Beach to bring the name forward."
The video, which is only 45 seconds long, shows the soldier carefully rubbing sand onto the headstone of Maj. William A. Richards. After a few moments, he wipes away the excess sand with a sponge, revealing the clear inscription on the stone.
For Speier, this small act of remembrance was incredibly moving. In her tweet, she wrote that it "sent shivers down my spine." According to WTHR, the soldier in the video was honoring the memory of Maj. William A. Richards, who served with the 112th Engineer Combat Battalion and entered the service in Michigan. Richards died on D-Day and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Purple Heart and World War II Victory Medal.
The Normandy American Cemetery, where Speier captured the video, is the final resting place for more than 9,000 American soldiers who died in the Normandy landings and subsequent operations during World War II. The cemetery is a solemn reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for freedom and democracy during the war.
Every year, French soldiers and civilians gather at Omaha Beach to collect sand from the shore. They then use this sand to fill in the letters on the tombstones of fallen American soldiers buried at the cemetery.
The tradition of filling in the letters on tombstones with sand reportedly began in the 1950s. At that time, the cemetery was maintained by French gardeners, who noticed that the letters on the tombstones were becoming worn and difficult to read. They came up with the idea of using sand from the beach to fill in the letters, making them more legible and creating a poignant connection between the soldiers buried in the cemetery and the place where they had fought and died.
The tradition was continued by French soldiers stationed in the area, and over time it became a beloved ritual among the local population. Today, the sand-filling ceremony is held annually on the eve of D-Day, and it is attended by a mix of French and American military personnel, dignitaries and members of the public.
The tradition of collecting sand from Omaha Beach is a beautiful way to pay tribute to the fallen American soldiers. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten, symbolizing the enduring friendship between France and the United States. Filling in the letters on the tombstones is a small but powerful way to show gratitude for their sacrifice and ensure that their memory lives on for generations to come.
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A couple from the archives
Rich
CNN - "How does a plane with a parachute end up like a 'meatball down a toothpick'"?
Crashed pilot video blogs efforts at being rescued - CNN Video
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2019/08/06/pilot-video-blogs-rescue-quebec-moos-pkg-vpx.cnn
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thanks to Hal-
Taken to the Soviet Union, Truth wrapped in fiction, "The Children Called Him Uncle Vanya" for you....
Do such things happen ? Yes, absolutely. In WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam, the Russians took our soldiers prisoner and kept them. All this information is out there for anyone who is curious. In WWII alone they took 25,600 out of the German stalags they 'liberated' and they put them on trains to the gulags of Siberia. Many were taken from Korea, many from Vietnam. This story is based on men that I have known, or known about. And places and prisons I know about. Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Johnson all knew about it. If you have been reading my emails over the years, you also know about it. It isn't a secret. It's just a horrible injustice.
Hal
This is one of thirteen short stories I have published on Amazon/Kindle.
See the enclosure The children called him Uncle Venya with Today's List
See the other enclosure Darkee Thanks to Mike. a WWII story about a C-54
I hope that these enclosures come through ok
If you have ever been above or in a solid over cast and lost all your navaids, radios and attitude instruments you know how this bunch felt. I had it happen to me 3 times in the F-8 and it was no fun. Once at night and twice in the daytime.
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Thanks to Interesting Facts
8 Things You Didn't Know About the Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon rainforest is the largest forest on the planet. Most famously associated with Brazil, it also extends across parts of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. The river of the same name that winds through it is the second-longest on earth — equivalent to the distance between New York and Rome. Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with this true natural wonder, but here are eight things you probably didn't know about the Amazon rainforest.
1 of 8
While It's the World's Largest Rainforest, It's Not the Oldest
The stats are impressive: Covering an area of approximately 2.1 million square miles, the Amazon rainforest is twice as big as Mexico. However, it falls short of the land area of the contiguous United States, which is nearly 3 million square miles by comparison. The Amazon also contains, by far, the world's largest area of primary forest — dense areas of native tree species that are untouched by human activity — accounting for nearly 85% of its total size. The next largest primary forest is that of the Congo in Africa (about 650,000 square miles).
Although the Amazon is unquestionably the biggest forest on the planet, it's nowhere near the oldest. Scientists estimate that the Amazon is approximately 55 million years old; the much smaller Daintree rainforest in Australia dates back 180 million years and is Earth's oldest forest.
2 of 8
The Amazon's Trees Aren't Quite the Lungs of the Planet
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted it and CNN reported it, but contrary to popular belief, the Amazon rainforest doesn't actually produce 20% of the world's oxygen. The late Wallace Broecker, an American geochemist and professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, debunked the popular myth as early as 1996. Since then, several other scientists have also disproved the statistic, including climate and environmental scientist Jonathan Foley.
It's true that, each day, trees use the sun to photosynthesize large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it into oxygen. However, ants, termites, bacteria, and fungi soon consume it. After the sun goes down, the trees also use some of that oxygen to enable them to continue to create energy. Considering all parts of the ecosystem, the end result is that trees produce, at best, a few percent, and certainly nowhere near 20% of the world's oxygen.
3 of 8
The Amazon Rainforest Contains Unrivaled Biodiversity
The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse environments on the planet; according to Greenpeace, more than 3 million species live in it. (Unfortunately, due to deforestation, it's estimated that one-third of them are threatened with extinction.)
In the Amazon, you'll find the jaguar, which is South America's largest cat. This strong swimmer is happy munching on much of what hangs out in the same neighborhood, including deer, armadillos, monkeys, and lizards. A jaguar would be ill-advised to pick a fight with a black caiman, however: At over 16 feet long, this mighty crocodile is the Amazon's biggest predator. Sharing the water is the green anaconda, the world's heaviest and most powerful snake. Other notable creatures in the forest include the capybara, which looks much like an oversized guinea pig; the reclusive Amazonian tapir, with its squat trunk; and the three-toed sloth, one of the slowest-moving creatures in the world.
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The Rate of Deforestation Is Alarming
It's difficult to determine the exact size of the area covered by the world's rainforests, partly because much of it is inaccessible and because the rapid rate of deforestation makes it hard to maintain up-to-date figures. What scientists do know is that many millions of acres are burned every year. According to Conservation International, the Amazon lost about 3,600 square miles of rainforest in 2015, which equates to an area the size of Cyprus or the state of Maine.
Since then, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon has been on an upward trend. Land is being cleared for ranching, logging, and unsustainable agriculture. (Forest soils are poor because most of the nutrients are stored in the biomass. Once what's in the soil has been used up, the leaf litter which once replenished the soil's fertility is gone.) Companies also mine for gold and drill for oil in the area, and as communities demand new housing, infrastructure projects such as road building also contribute to the problem.
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Its Plants Provide a Host of Health Benefits
Indigenous groups treat the rainforest as one big medicine cabinet. Approximately 80,000 plant species can be found in the forest, many of which have health-enhancing properties. Guaraná, for instance, contains four times as much caffeine as coffee. It was used in the Amazon as a tonic long before manufacturers of sports and energy drinks got wind of it. Equally well-known is the use of quinine, which is extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree and was traditionally used in the treatment of malaria. (These days, the World Health Organization recommends the use of other substances, which cause fewer side effects.)
Indigenous peoples also use matico leaves as a treatment for coughs, easing nausea, and as an antiseptic. The herbal supplement uña de gato, known in English as cat's claw, is believed to help ease symptoms of rheumatism, toothache, and bruising. The bark and stems of the vine-like Chondrodendron tomentosum are a source of curare, which Indigenous hunters typically used as an arrow poison. Its muscle relaxant and paralysis-inducing properties have been studied to enhance our understanding of treatments for tetanus, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis.
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More Than 400 Indigenous Tribes Call the Rainforest Home
Survival International suggests that around 1 million Indigenous peoples inhabit the Amazon rainforest. They form about 400 different tribes, each with their own language, culture, and identity. A few are nomadic, but most live in permanent settlements close to the river, which enables them to hunt, farm, fish, and access services such as health care and education. Some Indigenous groups — perhaps around 15 in Peru and at least twice that number in Brazil — are recognized as "uncontacted" and live an isolated life deep in the forest. However, recent reports indicate that some are choosing to make contact with the outside world.
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It's Home to the World's Largest City Without a Road Connection
The Jesuits founded the Peruvian port of Iquitos in 1757, and the city's population burgeoned as the rubber trade kicked in at the end of the 19th century. Today, the Iquitos' urban area has almost half a million inhabitants. It is widely believed to be the largest city in the world without a road connection to the outside world. To reach it, most visitors catch a flight from Lima, though planes also touch down at two other regional hubs, Tarapoto and Pucallpa.
Essential supplies arrive by air, though most of what the city needs is brought in by cargo ship along the Amazon River. Small vessels shuttle between Iquitos and outlying settlements, while larger cruise ships carry tourists keen to experience the nature and wildlife that's found in the remote rainforest.
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There's an Opera House in the Jungle
Across the border in Brazil, another city's fortunes waxed and waned with the rubber industry. Manaus was already a thriving port city by the 19th century, thanks to its location at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Solimões, which join to form the Amazon River. But as the increasing popularity of the bicycle, then the motor car, soon created an unprecedented demand for rubber, the city flourished. Its population grew rapidly as migrants flocked to the city to find work.
Those who had made their fortunes competed to build houses that would outshine those of their neighbors. The construction of the Manaus Opera House, which opened in 1897, was an example of the one-upmanship common at the end of the century — and a message to the rest of the world that this Amazonian city had arrived. Its success would be short-lived, however. As the industry collapsed, unable to compete with its Asian competitors, the theater was a casualty and closed in 1924. Fortunately, it reopened in the 1990s and now stages concerts and performances.
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This Day in U S Military History
August 9
1813 – After reports that British naval vessels were nearing St. Michaels, Md., to attack the shipbuilding town that night, the county militia placed lanterns on the tops of the tallest trees and on the masts of vessels in the harbor; and had all other lights extinguished. When the British attacked, they directed their fire too high and overshot the town.
1942 – After the removal of the American aircraft carriers, a Japanese cruiser force, commanded by Admiral Mikawa enters the Sealark Channel south of Savo Island. The remaining American naval defenses, lead by Admiral Crutchley, have little experience of, or the equipment needed for, night fighting. The Americans lose four cruisers and sink none of the Japanese ships. Sealark Channel is later renamed Ironbottom Sound. The American transports unloading at Lunga Point are not attacked, however they are ordered to withdraw due to the threat and the 1st Marine Division is left short of heavy equipment and with only one half of their supplies. The Coast Guard-manned transport USS Hunter Liggett rescued the survivors of three U. S. Navy and one Australian cruisers that had been sunk the preceding night by Imperial Japanese Navy during the Battle of Savo Island. The night battle, also known as the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, was one of the worst defeats ever suffered by the Navy.
1942 – With the Guadalcanal airstrip secure after heavy fighting with the Japanese, the 1st Engineer Battalion commenced work on the runway using captured equipment. Three days later, on 12 August, the first plane landed on Henderson Field, a Navy PBY which evacuated two wounded Marines. Nearly 3,000 wounded Marines would be evacuated from Henderson Field during the battle
1945 – A second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, the very industry intended for destruction. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records). General Leslie R. Groves, the man responsible for organizing the Manhattan Project, which solved the problem of producing and delivering the nuclear explosion, estimated that another atom bomb would be ready to use against Japan by August 17 or 18-but it was not necessary. Even though the War Council still remained divided ("It is far too early to say that the war is lost," opined the Minister of War), Emperor Hirohito, by request of two War Council members eager to end the war, met with the Council and declared that "continuing the war can only result in the annihilation of the Japanese people…." The Emperor of Japan gave his permission for unconditional surrender. Major Sweeney, the pilot, would in 1956, at age 37, become the youngest brigadier general in the entire peacetime Air Force when he was appointed by the governor of Massachusetts to command the 102nd Tactical Fighter Wing, Massachusetts Air National Guard.
1985 – Arthur Walker, a retired U.S. Navy officer, is found guilty of espionage for passing top-secret documents to his brother, who then passed them to Soviet agents. Walker was part of one of the most significant Cold War spy rings in the United States. The arrest of Arthur Walker on May 29, 1985, came just one day after the arrest of his brother, John, and John's son, Michael. All three were charged with conducting espionage for the Soviet Union. John Walker, also a Navy veteran, was the ringleader, and government officials charged that he had been involved in spying for the Soviets since 1968. He recruited his son, who was serving in the U.S. Navy, a short time later. Arthur Walker was drawn into the scheme in 1980 when, at his brother's suggestion, he took a job with VSE, a Virginia defense contractor. Over the next two years, the government charged, Arthur Walker provided John with a number of highly classified documents dealing with the construction of naval vessels. For his services, Arthur Walker received about $12,000. A nasty divorce between John Walker and his wife eventually brought the spy ring to light when his wife, angry after their separation, went to the FBI to inform on her husband. It was revealed at their trials that the motivation of all the Walker men was the repayment of large debts they had accrued. Arthur Walker was found guilty of seven counts of espionage on August 9, 1985. He was sentenced to life in prison and fined $250,000. John and Michael Walker later pled guilty to espionage charges, with John receiving two life sentences and Michael receiving 25 years in prison. A fourth conspirator, Jerry Whitworth, a friend of John Walker's, was convicted in 1986 on 12 counts of espionage and sentenced to 365 years in prison. With the arrests and convictions, the U.S. government claimed that it had broken one of the most destructive spy rings in the United States in the history of the Cold War.
1990 – Walking off of the first American C-141 transport to bring in the first elements what would eventually be more than 527,000 American troops were two Guardsmen from Headquarters Company, 228th Signal Brigade, South Carolina Army National Guard. They immediately set up and began operating their single channel tactical satellite radio link keeping the Saudi Defense Ministry in communication with the U.S. Army's Third Army Headquarters, Fort McPherson, GA. These two men were the first of 37,848 Army Guard personnel to serve in Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Strom which finally forced the Iraqi army to evacuate Kuwait.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
*LINDSEY, DARRELL R. (Air Mission)
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army Air Corps. Place and date: L'Isle Adam railroad bridge over the Seine in occupied France, 9 August 1944. Entered service at: Storm Lake, lowa. Birth: Jefferson, lowa. G.O. No.: 43, 30 May 1945. Citation: On 9 August 1944, Capt. Lindsey led a formation of 30 B-26 medium bombers in a hazardous mission to destroy the strategic enemy held L'lsle Adam railroad bridge over the Seine in occupied France. With most of the bridges over the Seine destroyed, the heavily fortified L'Isle Adam bridge was of inestimable value to the enemy in moving troops, supplies, and equipment to Paris. Capt. Lindsey was fully aware of the fierce resistance that would be encountered. Shortly after reaching enemy territory the formation was buffeted with heavy and accurate antiaircraft fire. By skillful evasive action, Capt. Lindsey was able to elude much of the enemy flak, but just before entering the bombing run his B-26 was peppered with holes. During the bombing run the enemy fire was even more intense, and Capt. Lindsey's right engine received a direct hit and burst into flames. Despite the fact that his ship was hurled out of formation by the violence of the concussion, Capt. Lindsey brilliantly maneuvered back into the lead position without disrupting the flight. Fully aware that the gasoline tanks might explode at any moment, Capt. Lindsey gallantly elected to continue the perilous bombing run. With fire streaming from his right engine and his right wing half enveloped in flames, he led his formation over the target upon which the bombs were dropped with telling effect. Immediately after the objective was attacked, Capt. Lindsey gave the order for the crew to parachute from the doomed aircraft. With magnificent coolness and superb pilotage, and without regard for his own life, he held the swiftly descending airplane in a steady glide until the members of the crew could jump to safety. With the right wing completely enveloped in flames and an explosion of the gasoline tank imminent, Capt. Lindsey still remained unperturbed. The last man to leave the stricken plane was the bombardier, who offered to lower the wheels so that Capt. Lindsey might escape from the nose. Realizing that this might throw the aircraft into an uncontrollable spin and jeopardize the bombardier's chances to escape, Capt. Lindsey refused the offer. Immediately after the bombardier had bailed out, and before Capt. Lindsey was able to follow, the right gasoline tank exploded. The aircraft sheathed in fire, went into a steep dive and was seen to explode as it crashed. All who are living today from this plane owe their lives to the fact that Capt. Lindsey remained cool and showed supreme courage in this emergency.
LEE, HOWARD V.
Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Marine Corps, Company E, 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, 3d Marine Division (Rein). place and date: Near Cam Lo, Republic of Vietnam, 8 and 9 August 1966. Entered service at: Dumfries, Va. Born: 1 August 1933, New York, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. A platoon of Maj. (then Capt.) Lee's company, while on an operation deep in enemy territory, was attacked and surrounded by a large Vietnamese force. Realizing that the unit had suffered numerous casualties, depriving it of effective leadership, and fully aware that the platoon was even then under heavy attack by the enemy, Maj Lee took 7 men and proceeded by helicopter to reinforce the beleaguered platoon. Maj. Lee disembarked from the helicopter with 2 of his men and, braving withering enemy fire, led them into the perimeter, where he fearlessly moved from position to position, directing and encouraging the overtaxed troops. The enemy then launched a massive attack with the full might of their forces. Although painfully wounded by fragments from an enemy grenade in several areas of his body, including his eye, Maj. Lee continued undauntedly throughout the night to direct the valiant defense, coordinate supporting fire, and apprise higher headquarters of the plight of the platoon. The next morning he collapsed from his wounds and was forced to relinquish command. However the small band of marines had held their position and repeatedly fought off many vicious enemy attacks for a grueling 6 hours until their evacuation was effected the following morning. Maj. Lee's actions saved his men from capture, minimized the loss of lives, and dealt the enemy a severe defeat. His indomitable fighting spirit, superb leadership, and great personal valor in the face of tremendous odds, reflect great credit upon himself and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for August 9, 2020 FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
9 August
1919: The Secretary of the Navy authorized construction of the Navy's first rigid airship ZR-1, the future USS Shenandoah. (24)
1944: MEDAL OF HONOR. While leading 33 B-26 Marauders from the 394 BG against a railroad bridge on the Seine River in France, Capt Darrell R. Lindsey's right engine received a direct hit and caught on fire. Even though his fuel tanks could explode at any moment, Lindsey decided to lead the bomb run to excellent results. After delivering the bombs, Lindsey ordered the crew to bail out. Before he jumped, the bombardier offered to lower the aircraft's wheels so the pilot could escape, but Lindsey refused. The fuel tanks exploded before Lindsey could leave the controls and the plane plummeted to the ground. For his courage, the Army awarded Lindsey a Medal of Honor posthumously. (4)
1945: Maj Charles W. Sweeney, flying the "Bockscar" B-29, dropped a second atomic bomb, called "Fat Man," on Nagasaki. Later in his career, Sweeney became the commander of the Massachusetts ANG. He died on 16 July 2004. (12) (24) (32) Through 10 August, 95 B-29s from Guam carried a record average bombload of 20,648 pounds to strike the Nippon Oil Refinery at Amagasaki, Japan. (24)
1949: While flying in an F2H-1 Banshee at over 500 knots near Walterboro, S.C., Lt Jack L. "Pappy" Fruin (USN) became the first pilot in the US to use an ejection seat for an emergency escape. (16) (24)
1952: Bob Faris flew a Mooney Mite, a light personal business plane, from Wichita to Montpelier, Vt. He covered the 1,400 miles in 11 hours 59 minutes 30 seconds, to set a new nonstop distance record for very light planes. (24)
1960: The first US ICBM base began functioning when SAC declared three Atlas D launching pads of the 564 SMS at Francis E. Warren AFB operational. (6) (12)
1962: The USAF first demonstrated a multiple countdown capability when a 389 SMW crew from Francis E. Warren AFB successfully launched two Atlas D missiles at Cape Canaveral on 5,000-mile flights. (6)
1965: A fire at a Titan II missile site near Searcy, Ark., claimed 53 lives, making this incident the worst disaster in the history of the US missile program. The fire broke out while the missile silo was being renovated and improved; the missile was installed and fueled at the time, although the nuclear warhead had been removed.
1974: MAC airlifted 160,000 pounds of disaster relief supplies on a C–141 and a C–5 to Cyprus to aid victims of the fighting. (18)
1997: C-141 aircrews from the 446 AW (AFRC) at McChord AFB arrived at Kelly AFB with four victims from the 5 August Korean Airlines 747 crash in Guam. Flight nurses and medical technicians from the 349th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, 349 AMW (AFRC) at Travis AFB supported the flight. (22)
1998: A 305 AMW C-141 from McGuire AFB flew 15 seriously injured State Department employees from Nairobi, Kenya, to Ramstein AB on their way to Landstuhl Region Medical Center. The 11 Americans and 4 Kenyan patients received injuries in the 7 August US embassy bombing in Nairobi, which claimed at least 200 lives and wounded more than 1,000. (22)
2005: The 452 AMW at March ARB received the first C-17 Globemaster III to be based in California. Called the Spirit of California, the C-17 (tail number 04-4138) flew 65 miles from the Boeing facility in Long Beach, Calif., to March ARB. It was the USAF's 138th operational C-17 and the first of 8 for the 452d to replace it aging fleet of C-141 Starlifters. The 452d was the first wing in the AFRC to be equipped with Globemaster IIIs. (22)
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