The List 7429
To All
Good Wednesday Morning January 28, 2026. .
Yesterday turned out to be a good day and got a lot of work done inside and out. Every trash can is full and ready for pickup. I decided to launch today's list last night as I was getting up early to get some physical therapy at the VA in Oceanside. My physical therapist has done wonders for my .
Today's weather is supposed to be overcast for most of the day with a low of 46 around 6 and a high of 71 around 1.
.Regards,
skip
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.HAGD
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This day in Naval and Marine Corps History (thanks to NHHC)
Here is a link to the NHHC website: https://www.history.navy.mil/. Go here to see the director's corner for all 94 H-Grams.
January 28
1865—Confederate torpedo boat St. Patrick strikes the side-wheel gunboat USS Octorara, off Mobile Bay, but her spar torpedo fails to explode.
1944—PB4Y-1 (VB 103) aircraft sink German submarine, U 271, off Limerick, Ireland.
1945—Submarine Spadefish (SS 411) attacks Japanese convoy west of Chuja Kundo, Korea and sinks escort vessel Kume and transport Sanuki Maru.
1962—USS Cook (APD 130) rescues 25 survivors from Panamanian tanker, SS Stanvac Sumatra, which broke in two in the South China Sea.
1986—The Space Shuttle Challenger tragically explodes early in its boost phase, killing all seven astronauts, including Navy Cmdr. Michael Smith.
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This Day in World History…
January 28
28 The Roman Emperor Nerva names Trajan, an army general, as his successor.
1547 Henry VIII of England dies and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Edward VI.
1757 Ahmed Shah, the first King of Afghanistan, occupies Delhi and annexes the Punjab.
1792 Rebellious slaves in Santo Domingo launch an attack on the city of Cap.
1871 Surrounded by Prussian troops and suffering from famine, the French army in Paris surrenders. During the siege, balloons were used to keep contact with the outside world.
1915 The U.S. Coast Guard is founded to fight contraband trade and aid distressed vessels at sea.
1915 The German navy attacks the U.S. freighter William P. Frye, loaded with wheat for Britain.
1921 Albert Einstein startles Berlin by suggesting the possibility of measuring the universe.
1932 The Japanese attack Shanghai, China, and declare martial law.
1936 A fellow prison inmate slashes infamous kidnapper, Richard Loeb, to death.
1941 French General Charles DeGaulle's Free French forces sack south Libya oasis.
1945 Chiang Kai-shek renames the Ledo-Burma Road the Stilwell Road, in honor of General Joseph Stilwell.
1955 The U.S. Congress passes a bill allowing mobilization of troops if China should attack Taiwan.
1964 The Soviets down a U.S. jet over East Germany killing three.
1970 Israeli fighter jets attack the suburbs of Cairo.
1986 The space shuttle Challenger explodes just after liftoff.
I will never forget watching that on the TV in Pri fly while watching Flight ops on one of the carriers. The Air Boss and I were talking and looked up at the launch and then the disaster and we were both speechless for a couple of seconds before the Oh S&*@ came out
At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger's launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa's family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.
READ MORE: 5 Things You May Not Know About the Challenger Shuttle
In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world's first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.
In the aftermath of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the disaster was caused by the failure of an "O-ring" seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive loss. As a result, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.
READ MORE: Reagan Delayed the 1986 State of the Union to Mourn the Challenger Disaster
In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.
On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth's atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.
The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011 after its final mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.
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Thanks to the Bear and Dan Heller. We will always have the url for you to search items in Rolling Thunder
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER …
. rollingthunderremembered.com .
To All
Thanks to the Bear
This is great to watch…skip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQcxP70jNMY
Thanks to Micro
From Vietnam Air Losses site for ..January 28 . .
January 28: https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/loss.php?id=2689
Thanks to the Bear and Dan Heller
rollingthunderremembered.com .
Hello All,
Thanks to Dan Heller and the Bear
Links to all content can now be found right on the homepage http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com. If you scroll down from the banner and featured content you will find "Today in Rolling Thunder Remembered History" which highlights events in the Vietnam war that occurred on the date the page is visited. Below that are links to browse or search all content. You may search by keyword(s), date, or date range.
An item of importance is the recent incorporation of Task Force Omega (TFO) MIA summaries. There is a link on the homepage and you can also visit directly via https://www.rollingthunderremembered.com/task-force-omega/. There are 60 summaries posted thus far, with about 940 to go (not a typo—TFO has over 1,000 individual case files).
If you have any questions or comments about RTR/TFO, or have a question on my book, you may e-mail me directly at acrossthewing@protonmail.com. Thank you Dan
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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.
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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
MOAA - Wall of Faces Now Includes Photos of All Servicemembers Killed in the Vietnam War
The site works, find anyone you knew in "search" feature. https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/
Wall of Faces Now Includes Photos of All Service members Killed in the Vietnam War
By: Kipp Hanley
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From the archives
Remove cat before flight
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And this is still going on
Thanks to Mike and to Cowboy for finding the URL
Subject: Borat Hits The Nail On The Head!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDTOQUvpw7I
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From the archives.
One year ago
Remembering Auschwitz
Holocaust survivors and world leaders gathered at Auschwitz in southern Poland yesterday to commemorate 80 years since the liberation of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were systematically executed at Auschwitz during World War II, primarily by poison gas, as part of the Nazi party's plans to form an ethnically German state (see history). Others in the camp died from mass shootings, starvation, and disease before Soviet troops arrived and freed roughly 7,000 prisoners. In total, around 6 million Jews were killed across German-occupied Europe from 1941 to 1945. Roughly 220,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are still alive today, with ages ranging from their late 70s to over 100 years old. See a virtual tour of Auschwitz here. Listen to firsthand accounts here.
Separately, an exhibit featuring a full-scale replica of Anne Frank's home—where she hid with her parents, sister, and others before being discovered by the Nazis—opened in New York City yesterday.
In The Know
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From the archives
Jim Webb. Lived a few doors down from me at Vandenberg AFB. He came to USC on a Navy scholarship and was a fraternity brother for a year before being accepted by the Naval Academy and graduated and went into the Marines. He went to Vietnam and served on the ground and became a much decorated survivor of that war and awarded the Navy Cross.. He has written many great books His book "Fields of Fire"is an excellent read about Vietnam combat. skip
You may enjoy reading this.
Subject: Fwd: WSJ: Jim Webb on Echoes of Vietnam, 50 Years Later
Thought you all might enjoy this article if you have not already seen it.
Hope all is well with everyone.
Bob
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Jim Webb on Echoes of Vietnam, 50 Years Later
From Saigon to Kabul: The ambiguous legacy of commitment and then withdrawal lives on today in American views of war.
By Barton Swaim
Jan. 20, 2023
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, popular culture had basically one message on the Vietnam War: that it was conceived in American arrogance, was perpetrated by American savages, and accomplished little but psychological devastation and national disgrace. Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Oliver Stone's "Platoon" (1986) and "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), Brian De Palma's "Casualties of War" (1989)—these and a thousand other productions, documentaries and articles told my generation that the war had been a gigantic fiasco that turned those who fought it into war criminals and frowning, guilt-ridden drug addicts.
The war ended officially on Jan. 27, 1973, with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. That's 50 years ago next Friday—an anniversary that will likely occasion a round of retrospective think pieces and cable-TV segments on the war's legacy. More will follow in 2025 to mark the final American pullout from Saigon in 1975.
The country has moved on since the '80s. The Vietnam War no longer elicits the sort of ostentatious regret it did a generation ago. To confine the discussion to Hollywood, "We Were Soldiers" (2002) was one of the first major films to portray the average American soldier in Vietnam as decent and valorous; more recently "The Last Full Measure" (2018), though indulging in the usual antiwar pieties, acknowledges the bravery and decency of American soldiers. We've moved on in politics, too. The great scourge of supposed American war crimes in Vietnam, John Kerry—the man who averred in 1971 that American soldiers serving in Vietnam perpetrated war crimes "in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan"—was the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 2004. He felt obliged to refashion himself as a war hero, and he lost.
The Vietnam War doesn't lend itself to unambiguous interpretations in the way many wars do. But with media-generated myths no longer dominant, and with the pain of losing 58,220 servicemen subsiding, are Americans ready to think about the whole thing anew? "Maybe," Jim Webb answers after a thoughtful pause. Mr. Webb, 76, who served as President Reagan's Navy secretary (1987-88) and a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia from (2007-13), commanded a Marine rifle platoon in the Vietnam bush in 1969-70. "Maybe," he says again, looking unconvinced.
The biggest myth, to my mind, holds that the ordinary Vietnam combat veteran was so scarred by the experience that he couldn't get his life together back home. Think of Travis Bickle, the lonesome, deranged vet of Martin Scorsese's 1976 film "Taxi Driver."
Is there any truth to the stereotype? Mr. Webb recalls an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1986 claiming to find that Vietnam veterans were 86% more likely than everyone else to commit suicide. "I read it," he recalls, "I broke down all the authors' numbers and figured out how they came to this conclusion, and it was total bulls—." The paper considered only men born during 1950, 1951 and 1952, and only those who died in Pennsylvania and California between 1974 and 1983. That didn't stop the press from touting the study, "in essence claiming if you served in Vietnam, you're probably going to kill yourself."
In 1979 Congress hired the Harris polling firm to survey Americans on what they thought about the war and its veterans. At the time Mr. Webb was counsel to the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "Of Vietnam veterans," he recalls, "91% said they were glad they served in the military, and 74% said at some level they enjoyed their time in the military. And 2 out of 3 said they would do it again."
Was the war worth fighting? Mr. Webb thinks on balance it was. He recalls a meeting with Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore. "I asked him a similar question," Mr. Webb says, "and in his view, America won—only in a different way. We stopped communism, which didn't advance in Indochina any further than it reached in 1975. We enabled other countries in the region to develop market economies and governmental systems that were basically functional and responsive to their people. That model has stayed, and I like to think it will advance, even in Vietnam."
But clearly a lot did go wrong between 1963 and 1975. In his autobiography, "I Heard My Country Calling" (2014), Mr. Webb writes of "the arrogance and incompetence of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his much-ballyhooed bunch of civilian Whiz Kids whose data-based 'systems analysis' approach to fighting our wars had diminished the historic role of military leadership." He repeats the same criticism of the war's civilian leadership, and he insists the military tacticians in the field—American and South Vietnamese—did their jobs superbly.
Mr. Webb describes two problems the U.S. military was largely powerless to solve. First, the North Vietnamese government's policy of sending assassination squads into the South. "Bernard Fall, a great French journalist, writes about this in 'The Two Vietnams,' " a book published in 1963, Mr. Webb says. "It had been happening since at least 1958. The Vietminh started sending these squads back into the South, particularly central Vietnam. They were extremely smart and ruthless about it. These guys would go in and execute anyone with ties to any part of the South Vietnamese government—government officials, teachers, social workers, anyone." Over time, these murders sapped the population's loyalty to the government in Saigon, and there was very little the U.S. military could do about it.
The second problem was the one many readers will remember well: the radical left's successful use of the war, with the news media's complicity. "Take Students for Democratic Society," Mr. Webb says. "They were founded before there was a Vietnam War. The Port Huron Statement of 1962"—the document that founded the SDS—"doesn't say anything about Vietnam. The goal of these revolutionaries was to dissolve the American system, and they thought they would accomplish that through racial issues. They didn't get any traction—until about 1965 and the Vietnam War."
Mention of the news media raises the subject of class. The journalists reporting on the war, interpreting events for the American public, "were articulate, were from good schools, had important family connections," Mr. Webb says. "You could see it all coming apart."
Coming apart?
Mr. Webb describes a "divorce" between "upper strata" Americans and the military's base of enlistees. That divorce didn't begin with the Vietnam War, but the war accelerated and exacerbated it. "The military draws mainly from people within a certain tradition. It's a tradition of fighting for the country simply because it's their country." Mr. Webb's first novel, "Fields of Fire" (1978), is in many ways an imaginative portrayal of this fragmentation.
The book, which captures the war's brutality but carefully avoids criticism of its policy makers, follows the war experience of three American servicemen. One, a Harvard student, means to get a spot in the Marine Corps band as a horn player but winds up as a grunt. He begins his tour by viewing the whole conflict through the lens of Jean-Paul Sartre ("Suffering without meaning, except in the suffering itself") and ends, permanently maimed, shouting into a microphone at antiwar protesters back in Cambridge: "I didn't see any of you in Vietnam. I saw . . . truck drivers and coal miners and farmers. I didn't see you."
The military's present-day recruitment difficulties, Mr. Webb says, have a lot to do with this cultural stratification. When civilian political leaders announce they're "going into the military to purge 'whites with extremist views,' do they know what they're doing? A lot of the U.S. military comes from a certain cultural tradition, and right now a lot of parents are saying to their kids, 'Don't go. You want to have your whole life canceled because someone said you were at a meeting where there was a Confederate flag or whatever?' "
Mr. Webb sought the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, although he dropped out before the end of 2015. At a CNN debate Anderson Cooper asked each of the candidates: "You've all made a few people upset over your political careers. Which enemy are you most proud of?" Others answered predictably: the National Rifle Association, the pharmaceutical industry, the Republicans. Mr. Webb's response: "I'd have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he's not around right now to talk to." The liberal commentariat disparaged him for boasting that he'd killed a man, but Donald Trump won the general election by appealing to the sort of swing voters who weren't offended by Mr. Webb's remark.
Max Hastings, in "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy" (2018), writes of the Paris Accords that the U.S. "eventually settled on the only terms North Vietnam cared about, whereby its own troops remained in the South, while the Americans went home." Mr. Webb, who speaks Vietnamese and has visited Vietnam many times as a civilian, agrees: "We did the same thing there as we did in Afghanistan: We cut our allies out of all the important decisions."
"In 1972"—here he becomes animated—"the South Vietnamese military was really starting to grow and become a lethal fighting force." In the Easter Offensive, the North Vietnamese "hit the South with everything they had."
He picks up some nearby papers and reads figures: "14 divisions, 26 independent regiments and several hundred Soviet tanks hit South Vietnam. The Americans—we were nearly all gone by then. South Vietnam lost 39,000 soldiers; the communists admitted in their own records that they lost 100,000. They tried to take the South, and the South beat them. And then, at Paris, we cut them out."
Soon afterward, Richard Nixon resigned, Congress cut off funding, and Saigon fell.
"Then, of course," Mr. Webb goes on, the communists "did the Stalinist thing—they put hundreds of thousands of the South Vietnamese finest into re-education camps. Two hundred forty thousand stayed there longer than four years. I have a good friend who was in a re-education camp for 13 years."
Recalling a visit to Vietnam in 1991, Mr. Webb describes a night when hundreds of South Vietnamese Army veterans who had spent years in re-education camps gathered in a park near Saigon's old railway station. "My Vietnamese friend told me many of these guys had been high-ranking officers. We could see some of them shooting heroin through their thighs. I thought to myself, 'Wait a second—these were our people.' " Mr. Webb pauses for a moment, then recovers.
What have we learned from Vietnam? Not much, if the Afghanistan pullout is anything to go by. "The way they left was horrible, disgusting," he says. "People said it looked like the fall of Saigon. No, it did not." As a military procedure, "the evacuation from Saigon was brilliant. In 1975, we had refugee camps all over the place ready to take people in—Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, Camp Pendleton in California, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, Operation New Life in Guam. These places were ready to go before the fall. We got 140,000 people out of there. What this administration did was a disgrace. There was no excuse for it."
Before I leave, Mr. Webb shows me various pictures and artifacts in his office. The leg injured by that grenade still troubles him; he walks around the office with a slight but discernible limp. One black-and-white photograph he particularly wants me to see. Taken in 1979, it shows a much younger Jim Webb with two pals from his rifle platoon. Tom Martin, who enlisted in the Marines while a student at Vanderbilt and served as a squad leader, is in a wheelchair. Mac McGarvey, Mr. Webb's fifth radio operator—three of the previous four were seriously wounded—has no right arm. All three men in the photograph are smiling.
Mr. Swaim is an editorial page writer for the Journal.
Appeared in the January 21, 2023, print edition as 'Echoe
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This Day in U S Military History
28 January
1915 – President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the "Act to Create the Coast Guard," an act passed by Congress on 20 January 1915 to form the Coast Guard (38 Stat. L., 800). The Coast Guard, however, still considers the date of the founding of the Revenue Cutter Service, 4 August 1790, as its "official" birthday, even though the Lighthouse Service, absorbed in 1939, is even older than that, dating to 7 August 1789. The Coast Guard is the amalgamation of five Federal agencies. These agencies, the Revenue Cutter Service, the Lighthouse Service, the Steamboat Inspection Service, the Bureau of Navigation, and the Lifesaving Service, were originally independent, but had overlapping authorities and were shuffled around the government. They sometimes received new names, and they were all finally united under the umbrella of the Coast Guard. The multiple missions and responsibilities of the modern Service are directly tied to this diverse heritage and the magnificent achievements of all of these agencies.
1915 – The merchant frigate Willaim P. Frye was stopped by a German cruiser in the South Atlantic off the Brazilian coast and ordered to jettison its cargo. The following day, the German captain noted that the disposal of the wheat had not been completed, so he ordered the ship's destruction. The sinking of the Frye was the first such loss inflicted on American shipping in World War I.
1917 – American forces are recalled from Mexico after nearly 11 months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had lead a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico. In 1914, following the resignation of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa and his former revolutionary ally Venustiano Carranza battled each other in a struggle for succession. By the end of 1915, Villa had been driven north into the mountains, and the U.S. government recognized General Carranza as the president of Mexico. In January 1916, to protest President Woodrow Wilson's support for Carranza, Villa executed 16 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel in northern Mexico. Then, on March 9, 1916, Villa led a band of several hundred guerrillas across the border and raided the town of Columbus, killing 17 Americans. U.S. troops pursued the Mexicans, killing 50 on U.S. soil and 70 more in Mexico. On March 15, under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa dead or alive. For the next 11 months, Pershing, like Carranza, failed to capture the elusive revolutionary and Mexican resentment over the U.S. intrusion into their territory led to a diplomatic crisis. On June 21, the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked Pershing's forces at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 17 Americans killed or wounded, and 38 Mexicans dead. In late January 1917, having failed in their mission to capture Villa and under pressure from the Mexican government, the Americans were ordered home. Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the government pardoned Villa, but three years later he was assassinated at Parral.
1942 – The Eighth Bomber Command (Later redesignated 8th AF in February 1944) activated as part of the U.S. Army Air Forces at Hunter Field in Savannah, Ga. Brig. Gen. Ira C Eaker took the headquarters to England the next month to prepare for its mission to conduct aerial bombardment mission against Nazi-occupied Europe.During World War 2,under the leadership of such generals as Eaker and Jimmy Doolittle, 8th AF became the greatest air armada in history. By mid-1944, 8th AF had reached a total strength of more than 200,000 people (it is estimated that more than 350,000 Americans served in 8th AF during the war in Europe). At its peak, 8th AF could dispatch more than 2,000 four-engine bombers and 1,000 fighters on a single mission. For these reasons, 8th AF became known as the "Mighty Eighth".
1945 – Part of the 717-mile "Burma Road" from Lashio, Burma to Kunming in southwest China is reopened by the Allies, permitting supplies to flow back into China. At the outbreak of war between Japan and China in 1937, when Japan began its occupation of China's seacoast, China began building a supply route that would enable vital resources to evade the Japanese blockade and flow into China's interior from outside. It was completed in 1939, and allowed goods to reach China via a supply route that led from the sea to Rangoon, and then by train to Lashio. When, in April 1942, the Japanese occupied most of Burma, the road from Lashio to China was closed, and the supply line was cut off. The Allies were not able to respond until 1944, when Allied forces in eastern India made their way into northern Burma and were able to begin construction of another supply road that linked Ledo, India, with the part of the original Burma Road still controlled by the Chinese. The Stillwell Road (named for Gen. Joseph Stillwell, American adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, China's leader) was finally opened on this day in 1945, once again allowing the free transport of supplies into China.
1973 – A cease-fire goes into effect at 8 a.m., Saigon time (midnight on January 27, Greenwich Mean Time). When the cease-fire went into effect, Saigon controlled about 75 percent of South Vietnam's territory and 85 percent of the population. The South Vietnamese Army was well equipped via last-minute deliveries of U.S. weapons and continued to receive U.S. aid after the cease-fire. The CIA estimated North Vietnamese presence in the South at 145,000 men, about the same as the previous year. The cease-fire began on time, but both sides violated it. South Vietnamese forces continued to take back villages occupied by communists in the two days before the cease-fire deadline and the communists tried to capture additional territory. Each side held that military operations were justified by the other side's violations of the cease-fire. What resulted was an almost endless chain of retaliations. During the period between the initiation of the cease-fire and the end of 1973, there were an average of 2,980 combat incidents per month in South Vietnam. Most of these were low-intensity harassing attacks designed to wear down the South Vietnamese forces, but the North Vietnamese intensified their efforts in the Central Highlands in September when they attacked government positions with tanks west of Pleiku. As a result of these post-cease-fire actions, about 25,000 South Vietnamese were killed in battle in 1973, while communist losses in South Vietnam were estimated at 45,000.
1975 – President Gerald Ford asks Congress for an additional $522 million in military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia. He revealed that North Vietnam now had 289,000 troops in South Vietnam, and tanks, heavy artillery, and antiaircraft weapons "by the hundreds." Ford succeeded Richard Nixon when he resigned the presidency in August 1974. Despite his wishes to honor Nixon's promise to come to the aid of South Vietnam, he was faced with a hostile Congress who refused to appropriate military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia; both countries fell to the communists later in the year.
1986 – At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger's launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa's family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors. In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world's first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident. In the aftermath of the explosion, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the explosion was caused by the failure of an "O-ring" seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive explosion. As a result of the explosion, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle. In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station. To date, there have been more than 100 space shuttle flights.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
*GIBSON, ERIC G.
Rank and organization. Technician Fifth Grade, U.S. Army, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Isola Bella, Italy, 28 January 1944. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Birth: Nysund, Sweden. G.O. No.: 74, 11 September 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. On 28 January 1944, near Isola Bella, Italy, Tech. 5th Grade Gibson, company cook, led a squad of replacements through their initial baptism of fire, destroyed four enemy positions, killed 5 and captured 2 German soldiers, and secured the left flank of his company during an attack on a strongpoint. Placing himself 50 yards in front of his new men, Gibson advanced down the wide stream ditch known as the Fossa Femminamorta, keeping pace with the advance of his company. An enemy soldier allowed Tech. 5th Grade Gibson to come within 20 yards of his concealed position and then opened fire on him with a machine pistol. Despite the stream of automatic fire which barely missed him, Gibson charged the position, firing his submachine gun every few steps. Reaching the position, Gibson fired pointblank at his opponent, killing him. An artillery concentration fell in and around the ditch; the concussion from one shell knocked him flat. As he got to his feet Gibson was fired on by two soldiers armed with a machine pistol and a rifle from a position only 75 yards distant. Gibson immediately raced toward the foe. Halfway to the position a machinegun opened fire on him. Bullets came within inches of his body, yet Gibson never paused in his forward movement. He killed one and captured the other soldier. Shortly after, when he was fired upon by a heavy machinegun 200 yards down the ditch, Gibson crawled back to his squad and ordered it to lay down a base of fire while he flanked the emplacement. Despite all warning, Gibson crawled 125 yards through an artillery concentration and the cross fire of 2 machineguns which showered dirt over his body, threw 2 hand grenades into the emplacement and charged it with his submachine gun, killing 2 of the enemy and capturing a third. Before leading his men around a bend in the stream ditch, Gibson went forward alone to reconnoiter. Hearing an exchange of machine pistol and submachine gun fire, Gibson's squad went forward to find that its leader had run 35 yards toward an outpost, killed the machine pistol man, and had himself been killed while firing at the Germans.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for January 28, FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
28 January
1908: Lts Frank P. Lahm, Henry W. Alden, and J. G. Obermeier made a 2-hour, 20-minute balloon trip in the Ohio from Canton, Ohio, to Oil City, Pa., covering about 100 miles. (24)
1917: At San Diego, Calif., for the first time in the US a pilot transmitted his voice by radiotelephone from a plane to the ground. (5)
1938: Through 29 January, Capt Robert O. D. Sullivan flew from New York, N. Y., to Marseilles, France, to make his first flight across the Atlantic. On 28 December 1942, he made his 100th flight across the Atlantic. (24)
1945: Eighth Air Force celebrated its third birthday with a 1,000-plane raid on Germany. By this time, the Eighth had flown more than 250,000 bomber and 210,000 fighter sorties to deliver 518,000 tons of bombs and destroy 13,000 enemy planes. (24)
1949: A service test model of the C-97A flew for the first time. (18)
1964: Maj Robert A. Rushworth flew the 100th X-15 flight near Edwards AFB, Calif. He hit 3,682 MPH (mach 5.4) and 107,000 feet in altitude in this mission. (5)
1968: Operation PLOWSHARE/Project CABRIOLET. The Atomic Energy Commission conducted this project at the Nevada Test Site to study peaceful uses of atomic energy. (5) Air Force reservists set a record by airlifting more than 447 tons of domestic cargo during 22-28 January, in addition to the cargo carried to Southeast Asia and Europe. (16)
1970: The 6511th Test Group (Parachute) set a new record for a single pallet drop, when a C-130E dropped a pallet weighing 50,540 pounds from 2,500 feet. (3) In the first MiG encounter since the bombing halt in November 1968, a MiG-21 shot down an HH-53 helicopter with air-to-air missiles. The HH-53 was orbiting in Laos while waiting for clearance to enter North Vietnam to pick up a downed F-105 crew. (17)
1973: LAST B-52 COMBAT SORTIE IN SEA. The last B-52 sortie for Operation ARC LIGHT struck targets in South Vietnam. This operation began in 1965. (16) (17)
1982: The first of 76 C-5 Galaxy aircraft to receive new wings arrived at the Lockheed-Georgia plant in Marrietta, Ga., for modification. (16) (26) Air Force Systems Command directed its Aeronautical Systems Division to set up a derivative fighter organization to compare the F-15E and F-16E as dual role fighters with air-to-air and airto-ground capabilities. (30)
1984: The Air Force Reserves accepted its first F-16 Fighting Falcon at Hill AFB, Utah. (16) (26)
1985: Two H-3 Jolly Green Giant helicopters rescued 10 shipwrecked Korean fishermen. The helicopter took the survivors to Kunsan AB, South Korea, for medical treatment. (16) (26)
1986: CHALLENGER DISASTER. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing Astronauts Francis R. Scobee, Navy Cmdr Michael J. Smith, Dr. Judith Resnik, Dr. Ronald E. McNair, Air Force Lt Col Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis of Hughes Aircraft Corp., and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. This tragedy delayed America's manned space program for more than two years. (21)
1998: Exercise PURPLE DRAGON/Operation BIG DROP. Through 29 January, Air Mobility Command took part in this Joint Task Force exercise by supporting the BIG DROP airborne and air assault operation at Fort Bragg, N. C. More than 60 C-17s, C-130s, and C-141s flew troops and heavy equipment to the Fort Bragg drop zones. More than 30,000 service members from the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard participated. (22)
1999: The DoD cancelled the Lockheed Martin DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle program. It was designed by and built at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility at Air Force Plant 42 near Palmdale, Calif. (3)
2002: The Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General John P. Jumper, tasked the Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, Calif., to test and evaluate the T-3A Firefly's suitability for some useful role within the Air Force. The USAF reconditioned the T-3As for the test. (3)
2003: Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. The Air Staff waived the USAF General Flight Rules to allow Air Combat Command to deploy the RQ-4A Global Hawk for this operation. At the time, the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, Calif., still had the Global Hawk in developmental testing. (3)
2005: The Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, Calif., completed a series of C-130J air drop tests with a Container Delivery System that allowed it to carry up to 40,000 pounds of cargo packed in bundles on wooden pallets. (3)
2006: The Air Force Research Laboratory's Propulsion Directorate conducted the third and final test of an upgraded Atlas V solid propellant rocket booster motor at Edwards AFB, Calif. It fired for nearly 90 seconds and yielded more than 250,000 pounds of thrust. (3)
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