Military Affairs & History

relantel
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Military Affairs & History

Postby relantel » Wed Oct 04, 2017 2:29 pm

PS - Amazing what-if article that was on Midway. (I was six-months behind on this thread and just caught up). Really has me wanting to check out that Hornfischer book. (And maybe not so hard to get to Man in the High Castle territory)

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:19 pm

It's Fleet Week in SF. Yahoo. Taking PTO tomorrow to hit up Blue Angels circles and practice, then Mrs Tif and I are going up early on Saturday for the K9 demonstration and staying for the airshow.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:41 pm

Fleet Week. Glad we have the extra money just laying around, and the Navy has conducted their mission so well lately I'm sure they have nothing to else to focus on.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:25 pm

Officially retired from service the previous month, 11 years ago today, the final F-14 Tomcat in US Navy service was ferried from NAS Oceana to Farmingdale Republic Airport on Long Island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR1SUtDavR0

This particular Turkey had an interesting service life. It was a D-model jet, with the digital radar and King Kong GE engines; it was the penultimate Tomcat off the Grumman line in Bethpage; it conducted the first strike of Operation Enduring Freedom (taking out an SA-3 SAM battery in Kabul). After landing in Farmingdale, the pilot conducted a ground burn to get rid of the last bits of fuel. After the jet sputtered to a fuel-starved shutdown, the aircraft was cleaned, and then taken by truck to Northrop Grumman Plant 25 where the jet still lives today in static display.

Image

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Oct 17, 2017 2:16 pm


Shyster
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Postby Shyster » Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:33 pm

The Navy has released a combined report on the Fitzgerald and John S. McCain collisions, and the list of causes listed in their summaries are pretty damning:

Fitzgerald
Failure to plan for safety.
Failure to adhere to sound navigation practice.
Failure to execute basic watch standing practices.
Failure to properly use available navigation tools.
Failure to respond deliberately and effectively when in extremis

John S. McCain
Loss of situational awareness in response to mistakes in the operation of the JOHN S. MCCAIN’s steering and propulsion system, while in the presence of a high density of maritime traffic.
Failure to follow the International Nautical Rules of the Road, a system of rules to govern the maneuvering of vessels when risk of collision is present.
Watchstanders operating the JOHN S. MCCAIN’s steering and propulsion systems had insufficient proficiency and knowledge of the systems.

Reading between the lines, both reports seem to boil down to "Nobody knew what the f*** they were doing."

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=103130

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Nov 10, 2017 6:55 am

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, which transformed WWII from an impending Axis victory into an inevitable defeat. Highly recommend taking 10-15 minutes to read through the Wiki article, it's a good one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

My favorite book on the battle:

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fatef ... 0140284583

Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:05 am

Thats one of my favorite books of all time, almost impossible to not feel intense despair during the encirclement.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:10 am

What a cluster **** that battle was. Also, Rachel Weisz was extra spicy in "Enemy at the Gates."

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:14 am

I find Rachel Weisz to be extra spicy, generally, but I digress.

Watched an old History Channel doc about the blunders of the Luftwaffe last night. It's amazing to think that the people with the intellectual wherewithal to convince bureaucrats to pull off the Holocaust were also so stunted as to think the Me-262 should be employed as a dive bomber.

Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:06 pm

What a cluster **** that battle was. Also, Rachel Weisz was extra spicy in "Enemy at the Gates."
Fun fact, her arc was the closest thing to historical accuracy in that pile.

dodint
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Postby dodint » Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:19 pm

On Christmas, at bootcamp, we watched part of enemy at the gates.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Sun Nov 12, 2017 5:57 pm

Speaking of Stalingrad, I'm watching a 2013 film of the same name. It was the first Russian IMAX movie, so it's visually great.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:18 pm

Fun fact: one of the actors playing a German officer is the guy, who portrayed Hauptmann Wilm Hosenfeld in "The Pianist."

dodint
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Postby dodint » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:20 pm

That's not fun.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:25 pm

Roman Polanski bait for you...

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:53 pm

Speaking of Stalingrad, I'm watching a 2013 film of the same name. It was the first Russian IMAX movie, so it's visually great.
The special effects were the best thing that movie had going for it.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:55 pm

Note my tepid review. ;)

columbia
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Postby columbia » Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:57 pm

"Come and See" is the mother of all Soviet war films. It's just devastating.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Sun Nov 12, 2017 7:24 pm

^^ Yes. Yes it is.

columbia
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Postby columbia » Fri Nov 17, 2017 2:45 pm

^^ Yes. Yes it is.

Image

columbia
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Postby columbia » Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:11 pm

More Stalingrad: watching a German film from 1993. Depending on your taste in films and sense of aesthetics, it's worth a watch.

Dickie Dunn
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Postby Dickie Dunn » Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:14 am

The US military in Okinawa has been banned from drinking alcohol or leaving their residences after a US Marine killed a local man in a car crash. The Marine reportedly had three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood at the time of the crash.

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Tue Dec 05, 2017 3:50 pm

This would make for an excellent embedded Tweet, but it is what it is:

https://twitter.com/EdPiotrowski/status ... 8402464769

That's a lot of ordinance on that F-16. Shaw AFB is about 95 miles away from MYR, which used to be the home to another AFB (A10s!!!)

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Dec 05, 2017 4:01 pm

That can't be live ordinance, can it? Touch-and-goes at a civilian airport with 3k pounds of live stores?

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