Military Affairs & History

Freddy Rumsen
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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:40 pm

This self-driving ship could be the future of military warfare.
https://t.co/Ly6xsYd29B

Shyster
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Postby Shyster » Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:13 pm

USS Lexington discovered by billionaire Paul Allen's crew 76 years after WWII sinking
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/03/ ... nking.html

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:45 pm

Would that make Lady Lex the largest known shipwreck on the sea floor? She's a few feet longer than Britannic in the Mediterranean, but the liner is actually heftier.

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Postby Shyster » Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:30 pm

Would that make Lady Lex the largest known shipwreck on the sea floor? She's a few feet longer than Britannic in the Mediterranean, but the liner is actually heftier.
I don't think it could be, although that might depend on how one defines "biggest." The Yamato and Musashi were both a little shorter than the Britannic in length, but dwarfed that ship in displacement. I think we know where both of those wrecks are. Also, if "shipwreck" would include intentional scuttlings, I think the Oriskany in her final rebuilt incarnation would have been longer/greater displacement than a Lexington-class ship. There's also the Shinano—the aircraft carrier that was built on the third Yamato-class hull. I'm not sure if that wreck has ever been found, however.

It seems like the Lady Lex is deep enough that it won't be accessible for the illegal scrapping that has defiled other WWII wreck sites in the south Pacific. I certainly hope so.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:42 pm

Well, if we exclude intentional scuttlings we'd have to knock Lex off the list. (She was not ultimately sunk by her battle damage)

Neither the Yamato nor the Musashi are intact.

The Oriskany is a really good callout, that I forgot about. She was gutted prior to scuttling, but she wasn't anything close to the Japanese ships in displacement when active. There was an excellent show on NatGeo or something about the preparations for her scuttling. The Great Carrier Reef, heh.

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Postby columbia » Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:08 pm

Crucial World War II encryption devices have found a home at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries thanks to the generosity of author Pamela McCorduck, wife of the late Computer Science Department Head Joseph Traub.

Totaling more than 50 calculating machines, letters and books, the collection contains important items in the history of computing. Included are two Enigma machines, electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used to encrypt communication. Most notably, they were used by Nazi Germany to protect military communication during World War II. With this gift, which includes one 4-rotor machine and one 3-rotor machine, CMU becomes one of a handful of American institutions to own an Enigma machine.

Image

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Postby Shyster » Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:32 pm

Paul Allen has now found the wreck of the light cruiser USS Juneau, which was torpedoed and sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The Juneau was the ship on which the five Sullivan brothers were serving. Of the 673 sailors on board, only 10 ultimately survived. About 100 men survived the sinking, but rescuers didn't arrive for eight days, and all but 10 of the survivors of the dinking drowned or were killed by sharks. The Navy has since named two different destroyers "The Sullivans"—a Fletcher class and an Arleigh Burke class, the latter of which is currently in service.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics ... index.html

Freddy Rumsen
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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:41 pm

#BREAKING - First footage of #Saudi Arabian patriot missile failure and hitting capital city of Riyadh after failed attempt at intercepting a #Yemeni ballistic missile.
https://t.co/w7UBSvmZTb

shafnutz05
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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:12 am

#BREAKING - First footage of #Saudi Arabian patriot missile failure and hitting capital city of Riyadh after failed attempt at intercepting a #Yemeni ballistic missile.
https://t.co/w7UBSvmZTb
:shock:

DigitalGypsy66
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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:09 am

Dawn had yet to break, but thousands of people had already gathered at White Sands Missile Range Sunday for the 29th annual Bataan Memorial Death March.

This year's march saw the largest number of participants -- nearly 8,500 -- an 18 percent increase over last year. Some wore military uniforms carrying 35-pound rucksacks while others chose colorful red, white and blue tutus. For retired Col. Beverly "Ben" Skardon, he selected an orange shirt -- in honor of his alma mater Clemson University -- and a white fedora.

At 100 years old, this would be the 11th memorial march in 12 years for Skardon, a Bataan Death March survivor. His participation makes him not only the oldest marcher but the only survivor to ever walk in the event.

"(Participating in the march) means a lot to me personally because that march and the men hang heavy on me. I've never forgotten it," Skardon said. "While I walk, it seems to me, my memory flashes back, and I get emotional."

The march requires participants to make their way through 14.2 or 26.2 miles of the high desert terrain of White Sands Missile Range.

It's nothing compared to the Bataan Death March, the infamous 1942 World War II march, in which 68,000-plus civilians and Filipino and American prisoners of war were cruelly forced to walk at the hands of their Japanese captors through Philippines jungle with little food or water. Some captives were executed; others died from disease and illness -- either during the march or while kept as prisoners afterward.

About 1,800 of those forced to walk were New Mexicans who served with the 200th Coastal Artillery and 515th Coast Artillery at Bataan. They were members of the New Mexico National Guard.

Skardon was not a New Mexican, but has become familiar with the Land of Enchantment in recent years through his participation in the memorial march.

He joined the military after graduating from Clemson College in 1938 where he entered as a second lieutenant. During World War II and prior to the death march, Skardon had already received two Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart for his commitment in commanding a battalion of Filipino Army recruits.

But on April 9, 1942, Skardon became one of the many POWs forced to march about 70 miles over five days before being shoved in to train carts and shipped to prison camps. They were starved and beaten and many died.

Skardon, too, was close to death. He was severely ill with malaria and beriberi and said he survived thanks only to his fellow Clemson grads Henry Leitner and Otis Morgan, who spoon fed him, carried him to get bathed and cleaned his eyes from infection.

"I do (the march) as a tribute and honor to my Clemson friends. Two and a half years in the prison camp and we became like brothers," Skardon said. "They are at the foremost of my mind."

Skardon was released in 1945. He was 27 years old and weighed 90 pounds.

"It's a whole era out of my life," Skardon said of his time as a POW. "When I start talking about it I get graphic (images) in front of me."

Following his return and his recovery, Skardon continued to serve in the military until 1962, when he retired as a colonel.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/201 ... march.html

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:21 am

Humans have an incredible capacity for inhumanity.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:40 am

Saturday, April 14 was the 100th anniversary of the first aerial dogfight in military history.
Six days after being assigned for the first time to the western front, two American pilots from the U.S. First Aero Squadron engage in America’s first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft. In a battle fought almost directly over the Allied Squadron Aerodome at Toul, France, U.S. fliers Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow succeeded in shooting down two German two-seaters. By the end of May, Campbell had shot down five enemy aircraft, making him the first American to qualify as a “flying ace” in World War I.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 11:23 am

Considering Oswald Boelcke published his Dicta at least two years prior to that, imma go ahead and say air combat had already been a thing for a while before April 1918. :wink:

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Postby dodint » Mon Apr 16, 2018 11:25 am

Yeah, I wasn't going to say it, but shaf is a blindly ignorant 'murican nationalist. ;)

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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 12:50 pm

Yeah, I wasn't going to say it, but shaf is a blindly ignorant 'murican nationalist. ;)
lol, I deliberately put "First American aerial dogfight" for a reason. Aerial combat in general had been going on since nearly the beginning of the war, with the Serbs and Austro-Hungarians outfitting their planes.

One of the more fun pieces of trivia on this subject is that the first instance of plane-to-plane combat was probably during the Mexican Revolution (1913), and to top it off, was actually between two American mercenaries fighting for opposite sides.

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Postby dodint » Mon Apr 16, 2018 12:53 pm

Sure.

But your words in dispute were "Saturday, April 14 was the 100th anniversary of the first aerial dogfight in military history."

I appreciate your enthusiasm but it's surprising to see you doubling down on this.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 1:02 pm

I'm not doubling down on it, it was an error of omission on my part. I was (wrongly) taking an Amerocentric approach to the thread.

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Postby dodint » Mon Apr 16, 2018 1:04 pm

Lest you think I'm serious, I was obviously just teasing you here. I knew what you meant.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Mon Apr 16, 2018 1:21 pm

I will not be bested on nerding out over air combat history.

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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:33 pm

Reading today that Lockheed Martin is preparing a request for information for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force for a new aircraft type that would essentially be a hybrid of the F-22A (which is awesome, but barred from export) and the F-35A (which everyone will operate, but is awful). I'm not a fan of stealth-compromised designs, but this development could prove interesting.

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Postby Shyster » Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:53 pm

I wonder how exactly the export ban on the F-22 is written, particularly on how exactly it defines an F-22. Let's say Lockheed modifies the aircraft to accept Japanese-designed engines rather than the P&W F119 engines. Would that still be an F-22 for the purpose of the export ban, or would that be a new aircraft? Stuff like that.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:57 pm

The ban has less to do with engines than it does all the associated electronics and sensors, and the materials that go into the construction and maintenance of the aircraft. The worry was that certain countries (*ahem*Israel) might be happy to let some of that IP walk to adversary nations like Russia and China. So instead of singling out one nation with a history of doing that sort of thing with US military tech, Congress just chose to make all exports of the Raptor illegal.

It should be remembered, too, that the ban was enacted at a time before the Raptor had even entered production, and the strategic plan for the aircraft was that they were going to have hundreds of the things supercruising their way through Soviet-era air defense networks acting as mini-AWACS platforms to task hordes of JSFs to their targets. So maintaining the integrity of that tech in that hi-lo environment is even more critical than usual. It truly was the secret sauce behind what, at the time, was the USAF battle plan for the next 20-30 years. Well, here we are 20 years later, they shutdown the Raptor at 187, the JSF - which had just gone to prototype when the F-22 ban was passed - is a mess, and they talking about ramping up production on legacy teen series jets because the ones already on the line or in the fleet are starting to die of old age.

I don't know who is responsible for the US putting all its tactical aircraft eggs in these two baskets, but I hope they have since gotten the herpes.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed May 02, 2018 12:25 pm


dodint
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Postby dodint » Wed May 02, 2018 12:27 pm

C-130 has been having an unusually rough time lately.

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Wed May 02, 2018 12:31 pm

Any time you hear about a transport/cargo ship going down, you have to cringe at the potential for how bad the news is going to be.

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