Author: Major Dan

A Brief History On May 14, 1955, eight communist nations in the orbit of the Soviet Union (USSR) signed a mutual defense pact military alliance, known as The Warsaw Pact.  This gang of communist countries aligned with the USSR was organized as a counter to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) mutual defense pact aligned with the United States and its Western allies in response to communist aggression and the stated goal of the USSR and other communist countries to forcibly convert the rest of the world to communism by any means possible.  Today we take note of 10 times…

A Brief History On May 11, 2020, CNN and other news agencies reported the Iranian Navy while conducting exercises in the Gulf of Oman accidentally killed 19 of their own sailors and wounded another 15.  As we have reported many times in the past, Naval Oops Moments seem to be without any limit, with no navy in the world immune from catastrophic blunders.  We have also reported on incidents concerning so called “friendly fire,” when your own people accidentally shoot, blow up or target their own comrades or equipment.  Sometimes both of these military mishaps come together and combine into…

A Brief History On May 12, 1942, the German Kriegsmarine submarine, U-507, a Type IXC boat, sank an American tanker, the SS Virginia, with one of its deadly torpedoes while the tanker was in the mouth of the Mississippi River, an affront to the United States bringing deadly danger to shipping right to America’s doorstep.  During World War II the submarine fleets of each navy of the major powers played an outsized role in effective naval warfare, and also put the crews of those submarines in more peril than any other naval duty.  We have dealt with the subject of…

A Brief History On May 11, 2011, former NBA and current European league basketball player Robert Traylor died of an apparent heart attack at his home in Puerto Rico. He was only 34 years old and had played in a professional basketball game only a couple of weeks prior to his untimely death.  Sadly, the history of basketball is filled with similar sad stories, and today we take a look at some of these athletes that died too young. (By the way, the loss of Kobe Bryant in January of 2020 in a helicopter crash at the age of 41…

A Brief History On May 10, 1967, an experimental “lifting body” aircraft created by Northrup for NASA, the M2-F2, made its 16th and final flight, crashing into the dry lake bed on the desert floor, ruining the aircraft and severely injuring the pilot, Bruce Peterson.  The unfortunate, though spectacular crash, was used as the inspiration for the novel Cyborg, by Martin Caidin, and the television program, The Six Million Dollar Man.  Film footage of the crash of the M2-F2 was used in the opening sequence of the television series! Digging Deeper The horrific crash scene of the M2-F2 rolling over…