A Brief History On March 27, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces began Operation Starvation, an extensive program of using naval mines in all the waterways in and around Japan in an effort to greatly inhibit the transportation of food and essentials between Japanese islands. Initiated at the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, the plan utilized the latest and most modern heavy bombers in the American arsenal, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress to drop the mines from the air. Digging Deeper Nimitz, born in Fredericksburg, Texas…
Browsing: March 27
A Brief History On March 27, 1964, Good Friday to Christians, a massive earthquake hit Alaska, fracturing the ground, knocking down buildings, and causing tsunamis, all of which killed at least 131 people. Known variously as The Great Alaskan Earthquake, The Good Friday Earthquake, or The 1964 Alaskan Earthquake, by any name the massive magnitude 9.2 quake was the largest known earthquake in North American history. Digging Deeper Labeled a megathrust earthquake, one in which tectonic plates move to overlap each other, the massive quake lasted just over 4 and half minutes, probably seeming much longer to those who experienced…
A Brief History On March 27, 1794, the United States Congress authorized the building and purchase of a fleet of 6 frigates, ships that would become the core of what became a standing US Navy, a naval fighting force that would eventually rule the oceans for many decades, ruling the waves from World War II to the present. Digging Deeper After fighting and winning the American Revolutionary War against the greatest military power in the world, Great Britain, the US fought valiantly at sea with a tiny Navy against the greatest naval power in the world, albeit with the help…
A Brief History On March 27, 1999, Lieutenant Colonel Dale Zelko of the US Air Force became the first pilot of a stealth fighter or bomber ever shot down, in fact, the only time a warplane with stealth capabilities has been shot down. Digging Deeper While flying a Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk on a bombing mission over Yugolslavia, Zelko had the misfortune of having his supposedly undetectable light bomber detected by supposedly obsolete radar systems and shot down when the Yugoslav air defense crews fired a battery of anti-aircraft missiles (probably about 5) at his plane, one of which exploded near…
A Brief History On March 27, 1975, work began on the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. More than just an 800 mile 48 inch diameter pipe, the vast system includes 11 pumping stations and hundreds of miles of smaller pipes that feed the big pipe. The US has undertaken many great construction projects, and here we list 10 of them. Digging Deeper 10. Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Overcoming objections by environmentalists and working in the frozen north presented quite a task. Cracked fact: Native Americans had mined crude oil from peat soaked in oil for hundreds of years on Alaska’s…
