A Brief History On July 31, 1948, the battleship USS Nevada BB-36 was sunk by a torpedo from a Navy bomber, ending the career of possibly the most battered ship in history. Not only did the Nevada survive the Pearl Harbor attack in which she was hit by a torpedo and as many as 10 bombs (minimum 6), but she was also hit by a Japanese Kamikaze suicide plane off Okinawa as well as by shore battery fire, but easily survived those hits. (Please see our other article about the USS Nevada, “USS Nevada, America’s First Super-Dreadnaught”) Digging Deeper After World…
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A Brief History On July 28, 1935, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress first took flight, starting a career that many claim as the greatest bomber aircraft of all time. Of course, the Avro Lancaster crowd has something to say about that, and the eternal B-52, descendant of the Flying Fortress, will probably serve for 100 years before it is retired. Even the proponents of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator question the title going to the B-17, but among the men that flew them, the B-17 was and will always be the greatest. Digging Deeper When the giant (for its day) Boeing…
A Brief History On July 23, 1903, Ford Motor Company, the product of the Henry Ford’s engineering genius, sold their first automobile. By the early 1920 perhaps half of all cars in the entire world were Ford, but somehow, something went wrong, and the market share of the once mightiest car company on Earth now ranks #5 (#2 in the US). Digging Deeper There has to be a reason for this decline, and here we list 5 of the worst Ford products that contributed to declining sales and reputation. For each lousy car, we will name a great automotive product…
A Brief History On July 21, 1904, Frenchman Louis Rigolly became the first person to speed past the 100 mph “barrier” when he accomplished the feat in his Gobron-Brillie race car at Ostende in Belgium. Digging Deeper Although the car would seem clunky and slow by our standards, the 13.5 liter beast of an engine (over-bored to 15 liters!) had 2 pistons per cylinder, each opposing each other from opposite directions. The engine probably produced a mere 25-50 horsepower (hp) despite its size. (I could not find the exact horsepower rating, but earlier engines had less than 25-50 hp and…
A Brief History On July 18, 1942, German aeronautical engineers reached a milestone in aviation history when the twin jet powered Messerschmitt Me 262 made its first flight under jet power. Initial flights of the soon to be first successful jet warplane had been made with a regular propeller driving engine mounted on the nose of the prototype in order to test the airframe. Digging Deeper The Me 262 Swallow (“Schwalbe” in German) would become operational in April of 1944, much to the chagrin of Allied pilots. The Me 262 boasted a top speed of 559 mph, more than 100…