Browsing: Vehicles

A Brief History On August 20, 1977, the United States space probe, Voyager 2 was launched with the mission of studying the outer portions of our solar system and then becoming the first (with its sister ship, Voyager 1, actually launched 2 weeks later) man made object to enter inter-stellar space. Digging Deeper These Voyager spacecraft have sent back information about Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune and the moons of those planets, and are expected to continue to send back data (including images) until about 2020 when their Plutonium powered generators run down, with perhaps another 5 years of weak…

A Brief History On August 10, 1628, the brand new Swedish warship, the Vasa, set sail for the first and last time, sinking all by herself with no help from any enemy after traveling less than a mile!  She was not the largest ship in the world at the time, nor did she carry the most guns, but because she had the most shot, she was the most powerful. Digging Deeper History and Headlines has featured stories about military disasters and “Naval Oops Moments,” and the sinking of the Vasa ranks right up near the top of those blunders.  Built at a time when naval…

A Brief History    On June 1, 1939, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, a plane designed by the German aeronautical engineer Kurt Tank, made its first flight and would go on to bedevil the Allies throughout the rest of World War II.  With upgrades throughout its service life, the “Butcher Bird” (or Shrike) as it was known due to its heavy firepower, would remain on the leading edge of piston-engine performance. Digging Deeper With its introduction to combat over the English Channel and France in 1941, the Fw 190 became an obvious game changer, requiring Allied designers to upgrade existing Spitfires and come up with…

A Brief History On May 18, 1953, 46-year-old Jackie Cochran, a world famous female racing pilot, while flying a Canadian Air Force F-86 Sabre over Rogers Dry Lake, California at a record speed of 652.3 mph, took the plane in a dive, causing the tell-tale “sonic boom,” thereby becoming the first woman to pilot an airplane at a supersonic speed.  Not only was she the first woman to fly supersonic, in 1961, while piloting a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, she became the first woman to fly at Mach II (twice the speed of sound)!!! Digging Deeper Born in 1906 as Bessie Lee Pittman, Jackie Cochran,…

A Brief History On May 11, 1945, the Essex Class U.S. aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill was struck by two Japanese Kamikaze (suicide) aircraft during the battle for Okinawa.  In spite of severe damage and 346 fatalities, the Bunker Hill was not lost as were none of the 24 Essex Class carriers built during World War II. Digging Deeper It became apparent early in the Pacific theater of the war that the battleship no longer reigned supreme, and it was the aircraft carrier that would take up the mantle as a navy’s capital ship.  Seeing an extreme need for many carrier groups, the United States went…