A Brief History On February 24, 2022, days after recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Digging Deeper Russia’s invasion has had five major phases thus far. The first phase covers the period from February 24th, 2022, when Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine, to April 7th, 2022 when fighting focused away from the northeast and Kyiv and towards the south and east of Ukraine. The second phase covers the period from April 8th, 2022, when the area of heavy fighting shifted to the south and east of…
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A Brief History On February 15, 1972, in what is surely one of the most frustrating political events in history, the President of Ecuador, José María Velasco Ibarra, was ousted by a military coup, incredibly, the fourth time such a coup took place out of the five times Ibarra was president! Digging Deeper A lawyer born in 1893, Ibarra became involved in politics in the 1930s, eventually rising to the presidency of Ecuador in 1934, a post he regained in 1944, 1952, 1960, and 1968. His unceremonious oustings occurred in 1935, 1947, 1961, and 1972. In 1956, Ibarra left power…
A Brief History On February 2, 1943, the last of the German army at Stalingrad surrendered to the Soviet Red Army, often called “the turning point” of World War II in Europe. Germany never recovered offensive momentum after the defeat at Stalingrad, having lost about a million men killed, as many as 5,600 combat aircraft, over 4,300 tanks, and over 15,000 artillery pieces. Digging Deeper The Germans were forced to redeploy men and equipment from other theaters to shore up their Eastern Front, affecting the course of all future battles in Europe. The Pacific Theater was an entirely different theater,…
A Brief History On February 1, 1950, the first successful night landing of jet aircraft onto an aircraft carrier occurred when the US Navy landed an octet of Grumman F9F Panthers onto the deck of the USS Valley Forge. Digging Deeper Jet aircraft first flew in 1939, when the Heinkel He-178 took to the air. By the end of World War II, Britain and the US had joined Germany in producing operational jet fighters, but aircraft carrier technology of the day made the use of jets on carriers problematic. The jets generally had higher landing speeds and higher stall speeds…
A Brief History On January 20, 1921, the crew of the Royal Navy submarine K5 found out the hard way just how dangerous being a submariner is, even in peacetime, when they suffered a fatal “Naval Oops Moment” and the sub was lost with all hands. Digging Deeper K5 had been part of naval maneuvers in the Bay of Biscay when she dived and never resurfaced. Debris from the sub told the sad tale that the boat had been lost with all hands. Why the sub sank is not entirely known, with speculation that perhaps she exceeded her designed maximum…
