Browsing: Military

A Brief History On September 23, 1338, the English ship, Christofer (variously spelled Christopher or Christophe) went into battle at Arnemuiden armed with three cannon and one hand gun.  This battle would be the first known time in history when a ship saw combat using artillery.  This battle was also significant as the first naval battle of the Hundred Years War. Digging Deeper The English had only 5 ships  (“great carracks”) for the battle, but having cannon was a decided advantage.  The French brought a large fleet of 48 galleys, and the overwhelming numbers proved decisive.  Despite a furious battle, the…

A Brief History On September 22, 1979, a huge, unidentified double flash of light was seen by a US reconnaissance satellite near the Prince Edward Islands near Antarctica.  Known as the “Vela Incident” because of the satellite’s name, Vela Hotel, not much is publicly known about the incident, as the US government has kept much of the information secret. Digging Deeper The origin of the mysterious flash has been speculated to be a nuclear test kept secret from the rest of the world, perhaps by Israel and or South Africa, possibly a joint venture by those two nations.  Other explanations…

A Brief History On September 21, 1942, the first Boeing B-29 Superfortress made its first flight.  This sleek bomber would become the highest technology piston engine powered bomber of all time, as well as the mightiest bomber of World War II.  On top of that, it would also become the first nuclear bomber in history. Digging Deeper Needing a longer range bomber than the B-17 and B-24 “heavy” bombers already in service, especially in case Britain fell to the Nazi’s, American engineers feverishly worked on a new design that could fly farther and carry heavier loads than existing bombers.  The…

A Brief History On September 18, 1944, the British submarine, HMS Tradewinds, torpedoed and sank the Jun’yo Maru, a Japanese cargo ship transformed to carry prisoners.  Over 5000 people died in the tragedy, of which 1377 were Dutch prisoners of war, another 64 victims were British and Australian prisoners of war, and 8 were American prisoners of war.  Most of the rest of the victims were Javanese slave laborers, around 4200 of them. Digging Deeper Obviously, the skipper of the Tradewinds did not know the targeted ship was carrying prisoners, as the Japanese did not mark POW ships in any…

A Brief History On September 14, 1954, the Cold War warmed up a little when the Soviet Air Force dropped a 40-kiloton atomic bomb from a Tupolev Tu-4, a nearly exact copy of the U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Digging Deeper The Soviets often relied on technology from the West to further their own development of products and weapons.  Joseph Stalin jealously craved a modern heavy bomber of his own, so, when U.S. B-29 bombers made emergency landings on Soviet soil, the bombers were interned by the USSR in spite of American demands that they be promptly returned. Reverse engineering to simple…