Browsing: Military

A Brief History On November 9, 1979, the computers that served the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the American and Canadian anti-nuclear defense agency, wrongly reported that a massive Soviet nuclear strike was on the way, triggering an alert that nearly caused the U.S. to launch its own massive retaliatory nuclear strike. Digging Deeper Luckily for the citizens of the Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps the entire earth, a frantic manual check of satellite data and early warning radars showed the alarm to be false, and NORAD cancelled the alert, narrowly averting the accidental start of a massive nuclear war. At that point in…

A Brief History On November 8, 1950, early in the Korean War, a U.S. Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter, flown by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Russell Brown, shot down a Soviet-built MiG-15 piloted by a North Korean pilot, in the first air-to-air combat between jet planes in aviation history. Digging Deeper The F-80 was a reliable and rugged airplane whose service life with the USAF lasted into 1975 and longer elsewhere, however, it was outclassed by the MiG-15.  The Shooting Stars fighting in Korea were effective at shooting down piston-engine communist airplanes (Yak-9, IL-10), but their air-to-air record for shooting down MiGs was 6 for 13 of…

A Brief History On November 6, 1935, the Hawker Hurricane, the first modern British fighter plane, made its first flight.  Although destined to live hidden in the glow of the Supermarine Spitfire, almost 15,000 Hurricanes were built from 1937 to 1944, and this rugged warrior was the primary British fighter during the Battle of Britain, accounting for 60% of the air-to-air kills. Digging Deeper The Spitfire, utilizing the same famous Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12 engine and armed with the same 8 x .303 caliber machine guns as the Hurricane, made its first flight only a few months after the Hurricane’s maiden…

A Brief History On November 5, 2009, Fort Hood, Texas became the scene of the worst slaughter of U.S. military personnel at an American installation when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist of all people, went on a murderous shooting spree that left 13 dead and 32 wounded.  Digging Deeper On the morning of the fateful day, Hasan gave away his furniture and handed out copies of the Koran.  He then armed himself with a 5.7 mm FN pistol, went to the Soldier Readiness Center, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (Arabic for “God is Great”) and spent the next ten minutes shooting his comrades.  Hasan…

A Brief History On November 1, 1951, the U.S. military conducted Operation Buster-Jangle in which U.S. soldiers were exposed to atomic explosions in Nevada so that the effects could be studied.  Nobody asked the soldiers for consent, and many of them were probably draftees as well.  6,500 of these unfortunate men were used in 7 separate explosions, 5 of which were above ground (atmospheric), and the remaining 2 were underground (“cratering”).  Of course, the men were lied to about the “safety” of these tests, and they were exposed to harmful radiation from inhaling radioactive dust and marching on irradiated ground. Over the years, the U.S.…