Browsing: Military

A Brief History On February 21, 1973, the Israeli Defense Force sent American-built F-4 Phantoms to shoot down a Boeing 727 operated by Libyan Arab Airlines.  Flight 114 had taken off from Tripoli and was headed to Cairo when it got lost over Egypt due to weather and equipment malfunction.  Digging Deeper The two Phantoms intercepted the jet liner over the Sinai desert after it had strayed there from the Suez Canal.  The Sinai had been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.  The failure of Egypt to shoot missiles at the plane, and the seeming approach toward a secret Israeli nuclear (possibly bomb making?) facility exacerbated the situation, especially since…

A Brief History On February 16, 2006, the United States Army decommissioned the last of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, or MASH as they were called.  Since the Army is staffed by educated and intelligent people (mostly), they obviously had a backup plan, and that is the Combat Support Hospital (CSH pronounced cash). Digging Deeper Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals had served the combat medical needs of the U.S. Army since their inception in 1945, continuing through the Korean and Viet Nam Wars and then in the conflicts in the Middle East until being replaced by Combat Support Hospitals. Famously depicted in the 1968…

A Brief History On February 9, 2001, the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS Greeneville (SSN 772) accidentally sank the Japanese training fishing vessel Ehime Maru on board which were some high school students. Digging Deeper The Greeneville had been conducting maneuvers of the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii with guests aboard, mostly big-money donors to the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor.  In the course of conducting an emergency main ballast tank blow and ascent, the nuclear sub came up underneath the Ehime Maru in a terrific collision that smashed the hapless fishing boat and sank it within 10 minutes.  Japanese losses were 9…

A Brief History On January 30, 1945, Soviet submarine S-13 fired 3 torpedoes into the side of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner named after an assassinated Swiss Nazi that had been converted for military use. Digging Deeper The Wilhelm Gustloff had been engaged in evacuating German troops and civilians from the Courland area of the Baltic coast, transporting them back to Germany to escape the Red Army.  The ship was carrying over 6,000 troops, and with crew and civilians, total passengers probably numbered over 10,000. Massive damage was caused to the front, middle and rear of the ship, and the…

A Brief History On January 27, 1939, one of the great American fighter planes of World War II, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, made its first flight.  Appropriately named, the Lightning was the fastest fighter in the world at that time, being the first to exceed 400 mph in level flight. Digging Deeper The Lightning was designed by the master aircraft architect Clarence Kelly Johnson who also designed the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Conceived as a high-speed, high-altitude (44,000 feet!) interceptor, at its introduction, the twin-engine Lightning…