A Brief History On May 29, 1945, the Consolidated B-32 Dominator, an American heavy bomber, made its first combat flight. First flown in 1942 and on active duty in January of 1945, the B-32 was an alternative to the Boeing B-29 Superfortress in case the B-29 did not work. Digging Deeper A development based on the B-24 Liberator, the B-32 used the same engines as the B-29 and had retractable gun turrets bristling with 10 .50 caliber machine guns for defense. Also proposed were rear facing 20 mm cannons in the engine nacelles. The pressurized cabin never worked, a major…
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A Brief History On May 23, 1939, the submarine USS Squalus demonstrated the dangers faced by submarine sailors even in peacetime. Squalus was commissioned in March of 1939, with a length of 310 feet and a normal crew of five officers and 54 enlisted men. Digging Deeper With four bow torpedo tubes and four more aft, Squalus was a formidable warrior, boasting a 3-inch gun and four machine guns. After completing a series of test dives, Squalus once again dove on May 23, 1939, and suffered the catastrophic failure of her fresh air intake valve, partly flooding the sub, drowning 26 men…
A Brief History On May 19, 1959, the North Vietnamese Army formed Group 559 and gave the group the job of establishing a reliable supply route for NVA and Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam. The result became the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of roads and footpaths used by the communist North to funnel people and supplies to the South, via Laos and Cambodia. Digging Deeper Called by the American spy group the NSA “one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century,” the Ho Chi Minh trail was a constant target of US bombing…
A Brief History Documentary fans, here is your chance to be among the first in Cleveland, Ohio to see a free, virtual screening of The Blue Angels on Monday, May 20, 2024 at 6:00PM Eastern. Please log on to https://amazonscreenings.com/BLUEANGELShistory for your chance to watch a virtual screening of this film. Please note: you MUST register before 6:00PM ET on Monday, May 20th in order to participate. No new registrations will be accepted after that time. The screener link will deliver from no-reply@amazonscreenings.com at 5:00PM ET on Monday, May 20th. You will have a 36-hour screening window starting at 6:00pm. …
A Brief History On May 16, 1943, modified British Lancaster bombers undertook Operation Chastise, a bombing raid against dams in the industrial heartland of Germany. Remarkable for the use of “bouncing” bombs that skipped across the water to roll down the inner faces of the dams before detonation, the daring raid breached two of the targeted dams and damaged a third dam, killing about 1,600 people. The RAF lost eight of the 19 bombers used in the raid. Digging Deeper Famous for its ingenuity, the “dambusters” raid ranks high among famous bombing raids, which also include: The Doolittle Raid of…
