A Brief History On December 25, 1941, US Navy Admiral, later Fleet Admiral, Chester Nimitz arrived at the devastated Pearl Harbor Naval Base to take command of the US Pacific Fleet. Nimitz had been appointed Commander of the Pacific Fleet a week earlier and would go on to conduct an incredibly successful campaign across the vast reaches of the Pacific, overcoming great odds to defeat Imperial Japan and win the War in the Pacific. Digging Deeper Nimitz was also appointed as Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, leading all Allied war efforts against Japan. US Army General Douglas MacArthur, later…
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A Brief History On December 24, 1971, a bolt of lightning took down a Lockheed 188A turboprop airliner over Peru, killing all but one of the 82 people aboard. Thunderstorms and lightning are just one of many ways Mother Nature discourages and even puts an end to manned flight by humans in airplanes. Digging Deeper Besides weather, birds have a long history of bringing down airplanes, including the famous “Miracle on the Hudson” event in 2009. Birds are so dangerous to airplanes, that many airports employ a variety of means to keep birds away from runways, from noisemakers and landscaping…
A Brief History On December 23, 2002, the first known air to air battle between a manned fighter plane and an unmanned aerial drone took place in the sky above Iraq, when an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter jet shot down an American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator. Digging Deeper Far from the manned fighter merely taking out the drone, the high technology dogfight was a real air to air combat, with the drone armed with and firing an air-to-air missile at the Iraqi fighter. Luckily for the Iraqi pilot, the drone’s Stinger missile was allegedly confused by the heat signature of the…
A Brief History On December 18, 1995, a Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner driven by four large turboprop engines crashed in Angola, leaving 141 of the 144 people aboard dead. First flown in 1957 and entering service in 1959, the Electra was the first big turboprop powered airliner made in the USA. Digging Deeper While turboprop aircraft may look like the old fashioned prop planes of the past powered by internal combustion engines, the turboprop variety uses basically a jet engine or turbine engine to provide power, using a lower cost fuel and a lighter weight engine, allowing for lower take…
A Brief History On December 17, 1957, the United States successfully launched their first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The SM -65 Atlas became operational in September of 1959, closely following the Soviet R-7 Semyorka that had become operational in February of that year. Digging Deeper With the advent of these ICBMs, either the US or USSR could launch an unstoppable fleet of nuclear bombs at each other anywhere on the Earth. The stunning numbers of nuclear tipped missiles and nuclear warheads fielded by the two main Cold War powers included a maximum of 32,000 nuclear…