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In the Southwest Pacific, having stopped the Japanese drive on Port Morseby and finally having won Buna and Milne Bay, the US and Australian forces under the command of General MacArthur began the task of advancing along the northern shore of New Guinea to neutralize the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, and interdict Japanese lines of communications.

In the early months of the war, MacArthur didn’t seem to grasp that he needed to fight for New Guinea. But once he found himself forced to conduct a campaign there, it would become one of the best conducted campaigns of the war.*

The primary air component of MacArthur’s forces was the US Army Air Forces Fifth Air Force, under command of Major General George Kenney.  Fifth Air Force was much smaller than, say, the mighty host of the 8th Air Force, and operated under some of the most appalling conditions to be found. And yet Kenney quickly became adept at using airpower to neutralize Japanese airfields, and provide support at the operational level to the ground and naval schemes of maneuver MacArthur and Kenney formed the type of harmonious command relationship that wouldn’t be found in Europe until much later in the war.

This synchronization of effort between Army, Air Force, Navy and Australian elements yielded good results with only modest forces, and is a textbook case of how operational and tactical planning should work.

*With some notable exceptions- for instance, the battle at Buna was handled disastrously.

Photo Credit: Dvids

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Womack Army Medical Center is still struggling to cope with the influx of patients into its overflowing emergency room, which sources say is due to soldiers playing a drinking game during the first presidential debate on Monday.

Since late Monday, every doctor, nurse and medic on the post not affected with acute alcohol poisoning has been ordered to the hospital to triage and treat thousands of afflicted soldiers. According to reports, more than 7,200 soldiers and DoD civilians have been hospitalized, while hundreds remain in critical condition.

Military installations across the country are reporting similar conditions, with mass casualties reported at every major base.

via www.duffelblog.com

A simple jet engine does four things- suck, squeeze, spin and blow. The compressor sucks in the air, the combustion chambers add the squeeze, the turbine is spun (to power the compressor) and the exhaust is blown out the back to provide thrust.

We all know the 707 was the first truly successful jet airliner. And early 707s were powered by the Pratt and Whitney JT3C, the civilian variant of the J57 turbojet. While an excellent engine for its day, it had a couple of disadvantages. First, they had a fairly high specific fuel consumption. While the cost of jet fuel in those days wasn’t a terrific concern, higher fuel consumption meant less range for a given flight. Second, they were tooth-jarringly loud. Like, really, really loud. The Jet Age of commercial air travel wasn’t universally popular, as neighborhoods around airports that previously only had to tolerate the occasional piston powered aircraft overhead now found houses shaking to their very foundations from the stupendous noise of the 707s blasting overhead.

The noise of a jet engine is primarily a function of the average velocity of its exhaust gases. Turbojets take a relatively small volume of air, and accelerate it to very high speed.

Pratt and Whitney, knowing Rolls Royce was working on a turbofan (an idea invented in the Soviet Union just before World War II) decided to modify the JT3C to a turbofan design. A new stage was added before the compressor. This fan would indeed compress air, but critically, this air would bypass the combustion chambers. The effect was a jet that moved about three times as much air, but the average velocity of the air was much lower, meaning the noise levels were much lower as well. As an added bonus, that bypass air tended to form a shroud around the high velocity exhaust that did pass through the combustion chambers, helping to dampen that noise.

As noted, the engine moved about three times the mass of air, though at a substantially lower average velocity. But mass and velocity also determine the thrust of an engine, and that larger mass meant the new engine, the JT3D, had about 25% more thrust overall.  And the new JT3D also had greatly improved fuel consumption.

Entering service in 1961, the JT3D was an enormously successful design. In addition to powering hundreds of airliners, it also had a military variant, the TF33, which powered the C-141 Starlifter, and even today flies on the B-52H Stratofortress.

“Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty, and chance,” wrote Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz in his seminal On War.¹ He observed that collectively, those four elements comprised the notion of friction, which he defined as “the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.”² Friction has disrupted the implementation of war plans since the dawn of civilization, and despite efforts to minimize its effects, it will continue to do so.

From the Airman’s perspective, friction looms especially large because of the importance of the technology needed not only to fight in the third dimension above the surface of the Earth, but also to live there, or at least to secure a presence in that environment. The possible breakdown of equipment or structural failure of an airframe could heighten stress and danger regardless of whether an enemy attempts to shoot down an aircraft. Additionally, unanticipated weather conditions could have a tremendous impact on aerial operations and their prospects for achieving success, or even occurring at all. Clausewitz remarked, “Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—continue to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal.”³

via ndupress.ndu.edu

H/T to Jason, this is your must read of the day. It's fairly long, about 35 pages, but looks at the role of the B-52 crews in the Vietnam war, and how those same issues of friction impact our leadership and our operations today.

It’s early 1942 and you are inbound to Douglas MacArthur’s staff as his new air commander, commanding the Fifth Air Force and the Allied Airforces in the South West Pacific. The dilemma you are faced with is that the allies have been in retreat in the face of the Japanese onslaught which has seen great swaths of Asia fall into their possession. You, in turn, are to meet that formidable force with a rag-tag group of survivors gathered from around the Philippines and the rest of the theater, now based in Australia. Your counterpart over in the Navy is exceptionally busy as well, struggling to meet the threat with what was still afloat from Pearl Harbor and subsequent attacks (fortunately the carriers survived) and some land-based air. Most of it, however, is out of your territory and besides, controlled by the Navy.

You think about where and how to hit the enemy to effect the most damage, and like your Navy counterparts, deduce that the Achilles heel in the Empire’s far-flung lines of support is shipping, merchant shipping. The thousands of island garrisons, from the biggest at Rabaul to the smallest outcrop of coral and volcanic rock were all heavily dependent on supply from the sea. In later parlance, it would be “a target rich environment.” Problem is, pre-war tactics have proven abysmal when applied in the real world. High altitude precision bombing wasn’t working against a maneuvering target and attempts to replicate at lower altitudes ran into swarms of fighters and heavy flak from escorts. What do you do?

via steeljawscribe.com

I'm tired and a little busy today, so I'm just going to raid SteelJaw's archives for a good post.

The music was an inspired choice.

Kraken, Confederate and High Caliber- that’s the trifecta of awards in WoWs.

This video came out a couple years ago at the Centennial of Naval Aviation. Any documentary with Jimmy Triple-sticks and MOH recipient Thomas Hudner can’t be bad. And I don’t care what you think, I think the T-45 is a damn fine looking jet.

Grab a cup of coffee, and a donut.

The top U.S. military officer confirmed Thursday that Islamic State militants targeted a military base in Iraq where U.S. troops were stationed with a potentially deadly chemical weapon this week.

“We assess it to be a sulfur-mustard blister agent,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Dunford did not elaborate, but the shell landed at a military base in northern Iraq where U.S. military advisers are helping Iraqi forces prepare for an upcoming offensive, according to an earlier account from two defense officials. They asked not to be named because they were not authorize to discuss the issue publicly. The defense officials suspected the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, of launching the attack.

via www.usatoday.com

Sulfur mustard agent is rather nasty. It's rarely fatal, but leaves terrible chemical burns on the victims.

And one of the more pernicious facts is, it isn't immediately incapacitating. It takes hours, as much as two days, before the effects manifest themselves. That means exposed troops who might have decontaminated themselves earlier instead suffer the full effects of the agent.

Sulfur mustard also is what is known as a persistent agent. That is, an area contaminated with mustard gas stays contaminated for days, weeks, and even months. Some places that receive little or no sunlight can remain contaminated for years.

Droplets or fumes of mustard are readily inhaled, and damage the esophagus and lungs. Very minor amounts might seemingly be treated and yet still inflict long term damage to the respiratory system.

The current US MOPP suits and protective masks provide robust defense against the immediate effects of mustard, but simply wearing them reduces a soldier's effectiveness even in the most benign of environments to a drastic degree.

Over at The Lexicans, Bill Brandt and Rick Lobbes collaborated to publish a series of the “Best of” pieces from the late Neptunus Lex, CAPT Carroll LeFon, USN (Ret.). And today, Bill shared the last in the series- Early Go.

There’s a haunting bit of foreshadowing in there, for those who know.

Many thanks to Mary and the rest of the wonderful LeFon family for allowing us to share Lex’s writings.