XBradTC

In 1943, the US Navy assigned Commander Edward J Steichen USNR, along with a team of combat cameramen, to document the actions of the newly commissioned USS Yorktown, CV-10. USS Yorktown, second of the Essex class fleet carriers that would form the backbone of the strike force of the Pacific Fleet, was named in honor of the previous Yorktown, CV-5, lost at the Battle of Midway.

Steichen and his men, filming in gorgeous 16mm color, provided some of the best visual documentation of carrier operations of the Pacific war. And in 1944, with some careful editing, and after running the film through Technicolor, a one hour propaganda/documentary film titled The Fighting Lady was released.

Mind you, not all the footage was shot aboard Yorktown. Film from various other Essex class carriers was used. And, likely for wartime operational security reasons, the film is kinda fast and loose with the actual ports of call of the ship.

Yorktown herself would survive the war, and soldier on, being converted to an anti-submarine carrier until her decommissioning in 1970. Since 1975, she’s been a museum ship at Patriot’s Point, North Carolina.

I went on a bit of a tear.

For a while there, I didn’t think I was going to sink anything.

Also, sometimes it is a bit frustrating when your first battle of the day is your best.

Two officers attempting to settle a disagreement by duelling with flares at a British Army base have set fire to the officers mess, according to Forces TV sources.

 

The officers decided the solution to their argument was to each take a kayak into the swimming pool and fire flare guns at each other at the Allenby Barracks in Bovington on Friday night.

via forces.tv

NOT the Duffel Blog.

WASHINGTON – The VH-92A Presidential Helicopter Replacement Program successfully passed a major Pentagon test, Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky subsidiary announced today, with completion of a Critical Design Review (CDR). The milestone means the manufacturing and assembly of the helicopters can take place.

The joint Sikorsky/Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) VH-92A helicopter program team met in July with key collaborators from government and industry for the in-depth design review, Lockheed said in a statement.

via www.defensenews.com

The previous program to replace the ancient fleet of VH-3D Presidential helicopters was a disaster, with costs spiraling out of control, and an absolute inability to avoid gold plating the requirements. The basic helicopter selected, the H-71, based on the EH101, wasn't the problem, but turning it into a flying White House was. The airframes that were bought, at stunning cost, were eventually sold to Canada for pennies on the dollar.

One hopes that between the White House and NAVAIR, some lessons were learned, and strict attention was paid during the requirements phase, so that revisions to the contract won't again cause costs to explode.

Even so, it's rather embarrassing that a basic airframe such as the S-92, which has been in civilian service for decades, won't be available for actual Presidential lift missions for at least another 7 years.

Technically, a ration is not one meal, but rather, all the foods provided for one soldier for one day. In essence, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and perhaps a snack such as soup and coffee.

Before the era of processed and canned foods, meat was generally issued either as salt pork, or perhaps dried beef. The daily ration was specified by the Militia Law of 1775 was:

One pound of beef, or 3/4 of a pound of pork or one pound of fish, per day. One pound of bread or flour per day. Three pints of peas or beans per week, or vegetables equivalent, at one dollar per bushel for peas or beans. One pint of milk per man per day. One half-pint of rice, or one pint of Indian meal per man per week. One quart of spruce beer, or cider, per man per day, or nine gallons of mollasses per company of one hundred men per week. Three pounds of candles to one hundred men per week, for guards. Twenty pounds of soft, or eight pounds of hard, soap for one hundred men per week.

Whenever possible, even in the field, the Army strives to avoid using MREs. When in garrison, meals are prepared like at any other institutional kitchen, with commercially procured foodstuffs.

Speaking of commercially procured foodstuffs, it was time to hit Costco and stock up on meats again.

As to combat rations, I *hope* to be able to make a video review of one of the rations I’ve long been fascinated by, the K-Ration.

Quite possibly my favorite Cary Grant movie, and neck and neck with Down Periscope for my favorite submarine movie.

I think this is my first really successful run in the Tier IX US Destroyer, the Fletcher.

48k damage, 10,000XP, and 330k credits. Not bad at all. Oh, and I grabbed all four cap points.

The murder, this time, not of Israeli Olympic athletes, but German children as they ate in a shopping mall in the Bavarian city of Munich.  (URR here.) But the perpetrators are the same as those in September of 1972.  Radical Islamists.  The very people responsible for Khobar Towers, the Achille Lauro, the first World Trade Center bombing, USS Cole, 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Brussels, Paris, San Bernadino, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, Orlando, Nice, Nigeria, Syria, Benghazi….  You know.  Those who have declared all the West as their mortal enemies.  Those whom our own President refuses to acknowledge exist, let alone are responsible for their bloody acts of terrorism.  From Daily Mail:

A woman named Loretta said she was in the McDonald's when the man with a gun came out of a bathroom and began shooting.

She told CNN: 'I come out of the toilet and I hear like an alarm, boom, boom, boom. He's killing the children. The children were sitting to eat. They can't run.'

Loretta said she had been in the bathroom at the same time as the shooter, with her eight-year-old son. She said the man yelled: 'Allahu Akbar!' 

Guns are, of course, regulated to the point of essentially being illegal in Germany.  Unless you are an Islamist who has friends that can get them for you.  If so, there is little to stop you from killing anyone and everyone you want, until the police arrive. Just like Hillary and Obama would like here.  The perfect recipe for muhammedan terrorism in our cities and towns, even more so than we have already seen?  A generous portion of gun control liberally sprinkled with Islamist "refugees".   Add an apologist media and office-holders sympathetic (or is that empathetic, Hillary?) to Islamists, stir frequently with racial and class warfare propaganda, just like Alinsky told you.

And spare me the nonsense about how the violent, filthy radical muhammedan terrorists of Black September are somehow different from the violent, filthy radical muhammedan terrorists of Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or Boko Haram, or any of the other violent, filthy muhammedan terrorist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood.    Because it is a distinction without difference.  

They mean to kill Jews, gays, Christians, Westerners.  Men, women, children.  And continue to succeed.  Yet our own President will not even call them our enemies.