Bring The HEAT

If you’re gonna talk smack, don’t be surprised if you get called on it.

Of course, it ain’t bragging if you can do it.

So, before the start of golf’s Ryder Cup, during putting practice, the Euro team was struggling a bit with a 12’ putt. And one spectator, having voiced his opinion that even he could sink that gimme, was called out. Oh, you think it’s easy, why don’t you try it?

OK.

And there’s a $100 riding on this putt.

 

Silverplate

Our friend AggieSprite mentioned the other day that her latest trip to the thrift store had yielded some silverplate for a future project.

Which, my ears perked up and a memory was triggered.

By the middle of 1943. the scientists and engineers on the Manhattan Project began to have a fair idea what the size and shape of the two types of projected nuclear weapons they were building would be. There were two bomb designs. The first was a plutonium gun type design, known as Thin Man. The second, riskier approach was a plutonium implosion device, known as Fat Man.

With a rough idea of the weights and dimensions of the bombs, they began to consider what airplane should be used to deliver the bombs. The existence of AVRO Lancaster bombers already modified to carry extremely large bombs was a possibility, but range restrictions, and a strong desire to utilize an American design meant the Manhattan Project, in cooperation with the Army Air Forces, settled on using modified B-29 Superfortress bombers as the delivery platform.

But not just any B-29 could drop an atomic weapon. First, no B-29s were equipped with the shackles and release latches needed for extremely large bombs. Second, the Thin Man bomb design was longer than either of the B-29s two bomb bays.

The project to produce and modify a limited number of B-29s for the atomic mission was soon dubbed “Silverplate.”

The Army Air Forces first attempted to design their own shackles and releases, but when that proved problematical, they simply borrowed the existing British designs.

As to the bomb length,  the Army Air Force  converted the two 12 foot long bomb bays of a standard B-29 to one enormous 33 foot long bomb bay. This was more than enough to carry the projected 17 foot length of the Thin Man bomb.

Soon after modifying the first Silverplate B-29, scientists at Manhattan realized that high spontaneous fission rates would make the plutonium gun type bomb impractical. The bomb design was modified to use Uranium 235.  The change in bomb design also meant the bomb would be much shorter, at about 10 feet, meaning the standard B-29 bomb bay length would be sufficient. Accordingly, the first Silverplate had its bomb bays returned to the normal configuration.

Seventeen further Silverplate production aircraft were ordered from the Glenn L. Martin company, with 14 bombers assigned for training to what would eventually become the 509th Composite Group, and three assigned for testing.

These 17 Silverplates, being early production B-29s, suffered the same problems conventional early production B-29s struggled with, including a nasty tendency for the Wright R-3350 engines to burst into flames. By early 1945, a great number of changes to the B-29 had been made on the production line, improving the engines, adding a radar bombing capability, and other myriad improvements. Rather than going through the trouble of modifying the existing Silverplate fleet, another tranche of aircraft were ordered, 28 “next gen” Silverplates were ordered, with 15 of them combat coded for use by the 509th.  The remaining 13 were dedicated to the testing program, or held in reserve in Utah as replacements for any losses the 509th might suffer.

A final tranche of 19 Silverplates were ordered just before the atomic missions, and delivered between the end of the war, and 1947.  By 1948, the Air Force had an operational fleet of 32 nuclear capable B-29s. They represented the entire US atomic delivery capability.

Soon the B-29 would be supplanted in the nuclear role by the B-50 and B-36 bombers, but for a time, the US nuclear deterrence rested upon an incredibly small fleet of aircraft.

World of Warships- Don’t Bring a Tier VI Cruiser to a Tier VIII Battleship Fight

Caution- Wake Turbulence

Every aircraft forms vortices as a consequence of generating lift.  And large aircraft, particularly at low speeds, in the landing configuration, form large vortices.

This video, shot on a foggy day at Birmingham, England, shows these vortices quite clearly.

Depending on the conditions, especially on days when the winds are mostly calm, these vortices can actually persist for as much as five minutes. Note during the video that there is a slight left to right crosswind, and the vortex from the left side of the aircraft drift across the center of the runway.  While these examples dissipate fairly quickly, the danger is that one might come across a vortex from a previous aircraft while landing. And usually, pilots don’t have the visual cue of fog to clearly show the vortex.

More than one aircraft has been doomed by flying into such a vortex. These powerful disruptions have more than enough energy to flip over an airliner as large as a DC-9.

There’s a reason why air traffic control has to space out landings behind larger aircraft.

Why do Police sometimes shoot unarmed citizens?

First P-8A Poseidon for RAAF

The first P-8A Poseidon for the @Aus_AirForce debuts with its signature livery, including a Wandering Albatross and a kangaroo. pic.twitter.com/CzZEzcvTrQ

— Boeing Defense (@BoeingDefense) September 27, 2016

The Mobile Riverine Force as an Example for Riverine Ops in the 21st Century

An American Infantryman, laden with equipment and weaponry, steps off the ramp of a specially modified landing craft. He is not storming the beaches of Normandy or moving ashore on Guadalcanal – in fact, he is not even landing from the open ocean or a sea. Instead, this is the scene of a member of the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF), a joint Army-Navy venture formed during the Vietnam War. In an often-overlooked part of the war, soldiers and sailors worked together in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to dominate the fluvial local terrain in the region—rivers, streams, and swampy rice paddies. Using World War II era equipment and creating tactics and techniques while under fire, the men of the MRF wrote the modern chapter on riverine warfare for the U.S. Army.

While preparing for riverine warfare is not a common task, it is not a new challenge for the U.S. Army. Since its inception, the Army has dealt with the tactical challenges caused by rivers – from New Orleans to Vicksburg, and from the Philippine Insurrection to the Rhine. Despite the fact that the Army’s experience with riverine warfare peaked with the MRF of the Vietnam War, the concept is not outdated.

via cimsec.org

Read the whole thing. The MRF was one of the most successful initiatives in the whole Vietnam war, and was formed and fielded very rapidly, at minimal cost. It was an excellent example of how the Army and Navy could cooperate with a minimum of bureaucratic burden, and allowing relatively junior leaders to exercise sound initiative and judgment to overcome challenges.

New Guinea- The Lae-Salamaua Campaign

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.

Military hospitals still struggling with mass casualties from presidential debate drinking game

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

The Early Turbofan Engines

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.