Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

April 18, 1942: The Doolittle Raid, sixteen B-25B Mitchell bombers led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle launched from the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) to attack Tokyo. The daring one-way raid boosted US morale while causing widespread panic in Japan. The mission was also a significant achievement in joint Army-Navy operations. The bombing raid though light impact damage had significant psychological effects and served as an initial retaliation for the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.


Doolittle, who had worried he would be court-martialed for missing his primary targets, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted two ranks to brigadier general.

USS Hornet Museum


April 18, 1945: legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle (born August 3, 1900) killed during the Battle of Okinawa.

On April 18, 1945, just six days after President Franklin Roosevelt succumbed to a fatal stroke, a bullet from a Japanese machine gun prematurely ended the 44-year-old journalist’s life. In less than a week, Americans everywhere found themselves collectively mourning—and publicly commemorating—the loss of two national heroes.

Renowned for his adept reporting from foxholes and frontlines, Pyle bridged the gap between soldier and civilian, in a way few columnists could. His artfully prosaic observations captured profound truths about human complexity and the horrors of war, and his simple, narrative-driven style attracted more than 14 million readers across 300 different publications.

The first known memorial erected in Pyle’s honor was a notably nondescript marker built by Corporal Landon Seidler on the day of Pyle’s death. A single wooden post with a plain, unadorned sign stood as a fitting tribute to a man who appreciated unpretentious simplicity. Hand-painted black lettering stood out in stark contrast on pale wood.  It read: “At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945.”

....

Efforts to honor Pyle’s legacy on the Home Front also abounded. The Hoosier journalist’s last residence in Albuquerque, New Mexico was repurposed and transformed into the Ernie Pyle Library with its own Pyle memorabilia and archival holdings. The original picket fence and the grave marker of Pyle’s beloved dog, Cheetah, were both preserved, and the site was later designated a national historic landmark.

College campus halls, collegiate scholarships, elementary and middle schools in Indiana, California, and New Mexico, roads in Maryland and Kansas, a stretch of US Highway 36, and a small island in Cagles Mill Lake all bear Pyle’s name. They are everlasting tributes to a life well lived and constant reminders of his courage and heroism.

Almost immediately after the war, the Army exhumed Pyle’s remains and reinterred them at a US military cemetery on Okinawa before permanently relocating them in 1949 to Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii. There, under pleasant tree-cast shade, Ernie Pyle was laid to rest on plot D 109 beneath an unembellished gray marker between two unidentified soldiers. For a man who paid the ultimate price in order to immortalize the ordinary foot soldiers who selflessly risked their lives, perhaps that is the greatest tribute of all.

Honoring a Hero: The Death and Memorialization of Ernie Pyle


Pyle’s wartime columns & photos at Indiana University.



Full column: The Death of Captain Waskow

The employees of Boeing-Wichita, through the 7th War Loan Drive, paid for and built a Boeing B-29 Superfortress named the "Ernie Pyle," which was dedicated on May 1, 1945. Initially assigned to the Second Air Force at Kearney Air Force Base, the B-29 named in Pyle's honor, Serial Number 44-70118, was sent to the Twentieth Air Force, Pacific Theater of Operations, on May 27, 1945. The plane was ferried to the Pacific theater by a crew under the command of Lieutenants Howard F. Lippincott and Robert H. Silver. The nose art was removed when the aircraft reached its intended operations base in the Pacific because the base commander thought it would become a prime target of the Japanese. The "Ernie Pyle" survived the war and was returned to the United States on October 22, 1945; later scrapped.

Archived PDF of Wing Tips.

Unveiling of B-29 44-70118 “The Ernie Pyle”

Ernie Pyle World War II Museum

In early 1945, the war correspondent Ernie Pyle described the missions in the Pacific as "milk runs" compared to the missions in Europe. In response, the crew of Lt. Sam Parks decided to name their aircraft "Ernie Pyle’s Milkwagon". Out of respect for his memory, the crew decided to rename their aircraft. They selected the name "Uncle Sam’s Milkwagon". On May 23, "Uncle Sam’s Milkwagon" crash landed on Iwo Jima after a harrowing mission. Lt Parks, who was awarded the silver star for his role in this mission, provides detailed recap of the mission...

Coincidences? I Can't Believe It! or God Was On Our Side



April 18, 1973: SOYLENT GREEN directed by Richard Fleischer opened in New York and Los Angeles.


Coincidentally, the director's surname, Fleischer, is German for "butcher."
In the movie, the videogame in Simonson's apartment, "Computer Space", was one of the first coin-operated videogames, manufactured by Nutting Associates in 1971 and designed by Nolan Bushnell, who later founded Atari and was credited as the inventor of Pong.


Fun fact: Prof. Frank R. Bowerman (1922-1998) of University of Southern California was the technical consultant for SOYLENT GREEN and was president of the American Academy for Environmental Protection at the time. Also, he has a landfill in Irvine, CA named in his honor. Yes, really. It opened in 1990 and is one of the largest landfills in California and the ninth largest in the United States.

In the early 1970s, Bowerman said, he gained a special sensitivity toward problems facing the environment when he served as a technical adviser to writer Stanley R. Greenberg and actor Charlton Heston for the science-fiction movie “Soylent Green.”

His job was to give the filmmakers “a correct prediction of what things would be like in New York City in 2022.” The futuristic yarn supposed that the 21st-Century nation would be overpopulated and rapidly outpacing its ability to produce food. In the plot, national leaders, attempting to deal with the dwindling food supply, introduce a new synthetic food called “soylent green.” But the new food, it turns out, is made from human corpses--older people who are enticed into death in exchange for being able to see movies about how the Earth looked before being ravaged by man.

“I guess working on the movie gave me a sense of focus about the environment and the serious threats that lurked out there,” Bowerman said, adding that an underlying theme of euthanasia in the movie made him think seriously about overpopulation.

LA Times (April 1, 1990)

Also, it is the site for the world's first commercial landfill gas to liquid natural gas project, the Bowerman Landfill Project, constructed by Prometheus Energy, an LNG fuel company based in Redmond, Washington, and Montauk Energy, a capital investment firm. "Montauk" ???


Montauk Renewables plans RNG facility in Irvine, California - The facility likely would produce 3,600 metric million British thermal units of gas daily, the company says.

April 18, 1988: the U.S. Navy engaged in its largest surface battle since WWII when it launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian targets. The operation was in retaliation to the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf that had severely damaged the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts. Certainly brings back memories, the mines & Strait of Hell (Hormuz) I mean.

USS Wainwright Captain: "Stop and abandoned ship. I intend to sink you, over." Harpoon away.




I was skeptical of Biden’s Gaza Pier plan but wasn't expecting it to go this bad. The MAJORITY of the fleet sent over had mechanical issues creating multiple delays. One caught FIRE and a rescue vessel was dispatched to save her. If the Army & Navy combined can’t build a simple pier in Gaza to deliver food in peace without multiple ships breaking down & catching fire... how will we resupply US overseas bases with food AND munitions during war?



Navy Ship Slated to Help Build Gaza Aid Pier Forced to Return to Port


Meanwhile, Uniparty goes Brrrrrrr




Crazy. I'll never understand the 'thinking' behind Geo-politics...


CNN
It's like when competing firms are in the same building/location and they are actually controlled by a bigger firm or belong to the same association to lobby for their industry.


His posts are very dangerous so we’re going to take him off Twitter and not cover them, but then we’re going to give him unlimited free media coverage and post his Truth Social posts 24/7 on national (content creator) news.


We will imprison the Dark Prince in his Tower in the city in which he originally rose to power and broadcast his front door 24/7 to all the people of the realm... sounds like a fairy tale. LOL.