Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

It's National West Virginia Day! Here is USS West Virginia in NY in 1934. The "WeeVee" was sunk on December 7, 1941, but refloated and rebuilt. When she returned to the firing line at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, she flew the same colors that she had flown at Pearl Harbor. Time for payback!


She returned to service in time for serious payback at the Philippines Campaign, where she led the American line of battle at the Battle of Surigao Strait on the night of 24–25 October 1944. There, she was one of the few American battleships to use her radar to acquire a target in the darkness, allowing her to engage a Japanese squadron in what was the final action between battleships in naval history.

After Surigao Strait, the ship remained in the Philippines to support troops fighting during the Battle of Leyte in 1944 and then supported the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in early 1945. The ship also took part in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa later that year, providing extensive fire support to the ground forces invading those islands. During the latter operation, she was hit by a kamikaze that did little damage. Following the surrender of Japan, West Virginia took part in the initial occupation and thereafter participated in Operation Magic Carpet, carrying soldiers and sailors from Hawaii to the mainland United States before being deactivated in 1946.



During the Korean War, a detachment of roughneck wild Navy Seabees from Amphibious Construction Battalion 1 (ACB-1) went behind enemy lines to capture several locomotives. When they discovered that the switchyard was next to the Kiran Brewery, they quickly loaded 15 cases of beer and sake, onto the locomotives before firing up the engines and heading back to American lines. Stealing locomotives is a thirsty job. That would make a good movie — The Great Beer Heist.

The return journey was not without incident. The Seabees encountered fire from North Korean forces and, later, from U.S. Marines who mistook the approaching trains for an enemy attack. Fortunately, the Marines recognized the Seabees’ American uniforms in time to hold their fire.

What happened to the beer? Read below...


This event, often referred to as "The Great Seabee Train Robbery," took place after the Inchon landing on September 15, 1950.



March 22, 1952: Man Will Conquer Space Soon!
The famous series of articles by Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Cornelius Ryan, Chesley Bonestell, et al. In COLLIER'S magazine (1952-54), later published as a series of large-format books.


COLLIER'S was oriented toward an audience of super-wealthy East Coast Establishment Roosevelt-hating conservatives, so von Braun played up the role of the Space Station as a surveillance and nuclear strike platform.

The introduction written by the magazine's ultra-conservative editors is straight Space Power Doctrine: Space is the New High Ground, the Reds are moving to seize it, the Free World will be toast if they do, so we must get there first. March 22, 1952, over five years before Sputnik 1! This whole military justification is mostly missing from the books.

Man Will Conquer Space Soon! (1952-54) (PDF starting pg 42)

The Von Braun Master Plan: National Dream or National Nightmare?
by Jeffrey F. Bell
Nov 03, 2003

In his recent testimony before Congress, my fellow planetary scientist Wes Huntress made the following cryptic statement: "Fifty years ago, in 1952, we developed a national dream of space exploration. As a nation of people who make dreams happen, and who explore to provide for a better life, we didn't do too badly with making that mid-Century dream of space travel come true."

The Congressmen were probably puzzled by the first sentence of this quote. To most people, the US space program started with Vanguard and Explorer in 1958. But we hard-core space cadets know what Dr. Huntress was talking about: the famous series of articles by Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Cornelius Ryan, Chesley Bonestell, et al. In COLLIER'S magazine (1952-53), later published as a series of large-format books.

This was the first presentation of an integrated vision for the human exploration of space. And the Von Braun Master Plan was trumpeted to the public over and over again (in many formats from Walt Disney TV specials to comic books) all though the 1950s until it was practically engraved on the brains of the Baby Boom generation..

So Huntress is not exaggerating when he calls the Plan "our national dream of space exploration." However, he is dead wrong when he says "we didn't do too badly" at it. Actually, we have utterly failed to achieve that dream, for two reasons:

A) the space program outlined by Von Braun in 1952 had excessively grandiose goals and was wildly optimistic in terms of funding and scheduling.

B) the solar system is both a lot more dangerous to human life and a lot less interesting than we thought it was in 1952.

"Radioactive strontium 90 may be falling from the stratosphere at a faster rate than the public hitherto has been told and the fallout may be greatest over the United States..." (Wash D.C. Evening Star, March 22, 1959)




New Books: What Would Happen to Survivors Of a Cataclysmic Nuclear War
"Mr. Frank supposes that the Russians struck without warning in retaliation for an accidental bombing of a satellite port in the Mediterranean." (March 22, 1959)




March 22, 1963: Fallout Measure: The purpose, officials said, is to inject "common sense" into civilian defense planning...




March 22, 1963: LIFE FROM LABORATORY... churches "should prepare for all kinds of tomorrows." Yep, circa 2020 we all got thrown onto a new time line.




March 22, 1961: industrial designer Raymond Loewy made several sketches of a futuristic sports car at the request of Sherwood Egbert, the recently appointed president of the ailing Studebaker Corporation. Egbert hoped that Loewy, who had a long relationship with the company, could design a new car bold enough to capture the popular imagination and boost the company’s sagging fortunes. Loewy and his team of designers produced a prototype automobile in record time; the Avanti—Italian for “forward”— debuted in April 1962 to rave reviews. The four-passenger car was indeed forward-looking, for it had a streamlined fiberglass body with almost no chrome, and was the first American car to incorporate a disc brake system along with other safety features.

A series of problems stalled production of the car, however, and the Studebaker Corporation abruptly discontinued its U.S. manufacture late in 1963. Seeking to revive the popular model, in 1965 two Studebaker dealers acquired the corporation’s vacated South Bend, Indiana factory and as the Avanti Motor Corporation produced the Avanti II into the 1980s.


Raymond Loewy (1893–1986). Preliminary studies for Studebaker “Avanti” automobile. Study 1. Fluid marker on paper, March 22, 1961. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He is sometimes called "the father of industrial design", also designed automobiles for Hupmobile, Lincoln, and Jaguar, among many other projects. Born in Paris in 1893, he was educated in France as an engineer. Loewy emigrated to the United States after World War I, where his first design assignments were in window decoration for New York department stores. Loewy’s signature streamlined style was eventually seen in a wide variety of industrial and consumer products, ranging from railroad locomotives to refrigerators, to pencil sharpeners, to dishes, to corporate logos.

He became a U.S. citizen in 1938 and married Viola Erickson ten years later. Never Leave Well Enough Alone, Loewy’s autobiography, appeared in 1951. In the early 1960s, Loewy was hired by the Kennedy White House for several projects; he also designed a commemorative postage stamp in memory of John F. Kennedy, in 1964.

By 1967 he was employed by NASA to create hospitable spaces for astronauts. At the extremes of the transportation field, Loewy was asked to design NASA’s Skylab and spacesuits in 1967. His most important contribution was that he added a porthole to Skylab so that the astronauts could (literally) see the world. The work gave the seventy-five-year-old great pleasure and publicity, which he made the most of.

The Unsung Story of the Greatest Industrial Designer (Checkout the history of Raymond; WoW!!!)


March 22, 2233: James Tiberius Kirk (prime timeline) was born in Riverside, Iowa. He shares his birthday with his real life counterpart, William Shatner, who turns 94 today!




Photo update: Mike Vining still looks like he could kill you.


SGM Mike Vining is a military legend. From his time as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician in Vietnam, to the founding of the United States Army's premiere counter terrorism force, Delta Force, Mike has done it all.