Sunday, October 11, 1925. The line of duty.

The China Zhi Gong Party as founded in the United States in San Francisco by a pair of exiled former warlords who opposed the the Kuomintang.  It remains today as one of the eight minor Chinese political parties currently permitted to exist as flunkies.

M'eh.

FBI agent Edwin C. Shanahan, was fatally shot after following a suspected car thief, Martin James Durkin, to a garage.  He was the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

It was a bit of an immigrants take.  Dunkin was an Irish American, and so was Shanahan.  Cop, and cop killer, both of recent immigrant stock, a story that was not uncommon.

Dunkin was convicted and remained in prison until 1954.  He died in 1981.

The Senators beat the Pirates 6 to 3 in game four of the 1925 World Series.

At Locarno delegates agreed that due consideration would be given to Germany's special military status until such time as a general arms reduction plan could be implemented across Europe. This was thought to secure Germany's entry into the League of Nations.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 10, 1925. The Chinese Imperial Collection.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 World Series, 1930s, 1937, Art, Chinese Civil War, Clothing, Edgar Franklin Wittmack, Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, Second Sino-Japanese War

Smoked Salmon Sandwich (1951) on Sandwiches of History

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

 Additional labels for:  

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, September 10, 1945. Eh? (Additional Labels)

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, September 10, 1945. Eh?: Post war news items were getting a bit weird. Mike the Headless chicken was ineffectively beheaded, and would go on to become sort of a frea...

Monday, July 2, 1945. Advances on Balikpapen.

Maria Michi in Rome, Open City.  She also played the role of the welcoming Italian turned prostitute in Paisan.  Both films were directed by Roberto Rossellini and filmed immediately after World War Two.  Why am I featuring her? See below.

Tokyo's population was down to 200,000 people due to evacuations from the bombed city.

Australian troops took Balikpapan's oil facilities.

American operations conclude on the Ryukyus.

The submarine USS Barb fired rockets on Kaihyo Island near Sakhalin,the first instance of a submarine firing such weapons.

Mountbatten is ordered to launch Operation Zipper, the liberation of Malaya, in August.

The 1945 Sheikh Bashir Rebellion broke out in Burao and Erigavo in British Somaliland against the British.

"The American Farmer" was the cover story in Newsweek.

Louis Till, father of Emmett Till who is remembered for being lynched at age 14 in 1955, was executed by the U.S. Army at Aversa, Italy for two counts of rape and murder.  

The elder Till had married the younger Till's mother when they were 18, over the objections of her parents. The marriage was not a happy one and she divorced him after he physically attacked her.  A conviction from that resulted in his joining the U.S. Army in order to avoid a prison sentence.

While Tills' conviction and execution are debated, the circumstances of the crime, which involved a home invasion and rape, are vile, and it seems that the trial was well conducted.

What's this have to do with the younger Till's lynching?  Absolutely nothing.  The junior Till never knew his father as the relationship had disintegrated when he was a mere infant.

There may be something, however, to take away about the horrors of the postwar world.  Armies are made up of all kinds of people, particularly conscripted armies.  Putting somebody in uniform so they wouldn't go to jail was fairly common.  There was a guy in boot camp with me who was there for that very reason, and I know a very successful person who essentially had the same thing occur to him.

And wars are a huge violation of the moral order.  Invading armies have always been associated with crime, with rape being a particularly common one.  Occupying armies, and even garrison armies, have a fair amount of moral depredation they bring on as well.

This certainly doesn't apply to everyone in uniform in these conditions, and not even the majority of those in uniform, in most modern armies, but it's frankly the case that World War Two created a vast amount of prostitution in Europe, some of it of a massively desperate type as portrayed in Rossellini's Paisan, and discussed in Atkinson's The Day of Battle.  Italy was quite frankly particularly hard hit as its infrastructure was far less developed than that of France or Germany, and it's population lived much more primitively and much closer to the poverty line.  Indeed, the vast bulk of the Italian population even before the war lived in what Americans of the same period would have regarded as poverty.

In these conditions, Italian women became targets.  Many prostituted themselves.  Some entered what might be regarded as a species of concubinage.  A biography of Bill Mauldin notes, for example, that for a period of time both Mauldin and another Stars and Stripes reporter kept girls in their mid teens, something that would have been regarded as a crime in the U.S. given the girls' very young age.  Paisan, as noted, depicts a middle class Italian girl descending into poverty, and then trying to grasp a straw out of it that nearly appears.  The classic The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit depicts a middle class American businessman who was an officer during the war engaging in a secret affair that produces a child while a soldier in Italy.

Concubinage is one thing.  Rape quite another, but murder is beyond the pale even for most whose morals decay in wartime.  But not for everyone.  And of course, we haven't touched on the Red Army, for whom wholescale rape, and then murder, of the women of the countries they overran was routine.  The percentage of Soviet soldiers that went home as rapist likely isn't known, but it was appreciable, and appreciated apparently by Soviet women, which lead to that generations domestic lives being notoriously turbulent.

War changes everything, and most of what it changes, isn't for the better.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 1, 1945. Battle of Balikpapan. The Post War German Map. Blondie.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Australian Army, Automobiles, Battle of Balikpapan, Borneo, Dutch Army, Germany, Growing up in the 1970s, Music, New Wave Music, Personalities, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Rock Music, World War Two

Officer Bill Gannon Sandwich of Dragnet (1952) on Sandwiches of History⁣

Friday, June 15, 1945. Infantry Day.

The longest British Parliament since the Cavalier Parliament of 1661–1679 was dissolved ahead of the July 5 elections.  Parliament had been in session since 1935, as elections during the war had been suspended.

The Battle of Bessang Pass in the Philippines came to an end in an Allied victory.

It was the first flight of the XP-82, the Twin Mustang.

Coming too late for its intended role as an escort for B-29s in World War Two, it would see action during the Korean War before it was retired in 1953.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 15: 1945  Governor Leslie Hunt proclaimed to day Infantry Day.

Conflict, starring Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Sydney Greenstreet was released.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 14, 1945. Slogging.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Charles de Gaulle, Chester Nimitz, Chinese Army, Chinese National Army, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Japan, Northern Ireland, Okinawa, Ulster, World War Two

US Marine achieves feat not done since 1959 during USMC Marksmanship Championship Competition

US Marine achieves feat not done since 1959 during USMC Marksmanship Championship Competition: MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. – U.S. Marines from across the Corps competed in the annual U.S. Marine Corps Marksmanship Championship Competition on MCB Quantico, April 10-18.

The Aerodrome: Air Force One.

The Aerodrome: Air Force One.: 

Air Force One.

Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it  started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.

Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in.  If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One.  But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.

RD-2

Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt.  It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight.  The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.

Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.

In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a  Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow.  It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta.  Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.

Truman's VC-118.

President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.

Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.

At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier.  707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.

747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that.  They've been used ever since.

These aren't normal 747s.  They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.  

Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago.  The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore.  Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft.  Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option.  Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.  

The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.

What the new Air Force Ones will look like.

Enter Qatar.

Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete.  But here's the thing.  Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft.  All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.

Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things.  He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well.  In his case, this is inexcusable.  It's a combat airplane.

Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.

Which gets to this.

The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft.  The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well.  It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.

But that's what Trump tends to use it for.

That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do.  It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips.  In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C.  In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III.  In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.

Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.

Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft.  It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .The Thomas Crown Affair.

Eh? 

Allow me to explain.

I posted this yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .:   Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. O.W. Root @NecktieSalvage · 1h People think I am exaggerating when I ...

Last night, I tried to watch the Thomas Crown Affair.

I'm generally a fan of older movies, and often watch ones older than this.  But I couldn't make my way through it.  The appearance of the characters and the urban settings were just too much for me.  The thing is, I"m pretty sure it was accurate.

All the office workers and businessmen are dressed in contempoary suits, some of which were quite nice and still would be today.  The hats really stood out, with every man wearing a Trilby, something really identifiable with teh 1960s, but which when we look back on the 60s, is easy to forget.

The 1960s may have been the era of Haight Ashbury and hippies, but it was also the era of men still wearing suits and ties in the office.  It isn't really into the 1970s that this began to change.  The wide lapel  loud color suit came out of the 60s, but it didn't show up until the early 1970s, which is really, culturally, part of the 1960s.  Even so, men were wearing coat and tie in the office.

The other thing I encountered leading to this thread was a link from something on Pininterest, which lead to a set of photos that a high school teacher/photographer, took of high school students in his school in the 1970s.  I'm not going to linke them in, as some of the photos he took were, in my view, a bit lacking in modesty (not anything illegal, but just something I wouldn't really think a person should photograph), but maybe that was his point.

It wasn't that I didn't recogize the photographs.  I really did.  That's the thing.  All the boys and girls in tight fitting t-shirts.

I have my father's high school annual from 1947, and I've written on the appearance of the studends that appear in it before:

Standards of Dress. Attending school

This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946.  Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).

Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents.  It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country.  None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids.  I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.

So how do we see them dressed?  One is wearing a striped t-shirt.  Exactly one.  Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt.  Of those, all but one are wearing ties.

One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.

Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day?  Probably they did.  I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties.  And somebody knew hot to tie them.  None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.

 

NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.

Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year.  Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school.  Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC.  Most of the boys are in uniform.  Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties.  A couple have t-shirts.  Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.

NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.

Here are the Junior girls that year.  As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt.  They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.

Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that.  Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years.  This is s cross section of students from a Western town.  The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers.  They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really.  No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.

I don't know that things had changed enormously by the mid 1950s.

Kids still new how to dress fairly formally, by contemporary standards, and girls are always shown wearing relatively long skirts and blouses.  Boy nearly are always wearing button up shirts, not t-shirts.  For something more formal boys still appear quite often in jacket and tie, or suit and tie. Consider the school dance here from the 1950s:

Dance.

Not ties in a quick review, but still pretty cleanly dressed for the boys and very well dressed for the girls.

By the 60s, things were evolving.

Linked in from original site under Fair Use exception.

And by the 1970s, they had really changed.

And not really for the good.

In the 70s, men still wore coat and tie to the office, but the trend line is pretty obvious. 

If anything, youth dress hit rock bottom in the 1970s.  It's intersting that office dress has hit rock bottom, right now.

And, like Atticus Finch noted, dress does matter. 

Wednesday, May 14, 1975. Hmong evacuation.

Thousands of Hmong soldiers and officers and their families who had assisted the CIA during the Laotian Civil War, reported to the Long Chieng airbase in Laos for air evacuation.  Only two cargo planes were assigned the duty, but they managed to take out 2,500 Hmong.

This brings back up the discussion here earlier of Ma Yang, a Hmong was deported by the U.S. to Laos even though she only speaks English and has lived in the US since she was eight months old.  As far as I know, nothing has yet been done to address her plight.

Today is Hmong American Day in the United States, which is set on this day in recognition of the evacuation and ultimately that a population of the Hmong Diaspora relocated to the U.S.  The largest population of Hmong live in China, which is actually where the ethnic group originates, with Vietnam having the second largest population.

Dalton Trumbo was presented an Academy Award for his 1956 script for The Brave Ones, which had been earlier awarded under a pseudonym due to Trumbo then being blacklisted.

Dalton and Cleo Trumbo at a 1947 House Committee on UnAmerican Affairs hearing.

Trumbo actually was a Communist and pretty up front about it.  1973's Papillon was his last screenplay to be produced prior to his death in 1976.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 13, 1975. Breakthrough at Long Tieng.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Central Intelligence Agency, Hmong People, Laotian Civil War, North Vietnamese Army, Pathet Lao, Personalities, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam War

Related Threads:

Ma Yang

Labels: Crime, Hmong People, Immigration, It was because of the Vietnam War, Laos, law, Marijuana, Monday at the bar

Thứ Năm, ngày 1 tháng 5 năm 1975. Chiến tranh Việt Nam kết thúc.* Thursday, May 1, 1975. The conclusion of the Vietnam War. Jeudi 1er mai 1975. Fin de la guerre du Vietnam.

ARVN troops in Cần Thơ  surrendered to the VC following the suicide of Gen. Nguyễn Khoa Nam, age 48, Major General of IV Corps in Cần Thơ.  This effectively brought organized resistance to the VC and NVA almost to an end after twenty years of combat.  The country remains, of course, under the regime that won the war.

Quân VNCH ở Cần Thơ đầu hàng VC sau cái chết của Tướng Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 tuổi, Thiếu tướng Quân đoàn IV ở Cần Thơ.  Điều này đã khiến cho sự kháng cự có tổ chức chống lại VC và Bắc Việt gần như chấm dứt một cách hiệu quả sau hai mươi năm chiến đấu.  Tất nhiên, đất nước vẫn nằm dưới chế độ đã thắng trong chiến tranh.

Les troupes de l'ARVN à Cần Thơ se sont rendues au VC suite au suicide du général Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 ans, major général du IVe Corps à Cần Thơ.  Cela a effectivement mis fin à la résistance organisée au VC et à la NVA après vingt ans de combat.  Le pays reste bien entendu sous le régime qui a gagné la guerre.

By this point, I'd quit tracking the war on my National Geographic map of Vietnam.  There came to be no point.

Khmer Rouge forces landed on Phú Quốc which was claimed by Cambodia but controlled by South Vietnam.  It was also the location of a large South Vietnamese POW camp.

Hank Aaron broke the career record for RBIs.

Thursday, May 1, 2025

May 1, 1975: Hank Aaron Becomes the All-Time RBI Leader

The New York Stock Exchange dropped the requirement of a fixed commission for stock transactions following pressure to do so from the SEC. 

Footnotes:

*Google Translate text.  I don't speak Vietnamese.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 30, 1975. The Fall of Saigon.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Bùi Văn Tùng, Dương Văn Minh, North Vietnamese Army, Operation Frequent Wind, Personalities, Saigon Vietnam, The Fall of Saigon, Viet Cong, Vietnam War

Blog Mirror: 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #104: The Searchers (1956)

 

100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #104: The Searchers (1956)

M76 Otter. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

This is a M76 Otter, an amphibious cargo carrier used by the USMC in the 1950s and into the 1960s.  This one, apparently, was used by the Army.

The vehicle did see use in the Vietnam War.

Last edition:

Miscellaneous wheeled transport of World War Two. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1930s, 1940s, 4x4, 6x6, Military, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Transportation, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

M38 A1s, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

M38A1 with a recoilless rifle.

The first automobile I ever owned was a M38A1.

The prototype for the modern Jeep, basically, it entered civilian use as the CJ5, after entering military use in 1952.  Doubtless examples are still in use, and civilians varians are still produced by Roxor in India.

 Last edition:

M151 Jeeps. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 4x4, Automobiles, Military, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Radio, Trucks, Wyoming (Dubois)

M151 Jeeps. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

The M151 "Mutt" entered service in 1959 and carried on into the 1990s.  It had fantastic off road capabilities, and was also fantastically dangerous, given its independent wheel suspension system.

The last Jeep to see general use in the U.S. military, it was replaced by HumVeh's, although speciality vehicles, and even modern commercial Jeeps, continue to see some use.  In these examples, the radio mount for a period radio is displayed.

I personally have a lot of experience from the 1980s, with both the M151, and this model of military radio.

Last edition:

M32 Tank Retriever, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Armor, Korean War, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Tracked vehicles, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)