The Civil Aeronautics Bard granted a certificate to Bell Helicopter for the Bell 47 to be sold to civilians.
If you've seen M*A*S*H you've seen the Bell 47.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label Aircraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aircraft. Show all posts
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
The Aerodrome: Kuwaiti speaks to shot down U.S. pilot.
The Aerodrome: Kuwaiti speaks to shot down U.S. pilot.: There's footage of this F-15 being shot down over Kuwait, which was a friendly fire incident. I actually didn't know the F-15 was ...
Kuwaiti speaks to shot down U.S. pilot.
There's footage of this F-15 being shot down over Kuwait, which was a friendly fire incident.
I actually didn't know the F-15 was still in use by the US, but this very late model has only been in service since 2021.
Monday, February 16, 2026
Saturday, February 16, 1946. Potato consumption. Frozen food. Helicopters.
Frozen french fries were introduced by Maxson Food Systems of Long Island, New York.
From time to time, we'll have these a lot.
American per-capita potato consumption had interestingly declined since 1910, and was not measured at previous levels until 1962, when french fries were a fast-food restaurant staple.
I would not have guessed that, or frankly anything close to that.
Indeed a decline from 1910 to 1962 really surprises me.
I personally used to grow large volumes of potatoes, picking up where my later father had left off. Maybe because its because I'm more Irish than most Irish, but I love them.
An item on frying fries:
Chugwater Fry-Off: Are Beef Tallow French Fries Really Better?
The first UN Security Council veto was made by the Soviet Union, killing a resolution concerning the withdrawal of British and French forces from Syria and Lebanon, while it still occupied parts of Iran. Basically, the Soviet Union wanted the British and French out of Syria and Lebanon (which really was a French thing) while they still had their claws in Eastern Europe, North Korea, Sakhalin, and Iran.
They'd leave Iran, and with the fall of the Soviet Union, they'd leave many other places as well. With the Russo Ukrainian War, they're trying to claw their way back in, however ,and they've never left Sakahlian.
The Sikorsky S-51, the first helicopter sold for commercial rather than military use, although it received military use, was flown for the first time.
By United States Navy - Scanned from Alexander, Joseph H., Fleet Operations in a Mobile War: September 1950-June 1951, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 2001, p. 39., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72961678
There was major news on the strike wave:
A Denver merchant noted the anniversary of Scouting:
Last edition:
Thursday, February 14, 1946. ENIAC.
Labels: 1940s, 1946, Army, Banking and finance, Computers, United Kingdom, WeaponsSaturday, February 14, 2026
The Aerodrome: The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, ...
The Aerodrome: The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, ...: The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, FAA closes El P... : Oh great, now what? Without explanation, FAA closes El Paso and New ...
The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, FAA closes El P...
The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, FAA closes El P...: Oh great, now what? Without explanation, FAA closes El Paso and New Mexico airspace for 10 days, cites national defense
Friday, February 13, 2026
Saturday, February 13, 1926. Calles attempts to end Catholic education.
The Calles government in Mexico ordered all Catholic schools to close.
This is no longer the case and Catholic schools are once again common in Mexico.
The U.S. issued its first Air Mail stamp.
It was a Saturday.
Last edition:
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, FAA closes El Paso and New Mexico airspace for 10 days, cites national defense
The Aerodrome: Blog Mirror: Without explanation, FAA closes El P...: Oh great, now what? Without explanation, FAA closes El Paso and New Mexico airspace for 10 days, cites national defense
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Tuesday, February 5, 1946. Star of Paris.
Look offered an article on what FDR would have said regarding the ongoing intense look back at the events leading to December 7, 1941, a controversy that most Americans have forgotten occurred. But it was probably the slice of cheesecake offered up in the form of actress Colleen Townsend that drew attention to the magazine. Townsend is from California and attended BYU (she was a Mormon growing up). She entered acting through minor roles in the early 40s, but it was magazine covers that drew the publics attention to her. She was one of the Yank pinups. She converted to Presbyterianism in 1948 and married a seminary student in 1950, after which she left acting. She had a long career as a humanitarian and civil rights worker, and is still living.
TWA's "Star of Paris", a Lockheed Constellation, flew from New York to Paris in the first transAtlantic commercial airline flight.
The flight took fifteen hours.
More on the flight here:
5–6 February 1946
President Truman established the Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.
Last edition:
Monday, February 4, 1946. Weather and War Brides.
Monday, February 2, 2026
Saturday, February 2, 1946. Twenty Questions.
There was news on the Elk Mountain disaster, including that miners had a role in discovering the crash.
I wouldn't have associated miners with this incident in any fashion. Nor did I realize that Elk Mountain was that high. I've been on the neighboring peaks without realizing that.
The Rocky Mountain News reported on the disaster as well.
An advertisement from the same edition of the Sherican Press.:
I wish.
The USSR annexed the Kurils.
Russia holds them today.
They need to give them back.
The Rocky Mountain News was inspiriting panic.
I loved the Rocky Mountain News in the70s and 80s. I didn't really realize it had such a tabloid origin, even though it was a tabloid.
Sunspots disrupted radio communication between North America and Europe between 4:05 am and 7:00 am EST.
Twenty Questions, hosted by Fred van Deventer and based on the on the "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral" parlor game, premiered on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Last edition:
Thursday, January 31, 1946. United Flight 14 crashed into Elk Mountain.
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Thursday, January 31, 1946. United Flight 14 crashed into Elk Mountain.
United Airlines Flight 14, flying from Boise to Denver, crashed into Elk Mountain, Wyoming, killing all 21 persons on board.
The plane is apparently the last one to have crashed into Elk Mountain, and was also apparently the fifth to do so.
The distant Elk Mountain from Shirley Basin.
Last edition:
Tuesday, January 22, 1946. Central Intelligence Group formed.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Wednesday, January 21, 1976. Supersonic.
The first commercial flight of the Concorde supersonic airliner took place with one departing Heathrow in British Airways colors and another departing Orly Airport in Paris in Air France colors. The British jet flew to Bahrain and the French one to Brazil.
The plane remained in service until 2003.
On the same day communist forces in Angola established the People's Air Force of Angola.
Last edition:
Monday, January 19, 1976: The Iowa Caucuses
Monday, January 19, 2026
Saturday, January 19, 1946. Creation of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) was created by proclamation of General Douglas MacArthur.
Bell Aircraft chief test pilot Jack Woolams fle the XS-1 (X-1) in a non powered flight. It was the first flight of the aircraft.
Country music singer Dolly Parton was born on this day.
Last edition:
Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.
Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1946, Cartoons, Daily Living, Deer, Elk, Food, hunting, It was because of World War Two, J.R. Williams, Rationing, The family
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Wednesday, January 6, 1926. Deutsche Luft Hansa
Deutsche Luft Hansa (DLH), the predecessor of Lufthansa, was formed.
It ceased operations in April, 1945, but it's personnel later reformed the company as Lufthansa in 1955.
Last edition:
Sunday, January 3, 1926.
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
The ghosts of Billy Mitchell and António de Oliveira Salazar visit Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, graduate of the Wharton School of Business, has no grasp of mathematics or history. He's become the poster boy for questioning the intellectual value of an Ivy League education.
And very clearly, one of the things he doesn't understand is shipbuilding and naval warfare.
Fantasy class warship, probably in the cruiser class, maybe, which the Trump administration plans on building as part of a "Gold Fleet", some naval marketing genius' terms for a vanity suck up project that will never get built, but which appeals to Trump's edge of death vanity. The artwork heavily resembles a Revell model box for one of their cheaper modells from the 1970s.
2025 is the 100th anniversary of the court marital of Billy Mitchell. Mitchell, a World War One aviator, accused the Navy Department and the War Department (which was more or less the Army Department) of “incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the National Defense.” He had more than one point, but his big point was that the biggest ship could be sunk by aircraft. The battleship Navy was horrified.
The British attack on the Italian port of Taranto in 1940 proved Mitchell quite right. Pearl Harbor proved him right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Mitchell was convicted in his court martial and went on to retirement the following year, but by 1941 he had been proven so right that he was lauded as a hero and the U.S. Army Air Corps named a bomber after him, the B-25 Mitchell.
Mitchell is still right, there's only one thing that's really changed. Aircraft have evolved.
They've evolved from mannered bombers and fighters to a new class of aircraft, the unmanned drone. This event has been anticipated since late World War Two, and by the 1950s the British already assumed that the day of unmanned aircraft was about to arrive. The predictions on the speed of the evolution of such craft were wildly off, but the Russo Ukrainian War proves the day is now here, and not just in the air, but on the sea. The Ukrainians have sunk or damaged about 24 Russian ships through the use of drones during the war and pretty much rendered Russia's Black Sea Fleet a nullity.
For decades now military theorist have wondered if the pride of the US Navy, the supercarrier, is actually obsolete. The speculation began as early as the 1970s when really good long range air to surface and surface to surface anti shipping missiles appeared on the scene. The viability of such missiles was proven during the Falklands War when Exocet missiles in Argentine hands sank the HMS Sheffield and the cargo ship Atlantic Conveyor and severely damaged the HMS Glamorgan. The Exocet went into production in 1975, and while still around, it's undoubtedly the case that it's improved over the last 50 years and there are other missiles around that are just as good or better. The U.S. Navy started worrying about such missiles just as soon as they were produced, but the Navy's large supercarriers have never had to encounter them.
That is, in part, because we have not fought a peer to peer conflict since World War Two. In spite of that, it's worth noting that the U.S. military has not exactly shown itself invincible in wars less than that. The North Koreans and Chinese, the former of which only had an army from around 1946 or so, and the latter of which had just come out of a largescale civil war and which chose to deploy, to no small degree, troops who were conscripted out of the losing side of that war, fought us and our UN allies to a standstill in Korea. Starting about a decade later we fought and ultimately were defeated by an Army that was quite primitive in comparison to our own, although a lot of that defeat was a morale issue. Since that time we've fought and beat Iraq twice, but we were never able to prevail in Afghanistan, in no small part due to a major strategic miscalculation by Donald Rumsfeld, and our current Oval Office occupant ended up surrendering to the Taliban.
Now, of course, there's been very little naval action in anything that I've mentioned, but that shouldn't really give us any comfort. What naval action that has occured since 1945 shows that long distance anti ship warfare had improved remarkably since 1945. The Argentines, not wanting to be exposed to it, didn't evey deploy an aircraft carrier it had during the Falklands War.
Now, of course, people are pointing out that the awkwardly named Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has the most combat ships in the world, although its not regarded as the most powerful. That would be the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy, with its supercarriers, holds that title, and it should. But it can't be ignored that Ukraine has proven that sinking ships is now pretty possible with air and sea drones.
That's where the future of naval warfare is, not with vanity "battleships".
Indeed, that was proven in 1941.
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The Navy knows that, but senior military officers right now know that if they want to keep their jobs they have to feed the demented monkey in Trump's brain. And that brain isn't pegging out on the smarts meter by any means. Statements by Donald Trump show him to be in the full grasp of dementia and raise questions on whether he was every very sharp.
He's also incredibly vain.
And more than a little scared.
Being vain and scared, he's quite easy to manipulate. Given the chance to name something after himself, and believe that it will be around after his body is rotting in its grave, which will be quite soon, he'll take the bait. And hence the Trump Class of "battleship".
It'll never happen.
It takes at least two year to design a warship, and often multiples of that. And then it takes another two to five years to build it. Trump no doubt plans on being living at age 90, but he won't be, and his demented brain will be reduced to complete mush should he live that long. The Navy knows that, but the Navy likes to have money and ship projects bring in money. Every since World War Two the U.S. military has engaged in acquisitions of things it didn't need for one reason or another, and the Army has proven that even a simple project like designing an assault rifle can take so long that a person who entered the overall task early in his career can retire before its done.
And hence António de Oliveira Salazar.
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Salazar was the Portuguese dictator who came into power in 1932 and who fell into ill health and suffered a stroke in 1968. The Portuguese government replaced him and he died 1970. But they never told him. He was simply given glowing reports on how well everything was going and assured he was still running the show.
I'm pretty convinced that's more or less what's going on with Trump right now.
The Navy is simply going to slow roll this project. Glowing reports are going to be given to the Demented Dear Leader. The entire project will go swimmingly. Meanwhile, others will report the same on the White House Ballroom. Neither will ever be built.
Indeed, already the palace intrigue is on. J.D. Vance is gathering allies. Mike Pence is scooping up Heritage Foundation defectors. Congressmen and Senators who are too tainted with the stench of MAGA, or who don't want to be there when Trump falls and takes MAGA out with it, are abandoning their offices to go on to new pursuits, readying themselves to reemerge cleansed from the inevitable bunker scenes that are already beginning to happen.
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Tuesday, December 11, 1945. Steel Workers announce strike.
The United Steelworkers voted to go on strike on January 14. They were seeking an additional $2.00/day.
A B-29 set a new coast to coast speed record, flying from Burbank, California to Brooklyn, New York in 5 hours, 27 minutes and 6 seconds.
Last edition:
Friday, December 7, 1945. Command Responsibility.
Labels: 1940s, 1945, Commentary, Displaced Persons, Ethnicities, Germany, Imperial Japanese Army, It was because of World War Two, law, United States, War Crimes
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Friday, December 5, 2025
Wednesday, December 5, 1945. Flight 19.
The legendary aviation mystery of Flight 19 occurred when five Grumman TBFs disappeared in a training flight between Florida and Bermuda, together with a PBM Mariner that was sent to look for the missing aircraft.
The PBM is believed to have exploded.
No doubt because none of the aircraft have ever been found, the mystery remains an enduring and popular one, and it is part of the Bermuda Triangle set of myths.
The French government nationalized five banks.
Last edition:
Monday, December 3, 1945. A Walk In The Sun.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Monday, December 3, 1945. A Walk In The Sun.
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A Walk In The Sun was released. I'm personally not a great fan of the movie, but many regard it as one of the greatest World War Two, and indeed war, films ever.
3 December 1945
3 December 1945: The first landing and takeoff aboard an aircraft carrier by a jet-powered aircraft were made by Lieutenant-Commander Eric Melrose Brown, M.B.E., D.S.C., R.N.V.R., Chief Naval Test Pilot at RAE Farnborough, while flying a de Havilland DH.100 Sea Vampire Mk.10, LZ551/G. The ship was the Royal Navy Colossus-class light aircraft carrier, HMS Ocean (R68), under the command of Captain Casper John, R.N.
The Arab League voted to boycott all goods from Jewish Palestine.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided International Shoe Co. v. Washington holding that held that a party may be subject to the jurisdiction of a state court if it has "minimum contacts" with that state.
This ad appeared in Sheridan's newspaper:
Last edition:
Friday, November 30, 1945. Executing Germans for ordering the killing of civilian sailors and for directly killing downed airmen.
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