Final Air Force review finds M18 pistols ‘safe, reliable’ 

The inspection was ordered after use of the pistols was paused last year following claims of an accidental discharge.

Saturday, August 17, 1946. All The King's Men.

 

Published on this day in 1946.

The novel was a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of Huey Long.

Soviet physicist Pyotr L. Kapitsa was removed from his posts and put under house arrest over his feud with Beria.

First Sergeant Lawrence Lambert, U.S. Army Air Force,  became the first person in United States to test an ejection seat by being ejected mid flight.

It was a brave act, but it should be noted that both German and Swedish developers had already introduced ejection seats.  The very first use of one occured on January 13, 1942, when Henkel test pilot Helmut Schenk was forced to use one while making a test flight of a He 280.

Last edition:

Friday, August 16, 1946. Direct Action Day and the founding of the KDP (ارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان).

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Australia, Bangladesh, Catholic, China, Communism, Harry S. Truman, India, Kurdish Democratic Party, Kurdistan, Manchukuo, Pakistan, religion, Unions, War Crimes

Everyone getting their own toys. Absurd military specialization.

Oh geez, here we go again:

Special Operations Command wants a 10-pound 5.56mm machine gun

The command that oversees U.S. special operators expects the Flyweight Assault Machine Gun to begin field testing in 2028, a spokesperson said.

Just recently I wrote a piece here about how it's really time for major reform in the U.S. Military, including a major scaling back of its size.  This is more evidence of that.

Military funding is so thick that we've reached the point where about every two weeks some branch or command of the military requests a new small arm.  It's frankly absurd.

The Army just recently adopted the M7 rifle and now is already looking at a M8 carbine based on the rifle. At the same time, it adopted a new machine gun. The M250.  Both are in a new cartridge.  The M7 was supposed to replace every variant of the AR15 (the M4 Carbine and the M16).  The M250 was supposed to replace the M249 and the M240, thereby also getting everyone on to a new 6.5 cartridge.

Special Operations was supposed to get the new SIG M338, which shoots a variant of the .338 Win Mag.  They are using the Mk 46, their own lightweight version of the M249.

Now they want a lightweight 5.56 machine gun.

The Marine Corps, for its part, has been so/so with the M7, and is using the 5.56 M27, a piston variant of the AR.  The M27 takes the place of both the M4/M16 and the M249 in the Marines.  It looked at the M7 and has rejected it.

The USAF uses the M4.  There are airmen who depend on a longarm, but they're relatively few in number so it really doesn't matter what the USAF uses.

Anyhow, this is nonsense.

The AR platform rifles have always been problematic. At this point the ARs share the same distinction occupied by the late 19th Century "trapdoor" Springfields in being a weapon that was never very good, got people killed early on, but which has lingered on forever.  Replacing it was a good idea.

The Army uses more longarms than anyone else and anything suitable for a soldier is suitable for a Marine.  The Marine Corps should be made to get with the program.  

Nobody needs a carbine. That's just stupid.

Nobody needs a 5.56 caliber weapon anymore. That's just stupid.

It's also a stupid waste of money.

For that matter, there being a M17 and M18 pistol is as well.

US military pistols tend to give me  heartburn to start with, as the post Vietnam War history of them has been dumb.  The M1911 never needed to be replaced, new ones just needed to be ordered.  Congress forced the 9mm and that's how we ended up with the M9.

Having said that, the oddly unloved M9 is a good 9mm pistol.  It really doesn't need to be replaced at all.  Just as the M16 was never able to replace the M14 fully, the M9 was never able to fully replace the M1911, which started a late in the day comeback even seeing the Marines re adopt it for special use as the M45.

Because everyone now loves striker fired pistols, we decided we needed one and adopted the SIG in the form of the M18 and M17.  That was bound to make Glock heads upset even though the Glock isn't that great of pistol, frankly.  The myth of the misfires started but apparently that is now over.

I guess I can tolerate there being a M18 compact variant of the full size M17, but frankly that's a little stupid for the most part.  I can see some use for it, but only some. Still, the USAF handguns are all M18s.  The Navy and Marine Corps also use the M18, rather than the M17.

Anyhow, during the Cold War, Congress at one time had enough and required the services to use uniform equipment.  After the Vietnam War that started to erode away.

It needs to come back.

Related threads:

The United States needs military reform. Der Fibber's Bunker and our outdated Cold War Military. This needs to go, and go back to the future.

Labels: 1940s, 1948., 2020s, 2026, Army, Military, Military Industrial Complex, The Second Trump Administration, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, U.S. Space Force, United States Marine Corps

 Good for the USAF. The M17 and M18 hatred is a bunch of crap.

Air Force plans to keep its M18 pistols

The M17 and M18 are really good pistols.  

The United States needs military reform. Der Fibber's Bunker and our outdated Cold War Military. This needs to go, and go back to the future.

Before World War One the size of the Regular Army was 127,000 men, up from 100,000 in 1914.  In 1939, before the start of World War Two, the Regular Army had 174,000 men.

It's time to go back to that.

Donald Trump this week:

Let's be clear.

We aren't being served well by a professional military class at all, and if most of the fighting strength of the nation was in the National Guard and Navy Reserve, we wouldn't be in a mess like Iran now.  If we did that, having a fortress at the White House would be pointless.

And frankly, it's pointless anyhow...

The ballroom is completely pointless.  There's another large Washington facility that can fit this purpose.  In short, the next President needs to scrape this monstrosity and fill the bunker in with concrete.

But let's take a little deeper dive into this.

Trump's building a bunker.

Just like Hitler did.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5437633

Am I saying Trump is Hitler?  No, he's more like Idi Amin.  Idi Amin was a nutjob who stood mostly for his fat self, and that sums up Donald Trump pretty well.  

But building a bunker underneath the White House shows a mentality, and not just in Trump, but in the military, that it's 1964 and the Soviet Union is going to start a Third World War today.

Dwight Eisenhower's nightmare of the dangers of the military industrial complex have come true. And not only have them come true, our military sucks.

Not on the troops level.  On the troop level, say E-1 through O-6, it's really good.  But the problem is evident.  We have a Cold War legacy military and its a danger to the country itself.

Prior to June 24, 1948 the United States had a completely different defense model, and it worked very well.  It defended the nation and it never constituted a threat to the republic itself.  It also didn't work great for assaulting other countries.  It didn't, accordingly, do great in the offensive War of 1812, but it did suffice to keep the British counter invasion from succeeding, if only barely, and in part due to British morale and logistical problems.  It won the war against Mexico and because of its structure it necessitated the US coming to terms with Mexico.  It defeated the racist Southern rebellion of the 1860s, albeit at great costs as the South had the same military structure.  It slowly won the long asymmetric war against the Native population.  It beat Spain and then prevailed in the Philippine Insurrection.  It performed brilliantly in World War One and World War Two.

Since then, with the new structure?  M'eh.

We didn't lose in Korea, but we didn't win either.  Interestingly, in that "conflict", the old model was still partially in place, and without it we couldn't have fought the war.  We turned around with hte new model and lost completely in Vietnam.  Since Vietnam we've fought Iraq twice, the first time, with limited objectives, we did okay, and the second time resulted in us getting bogged down for years.  We also got bogged down in Afghanistan and ultimately surrendered to the Taliban.  We're losing now and are going to lose to Iran.

So what's the structural problem here?

Before 1948 the US defense model was based on the following:

• Large professional Navy (which the Marine Corps was a tiny part of).
• Very small professional Army. As in very, very small.
• Large state controlled, in peacetime, reserves, which started being called the National Guard with the New York State Militia adopting that name in 1824.
• A small Coast Guard (originally the Revenue Cutter Service) that was in the control of the  Treasury Department.

That was it.

There was no standing Army at all . The founders thought standing armies were likely to take over the country, sooner or later.  A professional navy was different as it would always be busy sailing around the globe and therefore couldn't stage a coup.

The thought was that if the US was actually attacked, and the number of suspects who might attack it were quite small, the state militias could be called into active duty service to defend the huge country.  A very small standing Army was formed in 1784 for frontier duty, and expanded after the US was badly beaten up in a frontier Indian war in 1786.  It seemed to have been proven that if the country was going to engage in frontier Indian Wars, it needed some sort of Army.  It was also frankly felt that sort of Army was not a danger to the Republic, as it was like the Navy.  While the Navy was busy off of Gibraltar (no joke) or Chile (no joke), like everyone else's navy, the Army would be off in the wilderness were it would be on the edge of extinction and busy.  If a real war came, the state's would muster their militia and the Federal Government call them into Federal service.

Really optimistic painting of the First American Rgt as party of a U.S. Army series.  Painted in 1976, this depicts a 1976 view of this.  In real life frontier soldiers wouldn't have been wearing white wigs, probably would have been semi shaven, and a lot of the enlisted men wouldn't be wearing uniforms  Nobody can keep white trousers clean.

Frankly, some of this acknowledged that being a soldier requires training, but overall isn't that hard.  It wasn't that hard then, and it isn't now.  The Regular U.S. Army has always looked down on state militias, but the evidence doesn't support the disdain.  In this period, likely the only branch of the Army that really required training were engineers and artillerymen, which the Army did provide, and which did require a professional service to sustain.

It was Canadian militia that basically won the War of 1812, and had the British Regular Army not performed up to expectations, Ohio would be a Canadian province today, as would most of the Rocky Mountain West.

The Mexican War was also fought largely with wartime volunteers and state militiamen.  The Army branch that really shined with the artillery, which was made of troops in the Regular Army, again pointing out what I've noted above.  Much of the early western soldiering was done by the Corps of Topographical Engineers, which again demonstrates it. For regular grunt fighting, volunteers and militiamen worked just fine.

This was all proven again during the Civil War.  Almost all the troops on both sides were wartime servicemen.  Lots of notable officer in the war came right out of peacetime civilian careers.  And notably a really large and bloody war was fought for the long-haul by men who had only state service before the war.

The National Guard's contribution to World War One was so large that the US would not have been able to fight the war without it.  For that matter, the Mexican Border War coming right before it completely relied on National Guardsmen defending the border when the Pershing's Regulars went into Mexico. And again, in World War Two, it was the Regular Army and the National Guard that really kept things going until mid 1943.  A lot of early U.S. Army commitments relied on the Guard well into Operation Torch.  Frankly, the Guard was sacrificed to some degree as they were available and trained.  As late as the Korean War, and only two years into the new defense structure, the entire service relied upon Guardsmen and Reservists to a significant degree.

So that establishment has worked.

After 1948, and more particularly after 1950, the US started to assume that it needed to be on a wartime footing all the time, and that lead to the massive Cold War military. The Cold War was the reason for that.  The assumption was that if war broke out with the Soviet Union there wouldn't be time to mobilize, so the US had to be ready to go from day one.

The Cold War has been over since 1990.  The current size of the Army is 453,000, down from 700,000 during the colder parts of the Cold War, but way up from what it was prior to the Second World War.  The British Army, in comparison, is 109,410.  The French Army, which has commitments all over the globe, is 264,000 men in size.

And I'm not including the Air Force, which didn't exist until 1947.  Prior to that it was part of the Army.  It has another 321,848 active duty personnel.  Into that you have to add the Space Farce, the comical absurdity that has 14,000 personnel.

The Navy, before World War Two, had 160,000 personnel serving 790 active ships.  It has 344,600 serving 480 ships now.  That size is about right.

The active duty Army's and Air Force's is not.  It's entirely too large.

And the structure is wrong.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff, formed in 1942, cover every service including sub services of the services.  It currently has eight members for what ought to be two services.  Having a large body like that risks turning it into a sort of German General Staff.

Complete with the incompetency such large bodies have.  Note how well the German General Staff did in World War One and World War Two.

It's the kind of body that thinks it should build bunkers. And its the kind of body that has the problem noted here:

The U.S. Army’s Dangerous Obsession with WWII Europe

The Second World War, which is now over 80 years ago, is the last really successful war the US fought.  You can't say we've lost ever war since, although I've seen that claim made, but like a large colonial power, which aren't, or aren't fully, our professional military gets involved in a lot of smaller wars with dubious results. A lot of those bad results is that, at the end of the day, we look back upon the Second World War in Europe.  We've been preparing to restage it ever since 1948.

Now, there was some real reason to prepare for that war, really, and it darned near actually occurred. There's still reason to prepare for it, even though Donald Trump has a titanic crush on Putin and loves him dearly, making him the least reliable ally of all time, but we're preparing for it like it's 1941 and not 2026, which also makes us unprepared for anything else.  It also puts us in the mindset of a country that feels it needs to have a gigantic bunker at the White House.

Now, the contrary thread of thought here has been in place since the Militia Act of 1903, which formally committed the various state militias into being the official reserve of the Army.  The Army hated that at the time, but after World War Two, and during the Cold War, it brought the National Guard up to speed.  By the 80s the Guard was every bit as combat capable as the Regular Army is, and that's still the case.  Today, the US really can't fight a big war without the Guard, and truth be known it can't even make its overextended foreign commitments without it.

It's time to take that one step further.

And by that, I mean back to the future.  

The current size of the Army National Guard is 328,084. That ought to be brought up to an even 500,000, and the strength of the Army down to 175,000 active personnel.  The Air National Guard has 106,000 personnel.  The Air Force should be scaled down to about that size, and the Air National Guard up to about 400,000. Following that, the Army National Guard, the Air Force, and the Air National Guard ought to be folded into the Army establishment so there's no longer a seperate Air Force (or Space Force). The Marine Corps should fully go back into the Navy and the Coast Guard back to the Department of the Treasury.

The Air Force Academy ought to be closed and so should West Point. College ROTC programs can take care of training officers, and in an environment that doesn't lead to a military class.  I'd leave the Naval Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy, there, as sea related stuff is unique.  Being a soldier, frankly, isn't all that unique.  I've been one.

With this, the Joint Chiefs should be scaled down to three, one Chief from the Army, one Chief from the Navy, and one Chief from the National Guard.  The Chairman ought to always be a Guardsman.

Why all this?

Well, it's a lot harder to launch illegal foreign wars with a defense posture that's designed for actual defense, and not offensive warfare.  We aren't going to attack another country if we have to call up a bunch of Guardsmen to do it.  And we have less of a chance of becoming an imperial nation if we don't have an imperial military structure.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 145th Edition. The Department of Manly White Men.

 An AP Headline:

Hegseth announces new policy to test troops for low testosterone

Umm. . . .why?

There's something more than a little creepy about this.

Presumably female troops won't have to be tested for testosterone.

And then there's this:

Hegseth intervenes on promotion list (again), blocks female and Black officers

A Pentagon spokesperson said, “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” but the defense secretary hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt.

The Secretary's campaign against female officers I'd guess to be part of a back door move toward limiting the role of women in the military, but what's up with the seeming bias against black officers?  Maybe it's just a statistical glitch, but then we have the taking down and relocation of a portrait of black Air Force Gen. Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. a genuine hero. The excuse was that it was being relocated due to renovations or something.  Chappie actually stared down Muammar Qaddafi during the latter's 1969 coup and nearly drew his M1911 on him in a true Western style standoff.

Maybe it's all a coincidence but it's an odd one.

For that matter, the entire Trump Administration is the whitest administration imaginable, which we could chalk up to coincidence too but for all the recent rumblings about who is and isn't a "real" American.  Black have of course been in the country since before it was a country, indeed since 1619.  At that time the Trumps were just doing whatever it is they did in Germany.  Nonetheless, I can't think of any prominent black members of the current illegitimate administration.

Even the Joint Chiefs, who represent members of the Armed Forces, which have 30 to 33% minorities in the ranks, are lily white, and of course all male.  African Americans, who are 13.5% of the population and 20% of the military, don't show up there.

Seems a bit odd.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 144th Edition. Just in case you've begun to think that being governed by an 80 year old demented dictator is somehow normal, here's. . .

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 930, 930s, Donald Trump, Iceland, Kristrún Mjöll Frostadóttir, Politics, Social Democracy, United States, Zeitgeist

The Aerodrome: Air Force One, Aircraft boneyards, Arizona (Tucson), Boeing 747, Boeing VC-25B, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, RAF Mildenhall, United States Air Force, United States and Israel v. Iran

The Aerodrome: Missing a rather obvious upgrade. Was; The Aerodr...: The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument. : This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald T...

Missing a rather obvious upgrade. Was; The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.

The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.: This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. h...

So Trump went to the NATO summit in Turkey and, at some point, it dawned on somebody that this meant he was a stone's throw from Iran. . . and that maybe Air Force One made for a good target.

Frankly, the war in Iran has been very surprising in numerous ways, including htat much of what had always been predicted about such a war just did not occur, at least so far.  For instance, it had always been assumed that Iran would activate sleeper cells in the US if a war occured.  Right now, given that nothing occurred, we have to assume that Iran either has remarkable restraint, or it doesn't have sleeper cells  Nothing has happened.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz should have been no surprise at all, but what has been a surprise is Iran's resilience to attack.  People thinking that defeating Iran would be easy were always completely delusional, and indeed it won't happen unless the US commits troops the ground in very large numbers, but country's ability to just shrug off repeated attacks is really impressive.  It's engaged in some major missile offensives during the war and even now has only used a faction of what it has.  Early beliefs that all its launchers were taken out proved to be completely erroneous. 

Anyhow, while Trump was embarrassing the United States in Turkey the negotiations, such as they were, between Trump's son in law and the equally unqualified former lawyer and real estate figure that Trump has charged with this matter, fell apart.  J. D. Vance, occasionally saddled with trying to get the ink dry on some settlement, isn't working on it and is instead touring around the country making stupid statements in from of the Screw American Voters Act.  Trump used the opportunity, in addition to insulting Spain, to insult the Iranians, who were already pretty much ignoring him.

The it dawned on somebody that the new Qatari Royal Coach lacks electronic countermeasures, unlike the other jets in the Air Force One stable.

Oops.

Given that, one of the old Presidential buses was flown over to haul Trump around and the new one was flown to RAF Mildenhall on the excuse that the airmen might want to see it.

Yeah, a big airplane. What a treat for airmen.

The real reason, of course, was that it dawned on somebody that given as the plane has no countermeasures if the Iranians took a shot at it, only luck and fancy maneuvers, maybe, would keep the giant plane in the air.  And as Donald Trump murdered the head of the Iranian state, worrying that the Iranians would figure that turn about was fair play isn't irrational.  For that matter, even if the Iranian state might not attempt that, there's plenty of irregular forces in the region that might not particularly love Donald.

So, the US has sunk $400,000,000 into this dubious gift and it isn't as capable as the older aircraft.

As earlier reported here, when Trump vacates the Oval Office, which he has no legal right to be in already, the new Air Force One is supposed to be going to a Trump Presidential Library.  What a joke.  And an expensive one on the American taxpayer.  

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution states:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Congress has so suspended its duties that getting anyone to enforce this clause seems like a lost cause right now, but maybe in a future presidency somebody will dust the document off, walk down to Congress, dope slap the whole body until the current deadwood leaves (John Barrasso, looking at you) and people who actually will do their job reappear.  Should that occur, this airplane should not leave the Air Force inventory.  But what to do with it is another question.  $400,000,000 have been spent on it. 

There are already two new Air Force One's being built.  Those ones will be properly equipped.  The existing Air Force Ones already are.  Hopefully not another dime is spent on this one.

But that, frankly, puts it in the domestic hauler category.  I suppose it could be used for that, save for the fact that it's a national embarrassment. 

Given that, my prediction is that it will be junked.  I don't think it'll ever go to a Trump presidential library, assuming one is every built  Trump's already 80 years old and every morning when he wakes up the Grim Reaper is there asking how he's feeling.  It won't be used by a future President, and it's not going to be used by the Air Force for anything.

It's just a waste.

Boneyard of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.

It'll go to top men.  Top men.

Friday, July 2, 1926. Air Corps established.

Mexican President  Plutarco Elías Calles published the vile Calles Law, effective July 31, which banned religious education, foreign priests and political commentary in religious publications, seizing church property and holding that worship could only be conducted inside of churches and under the supervision of local officials

I've written on Calles before, who in some ways got his just deserts, but the damage he did is still felt to this day.

The United States Army Air Corps was established as an expansion of the United States Army Air Service that had been created on May 24, 1918.  It was not, however, an independent service, nor did it enjoy the level of autonomy of the Navy's Marine Corps.  Nor should it have. . . even to the present day.

Canadian Governor General Julian Byng dissolved Parliament.and scheduled new elections for the House of Commons and Senate to take place on September 14, which seems like a rather long delay.

Silent Cal addressed the Press:

I am not sure just what time I shall leave, or rather what day, to go up to White Pine Camp. I can’t leave earlier than Tuesday and I should expect to get away certainly by Wednesday.

I haven’t any more information about the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission of the gasoline industry. Here is a speculative inquiry as to the effect of larger output on prices. I don’t consider myself any better qualified to discuss that than the gentleman who asked the question. I suppose it will be apparent that if the price went up undoubtedly that would stimulate production, and if it stimulates it enough an oversupply would be produced which would undoubtedly have the effect of a reduction in prices. There has been an increase in production. Whether that is taken up by an increase in consumption would be a matter that would have to be considered in order to make any estimate as to what effect the increased production would have on the price. I think there are some 3,000,000 more automobiles this year than there were last, which undoubtedly causes a larger consumption of gasoline than in past years. There aren’t any developments in the Fenning case which I have knowledge of, other than those which have been reported in the press.

Press: Could you say whether or not the Attorney General has made that report you have been looking for?

President: He hasn’t made any report. I have asked him, as I stated the other day to the conference, to keep watch of the situation and keep in contact with the Committee to see if any action is necessary on my part.

I shall go to the Capitol tomorrow to sign bills. I found after thinking it over that I recalled very clearly going up two years ago. There was some question about that in my mind that arose at a previous conference the as to whether the President went up at the interim recess of Congress, or whether he only went up when Congress adjourned on the 4th of March, or went out of existence. He goes up at each time. While it has never been decided I think by a court of last resort whether the President has authority after Congress recesses to sign bills, some bills have been signed, but it has usually been the practice not to sign bills after Congress adjourns. I recall very distinctly being up there two years ago. I know Senator Lodge was Chairman of the Committee, being the majority leader, and he came in and notified the President that the Senate was about to adjourn and inquired if there was any more business. Something occurred during his conference with me, so that the President Pro Tem adjourned Congress before the committee got back to report – adjourned the Senate.

Did you find out Mr. Sanders – did you fin d out whether any Copeland case had been sent over here from the Department of Justice?

Mr. Sanders: It has not come, Mr. President.

President: I had an inquiry as to whether any report had come over here from the Department of Justice relative to an application for a pardon for a man named Copeland in Buffalo. No such report has come here. No application has been received here for any pardon for a man by that name.

People were calling Aimee Sample McPherson's disappearance story into question.

 

Last edition:

Thursday, July 1, 1926. Sweden creates an air arm, Safeway and Skaggs merge, Canada goes back on the gold standard.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Aircraft, Art, Canada, Corporate Capitalism, Distributism, Food, Grocery Stores, Independence Day, Swedish Air Force, Swedish Army, Swedish Navy, The Gold Standard

Thursday, April 11, 1946. Nostra culpa.

Einstein warned "I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives ... Nostra culpa!"

First powered flight of the X-1.

X-1 in flight.

Forced labor in French overseas territories, which had allowed for annual conscription for government projects, was banned.

The final edition of the China Burma Indian soldiers newspaper the Roundup was published.  It was a reprise of the war, and on its last page ran a selection of pinups, a feature of the newspaper with its pinups being a bit racier than Yank's.

In the last issue of this series (1946) we ran a story from the Rocky Mountain News about pregnant German women.  I.e., women who had become pregnant by American troops to whom they were not (and could not be, at that time), married.  The news ran the story in a somewhat lighthearted fashion, but that didn't match the reality.

Such children, of whom there were at least 200,000 by Allied troops, actually faced pretty rough conditions, as discussed here:

Occupation children

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 9, 1946. The Bomb, the accused, and pregnant Fräuleins.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Army, Colorado (Denver), Crime, Germany, Germany (Munich), Nuclear power, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Sex, The relationship between men and women, Weapons

Thursday, March 21, 1946. The Strategic and Tactical Air Commands created.

The Strategic Air Command and the Tactical Air Command were created.

Shoulder patch of the United States Army Air Forces Strategic Air Command.

SAC therefore predates the Air Force as an independent branch of the military.

And so does TAC, which has been inactive since 1992, when it was merged into SAC.

I've been meaning to do a post on reorganization of the U.S. military, which the illegal war on Venezuela and King Donny's War shows to be a desperate need, but I haven't gotten around to it.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure went into effect.

French forces engaged in the The Battle of Thakhek in Laos, allowing the French to reestablish themselves in that portion of French Indochina.

Kenny Washington became the first African American to sign with a professional football team since 1933.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 20, 1946. Tule Lake closes but its residents struggles continue.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1960, 1960s, Aircraft, Disaster, Ethnicities, Internment of Japanese, law, Racism, U.S. Air Force

Wednesday, March 20, 1946. Tule Lake closes but its residents struggles continue.

The final adjudication of the cases of Japanese internees who had renounced their citizenship during World War Two concluded, resulting in the closure of Tule Lake War Relocation Center.  The litigation reversed their loss of citizenship, but the Justice Department would reverse that.  It would take until the 1960s for their citizenship to be restored.

Almost all of those who had renounced their citizenship had recanted, and for that matter not all of the renunciations were genuine.

There were two air disasters in the news:

26 DIE IN C-47 CRASH; AB-29 FALLS WITH 7; Army Plane Explodes in Sierras, Lost 'Superfort' Is Found South of San Francisco

Last edition:

Saturday, March 16, 1946. Route 66. George Mikan turns pro.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, 1940s, 1946, 1960s, 1970s, basketball, Cartoons, Highways, J.R. Williams, Music, Personalities, Post War United States (and Canada), Swing Music, television, Transportation