Posted on 10/30/2018 6:53:51 AM PDT by fugazi
Today’s post is in honor of Cpl. Brett W. Land, who died of wounds from an improvised explosive devise in Afghanistan’s Zhari district. The 24-year-old native of Wasco, Calif. was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault).
1918: Famous World War I flying ace Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker shoots down his 26th – and final – enemy aircraft over Rémonville, France.
1940: The Royal Air Force’s First Eagle Squadron, consisting of volunteer pilots from the United States, becomes operational. Thousands of Americans would apply, but only 244 were chosen for service during the early days of World War II.
[...]
1961: On a remote island north of the Arctic Circle, a Soviet Air Force Tu-95 “Bear” bomber drops the Tsar Bomba, setting off the largest man-made explosion in human history. The 50-megaton device has ten times the explosive force of all conventional weapons dropped during World War II and was over 1,500 times stronger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The blast is so powerful that windows are broken well over 500 miles away and the Soviet bomber crew is only given a 50 percent chance of surviving the mission. A U.S. Air Force JKC-135A intelligence-gathering plane on a secret mission to collect data on the blast is scorched by the heat wave and is removed from service after landing.
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
Ping list
Tsar Bomba!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6BspF9Ie9M
The Tsar Bomba was designed as a 100 MT weapon. The Russians lowered the yield by replacing uranium parts with lead.
The Soviet Union’s RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, also known as the Tsar Bomba, is the biggest and most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever made and tested. 60-megaton yield.
Wow !!!
„At 10 a.m. on October 30, 1939, Wilhelm Zahn was commander of U56 when he managed to avoid detection by the 10 destroyers (among them Intrepid, Ivanhoe, Icarus, Kelly, Impulsive, Firedrake), and battle cruiser Hood protecting the Home Fleet west of the Orkneys and came within striking distance of HMS Nelson and Rodney. Unbeknownst to Zahn, aboard the flagship HMS Nelson were First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes and admiral Sir Dudley Pound who was the First Sea Lord at the time.
Three cruisers were heading straight toward his U-boat’s position, making any attack by him almost impossible, when suddenly they veered by twenty to thirty degrees from their previous course opening the field of attack and bringing him into a direct line of fire with HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. Rodney was the lead ship of the convoy and Zahn decided to wait until it passed and concentrated his sights on the Nelson.. The U-boat came within the point-blank range of 800 meters of the ship and Zahn’s chances of striking and sinking it were high.
He fired three torpedoes from U56’s three torpedo tubes toward the flagship. All three struck the hull of the Nelson but failed to explode, although the sound of the impact with Nelson’s hull was picked up by the sonar operators of U56.
After the attack, Zahn ordered the U-boat to descend to a deeper level to avoid depth charges since the destroyers had by now detected its presence. In the evening Zahn ordered U56 to surface and subsequently sent a radio report to Berlin listing the targets in the group including HMS Rodney. The delay in the transmission of the information was caused by Zahn’s depression caused by missing his target. Had this delay in Zahn’s report not happened, the German command could have sent U58, which was in the area at the time, to renew the attack on the British targets.“
Remind me of an assassin who failed to kill Andrew Jackson. Both of his guns misfired and he got a good beating from Jackson’s cane instead.
The blast is so powerful that... the Soviet bomber crew is only given a 50 percent chance of surviving the mission
I’ve been a WW2 amateur historian for almost 60 years, but I don’t recall that incident with Churchill and HMS Nelson.
I remember that! Richie Valens sang a song about it!.................../s
Soviets are a different breed.
I think an even more interesting discussion to listen in on would be when the Red Army told the officers locked up in the gulags after one of Stalin’s purges, who had their bodies tortured and utterly broken, that they had to go back to the front lines to fight and die.
They melted a lot of ice that day, didn’t they? No wonder we got global warming!
Ruskies being Ruskies they probably didn’t tell the Crew.
That’s nothing compared to after I’ve come back from Taco Bell.
“the Soviet bomber crew is only given a 50 percent chance of surviving the mission.”
Preflight:
Commisar: Comrades! Today you will be dropping largest bomb ever created!
We will use this weapon to bring the running dogs of the west to their knees!
Today is a glorious day for Mother Russia and Comrade Chairman Khrushchev!
Comrades! This bomb is so powerful it is likely you will die in the process. But that is of no concern because you will be hailed as Heroes of Mother Russia!
Comrades! If any of you thinks of not taking part in this glorious mission remember that your families will be rewarded for your cowardice with retirement to Siberia where they will enjoy the most vigorous of lives.
Comdades! Do you accept this most important and glorious mission?
Flight crew: Da comrade!
Thank you!!
Nailed it!
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