Free Republic

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is quietly assembling a senior staff for an expected 2024 presidential campaign that will be headed by his top political adviser, Generra Peck, and around seven other Republican operatives serving as top advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter. The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party. But some of the senior staff have started to move in recent weeks...

Burial at sea is a ceremonial tradition dating back to ancient times when necessity dictated that the remains of deceased Sailors return to the deep. During World War II, several navies, including the U.S. Navy, buried their dead at sea. Often conducted while still on station in combat areas, the ceremonies were generally as brief as possible. On 12 May 1945, the day after two kamikazes struck aircraft carrier Bunker Hill (CV-17) off Okinawa, one of the longest burials at sea in U.S. Navy history commenced. The ceremony was not only a testament to the fallen, but to the survivors,...

A little over a week ago the US revealed that it is sending 100 killer drone systems to Ukraine as part of huge new $800 million weapons package approved by the Biden administration last month. The small, low-cost but high tech weapons, called “Switchblade” drones are a type of “kamikaze drone” in that they act as guided missiles capable of loitering before slamming into their targets. “We have committed 100 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems to be delivered in the most recent package of presidential drawdown,” assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs Celeste Wallander previously told the House...

The honor and dignity of Japanese culture carefully hides dubious aspects of their WW2 military operations. Why would a culture place such a high priority of respect onto legacies of kamikaze pilots, suicide submarine missiles, and underwater suicide mine bombers? In short, families of these soldiers knew the personal realities behind the warrior myths.

In the late thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire under Kublai Khan made two unsuccessful attempts to invade Japan. Historian Kawai Atsushi gives the background to the invasion, examines different theories about reasons for its failure, and looks at the aftermath for both sides. In November 1274, a fleet carrying some 30,000 Mongol Empire troops approached Hakata Bay off the Japanese island of Kyūshū. Genghis Khan had established the empire in the early thirteenth century by unifying the nomadic peoples of the Mongolian Plateau. Successive leaders expanded the empire through central Asia, and made Goryeo (Korea) a vassal state in 1259....

Biden reminds me of the Kamikaze pilots Japan desperately recruited during the final stages of WWII. Selected aviators flew suicide attack missions against Allied naval vessels by diving their planes directly into enemy ships to inflict as much damage as possible. Their final doomed flights were intentionally one way missions. Slow Joe Biden and his tail gunner, Kackling Kamala are on their own personal Kamikaze mission but unfortunately, their objective is to destroy America. Our own allies must be bewildered to watch a president intentionally inflict catastrophic damage to his own country. Biden's apparent cognitive decline is no longer secret....

“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” - a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded. War naturally conjures images of courageous soldiers. Flanders Fields, Charge of the Light Brigade, and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf. Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled...

apanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday his country will form a space defense unit to protect itself from potential threats as rivals develop missiles and other technology, noting that the new unit will work closely with its American counterpart recently launched by President Donald Trum

“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” - a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa, which ended on June 21st 1945, was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded. War naturally conjures images of brave infantrymen. Almost 200,000 soldiers and marines rest in cemeteries around the world. Too often forgotten are the Navy and merchant sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield...

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte escalated his unusually confrontational rhetoric with China over the fate of a disputed South China Sea island on Thursday, warning Beijing that Philippine troops are prepared to conduct “suicide missions” if China does not back down. “I will not plead or beg, but I am just telling you to lay off the Pagasa because I have soldiers their,” Duterte said in a speech on Thursday, using the common Filipino name for Thitu Island in the Spratly chain. “If you touch it, that’s another story. Then I will tell my soldiers, ‘Prepare for suicide missions,’” Duterte warned...

An incredibly rare Kamikaze version of Adolf Hitler's deadly V1 terror weapon is about to go on display at a British museum 47 years after it was saved from the scrapheap - and restored in Germany. The piloted Doodlebug was effectively a suicide bomb packed with one ton of explosives in its nose. Towards the end of the Second World War, some 5,000 V1 rockets, the world's first cruise missile, were launched by the Germans to bomb London, causing massive loss of life.

"This is incredible actual footage during the 80-minute attack on the USS Laffey. About the best naval footage ever shot by a Navy cameraman. The camera was in the gun turret under attack. The USS Laffey, "the ship that would not die", was hit by 6 Kamikazes and 4 bombs, but remained afloat after an 80 minute battle that included 22 Kamikaze attacks"

Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a Mongolian ship that was part of a fleet dispatched by Kublai Khan to invade Japan in the 13th century. The ship is the second to be located off southern Japan from two massive armadas – each reputedly made up of more than 4,000 ships and with an invasion force of 140,000 men – sent by the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty to conquer Japan in 1274 and 1281. Both invasion fleets were destroyed by devastating typhoons, with the storms going down in Japanese history as "kamikaze", or divine wind, that saved the nation...

Flying a kamikaze drone armed with explosives from the back of an MV-22 Osprey aircraft, and directing it right into the insurgent’s fighting hole. The Marines tested a small unmanned aircraft known as the Switchblade recently at Twentynine Palms, Calif., flying it directly at targets from both the ground and the back of the Osprey, a long-range aircraft that has rotors like a helicopter, but can fly like a plane once they rotate forward. They were “inert,” with no explosives on board, but the mission went off without a hitch, said Col. James Adams, commanding officer of Marine Aviation Weapons...

Frustrated with a Republican Party that seems hellbent on passing amnesty, and unwilling to substantively confront Obama with respect to the crisis on the southern border– Levin wonders if Karl Rove spells his first name in honor of Karl Marx… "Now, I know people spell their names differently– Karl with a ‘K’. I get that. You know who else spelled Karl with a ‘K’? " If you’ve ever wondered why GOP strategery seems like it’s been outsourced to an Indian call center– it’s because it has. (SNIP)

A film about kamikaze pilots has been playing to packed theaters from Hokkaido to Kyushu since its release in December of 2013, becoming one of the top-grossing Japanese productions of all time. In addition to attracting the admiration of Prime Minster Shinzo Abe, “The Eternal Zero” has drawn a fair amount of criticism for being the latest in a string of recent films that mythologize the Japanese role in World War II.

"A museum is appealing for experts to help them decipher mysterious codes written on the side of a World War Two kamikaze plane....The model held by the Fleet Air Arm Museum is believed to have been captured by Allied troops in the Pacific....They were fixed to the underside of bomber planes, before being flown up to a height of 12,000ft and released. The vessels would be piloted by suicide pilots, who aimed for Allied ships and would inevitably die on impact. They could travel unaided for 21 miles, reaching a maximum speed of 475mph. Only 800 of the aircraft were...

Killer drones are getting lighter, smaller and cheaper in order to keep their place on the battlefield as defense budgets are cut and as the U.S. military pulls out of Afghanistan. The latest twist: “kamikaze” drones that blow up along with their intended target. Two devices were on display at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) trade show in Washington, DC, this week: Textron System’s Battlehawk and Aerovironment’s Switchblade. Both are hand-launched devices that can be carried in a small backpack. The Battlehawk is made of carbon-fiber wings that curl up into a 22-inch tube launcher. The 5.5-pound...

In the beginning, [Club for Growth] targeted liberal Republicans ..., but it now extends to politicians like Lugar, Capito, Saxby Chambliss and even ... Speaker Boehner, who [normally] would be considered conservative. The Club and its allies see themselves as “insurgents” against a Republican “establishment” ... Republicans, Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in National Review, have to [be] “the party of middle-class economic interests.” “It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes on millionaires a little bit,”... Bill Kristol opined. But the Club and its network blame the Republicans’ and Romney’s defeat on their not being conservative enough. “The first lesson”...

President Shimon Peres on Saturday saluted as "courageous" remarks by Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas in which he appears to relinquish the demand for a "right to return" of PA Arabs to their former homes in what is now Israel. "Abu Mazen's courageous words prove that Israel has a real partner for peace," Peres said in a statement, referring to Abbas by his "kunya" name. .....