This Day In History: "Underway on Nuclear Power"

The USS Nautilus (SSN 571) was the world's first nuclear-powered submarine. Although officially launched in January of 1954, further construction and testing was required before she could be put to sea. On this day in 1955, Nautilus finally announced that she was "Underway on nuclear power."

By May, 1955, Nautilus broke the records for longest submerged cruise and highest sustained speed for a submarine. In February of 1957, the submarine reached her 60,000th nautical mile; i.e., the distance cruised by Jules Verne's Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. On August 3, 1958, she became the first vessel to reach the North Pole.

SSN 571 made her final voyage in 1979 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. The submarine is now an exhibit at the U.S. Navy Submarine Force Library and Museum near Groton, Connecticut.

Granddad and the Skyraider

I've already mentioned that I did some traveling this week. Well, last night I got back from California. I had made the unexpected trip due to the death of my granddad, whose memorial service was on Tuesday (it was only a few hours after that service that the PA unnecessarily panicked my wife). Between Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, we had known for a while that my granddad wouldn't last much longer, although he had already defied the doctors' predictions by several months.

I haven't called California home in over ten years (effectively my whole adult life), so I wasn't able to get to know my granddad as well as I would have liked. He wasn't a very talkative person, although he could tell the best stories when you asked him. Around the time I started to consider going into engineering, I found out that he was a member of the last generation of professionals that could call themselves engineers based on experience and on-the-job training rather than on a degree (I know plenty of people who hold engineering degrees that I would only reluctantly call "engineers"). My granddad had received much of his early training while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, where he repaired the electrical systems of AD Skyraiders on the USS Boxer (CVA-21). He eventually went on to become a highly respected "resident genius" at a company that specialized in chemical machining of aerospace and nautical components.

Although he was only in the Navy for a few years, it's his stories from that time that I most remember. My favorite story involved a Skyraider whose engine broke free when the plane crash-landed. The engine caught fire and hurtled down the deck, where my granddad found himself right in its path. He said that he "nonchalantly" headed towards a safety bunker just to find it full of pilots who were supposed to have gone below decks after landing. He crammed himself in and held the door closed while the engine passed just close enough for him to feel the heat from the fire.

Ever since I heard these stories, I've loved the Skyraider; an extremely successful medium attack aircraft. The plane saw service from the late 1940s to the early 1970s and was one of the last piston-engined combat aircraft. A few years ago I had the chance to see a flying AD-4N Skyraider and an A-1E Skyraider at an airshow put on by the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg, Idaho. The most memorable moment of the show was its finale in which the missing man formation was performed by the museum's three P-51 Mustangs and its AD-4N Skyraider. The Skyraider represented the missing man as it pulled out of formation. I'm going to guess that the AD-4N was used for that purpose since it was the odd airplane in a group consisting mostly of P-51s. Now that moment seems very appropriate to me personally.

Airshows and Historical Airplanes

Well, last night I fell asleep about two to three hours earlier than I usually do on a weekend night and neglected to post. So much for posting every day.

Anyway, I'm sure those (very few) who have seen this blog have noticed that I have a wide variety of interests. Well, one of my oldest obsessions is aviation. Thanks to my dad, that interest shifted away from modern aircraft and toward World War II-era warplanes (they have more character, he always said). It was a convenient hobby given where we lived; while I was a teenager in El Cajon, California our house was under the flight path of Gillespie Field, the local municipal airport. The airport was a yearly stopping point for several organizations that restore and fly historical aircraft such as the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) and the Collins Foundation.

My sophomore year in high school, the Collins Foundation flew in their B-17G and B-24J, two of the most important and famous American bomber models of World War II. My dad and I went to the airport after school to walk around and through the bombers while taking dozens of pictures. My dad found out that for a donation of $300 you could go on an hour long ride in one of the bombers along with six other donors (the donations just barely paid for the gas burned by a World War II-era bomber in one hour). He asked me if I'd like to fly in one of them; I said that I would love to, believing that it was a rhetorical question.


The next morning (it was a school day, but a note from my dad would take care of that) I found myself flying on the world's only flight-worthy B-24J. The flight took us over much of San Diego, giving us a great view of such sites as the Coronado Bay Bridge. We even buzzed Miramar Naval Air Station, a privilege almost never given to civilian-owned aircraft (I was in the bombardier's station in the nose at the time and probably got the best view of anyone on the plane). I will always be grateful to my dad for his generosity, especially given how tight our family's budget was at the time.


A few years later, the summer after my first year at BYU, I attended the yearly Wings Over Gillespie Airshow. The airshow featured such historical aircraft as the B-17G, the Heinkel 111 (the only one flying in the world), the P-38 Lightning (extremely rare), and various other bombers, fighters, and transports from World War II. I usually went to the airshow either with my dad or, if he was busy, by myself. That summer, though, a girl I had been dating told me that she would like to come along to the airshow.


A few years later I married that girl. I suppose that any girl who is willing to go to an airshow featuring World War II warplanes to be with you has to be worth marrying.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

It's only the 13th of November and already I'm having a hard time writing a blog entry every day (hence yesterday's unusual entry). Today's entry has to do with an interesting moment in history when someone really should have just kept his mouth closed.

There is an old saying in the military; "Loose lips sink ships". The idea is that a sailor, because of drunkenness, bragging, or just plain carelessness, can inadvertently say something that gives the enemy sufficient information to stage successful attacks on Navy ships. This might be something about departure dates, ship capabilities or weaknesses, etc.

A horrendous example of loose lips came in June 1943 when Andrew J. May, a U. S. congressman and member of the House Military Affairs Committee, accidentally released confidential military information during a press conference. Up until that time, American submarines often survived Japanese depth charge attacks (depth charges are anti-submarine weapons designed to explode upon sinking to a predetermined depth). Being unaware of enemy submarines' capabilities, the Japanese navy had been setting its depth charges to explode at shallower depths than U. S. submarines were capable of reaching. The submarines were simply diving below the level of the depth charges and sneaking off when the coast was clear. Well, during the June 1943 press conference, the careless congressman revealed to reporters that American submarines had a high survival rate since the Japanese depth charges didn't go deep enough.

This fact leaked out to several newspapers and soon came to the attention of Japanese military intelligence. A short time later, Japanese depth charges were adjusted to explode at deeper depths and U. S. submarines lost their previous advantage. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood would later estimate that May's loose lips had led to the sinking of approximately 10 submarines and killed 800 sailors.

With all the talking they do, it's a good thing that most politicians' words don't usually end up killing anybody.

The Kid Who Gets Bullied Is the One Who Doesn't Defend Himself

So, Obama isn't even president-elect for two days before his insane policies get us in trouble. It would appear that a newly belligerent Russia is planning to deploy missiles near our ally, Poland. Within two days of Obama's election, Russian neo-commie president Medvedev (Putin's willing puppet) called Obama to tell him the news. A Russian analyst has said that "Moscow isn't interested in confrontation, and if Obama makes some conciliatory gestures it will respond correspondingly." Conciliation... for what? Oh yes, the Russians have blamed the U.S. for Russia's recent war with the former Soviet satellite of Georgia. This accusation is absurd on the face of it; America was in nowise involved with the war.

Of course, there are those of us who knew this would happen, we just thought that it would wait until after his inauguration. You see, earlier this year Obama made a few promises to a left-wing pacifist group, the Caucus for Priorities.

Here are a few things promised by Obama; my comments are in brackets:

"...I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending."
[From Obama's previous statements, I have to assume that he believes nearly all defense expenditures are wasteful. The last time such cuts were made, Bill Clinton left our military completely unprepared for even limited military engagements (Somalia, anyone?).]

"I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space."
[You mean our successfully tested missile systems that would be handy in a situation like the one Medvedev has handed us? Here Obama shows his ignorance; missile defense systems do not "weaponize space". Space was weaponized in the late '50s when the first Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMS) were developed that could cross into sub-orbital space to strike targets on the opposite side of the globe. Missile defense systems are not used to attack an enemy but to destroy his missiles in transit.]

"I will slow our development of future combat systems."
[You mean the combat systems that will keep America secure in the coming decades? History has shown that when America stops advancing its weapons systems, America's enemies grow in strength and aggressiveness (e.g., the Nazi military buildup in the decade before World War II, the Soviet and Red Chinese military buildups in the years between World War II and the Korean War, and the Soviet nuclear buildup during the Carter Administration).]

"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons... and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."
[First, a missile taken off hair-trigger alert can be put back on hair-trigger alert within a day; they are designed this way. Second, experience during the Cold War has shown that the cuts Obama will pursue will be unilateral; Russia will not actually honor any agreements (communists never do; between 1917 and 1955 alone the Soviets signed 52 agreements with the West - they only kept two of them). Our nuclear arsenal has kept the peace for nearly 50 years since America's enemies know full well that a nuclear attack on the U.S. would guarantee their own destruction too. The Soviet Union increased its demands and aggression in the late '70s and early '80s thanks to the Carter administration's cuts in our military and our nuclear retaliatory capabilities.]

Now that America has chosen a leader as weak in defense as Jimmy Carter, if not more so, Medvedev has decided to play the same kind of bully that his forerunners in the Soviet Union did in the '70s. Was a renewing of the Cold War part of the change that Obama promised?