Categories
All About Guns Our Great Kids

The Rifle: Combat Stories From America’s Last WWII Veterans by AMERICAN RIFLEMAN STAFF

Rifle

rifle signaturesWhen 28-year-old Marine Andrew Biggio bought an M1 Garand, he never imagined the journey that would ensue. The Rifle, as it would come to be known, was purchased in honor of Biggio’s uncle, who was killed in Italy during World War II. He brought his new purchase to his neighbor, Joseph Drago, a combat veteran of the war. When Drago saw the rifle, memories that had been buried since the end of the war began to float to the surface. After hearing Drago’s stories, Biggio asked him to sign his rifle. Thus began a two-year journey to find as many surviving World War II veterans as possible, giving each of them a chance to sign the rifle and share their stories.

rilfe bookThrough its 278 pages, The Rifle chronicles the living memories of 96 combat veterans, all of whom held Biggio’s rifle and remembered when they carried their own example into battle. More than three-quarters of a century have passed since the Axis surrender in 1945, and the youngest of World War II’s surviving participants are now in their nineties. Of the 16 million Americans who served during the war, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that fewer than 240,000 are still alive. Biggio’s mission archives some of the last eyewitness accounts of a world torn by war. regnery.com

Categories
Our Great Kids Well I thought it was funny!

Smart Kid!

Categories
Our Great Kids Soldiering The Green Machine

WWII – US Army Medals Explained

Categories
Our Great Kids

Why thank our Vets on one day only?

No photo description available.

Categories
Our Great Kids

Rest easy our fallen dead!

Categories
Our Great Kids War

The Brown Water Strategy

Categories
Our Great Kids This great Nation & Its People

THE PATH LESS TRAVELED HOW ONE WOMAN HELPED SAVE THE ASTRONAUTS OF APOLLO 13 WRITTEN BY WILL DABBS, MD

Judith Love Cohen was a female rocket scientist back when
female rocket scientists weren’t cool. Photo via Instagram/@JackBlack

I started mechanical engineering school in 1984. In the entirety of the school, across all disciplines, there were exactly no girls, not a single one. For whatever reason, girls just didn’t pursue engineering back then.

Two of my kids went into engineering. The fairer sex is much more ably represented in such spaces nowadays. For a variety of reasons, it’s way better now.

If engineering school was fairly male-centric in 1984, it was positively testosterone-drenched back in the 1950s. However, there yet remained a few gleaming exceptions. One of those extraordinary standouts was Judith Love Cohen.

This is the Command Module/Service Module for the Apollo spacecraft. An explosion in the Service Module during the Apollo 13 mission vented most of their oxygen into space.

Judith Love Cohen

Judith Love Cohen was born in August 1933 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, NY. At a time when women were not expected to attend a whole lot of school, Cohen feasted on books. By fifth grade, her classmates were paying her to do their math homework. She originally aspired to become a math teacher, but when it came time for college, she chose a different path.

By her 19th birthday, Cohen was a young engineering student. She was also dancing in New York’s Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company. After two years of studying in Brooklyn, she married Bernard Siegel, and they moved to California. While there, she worked days at the North American Aviation Company and attended the University of Southern California at night. While earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering, she later claimed that she never saw another female student.

Upon graduation, Cohen began working for Space Technology Laboratories (STL), which later became TRW, Inc. It was there she remained until her retirement in the 1990s.

Cohen specialized in aerospace guidance systems. Her major projects included the guidance computer for the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile and the ground station that supported the Hubble Space Telescope. Another was the Abort-Guidance System (AGS) for the Lunar Module (LM) that helped take Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Computer technology in the 1960s was unrecognizable from what it is today. The computer power most of us carry around in our cell phones would have seemed positively otherworldly back then. The AGS was a backup system designed to be used during the descent, ascent and rendezvous phases of the lunar missions in the event of failure of the primary guidance system.

If all went well, the AGS would be nothing more than superfluous ballast. However, trips to the moon were the most technologically arduous endeavors in the history of mankind, and complexity on that scale means nothing ever goes according to plan.

NASA engineers had the Apollo 13 astronauts use the Lunar Module as a lifeboat for the trip back to earth.

When Good Plans Go Bad

In April 1970, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise blasted off from Cape Canaveral for the moon as part of the Apollo 13 mission. The seventh crewed mission of the program was to be the United States’ third manned trip to the lunar surface.

Damaged wiring insulation inside an oxygen tank resulted in an explosion that vented the contents of both of the Service Module’s oxygen tanks into space. In the absence of this oxygen supply, both the propulsion and life support systems on the spacecraft were inoperable. If NASA engineers could not conjure a solution immediately, the three men were going to die in the cold dark void.

The answer was to transfer the three astronauts into the two-man Lunar Module for use as an ad hoc lifeboat for the trip back home. The accommodations were cold, damp and terribly cramped, but the LM kept the astronauts alive. However, the lack of oxygen and potable water to cool the systems meant that the primary navigation system was worthless. It was Cohen’s AGS that guided the three astronauts home safely. The astronauts later traveled to her facility to offer their personal thanks.

After her retirement from engineering, Cohen embarked on yet another career as a writer. She started a publishing company called Cascade Pass that produced a series of popular children’s books focused on encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. The books sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Cohen was married three times and had a total of four children. Her second husband was Thomas William Black. In 1969, while pregnant, she was troubleshooting technical problems with the AGS when she went into labor. She took her printouts to the hospital and continued working on the problem until she solved it, telephoned her boss to explain the solution, and then delivered a son.

You may not have known Judith Love Cohen’s name prior to reading this. However, if you’ve ever seen the movies “School of Rock,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Nacho Libre,” or “Kung Fu Panda,” you’re familiar with her son. Her last child is the actor and comedian Jack Black. It was his grand entrance that briefly interrupted Judith’s design of the Apollo backup guidance system that ultimately saved the lives of three NASA astronauts.

Categories
Our Great Kids The Green Machine War

Ukraine war: Leak shows Western special forces on the ground

Why Is the Pentagon a Pentagon? | At the Smithsonian| Smithsonian Magazine

By Paul Adams & George Wright

The UK is among a number of countries with military special forces operating inside Ukraine, according to one of dozens of documents leaked online.

It confirms what has been the subject of quiet speculation for over a year.

The leaked files, some marked “top secret”, paint a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine, including sensitive details of Ukraine’s preparations for a spring counter-offensive.

The US government says it is investigating the source of the leak.

According to the document, dated 23 March, the UK has the largest contingent of special forces in Ukraine (50), followed by fellow Nato states Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1).

The document does not say where the forces are located or what they are doing.

The numbers of personnel may be small, and will doubtless fluctuate. But special forces are by their very nature highly effective. Their presence in Ukraine is likely to be seized upon by Moscow, which has in recent months argued that it is not just confronting Ukraine, but Nato as well.

In line with its standard policy on such matters, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has not commented, but in a tweet on Tuesday said the leak of alleged classified information had demonstrated what it called a “serious level of inaccuracy”.

“Readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread misinformation,” it said.

It did not elaborate or suggest which specific documents it was referring to. However, Pentagon officials are quoted as saying the documents are real.

One document, which detailed the number of casualties suffered in Ukraine on both sides, did appear to have been doctored.

UK special forces are made up of several elite military units with distinct areas of expertise, and are regarded to be among the most capable in the world.

The British government has a policy of not commenting on its special forces, in contrast to other countries including the US.

The UK has been vociferous in its support of Ukraine, and is the second largest donor after the US of military aid to Kyiv.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation and he was determined to find the source of the leak.

“We will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it,” he said.

Categories
All About Guns Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad Our Great Kids

White Feather – The Most Hardcore American Sniper

Categories
Our Great Kids This great Nation & Its People

Its been 50 YEARS AGO when we left that war!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1