Liberty Sized Lifter, a DARPA proposal

 This is something that I snagged from the Aviation stuff that shows up in my email from 3rd party sources.  This has interesting ramifications especially with China as a peer adversary in the near future and the Pacific being a big waterpark, and the islands we control are far less than there were during WWII. The ability to deliver freight and goods over water quickly has strategic implications, but also having control of the strategic airspace is a factor, can't have one of these things shot down by a "Chinese J20" or something similar would be bad.

 

New DARPA projects come about for various reasons, but sometimes they start with an impossible question. Five years ago, Alexander Walan, a program manager for the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, started asking if it was possible to design an ocean-crossing cargo vessel with a 100-kt. cruise speed.

“The short answer was: not really,” Walan tells Aviation Week.

• Liberty Lifter concept unveiled by DARPA
• Daylong Pacific crossings sought with 80-ton loads

By pursuing that line of inquiry for several years, however, Walan settled on what became the newly unveiled Liberty Lifter concept. Starting with a $31 million budget request for fiscal 2023, DARPA hopes to demonstrate a C-17-size, seagoing strategic airlifter by 2028.

In fact, DARPA’s proposed design calls for a hybrid configuration. The Liberty Lifter would be a wing-in-ground-effect aircraft that skims on a ground-effect air cushion over the tops of waves at up to 200 kt., but would also be a flying boat capable of ascending up to 10,000 ft.

If the Liberty Lifter concept works in five years, the U.S. military would have the option to field a new type of cargo transport and amphibious assault ship. The seaborne airlifter would cross the Pacific Ocean in about a day—not 2-3 weeks, as required for a seagoing freighter. The DARPA concept also could land and take off from bodies of water rather than the easily targeted runways and dirt strips used by Boeing C-17s.

That unique operational profile is the entire point for a military reorienting itself to strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific area, but it also creates an organizational dilemma. As the project gets started, DARPA officials are not yet clear on whether the operator for the Liberty Lifter should be the Air Force’s aircraft-focused Air Mobility Command, the Navy’s ship-oriented Military Sealift Command, or both.

“We’re probably doing something right if the services like it but can’t figure out where it fits,” Walan says. “That means it’s new and different. So that’s an opportunity and a risk.”

The concept evokes the Cold War-era “ekranoplan” fleet, which included the Soviet Union’s A-90 Orlyonok transports and Lun-class anti-ship missile launchers, but the Liberty Lifter comes with a major difference. Due to a design limited to ground-effect flight only, the Soviet vessels were limited to flying over calm seas.

DARPA’s concept calls for operating in ground effect over waves up to 18 ft. high, covering about 85-90% of maritime conditions, Walan says. Moreover, if the military decided to move a Liberty Lifter from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, it would be better to fly overland rather than around the tip of Florida, he adds. So DARPA added a requirement for up-and-away flight to 10,000 ft.

Bidders for a Phase 1 study could propose alterations, but DARPA came up with a design for a Stratolaunch Roc-style twin-fuselage arrangement, with canards in front of a long wing powered by 10 turboshaft engines positioned on the trailing edge. Most ekranoplan designs position engines in front of the wing to stimulate the ground-effect airflow, but DARPA rejected this approach. Mounting the engines on the wing’s trailing edge protects the blades and turbines from corrosive saltwater spray, and the Liberty Lifter’s wings can generate enough of an air cushion for ground-effect flying anyway, Walan says.

As the concept blurs the line between aircraft and boat, so does DARPA’s concept for the structure. The Liberty Lifter should be built from medium-grade aluminum, splitting the difference between lighter aerospace alloys and cheaper, heavier metal forms used in ships. A risk reduction project by DARPA manufactured a center section wing using 3D-printed aluminum panels, which were joined using friction stir welding, Walan says.

The proposed amphibious aircraft will need an advanced control system, including fly-by-wire and wave-monitoring sensors. Any given sea state involves more than simply the height of the waves,  including the distance between the waves and the interaction between them. “If I know what the waves look like—not only the crests, but also wavelength, etc.—I can optimize how high I want to fly,” Walan says.

The DARPA project comes amid a revival of interest from startup companies in wing-in-ground-effect vehicles. Although Flying Ships and Regent have held discussions with DARPA, both companies say they are not participating. For his part, Walan expects industry teams composed of aviation and maritime companies.

“We kind of gave a heads-up last year that this might be coming,” Walan says, “to let people start working those relationships.”

 

Will be 2 years before plans to launch new Airliner.

 I clipped these 2 articles together,they show a problem with Boeing.  My employer along with other airlines have been pushing for a replacement for the Boeing 757 the rumored New Midsized Airplane or the Boeing 797.  The 757 is a very good airplane but she is old technology and getting long in the tooth.  The B757 is my favorite Boeing airplane.  Airlines are starting to use the A321NEO because they are getting tired of waiting and if the NEO performs as advertised, Boeing may lose those customers to Airbus.   Airlines were origionally told that the  Boeing 737-900 was a replacement for the B757, but the 737 flat out just don't have the legs to fly the distance that B757 flies.  And Boeing is stalling on the replacement, Airlines will wait for a while, but eventually they will have to buy from Airbus because the airframes will get too old and metal fatigue becomes an issue and parts will become an issue and fuel cost is a huge concern for an airline because it is the single largest cost that an airline has to deal with.

 

A new program for a clean-sheet airliner from Boeing is still “at least a couple of years” away from being formally launched as the airframer hones the digital tools it will rely on to differentiate the aircraft, Boeing CEO and President Dave Calhoun told an investor conference June 3.

“We have to develop and mature the tools so we have them,” Calhoun told the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. “We’ve practiced them in several of our defense programs—some of which you see, some of which you don’t—and we’re very bullish about it.”

Calhoun said he had just reviewed the status of those digital tools the day before (June 2) with an integrated team and to discern what the maturity expectations are for them. He told Bernstein analyst Doug Harned it would be “at least a couple of years before I’m confident that those tools are tested and mature enough to implement on the next airplane.”

Boeing has long promised, through Calhoun’s tenure and his predecessor’s, that its next new airliner will be distinguished more for how it is digitally designed and manufactured, rather than as an envelope-pushing marvel of aviation advances. The company has several related efforts running, including the T-7A trainer for the U.S. Air Force, where so-called digital twinning, high-powered computer-aided design, automation and artificial intelligence are being used and/or built-in to the products. Recently, Boeing unveiled agreements with all three of the major cloud-computing industry leaders to move practically all functions, including aircraft design, into the cloud.

Still, the beleaguered company has faced loud calls to announce a new airliner program as a catalyst and rallying effort for itself and its supply chain to combat archrival Airbus’s growing market domination in producing—and currently delivering—new commercial aircraft. But Calhoun again asserted he was confident with Boeing’s plans to move forward and that its product line, including the 737 MAX and 787 widebody, will regain market share with customers as they roll out. He also reiterated that the digital aspects of the new airliner are essential, even more so than expected fuel efficiency gains.

“I don’t want to run forward until I get that,” Calhoun added.

Calhoun indicated the new airliner further would be differentiated on other, related achievements. “There are things you can compete on: sustainability will be one, readiness for sustainable fuels, etc., etc.,” he said, “and, the efficiency of the airplane itself: cockpit design and a major step toward, autonomy. A major step.”

The CEO reiterated that achieving advances in autonomy was what justified Boeing’s roughly $450 million additional investment in advanced air mobility startup Wisk, which was announced in January at a time that Wall Street was focused on whether Boeing would generate enough cash flow for shareholder returns. Overall Boeing has invested roughly $1 billion in Wisk.

“We don’t hesitate on the things that will matter to us,” Calhoun said. “There’s a whole lot of things about Wisk that are meaningful to us, not just a vehicle for helicopter displacement in urban markets and lots of markets around and/or local delivery services or whatever. It’s not just a use case. It’s autonomous from the word ‘go.’”

In other news, Calhoun ruled out a mid-term issuance of company stock in order to raise funds. He said the company will host an investor briefing event in September.

 

Irish businessman Michael O’Leary has never been one to mince his words. But when it comes to talking about Boeing, his words have become X-rated.

The Ryanair Group CEO—one of the largest purchasers of Boeing 737s—ended negotiations with Boeing for the 737 MAX 10 in September after the two sides could not agree on a price. As usual, O’Leary issued strong public statements on why he did not go along with Boeing’s pricing strategy, while Boeing issued a far shorter statement saying the manufacturer would “continue to be disciplined and make decisions that make sense for our customers and our company.”

In mid-May, however, the rhetoric from Ireland heated up to new levels, while Boeing stayed silent. O’Leary released a torrent of expletive-soaked statements after saying the ultra-LCC would have to cut some of its spring and summer schedules because MAXs from earlier orders that were originally set for delivery by the end of April had been delayed to the end of June.

“At the moment we think Boeing management is running around like headless chickens, not able to sell aircraft, and then even the aircraft they deliver, they’re not able to deliver them on time,” O’Leary fumed in a sentence that was rare for its lack of an expletive. 

He also questioned “what the hell their sales team has done in the last two years?” and added that “either the existing management needs to up its game, or they need to change the existing management, would be our view of life.” Much of his other remarks were unpublishable in this magazine.

Ryanair has almost 500 737s in service and more than 140 on order. The airline stuck with Boeing through the horrors of the MAX crashes, grounding and recertification. The aircraft that were delayed this year are whitetail MAXs that other airlines canceled in the aftermath of the fatal crashes. While O’Leary’s public thrashing was far from diplomatic, it’s difficult to see how Boeing can defend itself, so silence is probably the only option.

And O’Leary is not alone among airline and leasing company chiefs who are becoming increasingly frustrated—if not bewildered—at Boeing Commercial’s ongoing disarray. 

After Boeing announced in late April that it would delay the start of 777-9 deliveries from the end of 2023 to 2025, Emirates Airline president Tim Clark—an early supporter of the 777X program—said he was skeptical of the new date and pointed out that with the multiple delays, the 12 aircraft that Boeing has already built for Emirates will be seven years old by 2025. He said they would effectively be “second hand” for which a new price would be necessary. 

But the bad news in the April announcement went far beyond the 777X. Boeing is still working through 737 MAX and 787 production and certification issues that are affecting delivery schedules. The company delivered 28 MAXs in April, below its stated long-term target of clearing out an inventory of completed aircraft that stood at 320 at the end of March. 

To clear out its backlog of MAXs by the end of 2023, as the company has indicated it intends to do, Boeing must make monthly delivery totals equal to the running production rate plus 15 or 16 aircraft. So far, it has not hit that mark.

Of the 777X delay, Boeing president and CEO David Calhoun said, “Are we frustrated with the timing? You bet.”

But for many customers, Boeing’s frustration should not be their concern. More than ever as they emerge from a crippling pandemic, they want certainty and dependability from their key suppliers. 

Without it, they will delay new aircraft purchase decisions, cancel existing orders or demand new terms on those orders. 

And they want to focus on their own frustrations, not Boeing’s.

Air Lease Corp. executive chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy publicly acknowledged that he saw risk to the 777X program with each delay and said ALC had decided against buying the freighter version because there were “too many questions and delays.” 

Avolon CEO Domhnal Slattery said Boeing had “lost its way” and wondered aloud whether a change in leadership was needed.

But there are still big names staying loyal to Boeing and its products, including Alaska Airlines, International Airlines Group, Lufthansa and Southwest Airlines, which firmed or added to MAX orders in 2021. 

And the truth is that no airline or lessor wants to see an aircraft supplier monopoly emerge. Whether they prefer Airbus or Boeing aircraft, it’s in everyone’s interests to have a competitive market in which all competitors are strong.

It may be months or even years before Boeing wades out of its production, certification and cultural mess. For the most part, however, their customers can only lament—in some cases, publicly and with an abundance of frustrated, X-rated language.

Some going on at Casa De Garabaldi

 It has been an adventure at Casa De Garabaldi the past 6 weeks,  Well we wend down to visit my sister in law in Florida near Destin for a mini vacation, and while we were there, we decided to "Throw Axes"..

           I got a chuckle out of the sign...the place is run by a bunch of veterans(Couldn't you tell by the humor) and we got to swapping war stories and lies.   Hey it was a blast.

    

   While we were there, I dropped by to check out their ammo supply....it was kinda sparse...and since I have lost my guns in those dreadful kayak accidents....it was a walk of memories....*Sniff*Sniff*

   I did bring one of my books with me to read while I was there.  This one is about the "Potsdam Missions"  This picture is known by my friend Mack as a "NightStand Dump", I picked up the habit from him, LOL.

 We had some drama at the house.....

  The Spousal Unit got nailed by a small copperhead, the dang snake was in the garage in front of her car next to the kitchen door, how he got in we don't know.  The snake only hit her with one fang, the other one hit her sandal  strap.  Of course we went off to the hospital, they tracked the progress of the venom and decided not to give her anti-venom since her body was doing a good job of handling the bite.  The immediate results was that she was afraid to go into the garage, so I parked my Focus in the garage....This lasted for a month....

        We went to Savannah again, and stayed in the Historical section, and toured the old city and visited the sites, it was a good time, we spent 4 days there, just me and the spousal unit.  the kid stayed home, he had to babysit the house...he had to work and go to school(Bwah, hahaha).

Here is the link for my pictures I posted on Instagram...Never tried this before, LOL

https://www.instagram.com/p/CdZbP4_sDcl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

 

    Well we came back and it was primary season for elections and yes I voted, I did vote for Kemp even though his challenger was endorsed by President Trump.  Brian Kemp in my mind is the only one that can beat Stacy Abrams in 2022, Perdue has no chance.  Brian Kemp opened the state when all the naysayers were wanting to stay in their house and hide.  His steady hand in handling Georgia was similar to Florida, we were open whereas all the northern states were locked down.  yes Pepperage Farms remembers.  I'm sure the Media would like everyone to forget that one.  Other than that I voted straight Trump endorsed ticket.

     

  Ran across this in my travels, a kid was running a lemonade stand so he could earn money to go to camp, I was flabbergasted,  I haven't seen a lemonade stand since the 1970's.  Needless I spend some $$$ to help the kid out and and I was proud that he was trying to earn his way to camp, and told his parents that.

    Went back to Florida and visited my Sister in Law again.....Stayed there for a few days, then rolled home in the Focus....We have been driving the mess out of the Focus...Will touch on that in a few.

    Came home, dropped off the Spousal unit,  and picked up my son who had to house sit the house, and the dog and work( man life is rough) and headed to Cincinnati with him to watch the Mens National Soccer team play Morocco.

    We were using Buccee's to stop and Fuel up at.  We stopped at the one in North Georgia, then stopped overnight at my moms house in Sevierville Tennessee, since I brought the kid, i was chopped liver.   Well we did stop at Smokey Mountain Knife Works and I bought a couple more knives.  And we headed out the next day.  We stopped in out hotel room in Lexington Kentucky,   There was a Buccee's near Lexington, so we stopped there for fuel...

       Got back into the car, and rolled into Cincinnati

   he was driving so I was able to take pictures.  We found the stadium in short order, then parked then went looking for a place to get something to eat.  We went "across the Rhine" as they said to get some Mexican food.

     The Food was good, but there was only a couple of tables, apparently social distances and all that crap, so we were leaning on a bench against the wall, to eat our food.

 https://www.instagram.com/p/CeR8k2SpkWk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

   Went and watched the game and the United States Won, 3-0.  I pasted a link to instagram above the picture.  Like I said, it is something new.

We rolled home.after leaving the hotel..

 Stopped at Buccee's again to top off fuel, for our run into Georgia, we were gassing up at the Buccee's Near Lexington....Redmond I believe.  Was early in the morning....first time I never saw Buccee's swarming with people.

   Gassed up near Calhoun Georgia, was headed to Conyers to look at a car for the spousal unit.

Remember we were taking my Focus on a lot of roadtrips, My wife's Edge has been a flawless car, has given her no trouble, we have just done regular maintenance only. her Edge is a 2009 with 230,000+ miles on her and the car has the 3.5 liter engine with the Internal waterpump...the original waterpump.  This is important.  To replace the waterpump on a 3.5 liter engine you basically have to remove the engine, remove the timing chain and a bunch of other stuff to get to it, basically about $4000 worth of work, well the car is worth 4 grand....only.   and of something else goes wrong...then whoopsie.

  

          This is Her Edge.....

    This is the new Edge

    The new Edge is a 2020 Titanium fully loaded, Leather seats, Panoramic moonroof, ete,ete with 10,000 miles on the car, with the 2.0 ecoboast.   The car was made right before Covid, and was a rental car for 6 months....that was it.  I have the Carfax report on the car.  We paid a good price for the car, and they actually gave us a better price for the trade in then I expected.  i was planning on selling the Old Edge outright rather than take a bath on the car.  the Spousal unit is very pleased.  She uses the nose camera to watch for snakes when she drives into the garage....so now I don't park in the garage....anymore......Drats.

A couple of days later the people we contracted to clear the brush around our house showed up....We are convinced that the snake came from the underbrush near the garage...

   here is the Results......

            The Spousal Unit was happy.  

On a different note....I had to change the faucet in the kitchen....The hose on the sprayer developed a leak, I patched it for a temporary fix, but it was still leaking...

So I laid out my tools, man I feel like I was at work......

Removed all the stuff under the sink....shut off the valves....then started disconnecting...and had a bad thought....I remember when a professional plumber came into my house 10 years ago, and installed a toilet....the ass hamfisted the installation and flooded my upstairs bathroom and my kitchen ceiling when he broke the water pipe because they get brittle when they get old.  The pisser is that the company wouldn't own up for the damage...and even now I savage them on social media every chance I get and when they threaten me with lawsuits...I tell them"Bring it, I got proof, and receipts, and pictures and I will countersue, and they will pay my lawyer" and they go away, but they are a big name here in the county so they stay in business.   Well anyway....I go looking for my water main cutoff...

After excavating it.....LOL......I shut off the water.

 

             The New Faucet.....hey it is a working kitchen....It ain't home and garden.

   The underside of the sink after I tightened it.  I continued hooking everything up, gently.....then turned on the water from the street, then turned on the water under the sink....No Leaks :)

        Then after bleeding the air out of the lines, attached the head to the hose and function checking it.

   Yay it works :)

 

      Well I had to get gas for the Focus.....

Holy crap.....I used to not even spend that much money on my F150 during the Bad tweet days...now that is what I spent on my Focus?  and I started a small war on my farcebook page when I posted it. with people lobbing bombs at each other.  All I know is that when Trump was running things, sure he can be an ass, but he picked people for competence, where Xiden picks people for ideology and to check off boxes for special interest groups. and it shows.   I have a gut feeling its gonna get worse, the Donks are going for broke because they know that they are going to lose their ass in the midterms.

      

Hybrid Weapons That Really Didn't Work........

 

 

"The Axe Pistol of Grand Duke Ferdinand De Medici (1549-1609) Looks cool though....."
 

Let’s face it, from the very beginning that the cavemen sharpened stones and turned them into spears and arrows between 4,000 and 3,300 BC, we’ve come so far. When the Industrial Revolution from the mid-18th century entered, weapon designs and engineering were no longer just sticks and stones but rather more on advanced, sometimes-too-complicated, never-before-seen guns, swords, explosives— really, your imagination is the limit. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? We’d say both. With that, here are some badass-looking but not too useful weapons designed, some even dating back even before the revolution.

Ax Pistols

                              Ax-Pistol of Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici.

Is it an ax? Is it a pistol? It’s both!

The oldest record of the design was in the middle of the 16th century, combining wheel-lock pistol and conventional ax. The idea was popular among the wealthy noblemen who could afford elaborate mechanical curiosities. This German-manufactured ax-pistol was made of all steel with a hollow shaft of the ax serving as the pistol barrel, while the lock was placed to the outer side. Its shaft had a touchhole bore to it where the trigger was fitted. Its grip terminates a hollow pommel, formed by combining two hinged halves that more likely served as storage for pyrites, wadding, bullets, and the likes. The S-shaped ax blade was fitted in the forward end of the shaft. As The Met wrote:

The ax-pistol is first recorded in the Medici archives in 1589, when it was in Ferdinand’s private armory (armeria secreta) in his residence at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. There it was clearly described, including the grip, which is now plain, as having been covered in black velvet with fringe of black silk and gold. The entire weapon was stored in a case of black leather furnished with black velvet cords and tassels of black silk and gold.

They were also used by the Polish and the Swedish cavalry in the 1700s. The main issue with this undeniable cool-looking weapon was that the ax head could hinder the shooter’s ability to aim and fire with accuracy. Also, because of the combination, ax-pistols were heavy. Add the fact that its stock shape was awkward to use for ax-wielding, given its sheltered pistol.

Villar Perosa

Villar-Perosa modello 1915, Italian submachine gun.

The Pistola Mitragliatrice Villar Perosa M1915 was an Itlaian submachine gun chambered in 9 mm Glisenti. It was originally designed for a second crew member tasked to observe military planes but was later issued to the ground troops after its chambering was deemed ineffective in stopping enemy planes. It was made with two barrels acting as machine guns with two thumb triggers in a butterfly grip equipped with only 25-round magazines with a high rate of fire of over 1,500 rounds per minute. Still, its power was not sufficient in terms of shooting down aircraft. They tried to utilize it by attaching a shield for the infantry, but due to its inefficiency and the Italian losses during WWI, they decided to dismiss and halt its production entirely.

Plug Bayonets

                                                         Plug Bayonet, British

It’s awesome to have a 2-in-1 weapon, for sure. But not when the second one hinders and plugs the first function of your weapon as in plug bayonets. As the name suggests, the idea was that soldiers would have a backup as they closed in the enemy lines. They could plug these bayonets in the muzzles of their slow-loading guns so the gun would be nothing but the handle of their pike with no way of shooting unless you removed it again. Thankfully, this was phased out and replaced with a socket-style bayonet that allowed for dual use as it was only fit around the muzzle of the gun.   Yeah this one I never understood.....I guess I am glad they had inspiration.....Hated to put a plug on my M16.........

 

June 6th, Very important days in History. The Invasion of Europe and the culmination of the Battle of Midway

 *This should have dropped at 0430 this morning, but somehow I had selected "PM" instead of AM and caught it when I woke up to do my morning blog-reading while I drank my coffee.

 Sorry Guys, No Monday Music this week....They will continue next week.

 What I am referring to are the D-Day invasion of Western Europe in 1944, it was the first direct attack on Western Europe and "Festung Europa", after the aborted attack on Dieppe in 1942.  Some believed that this was a practice run on the Germans to see how they reacted.  The British left a lot of material behind and a lot of casualties and prisoners from that raid.  The Canadians were not happy about the results.  But 2 years later the Allies tried again with much different results than the ill-fated raid.

 On June 6th, the allies struck in Normandy on 5 beaches, Gold, Sword,Juno,Utah and Omaha, after a major bombardment with aircraft, battleships, destroyers, cruisers and the French resistance and more aircraft attacking the rear areas including railroad marshaling yards, bridges and other gathering points, they kept the Germans from reinforcing the bridgehead.  Also a major factor was Adolph Hitler who refused to release the reserves because he believed that the main attack would come at Calais instead.  This belief was reinforced by a major misinformation campaign by the allies to keep the Germans pinned at Calais and not reinforcing the embattled Germans at Normandy.

    Some facts about D-day:
    

The D-Day Invasion at Normandy – June 6, 1944

Invasion Date     June 6, 1944 – The D in D-Day stands for “day” since the final invasion date was unknown and weather dependent Allied Forces 156,000 Allied troops  from The United States, The United Kingdom, Canada,Free France and Norway Invasion Location The Allied code names for the beaches along the 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast targeted for landing were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Omaha was the costliest beach in terms of Allied casualties. The Armada 5,000 ships and landing craft 50,000 vehicles 11,000 planes The Commanders United States – Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley The United Kingdom – Bernard Law Montgomery, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Arthur Tedder, Miles Dempsey, Bertram Ramsay Germany – Erwin Rommel, Gerd von Rundstedt, Friedrich Dollmann Casualties Numbers represent total killed, wounded, missing or captured United States – 6,603 (1,465 killed) United Kingdom – 2,700 Canada – 1,074 (359 fatal)Germany – Estimated between 4,000 – 9,000 Results By June 11, with the beachheads firmly secured, more than 326,000 troops had crossed with more than 100,000 tons of military equipment. Paris was liberated on August 25. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.

I am a student of history and what got me interested in history was the battle of midway,  it lasted from June the 4 1942 until June 6 1942.  I will not post any major details except when it was done, the power has shifted in the pacific war.  After Midway Japan never had a victory until the end of the war.  The biggest loss for the Japanese besides 4 first line carriers was the loss to her aviation arm, the level of experience that went down when those carriers sank, they never recovered.

The events that transpired on those fateful days swung the balance of power in the pacific to the end of the war.  Before June 4 1942, the Japanese ran rampant through the Pacific, from bombing Pearl Harbor to the capture of the Philippines to the capture of the Dutch East Indies and the capture of the British Fortress of Singapore.The capture of Guam and Wake Island.  The Japanese started suffering from "Victory Disease" as Admiral Yamamoto called it.  The Allies found themselves fighting a much superior force than they expected from prewar intelligence.  The only hiccup was the Doolittle raid...

   The Doolittle Raid so traumatized the Japanese that they started planning the Midway operation before their Port Moresby operation was complete.  The Japanese made a move toward Australia and Port Moresby and the battle of Coral Sea. Coral Sea was the first battle where the ships fought and they never saw each other.  The battle was fought by carrier airplanes.  The battle was inconclusive, but we lost the Lady Lex and a fleet oiler.  The Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho but their 2 fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku suffered heavy losses and the Shokaku was damaged.  This was why the Japanese didn't have those 2 carriers for the Midway operation.  The U.S.S. Yorktown was heavily damaged but they preformed a 72 hour miracle at Pearl Harbor and Yorktown joined her 2 sisters, Hornet and Enterprise.

 

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent four aircraft carriers to the tiny Pacific atoll of Midway to draw out and destroy what remained of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

But this time the U.S. knew about Japan's plans. U.S. cryptologists had cracked Japanese communications codes, giving Fleet Commander Adm. Chester Nimitz notice of where Japan would strike, the day and time of the attack, and what ships the enemy would bring to the fight.
The U.S. was badly outnumbered and its pilots less experienced than Japan's. Even so, it sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the first day of the three-day battle and put Japan on the defensive, greatly diminishing its ability to project air power as it had in the attack on Hawaii.
On Monday, current Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. Cecil Haney and other officials flew 1,300 miles northwest from Oahu to Midway to mark the 70th anniversary of the pivotal battle that changed the course of the Pacific war.
Midway is now a National Wildlife Refuge hosting more than one million seabirds. Navy photos of the ceremony show an honor guard standing at attention next to a field of ground-nesting Laysan albatross and other seabirds.
"After the battle of Midway we always maintained the initiative and for the remaining three years of the war, the Japanese reacted to us," Vice Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of the U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, told a crowd gathered outside Nimitz's old office at Pearl Harbor on Friday to commemorate the role naval intelligence played in the events of June 4-7, 1942.
"It all started really in May of 1942 with station Hypo (the Combat Intelligence Unit at Pearl Harbor) and the work of some great people working together to try to understand what were the Japanese thinking, what were they going to do," Rogers said Friday.
Intelligence wasn't the only reason for U.S. victory.
The brave heroics by dive bomber pilots, Japanese mistakes and luck all played a role. But Nimitz himself observed that the code-breaking was critical to the outcome, said retired Rear Adm. Mac Showers, the last surviving member of the intelligence team that deciphered Japanese messages.
"His statement a few days later was 'had it not been for the excellent intelligence that was provided, we would have read about the capture of Midway in the morning newspaper,'" said Showers said in an interview.
Japan's vessels outnumbered U.S. ships 4-to-1, Japan's aviators had more experience, and its Zero fighter planes could easily outmaneuver U.S. aircraft.
But Japan, unlike the U.S., had little knowledge of what its enemy was doing.
Japanese commanders believed a U.S. task force was far away in the Solomon Islands. Then, as June 4 neared and Nimitz prepared his troops, Japanese commanders failed to recognize signs of increased military activity around Hawaii as an indication the U.S. had uncovered their plans to attack Midway, the site of a small U.S. base.
The U.S. lost one carrier, 145 planes and 307 men. Japan lost four aircraft carriers, a heavy cruiser, 291 planes and 4,800 men, according to the U.S. Navy and to an account by former Japanese naval officers in "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story."
The defeat was so overwhelming that the Japanese navy kept the details a closely guarded secret and most Japanese never heard of the battle until after the war.
Nimitz got his intelligence from Showers and a few dozen others relentlessly analyzing Japanese code in the basement of a Pearl Harbor administrative building.
Japanese messages were written using 45,000 five-digit numbers representing phrases and words.
The cryptographers had to figure out what the numbers said without the aid of computers.
"In order to read the messages, we had to recover the meaning of each one of those code groups. The main story of our work was recovering code group meanings one-by-painful-one," Showers said.
At the time of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, they understood a small fraction of the messages. By May 1942, they could make educated guesses.
A key breakthrough came when they determined Japan was using the letters "AF" to refer to Midway.
Showers said Cmdr. Joseph Rochefort, the team's leader, and Nimitz were confident the letters referred to the atoll. But Adm. Ernest King, the Navy's top commander, wanted to be sure before he allowed Nimitz to send the precious few U.S. aircraft carriers out to battle.
So Nimitz had the patrol base at Midway send a message to Oahu saying the island's distillation plant was down, and it urgently needed fresh water. Soon after, both an intelligence team in Australia and Rochefort's unit picked up a Japanese message saying "AF" had a water shortage.
Showers was an ensign in the office, having just joined the Navy. He analyzed code deciphered by cryptographers, plotted ships on maps of the Pacific, and filed information.
Now 92 and living in Arlington, Va., the Iowa City, Iowa, native went on to a career in intelligence. He served on Nimitz's staff on Guam toward the end of the war, and returned later to Pearl Harbor for stints leading the Pacific Fleet's intelligence effort. After the Navy, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Showers said commanders weren't always as open to using intelligence to plan their course of attack the way Nimitz was. Some were suspicious of it.
But Midway changed that.
"It used to be a lot of people thought intelligence was something mysterious and they didn't believe in it and they didn't have to pay attention to it. Admiral Nimitz was fortunately what we call intelligence-

   My favorite movie was of Midway with Charlton Heston, it was a good story and they used a lot of WWII movie cuts for the movie.  In the end there was a clip showing Admiral Nimitz played by Henry Fonda "Were we better than the Japanese?...Or just Luckier".  This battle showed a lot of luck for the Americans, from the Intelligence and the location of the carriers.  From the experience and power of the ships, the Japanese should have prevailed but luck was on the side of the Americans

 

 

 

Final Wings signal the End of the Iconic 747

 I have blogged a lot about the Boeing 747 , She is called the "Queen of the Sky for a reason, the plane is iconic and recognizable and she changed aviation forever.  My apologies for not blogging sooner, I went out of town and cane back yesterday and immediately went to work this morning.  I will blog about my misadventures, LOL

 

Boeing has staged the left wing for the last 747-8F freighter onto the production line at Everett, Washington, marking the build-up for the aircraft’s final assembly process and close out of the historic 747 line later in 2022.

The wings for the final 747-8 freighter, line number LN 1574, were loaded on the line almost 54 years after the final body join of the first aircraft in the summer of 1968 and comes 54 years and 8 months after the initial wing skin/stringer riveting machine began work on the first units at Everett in September 1967. 

All four of the final aircraft are due for delivery to cargo carrier Atlas Air by the end of 2022, Boeing says. The first of the group, which were ordered by Atlas in January 2021, is LN 1571, which made its first flight on April 22 and is expected to deliver soon having made its fourth shake-down flight on May 17. 

The second aircraft, LN1572, is undergoing final body join on the production line in Everett’s Building 40-22. The wing set for LN1573 is meanwhile being prepared for mating with the center fuselage section prior to transfer to the final body join position. Systems installation for the forward and aft fuselage sections of the second-to-last 747-8 is meanwhile underway in the adjacent build-up area on the north-west side of 40-22. 

Boeing confirmed in 2020 it would terminate production of the 747 in 2022. Previously, the company had hoped to extend deliveries into 2023 but was forced to bring the production date cut off forward after the backlog shrank following order losses after financial problems at the Volga-Dnepr Group in Russia. 

With the end of 747 production Boeing is preparing to bolster spares provisioning for the in-service fleet through Boeing Global Services, as well as clearing out space in 40-22 and the adjacent wing build-up area in 40-21. Following the consolidation of the 767/KC-46A and 747 line functions in 2016, and the transition of the 787 to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2021, the clearance of the 747 line will open up even more spare capacity in Everett. Boeing says no decisions have yet been taken on what to do with the space.

To-date Boeing has produced 1,569 747s of which the bulk—694—were 747-400s. The last variant of this model, a -400F, was delivered in December 2009.