Action!(1)

I think there’s a perception of army life that only lets us think of active combat.  You know, the Hollywood battlefield with tanks and explosions and hordes of enemy soldiers attacking the good guys.  While combat is a reality, the facts remain that there are just regular days…of cleaning up, of resting, of just trying to make some semblance of life in the front lines.  I can remember being in Iraq myself and doing inventories of my toolboxes while waiting to move out.  I’m sure if you are a veteran, you can understand what I’m saying.

The Korean war was no different.  Soldiers waited around, walked around and generally tried to get along as best they could.  I found some pictures at the National Archives tonight to help illustrate this point:

Eating Rice(2)

Field marching to assembly area(3)

Attending Services(4)

One of the best ways the soldiers found to break the montony was to eat!  Granted, army rations were nothing to write home about, but they could always be traded, improved with hot sauce and could even be used as weapons.  What follows is a great article from Popular Science on Google Books that might help illustrate this:

(5) (Source Link)

Have a great weekend!

Links:

US Army Quartermaster Foundation

What a Soldier Eats!

Sources:

(1-4) National Archives (keyword: Korean War)

(5) Google Books

It’s been a crazy month for me with many family duties to attend to, so I apologize for not posting up very many new topics on our Korean War series.  However, in doing research lately, I would want to share with you some neat things I just found out on the Google Book Search.  These changes are especially neat when looking at the back issues of Popular Mechanics.  For example, there’s the thumbnail view now available:

(Source: Google Books)

They’ve also added some new controls to make reading even easier:

(Source: Google Books)

So why are all these technical changes important for my history blog?  Easy!  When learning about history…in this case, the Korean War, what better way to learn than by examining the magazines and media of the time.  In this case, we see a great article from the pages of Popular Mechanics:

So take a few minutes and stroll on over to the Google Book Search.  If you want to try research on our topic of the Korean War, remember to have it search full view and set your years to 1950-1953.  Well, talk to you later!  I will be updating later with some more information on our current series!

Have a good weekend!

Hello everyone, including our new subscribers!  Life, as usual, has been crazy lately and I have not been able to post up as I should…please forgive me! 

We had a reader enjoy our last post on presidential planes, especially the Connie shots (link to that post is here), and forwarded to me links to some more information on the Constellation.  Here is that link:

http://www.conniesurvivors.com/141311.htm

What a beautiful aircraft…and such a big change from today’s seemingly generic airliners!  Thank you reader for forwarding that link!

*****

Since we had mentioned the Cold War in the last post, I wanted to bring up a new post on the Korean War in the early Fifties.  It’s been a while since I’ve spoken about it (CAS and old post here), and in light of the recent developments, I thought it would be informative to go back and revisit the time, era and some specifics from the war.  While I’m doing research on that, I’ve found some great shots from NARA that you might enjoy.  Take a look at these and I’ll be back soon with the story and lots more links!

Have a great day!

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Source Links (1-5), Courtesy NARA

We had a real good visit to the WPAFB the other day and I actually got to tour a part of the museum that I had never seen before:  The presidential aircraft section.

Currently, it’s pretty tough to get admittance to this particular part of the museum as it’s located in a secure area of the base.  If you can go, however, it’s definitely worth the time.

What follows are some pictures and links to help illustrate some of the neat thing one can find there.

Talk to you soon!  I’ve found a great site on the Cold War that I’m still investigating.  If you want to check it out, it is worth a visit.  You can find that here:

Cold War International History Project

Tony

FDR: Sacred Cow (1)

Truman: Sacred Cow (2)

Columbine III (3)

Some interesting things about Columbine III is that is the same as the Constellation airliner, which some elements of the design were based on the P-38.  Some particular designs also included:

• Over 300 mph top speed
• “held records for the longest duration non-stop passenger flight…”

(Source: 4)

Links:

Sacred Cow

Columbine III

Wikipedia: Constellation

Sources:

(1) WPAFB

(2) NARA

(3) WPAFB

(4) Wikipedia: Constellation page

*****

(1)

As evidenced in the short film above, the Fifties had brought about a consumer paradise with demand ever growing for more.  Maybe living this way helped to distract us from the increasing rhetoric of the Cold War, of the competition with the Soviets and the dark shadow of a nuclear war ever threatening.  This competition had recently grown even higher stakes with the introduction of Sputnik and the use of space.  The race was on…..

(2)

Nowhere could this been seen better than in the introduction of the Mercury 7.  Hand-selected, the astronaut trainees were about to embark on an adventure that would mark them for the rest of their lives.  But it was a scene that was far from easy.  This was uncharted territory, procedures and plans were formulated and reformulated on a daily basis.  Improvisation and adaptation were the rules, resulting perhaps in an environment that most today would shudder at, considering the regulatory burden in which we now exist.  Let’s look, for example, at Walter Burke, VP of McDonnell Aircraft Company.  In an interview from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Dec. 1963:

“…In Project Mercury, there are no pieces of the capsule that are off the shelf of any other program that ever existed…”

How did this look on a practical implementation?  Here’s a blueprint of the capsule:

(3)

Going beyond this however, the changes and reformulations brought about by the demands of the competition with the Soviets was also changing society in other ways.  Old ways and old methods of thinking were being discarded, their flawed assumptions being brought to light in the face of new knowledge…of admitting that things had been thought and done wrong.  It was American society on the brink of absolute change.  From race relations to social mores, change was coming and in fact had already started to crack the facade…something that would absolutely boil over in the decade of the Sixties.  We as a nation were on the launch pad and the count was growing ever shorter….

(4)

For now however, take a few moments to remember the Mercury 7 and think about being strapped into a small capsule with your destination maybe known, but getting there a complete mystery!

As we bring this post, and the series, to a close, I’ll leave you with some good links as well as tons more information about these fascinating two years and perhaps a little bit more….

Have a great day!

Links:

Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff (Google Books)

Compton, William D. Where No Man Has Gone Before (Google Books)

“I Lived With The Astronauts”. Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1959 (pg. 75)

NASA Fiftieth Anniversary-Mercury Program

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Air & Space Smithsonian (Mercury 7)

Wikipedia: Project Mercury

NASA: Anniversary of the Mercury 7

Mercury 7 Archives (NASA)

Sources:

(1) Shopping Can Be Fun, Internet Archive

(2) NASA Images

(3)NASA History Division: Mercury Capsule Details

(4) NASA Images