Veterans...Get the hell in here now!

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
June 1, 1813, in the midst of a bloody sea battle between an American and a British frigate a few miles north of Boston, one of America’s most memorable wartime slogans was born. As the mortally wounded Captain James Lawrence of the US frigate Chesapeake lay dying in his cabin, his crew locked in hand-to-hand combat on the quarterdeck above, he is alleged to have uttered the memorable words: “Don’t give up the ship!”

His rallying cry, published a few weeks later in a Baltimore newspaper, became the unofficial motto of the US Navy for decades thereafter, long predating “Remember the Maine” or “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Just two months after the battle, a bright blue banner emblazoned with Lawrence’s words flew at the masthead of a namesake vessel, USS Lawrence. Its captain, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, won a decisive victory on Sept. 10 over British naval forces in the Battle of Lake Erie.

Given the way it has echoed through the years, you might think Lawrence’s memorable plea marked a heroic moment in the history of American armed forces. It didn’t. Not only did Lawrence’s surviving crew give up the ship almost immediately after his exhortation, but historians and military analysts would later conclude that Lawrence had disobeyed orders to avoid combat in the first place, then committed a series of tactical blunders that all but guaranteed he and his ship would lose.
 

raratt

Well-Known Member
:finger::finger::finger::finger::finger:

Hope they find the assholes.
 

Herb & Suds

Well-Known Member

GreatwhiteNorth

Global Moderator
Staff member
Bravo Zulu Colonel Campbell

Air Force.jpg

On April 7, 2003, Kim Campbell piloted her A-10 Warthog over Baghdad. She received an urgent call for air support from troops in contact. When she and her flight lead arrived overhead, they saw Iraqi troops firing RPGs at the friendly unit below. The two A-10s strafed the enemy with 30mm Gatling guns and rockets. As Campbell pulled out on her final run, an explosion rocked the tail of her aircraft, rolling the jet violently toward the earth. Campbell identified she'd lost all hydraulics and placed the aircraft into a backup manual control mode. With seconds to react, she used cranks and cables to recover out of the dive and get the aircraft back into the sky. Her flight lead came alongside and identified hundreds of small holes and a football-size one in her right horizontal stabilizer. Despite the damage, Campbell elected to risk the flight back to base rather than bail out over Baghdad.
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An hour later, she arrived over Kuwait with crash recovery teams and rescue helicopters standing by. Miraculously, Campbell brought the jet down without issue. The next day, she was back in the air in another A-10 flying a search and rescue mission. For her heroism supporting the friendly unit on the ground and magnificent skill recovering her aircraft and bringing it safely home, Campbell was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with "V".
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Campbell later deployed a second time in support of OEF. She amassed 375 hours of combat flying between Iraq and Afghanistan. She is still on active duty after 23 years of service, now a full Colonel on faculty at the Air Force Academy.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today In Military History:
midway1.png

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway–one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II–begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.

In six months of offensives prior to Midway, the Japanese had triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and numerous island groups. The United States, however, was a growing threat, and Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto sought to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own.

A thousand miles northwest of Honolulu, the strategic island of Midway became the focus of his scheme to smash U.S. resistance to Japan’s imperial designs. Yamamoto’s plan consisted of a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived at Midway to respond to the invasion, it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. If successful, the plan would eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and provide a forward outpost from which the Japanese could eliminate any future American threat in the Central Pacific. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack.

In the meantime, 200 miles to the northeast, two U.S. attack fleets caught the Japanese force entirely by surprise and destroyed three heavy Japanese carriers and one heavy cruiser. The only Japanese carrier that initially escaped destruction, the Hiryu, loosed all its aircraft against the American task force and managed to seriously damage the U.S. carrier Yorktown, forcing its abandonment. At about 5:00 p.m., dive-bombers from the U.S. carrier Enterprise returned the favor, mortally damaging the Hiryu. It was scuttled the next morning.

When the Battle of Midway ended, Japan had lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 casualties.

Japan’s losses hobbled its naval might–bringing Japanese and American sea power to approximate parity–and marked the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. In August 1942, the great U.S. counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal and did not cease until Japan’s surrender three years later


 

Sofa King Smoooth

Well-Known Member
Bravo Zulu Colonel Campbell

View attachment 4915337

On April 7, 2003, Kim Campbell piloted her A-10 Warthog over Baghdad. She received an urgent call for air support from troops in contact. When she and her flight lead arrived overhead, they saw Iraqi troops firing RPGs at the friendly unit below. The two A-10s strafed the enemy with 30mm Gatling guns and rockets. As Campbell pulled out on her final run, an explosion rocked the tail of her aircraft, rolling the jet violently toward the earth. Campbell identified she'd lost all hydraulics and placed the aircraft into a backup manual control mode. With seconds to react, she used cranks and cables to recover out of the dive and get the aircraft back into the sky. Her flight lead came alongside and identified hundreds of small holes and a football-size one in her right horizontal stabilizer. Despite the damage, Campbell elected to risk the flight back to base rather than bail out over Baghdad.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
An hour later, she arrived over Kuwait with crash recovery teams and rescue helicopters standing by. Miraculously, Campbell brought the jet down without issue. The next day, she was back in the air in another A-10 flying a search and rescue mission. For her heroism supporting the friendly unit on the ground and magnificent skill recovering her aircraft and bringing it safely home, Campbell was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with "V".
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Campbell later deployed a second time in support of OEF. She amassed 375 hours of combat flying between Iraq and Afghanistan. She is still on active duty after 23 years of service, now a full Colonel on faculty at the Air Force Academy.

Reading that literally gave me goosebumps, hair stood up on my neck. Heart racing.
 

smokinrav

Well-Known Member
Today In Military History:

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway–one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II–begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.

In six months of offensives prior to Midway, the Japanese had triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and numerous island groups. The United States, however, was a growing threat, and Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto sought to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own.

A thousand miles northwest of Honolulu, the strategic island of Midway became the focus of his scheme to smash U.S. resistance to Japan’s imperial designs. Yamamoto’s plan consisted of a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived at Midway to respond to the invasion, it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. If successful, the plan would eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and provide a forward outpost from which the Japanese could eliminate any future American threat in the Central Pacific. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack.

In the meantime, 200 miles to the northeast, two U.S. attack fleets caught the Japanese force entirely by surprise and destroyed three heavy Japanese carriers and one heavy cruiser. The only Japanese carrier that initially escaped destruction, the Hiryu, loosed all its aircraft against the American task force and managed to seriously damage the U.S. carrier Yorktown, forcing its abandonment. At about 5:00 p.m., dive-bombers from the U.S. carrier Enterprise returned the favor, mortally damaging the Hiryu. It was scuttled the next morning.

When the Battle of Midway ended, Japan had lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 2,500 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 casualties.

Japan’s losses hobbled its naval might–bringing Japanese and American sea power to approximate parity–and marked the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. In August 1942, the great U.S. counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal and did not cease until Japan’s surrender three years later


This is a fantastic read
 
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