Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
Posted in Uncategorized
S.C.I. Mystery Cases – We Belong – Pat Benatar
SCI Mystery Cases is a cop show out of Hong Kong starring Gao Han Yu as Chief Bai Yutong and Ji Xiao Bing as Dr Zhan Yao, the chief psychologist of the Special Crimes Investigation unit. Friends since they were infants together, they compete while supporting one another. Chief Bai Yutong, usually wearing white, is skilled in martial arts and the skills needed for a policeman. Dr Zhan Yao is a bust at taking care of himself, but is brilliant at hypnosis. The issue in the show concerns the moral limits of hypnosis, something that Dr Zhan struggles with.
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Ladies first 🙂
https://youtu.be/imZUqkPlUaQ
Hold on
Forgot this one
Quintuplets! Most awesome. Them girls can pick! Thank you jay1776
One girl She’s very talented .
Millie Meunier 15 years old. 🙂
Wow! Just Wow!
Sealed With The Spirit
By Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the Word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13).
Most careful commentaries of the Bible make it clear that the words “after that,” in the above passage, actually have an immediate result in view. Upon hearing (or heeding) we believed, and upon believing we were sealed with the Spirit.
What is perhaps even more important to note, is the fact that upon believing “the gospel of… salvation,” we are “sealed with” the “Holy Spirit,” not “by” the Spirit. There is a difference between the two, which can be simply illustrated.
Here is a housewife, let us say, who is “putting up” jam or preserves and sealing each jar with wax. Now, the jars are being sealed by the woman, but she is sealing them with wax. Thus the Holy Spirit does not merely cause believers to be sealed and made secure. Rather He Himself is the Seal that keeps us eternally secure as God’s beloved children. We are sealed, not “by the Spirit,” but “with the Spirit,” — the Spirit Himself the Seal!
It is wonderful indeed to know that before the bar of God, the simplest believer in Christ has been fully justified (Acts 13:38,39). But this is a court action, a matter of law and justice. Besides this, the Spirit, who first brought the sinner under conviction, now gives him life — eternal life. This is why Rom. 8:2 tells us that “the law of the Spirit, [that] of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Thank God for the Spirit, who convicts, regenerates and seals every believer in Christ!
https://www.bereanbiblesociety.org/sealed-with-the-spirit/
Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
Acts 13:38 Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins:
39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
One of the real treats of a visit to Spain is the ritual Saturday morning guitar shop stroll. In Madrid, the best, most famous shops are (or at least they were still there the last time I was there) in the area around the Plaza Major. What’s neat about these guitar shop visits is that it seems as though every great musician in town also decides to show to sample the new guitars, meet friends. enjoy some music. And then, after a couple of hours of getting your music fix, you can alwys retire to a nearby restaurant for a great lunch. What a great way to spend a Saturday morning!
I haven’t yet been to Solera Flamanca, the shop in Barcelona that features these fine musicians but, watching the videos the performances are immediately familiar. If you are in the right place at the right time, if the phases of the moon are right, you can easily come upon local musicians of this caliber having every bit as much fun as these folks are having. You just have to be there . . . 🙂
Have you ever recorded yourself playing the guitar?
Alas, no. Except for my wife and disinterested kitty’s, I seldom play when anyone else is around. I’m just good enough to enjoy the music and enjoy a good guitar. I long ago decided that was enough for me. I think also that I was influenced by virtuoso David Russel’s grimace when describing not-great players putting up poor performances on Youtube. The music deserves better.
Joe Cocker, I hope you are resting in peace. Thanks for the tunes, old man!
Saw Joe perform live in some small club, can’t remember the name of it, in LA one night.
Saw Joe live in ’75 at Memorial Stadium in Austin. He was one of the opening acts at ZZ Top’ s BBQ & Barn dance. He did his whole set while holding on to a longneck beer bottle and dressed in jeans and a ripped t-shirt. It was great.
Anchored on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor the Iowa Class Battleship USS Missouri is ready for your inspection if you ever make it to Hawaii. On September 2, 1945 The USS Missouri when anchored in Tokyo Bay and was the ship on which the instruments of surrender were signed ending the War with Japan and WW II.
The Iowa Class Battleships were the last battleships built in the world. There were four of them. The USS Iowa, USS Wisconsin, USS New Jersey, and USS Missouri, They were the most capable and deadly Battleships to ever sail the seas. Their primary armament is 9 each 16″ guns. The armor piercing shell that those guns fired weighed over 2,000 lbs and the gun could fire those shells out over 20 miles.
When my team was deployed to Lebanon we were up on the ridge line over looking Beirut in the the night the USS New Jersey, sister ship to the Missouri, opened up with her big guns against the Syrian artillery positions to the east on 8- 9 February 1984. That night the New Jersey fired over 280 high explosive shells, each weighing over 1,800 lbs from her big guns. It was the most shells fired during one bombardment ever from any Iowa class battleship. A single broadside (9 rounds) from a Iowa Class Battleship using these types of shells basically takes out anything in an area that is in a one kilometer grid square (6/10th of a square mile).
I have been under artillery fire and and was almost killed by it. As it was the concussion of that 133 mm round rang my bell pretty good. It is scary as hell. I can’t imagine what it would be like for one to have 16″ shells rain down upon them. Some of the 1st Marines at Guadalcanal sure knew what it was like during WW II when they took a sustained bombardment by the big guns of a couple of Japanese battleships.
Now I am going to reveal some history I don’t believe you will find in any book. I was in Lebanon as part of a Special Forces MTT (Mobile Training Team) contingent consisting of two “A Teams” and a five man “B” team who’s mission was to train Lebanese “Rangers” of the LDF (Lebanese Defense Force) that we had started training in LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) operations.
The troops we were to train had been pulled to go into to combat in the fight that would determine who would control Beirut International Airport as the US Marines pulled out. One of the A teams of the MTT had been tasked with providing security for the staff of Donald Rumsfeld who was in Lebanon at the time as a special envoy of President Reagan. They were down in the city of Beirut.
We used that Hotel because it was on the first ridge line to the east of Beirut in a very defensible position and owned by a member of the staff of the Christian militia and located in the resort village of Brummana having a population of about 90% Christians. The Hotel was nice and was a very large “A” frame structure with the open ends facing along an East-West axis. Looking west one over looked Beirut about 6 miles away on the coast. To the east one saw the the next ridgeline which was held by the Syrians and where the had some troops, tanks, and artillery. (From our position on the first ridgeline the terrain to the east was a series of ridgelines finally flattening out into the Baka valley.)
Those Syrians would on occasion send some rounds our way during the night but it was more in the way of harassment. My impression was that if they got serious about it they understood that they would be in for receiving a terrible beating by artillery and air. After all, just down the street from the Hotel was a US Marine counter battery radar site that could quickly locate the location from which the fire was coming and call in counter battery fire from either land or sea. So the Syrians contented themselves firing a few tank rounds at intervals throughout the night in order to let us know they were still there, justify their existence, and perhaps interrupt our sleep.
My team was about to be deployed to a building in the suburbs of Beirut located about halfway between the US Ambassadors residence and the US Embassy that was then co-located with the British Embassy on the coastal hwy adjacent to the American University of Beirut. . We were to be a reaction force in case any of those locations were attacked.
The night the of the bombardment we were sent for by the Christian Militia S-2 (Intelligence officer). He was in the top floor of the Hotel in a long room that ran the length of the whole A frame building and had an excellent OP (Observation Post) set up there. He had various cameras and night vision devices set up to observe the Syrian positions to the east, He told us the New Jersey was firing. Looking out the east end we could see the flash of the battleships big guns but not the ship since it was below the horizon. Then looking out to the west end we could see the flashes of the impact of those huge 16″ rounds. Based on the locations of those flashes we determined that the shells had to be passing pretty much right overhead but there was no sound. We stayed up there for an hour watching or a little more. It was something to see.
A couple days later the team I was on visited the Ambassadors residence and met Ambassador Bartholomew and his NSO (National Security Officer tasked with providing personal security for the Ambassador). Reginald Bartholomew was a real pro unlike a couple of other pompous drunken US Ambassadors which I had the displeasure of meeting during my time in SF.
He took us on a tour around the Embassy grounds showing us the damage from a bombardment by Syrian artillery. One of his Lebanese gate guards had been killed in the bombardment. He then took us to a couple of shell holes. There he was asked about the shelling the New Jersey had dished out the other night. With a twinkle in his eye the ambassador told us that he was from Georgia and that his hobby was raising prize peach trees. And that the shell holes we were looking at was where his best peach tree had been located and that was why he had called for fire from the New Jersey.
After we were done with the Ambassador we reconned the residence, grounds, and the surrounding terrain outside the walls of the compound so we would be familiar with the set up in the event we were called in as a reaction force and then returned to the building where we were staying. From the roof of that building we could go out at night and watch the best fireworks shows I have ever seen as the fighting, including artillery and rocket fire, went on down in the city.
We were never called to the Ambassadors residence again but were called to help secure the US Embassy later and help locate and retrieve some civilian American workers that lived down in the city to bring them back to the Embassy to be evacuated as the fighting got hotter and surrounded the embassy and the American University at Beirut. At that time an incident occurred that demonstrated the strength and wisdom of my team Leader Captain Elliot Lash, but that is another story.
It was only later that I learned some other facts and put two and two together to discern the real reason why the New Jersey fired such a prolonged and powerful barrage that night. The fact was that the Ambassador and Donald Rumsfeld were meeting at the Ambassadors residence when the Syrians bombarded it and both were nearly killed. And THAT is why the New Jersey fired the heaviest bombardment any US Iowa class battleship ever fired that night. It took out the Syrian artillery batteries that had fired on the Ambassadors residence and killed the general commanding them and a bunch of other Syrians troops also.
A crap. We could see the battleship fire looking out to the west and then see the flash of the impact of those shells in the Baka to the east.
Cool story. I was in the Navy, I served aboard the USS Saipan LHA-2. Amazing the reaction that took place because a US Ambassador was almost killed compared to the reaction when an American Ambassador that was actually killed.
Reagan with George Shultz as Sec. State Vr Obama with Hillary as Sec. State.
I remember when Chris Stevens was murdered. I thought now what – they’ve killed an ambassador. Was totally surprised by the lack of any hard and fast retalliation by the USA.
Shocked!
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I posted another video of this guy the other day, reflecting on the 60s counterculture and later gibsmedat handout society as a man who was in his 20s in the 1950s and a hard worker who didn’t appreciate the layabouts and the disintegration of society he was already seeing
Here he is again reflecting on the counterculture, Viet Nam protestors, loss of sexual morals, problems with politicians, etc
Filmed in 1989 (32 years ago !), he diagnoses many of the problems that persist today with the Left, and he describes the America of the 50s and early 60s … the America that we’ve lost, as has become all too evident this year
This Ordinary Man Didn’t Get The Sexual Revolution
That “Ordinary Man” gets it.
ARE YOU READY TO BE OFFERED?
“Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.” Phil. ii. 17
Are you willing to be offered for the work of the faithful – to pour out your life blood as a libation on the sacrifice of the faith of others? Or do you say – “I am not going to be offered up just yet, I do not want God to choose my work. I want to choose the scenery of my own sacrifice; I want to have the right kind of people watching and saying, ‘Well done.'”
It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet. Suppose God wants to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased” – are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket – to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity.
Oswald Chambers
February 5th Devotional
Scenes Beyond the Grave – Marietta Davis
Chapter V – The Glory of the Cross
5:3
She then led the heavenly diapason of an immortal hymn, too full and too harmonious in movement to be transmitted by human language. At its close she said, “Sister spirit, rest thou in the embrace of holy affection. Observe what passeth around thee; for lo! shall be mirrored upon thy mind a faint, descending and remote expression of the joy that fills this land of peace. Thou didst notice when I descended, I kissed the Cross. All saints delight themselves in thus expressing their remembrance and regard for their Redeemer who offered himself a sacrifice.”
A pause in the address ensued, during which, voices, apparently in the distance, arose in soft and melodious alleluias. The accents moved like living beings, seeking to wake the song of redemption in every spirit throughout the vast assemblage.
“Who are these?” I inquired. “These are they,” she said, “who having come out of great tribulation, cease not day nor night to raise their anthems high, in exaltation of their Savior’s name. The heaven of heavens is animate with this celestial love. From saints, who in earth’s cottage humbly adore and sing of redeeming grace, through pathways of ascending life, is borne on high the soul inspiring melody of heavenly adoration. Above thee thou dost discover, moving in primeval light, beings of higher attainment.
“Wouldst thou dwell for ever in this world of peace, joy and love divine? Wouldst thou bear some humble part with the psalms of these immortal choralists? Be thou admonished of thy former incredulity, thy want of faith and consecration; for there are no other means than those in Christ, the Redeemer, by which to attain inheritance in this blest abode.”
To be continued…
The climate alarmists don’t like this one bit and I’m pretty sure you won’t hear it on your news.
The New Pause lengthens from 5 years 4 months to 5 years 6 monthsThe New Pause lengthens from 5 years 4 months to 5 years 6 months – Watts Up With That?
Here is a link to an article someone sent to me yesterday. Read it and weep for your country! ?
The Thirty Tyrants by Lee Smith
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants
That is a good, albeit long, read.
Worth every minute, though.
https://www.simonparkes.org/post/biden-s-oval-office-studio
Verse of the Day for Friday, February 5, 2021
✟
“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3 (KJV)
Thank You, Jesus, for blessings received and prayers answered!!!
Be My Voice – I am a CHILD – not a CHOICE!!!
Mornin’ infidels!
Good afternoon WeeWeed.
TGIF
IDK what happened, I logged on CTH OT here at 11:30 am and only saw 7 comments.
I thought maybe something happened to the site, but there were 400+ comments, current time, on the Resistance thread. I didn’t try the OT again until now
Found in the bin…. 🙁
Afternoon DI! Who knows….I seldom see replies to me, anymore….
thank you, this made me laugh out loud! So many questions 🙂
. . . but deliver us from the Evil One.
Amen ?
Prayer of Saint Ioannikios the Great (+ 846)
My hope is the Father, my refuge the Son, my protection the Holy Spirit. O Holy Trinity, glory to Thee.
Memo reminder…
Pluto is a Planet.
Yes it is, But now considered a minor planet and I think that it was a correct decision to relegate it to that status since with our advances in being able to see further out in space we are now seeing other minor planets about the size of Pluto further out in our solar system.
The Jesus Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.
The 50th Psalm Septuagint / Psalm 51 KJV
This is what my husband would have called a ‘hit piece’, or a take-down aimed directly at Justice Kavanaugh. It’s so over the top innuendo that the only question is – who is behind the timing of it, someone or a group of someone’s setting up the “need” to stack the Supreme Court because of the evil that put Kavanaugh on the bench?
That’s the only thing that makes sense, and this is only the 1st of a 5-part series. Not sure I’m going to read the entire series given how this one opens, claiming that President Trump is, or was a bag man for the mafia, I mean, it’s so outrageous it’s definitely the opening salvo to attack the integrity of the Supreme Court.
When done that Court will have wished they’d heard the Texas voting lawsuit which would have gone a long way to remove any doubt about the integrity of that branch of government, instead of leaving itself open to attacks such as this one.
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/who-owns-kavanaugh-1-the-justice?r=33bpb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
If I were you, I would, and am going to, skip it. Like you said, it is a hit piece, no doubt full of lies.
Kimchi
I don’t know why but I developed a taste for the stuff when I was in the Army. It is just one of the several different hot or spicy foods I used to enjoy. With my condition of late I have been unable to eat those kind of foods since they really bothered my bowels and when I sat on the toilet for long it really fired up the pain in my prostate. Even pizza bothered me. Now that I am getting better however I have started enjoying some more spicy foods. So tonight for dinner we’re having tacos. I can’t wait! As soon as I am in condition to drive again I’m headed for the local Chinese food place and getting a good order of General Tso’s chicken! Maximum heat! I’ve actually had some dreams about that meal over the last few months.
Recommended by a friend.
Denial Is Doom
Your overlords no longer care what you think or do. They needed previous elections as a sham for their shadow government, now they don’t. It’s all open and in plain vies.
I hope this pessimistic view is wrong, but I don’t yet see another pathway open.
For now, get right with God.
Chagas Disease
As an SF medic I was trained to identify and diagnose all kinds of diseases and parasitic infections that were once almost all only found in in the undeveloped world. Now with the uncontrolled illegal immigration our own government has and is again going to unleash upon us citizens many of these diseases and infections are showing up in the US with incidence growing.
Once confined to South and Central America and very rare in the US it has now migrated here with the “refugees” coming here. They can come in not only infected but also sometimes transport the insect vector in the personal belonging they bring with them.
Check out the Assassin bug shown and get to know it. They do bite humans. They don’t come in ones and twos. If present there are usually a number of them around. If you find them, kill them.
Chagas (Pronounced: Chagauze) is Americas version of the African Sleeping sickness. The Trypanisome (parasitic flagellate protozoa) which is the causative parasite is virtually identical to that found in Africa. And in fact the African version of the disease is known as Trypanosomiasis and the US version known as American Trypanosomiasis.
This stuff, though treatable is nothing to fool with. The problem is that it often causes permanent damage before it is diagnosed. And most of the US General Practitioners and PAs aren’t used to seeing this kind of stuff and it would be a good one that would know as much about as I’m telling you here. So there will be a whole lot of misdiagnosis of this infection.
It takes actually looking for and seeing the organism in the blood for a definitive diagnosis and that is why it can be tough to diagnose outside of an endemic area until after the symptoms from the disease gets really serious. Before then a simple blood draw may not pick up a parasite even if they are looking for it. By stage II when there are enough of the organisms in the blood that a simple blood sample is unlikely to miss picking some up but by then permanent damage has generally been done.
Untreated this stuff is deadly and leads to a very unpleasant death. The drugs given for treatment have heavy side effects so it’s not like the docs can just shotgun it with antibiotics and let you go.
Know the vector bug and kill it and know what it’s bite looks like.
‘Kissing Bug’ disease a growing concern in US (aol.com)
That article is from 2014…do you know if ANY progress has been made since then?
The article still applies. Of course the threat was lessoned under Trump but anticipate the problem now to grow under Bidden policies. And that is why I posted that article, A quick simple search turns up this more recent information concerning the problem with particular disease,
Chagas Disease in the United States: A Growing Public Health Concern – Clinical Advisor
CDC – Chagas Disease – Epidemiology & Risk Factors
BTW there are seven different kissing bug species in the US which can carry the disease.
In 2012 there were 1,659 cases identified in the US. By 2018 there were 300,000!
Wiki with photos of the insect:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triatominae
Is just me or is every month Black History Month now?
Used to be a country of law, order and swift justice.
“Once there was a country that knew how to deal with violent offenders. A child was raped and murdered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on December 22, 1921, the perpetrator pretending to be Santa Claus. The police quickly identified a suspect with a prior arrest for child molestation and apprehended him on Christmas Eve in a shack in the woods 12 miles from the crime scene. Blood-stained garments were found. Eyewitnesses testified to having watched the suspect lure the child away.
The trial was held on January 3, 1922, and the defendant convicted of first-degree murder. The case was open and shut, the defense attorney saw no reason to file an appeal. The prisoner expired in the electric chair on February 7, 1922, 48 days after the murder.” ~ Sheldon Bart over at AmericanThinker
Meanwhile the Ft. Hood jihadee turncoat soldier who killed 14 Americans in cold blood in front of many eyewitnesses is still alive today nearly 12 years after his crime. Why?
The way things are going, he will probably be turned loose and given his gun back.
Tomorrow’s Light
Times seem rough, times seem bad
It will get worse before it gets better
Most likely, a lot of us will not see it in our lifetime
Yet do not give up, do not be forlorn
In many years
One thousand to be precise
The judgement of the wicked
All over the earth, will begin
This world, our little planet
Is not our home, not the dirt, not the water
Yea, even the stars in heaven
In Paradise, out home awaits
Fret not, for man can only hurt the body
But the mind, the soul, they live free
In times of distress, in times of sorrow
Forget the trials of today, look toward tomorrow
Do not fight a battle you cannot win
Do not kick against the goads
Let not the mind and body sin
The battle is God’s
We do what we can
Raise our voices, take a stand
Desiring mercy, not sacrifice
The battle is won
Look to the creator of all
Seek solace and comfort
Even in the darkest hour, the blackest night
His light, the Spirit of Life opens your eyes to tomorrow’s light
God bless
Thank you for posting that. I needed it. Prayed to God at Christmas time, Lord, please don’t give up on the USA. Don’t abandon the people who try to follow God’s word. I’m Catholic in NY State. The Pope and many in the Hierarchy have abandoned the values of the church. Letting China pick bishops, hiding child abuse by their priests (of which I have experienced), wasting donations on corrupt or questionable expenditures, not fighting against threats to religious freedom, and encouraging pols who blatantly legislate against the Church and many other Christian/Judeo faiths. They sold us out to Communists, Race Baiting Frauds, Biological Science idiots, and progressives in order to promote carbon neutrality, wealth redistribution, open borders, etc. I’ll continue to practice my faith but without donating to the money changers. God bless.
You humble me.
God, the author of life, mercy, grace, and hope, has blessed me beyond measure and He gives words to speak.
https://michaeljlindell.com
Video outlining election fraud.
I’ve seen bits and pieces but there is a lot of forensic evidence to support the claim.
Now what?
Now nothing. All we are doing is documenting our demise.
January 24th on the traditional Calendar of the Orthodox Christian Church and February 5th on the civil or commercial calendar.
The Holy Hieromartyr Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, endured years of tortures and physical cruelty before being beheaded by the Emperor’s men while serving the Divine Liturgy in the years circa 310-312.
Memo reminder…
https://twitter.com/Melissa91260486/status/1357755550344298498
Here it comes. The first blast of Arctic air is headed down and will drop temps considerably for much of the nation. Florida, which has already had a damaging blast is in for another that will damage the citrus crop. To make matters worse many of us will have some pretty brisk winds along with it driving the wind chill to potentially dangerous levels.
A couple weeks ago I posted that this was coming about now based on Joe Bastardi’s long range forecast which differed considerably from what the major weather models were forecasting at the time. Joe said at that time and reiterated it again last Saturday that much of the US should expect more of these stormy and colder than average temperature blasts that will last throughout the month and into early March. He is confident that we are going to have a “later than average spring”.
It’s that darn climate change again of course. No matter what happens it’s always because of climate change you know.
Mid 80s Florida lost at least the tomato crop because of long term freeze. Yeah weather happens. Ohh the sky is falling or something.
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero (Reisen) and the decline of Japanese airpower,
The Japanese would all most certainly not have opted for war with the US without this excellent fighter aircraft and the stock of outstanding Naval pilots they had to fly it.
The aircraft was highly maneuverable with a fantastic rate of climb and exceptional operational range, and excellent armament for it’s time. It was made to be able to out turn and out climb it’s opponents. Through the first year of the war the Zero was the best fighter aircraft in the world being suited perfectly for it’s purpose and the conditions which it had to operate in and being flown by the most highly trained pilots in the world, bar none.
In July of 1942 the US recovered a flyable Zero from the tundra on Akutan island in the Aleutian chain, The aircraft was quickly evaluated and what was learned was quickly put . to good use. At the time the Grumman F6F Hellcat was nearing completion of its development. Based on the data received from the testing of the Akutan zero, design changes were made to the F6F to specifically make it better capable of taking on the Zero. What resulted was the most effective carrier based US fighter of the war responsible for the downing of more Japanese aircraft than any other US Naval type. (Some will say that the Hellcat downed more Japanese aircraft than any other US type from any service. I am not sure, but that seems unlikely to me. )
At the time of the Battle of Midway the average Japanese Naval pilot had a over 450 hours flight time while the average American Naval aviator had about 150 hours. The US Army Air Corp pilots at the time had even less flight time logged on the average than their Naval counterparts. Quite a few of the Japanese pilots had combat experience in the skies over China. IMO as a whole the Japanese pilots at the time were the best military pilots in the world at the time they attacked Pearl Harbor and their Naval fighter aviators the best of the best.
However as the war progressed the qualitative advantage in both aircraft and pilots that Nippon could field was ground down. This occurred as the quality and quantity of the US military pilots and aircraft steadily increased. By the middle of 1943 the decline in the quality and quantity of Japanese pilots had dropped to the point that they could never recover their superiority.
How did this occur? How did the US manage to dig out of the deep qualitative hole it found itself in when the war started?
There are several reasons why this shift in aviation power come about.
The first is the most obvious. The US was an industrial giant. The arsenal of democracy with it’s industry having already started to gear up as it supplied the powers facing Nazi Germany with the materials of war! Then came the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the nations population was unified and motivated like it had never been before. The great industrialists, all of them, turned their efforts towards developing and mass producing a massive arsenal of weapons with a speed and vigor unlike anything the world had ever seen before. And unlike Japan, the US had the natural resources to match it’s industrial capability.
And when shortages of a particular critical strategic raw material did occur the engineers and scientists innovated solutions to make products that often turned out to be superior in performance to those produced with the raw material that had been in short supply.
Perhaps the best single example of this adaptability and innovation was the massive effort to improve and produce synthetic rubber in versions having all kinds of different properties required for it’s intended function. Synthetic rubber had been around for years before the war but it’s applications were somewhat limited because it had not been developed in versions adequate for many potential applications before the war. There had been no need with a ready supply of latex coming from rubber plantations of the far east. But when the Japanese gained control of the vast majority of worlds rubber tree plantations the need for rubber to feed the massive build up of the war industry and the weapons it was to produce was acute.
The US military ground forces were developed to be more mechanized and mobile than any in the world and that meant vehicles, millions of them when one adds in the huge amounts supplied to our allies, and the tires they would run on. The US supplied 200,000 Studebaker 2 1/2 ton trucks to Stalin’s Russia along with spare tires and rubber parts to keep them running. GMC alone produced 571,073 trucks of various sizes and models from 1940 to 1945. Dodge and Studebaker and Ford were adding like numbers of various wheeled vehicles. With other smaller manufactures also producing significant quantities of heavy trucks and prime movers.
But it was not just tires, radiator hoses, and suspension bushings for vehicles that were critical. Massive quantities of rubber were needed for aircraft and ships and all kinds of other weapons and applications. An Iowa class battleship required about 150,000 lb of rubber in it’s construction. Rubber used in all kinds of different applications and requiring various properties for their specific applications/functions.
Then there were was production machining of steel, aluminum, and various alloys. Even before the war the US was far advanced over the Japanese in production and machining of these metals. And way ahead in the science of metallurgy which was especially critical for advanced aircraft engine production. As the war progressed and aircraft engines became ever more powerful and complex the Japanese simply could not keep up. The Japanese aeronautical engineers continued to develop aircraft designs that would have maintained parity in performance with the new types the US was fielding. However, due to lack of raw materials and limited metallurgical expertise they simply could not produce the alloys needed to make various components reliable.
It was inevitable that the US would far outstrip Japan in both quantity and quality of aircraft and other weapons of war. Admiral Yamamoto’s fear that the attack on Pearl Harbor he had planned would awaken an industrial giant was realized in spades.
But as has been demonstrated time and again during the history war in the air, the most critical factor in air to air combat is the quality of the pilot. This fact has been demonstrated many times but Chuck Yeager described an example the best I think. During the Korean war Yeager was the pilot that test flew the first MIG-15 that the US got it’s hands on. American pilots were reporting the MIG had all kinds of advantages over the aircraft they were flying. Yeager ended that BS quickly. An Air Force colonel was making such claims in a bar to Yeager. Yeager arranged for a dog fight with him. Yeager would fly an F-86 and take on the Colonel as he flew the MIG 15 after the Colonel had a chance to get enough hours in the type to become familiar with it. Yeager waxed the Colonels ass. Then they traded aircraft and Yeager flew the MIG 15 and waxed the Colonels ass again. It was all there on the gun camera film.
So how did the US gain a qualitative and quantitative superiority in pilots over the Japanese which started with what were the best trained pilots in the world at the time?
There were several factors that led to the elimination of the Japanese advantage in pilot quality.
First off the Japanese Naval pilot training program from the beginning stressed quality over quantity. The washout rate was very high and the programs took from 1 1/2 years to 2 years to produce a qualified pilot depending on the education level the recruit started with. It was a very inefficient program that from the beginning failed to produce enough pilots to replace operational losses. By the time the Japanese tried to increase the numbers of pilots being produced most of the superb pilots they had started with were dead! They had lost their base of experience and their training programs were overwhelmed.
The American pilot programs were efficient and set up to mass produce pilots from the start. They may not have produced as good a quality a pilot as the Japanese method did right out of school, but they produced a lot of pilots that were good enough. And the system grew upon itself and continually improved because unlike the Japanese the US brought combat experienced pilots home to train the new crops.
The loss of Japans best pilots occurred much more quickly than was anticipated for several reasons,
The US quite simply responded faster, more aggressively, and more competently than the Japanese war planners had ever anticipated and because of Japanese cultural and military norms and failures in logistics and cooperation between their Army and Navy.
The war in the Pacific was in it’s essence a war to take islands in order to stablish bases and especially airbases. .. And that put Japan at a disadvantage from the beginning since they had failed to develop the logistical and civil engineering units and equipment to efficiently and quickly build and maintain such installations. .
When the Japanese built an airfield they relied heavily on manual labor since they lacked the construction machinery. The manual labor was often supplied by slave labors brought in from Korea or from local sources of manpower. Such laborers were referred to as “flies” by their Japanese masters. The result of such a system were generally the relatively slow construction of a rough and poorly maintained airfield that resulted in excessive operational losses of aircraft. The Japanese even lacked the ability to provide their strips with PSP (Perforated Steel Plate) which was a mainstay for US airstrip construction in locations where the ground was marshy or liable to water drainage problems or where the soil was so sandy that it lacked the ability to support aircraft.
This situation came about in part because the Japanese had planned that the Central Pacific area would the responsibility of their Navy and the Army would be responsible for about everything else. This division of responsibilities resulted from the fact that their Army and Navy were at odds both politically and militarily from the beginning and objected to cooperating with each other any more than was absolutely necessary But the battle of Guadalcanal quickly made it apparent that the SNLF (Special Naval Landing Force) was totally inadequate for the task of throwing the Marines off the island and so the Navy and the Army were going to have to cooperate with each other and had relatively little experience doing so, .
As bad as the conditions for the Marine, Navy, and Army air forces on Guadalcanal were, those for the Japanese pilots were often worse. Because of their do or die attitude the Japanese military medical establishment and support was minimal compared to that US forces received. Thus their warriors, including their pilots, lacked the benefit of comprehensive preventative medicine practices and medical care that their US counterparts enjoyed. Far more Japanese were felled by the various diseases and infections rampant on those tropical islands they fought over. So the very attitude that death was as light as a feather which made the Japanese such tenacious fighters to the death also doomed to suffer diseases and infections and sometimes malnutrition that incapacitated or killed many of them and debilitated many others.
Those Japanese pilots that did not suffer and fail from such maladies faced flying and fighting until they were seriously wounded or killed. Unlike US pilots there were no rests away from the battle area to recuperate. American pilots, and quite often whole units, were cycled on a periodic basis to Australia for R&R, In some cases more frequent trips to Australia when a pilots body weight fell below a certain level. For the Japanese pilots it was fight until you could fight no more or died.
And die they did. During the fight for Guadalcanal the Japanese had to fly hundreds of miles from their existing bases to attack. This condition came about because of their failure and inability to quickly establish new bases closer to the action. And so when their aircraft was damaged or they were injured their odds of making back to their base were relatively poor and the Japanese had no formal search and rescue programs to try and save those pilots that had to bail out. While the Americans fighting to defend their field were quite often rescued if they survived to bail out. And the local natives and coast watchers helped considerably in these efforts while the downed Japanese that came across the natives would be more likely to be killed because of the poor treatment of the locals by the Japanese and the relatively good treatment they had received at the hands of local Australian authorities before the war. It is a fact that some Japanese pilots ended up in the stew pots of local inhabitants.
It was a scenario that played out time and again as American forces advanced up the Solomon chain to isolate the Japanese strong point at Rabaul.
I did my calculations and figured that I should set the onion seeds into trays on Valentine’s day (counted backwards from our usual last frost date). A late spring would mean I should delay starting the seeds for a week, or even two…
Same would be the case for the herbs, the peppers, the tomatoes, and ESPECIALLY the eggplants. For me, if eggplant seedlings get chilled, they just don’t produce well AT ALL.
hmmmm….I think I’ll spend some time this weekend recalculating the timing for seed starting based on this information.
Thank you for the info, rah!
Well then. It’s time to break out the tent and stove and enjoy the woods in winter. (Not me. Generic photo, Kifaru 4 man shelter with stove.)
BARDSFM….Good Stuff!
Sundance & fellow Treepers, I want to share some hopeful news. In NY’s 22nd Congressional district, the last undecided race, Claudia Tenney will be certified the winner. Alerts go out should House Dems try to stop her being seated after the constant Democrat refrain about Trump not accepting certifications.
Memo reminder… 😉
Isn’t this rich. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/twitter-condemns-myanmars-move-to-block-access
test –
Jesus Christ is Lord.
test for tonite
Jesus Christ is Lord.