U.S. Navy SBD Dauntless - En Route to bomb Japanese Airfield on Munda, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, from Guadalcanal - 2/3.1943.

We've all probably seen this image and wondered about it. I've always thought it was Oriental in origin but I didn't realize the true purpose. Daisugi is just another way the Japanese have learned to make more out of a situation that one would normally get. Conservation is seriously important when space is limited and they have also always impressed me as a very artistic culture.

 On This Date In History

On March 8, 1950, Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, expands its product offerings to include a microbus, which goes into production on March 8, 1950. Known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter, the bus was a favorite mode of transportation for hippies in the U.S. during the 1960s and became an icon of the American counterculture movement.
The VW bus was reportedly the brainchild of Dutch businessman Ben Pon, an importer of Beetles to the Netherlands, who saw a market for a small bus and in 1947 sketched out his concept. Volkswagen engineers further developed the idea and in March 1950, the vehicle, with its boxy, utilitarian shape and rear engine, went into production. The bus eventually collected a number of nicknames, including the “Combi” (for combined-use vehicle) and the “Splittie” (for its split windshield); in Germany it was known as the “Bulli.” In the U.S., it was referred to by some as a hippie van or bus because it was used to transport groups of young people and their camping gear and other supplies to concerts and anti-war rallies. Some owners painted colorful murals on their buses and replaced the VW logo on the front with a peace symbol. According to “Bug” by Phil Patton, when Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it.
The bus was only the second product offering for Volkswagen, a company whose history dates back to the 1930s Germany. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and announced he wanted to build new roads and affordable cars for the German people. At that time, Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was already working on creating a small car for the masses. Hitler and Porsche later met and the engineer was charged with designing the inexpensive, mass-produced Volkswagen, or “people’s car.” In 1938, work began on the Volkswagen factory, located in present-day Wolfsburg, Germany; however, full-scale vehicle production didn’t begin until after World War II.
In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., where the initial reception was tepid, due in part to the car’s historic Nazi connection as well as its small size and unusual rounded shape (which later led to it being dubbed the “Beetle”). In 1959, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach launched a groundbreaking campaign that promoted the car’s diminutive size as a distinct advantage to consumers, and over the next several years VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S. In 1972, the VW Beetle passed the iconic Ford Model T as the world’s best-selling car, with over 15 million vehicles produced.

The 'Samba'

 

The next year, 1951, the Samba went into production. It had windows all around and optional roof windows as well.

On March 8, 1942, Dutch forces surrender to the Japanese after two months of fighting.
Java is an island of modern-day Indonesia, and it lies southeast of Malaysia and Sumatra, south of Borneo and west of Bali. The Dutch had been in Java since 1596, establishing the Dutch East India Company, a trading company with headquarters at Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), which the Dutch commandeered in 1619. The Dutch East India Company began to assert greater and greater control over the Muslim kingdoms of the East Indies, transforming them into vassal states, with peasants growing rice, sugar, pepper, and coffee for the Dutch government. The company was dissolved in 1799 because of debts and corruption, and the Dutch government took control of the East Indies directly.
The British supplanted the Dutch in Java for a brief period (1811-1816), but the Dutch returned to power, slowly granting native Javanese more local control, even giving them a majority on the People’s Council. But on January 11, 1942, the Japanese declared war on the Royal Dutch government with its invasion of Borneo and the Island of Celebes, a date that also marked the beginning of the end of the Dutch presence in the East Indies. Sumatra was the next site of Japanese occupation, with paratroopers and troops landing from transports on February 14-16. Seven thousand British and Australian troops reinforced the Dutch fighters on Java, but the Allies pulled out of the fight in late February at the approach of two more large Japanese invasion forces that arrived on March 1.
The Dutch finally ended all resistance to the superior Japanese forces on March 8, surrendering on Java. Java’s independence of colonial control became a final fact of history in 1950, when it became part of the newly independent Republic of Indonesia.

 

Japanese invasion of Java

 

 

The Japanese lines of advance in the Dutch East Indies, Sarawak and North Borneo (British), and Portuguese Timor

Hein ter Poorten surrendering to the Japanese, Kalidjati, Java, Dutch East Indies, 8 Mar 1942

 On This Date In History

On February 27, 1942, the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (AV-3), is sunk by Japanese warplanes and all of its 32 aircraft are lost.
The Langley was launched in 1912 as the naval collier (coal transport ship) Jupiter. After World War I, the Jupiter was converted into the Navy’s first aircraft carrier and rechristened the Langley, after aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley. It was also the Navy’s first electrically propelled ship, capable of speeds of 15 knots. On October 17, 1922, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane, a VE-7-SF, launched from the Langley's decks. Although planes had taken off from ships before, it was nevertheless a historic moment. After 1937, the Langley lost the forward 40 percent of her flight deck as part of a conversion to seaplane tender, a mobile base for squadrons of patrol bombers.
On December 8, 1941, the Langley was part of the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked. She immediately set sail for Australia, arriving on New Year’s Day, 1942. On February 22, commanded by Robert P. McConnell, the Langley, carrying 32 Warhawk fighters, left as part of a convoy to aid the Allies in their battle against the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies.
On February 27, the Langley parted company from the convoy and headed straight for the port at Tjilatjap, Java. About 74 miles south of Java, the carrier met up with two U.S. escort destroyers when nine Japanese twin-engine bombers attacked. Although the Langley had requested a fighter escort from Java for cover, none could be spared. The first two Japanese bomber runs missed their target, as they were flying too high, but the Langley's luck ran out the third time around and it was hit three times, setting the planes on her flight deck aflame. The carrier began to list. Commander McConnell lost his ability to navigate the ship. McConnell ordered the Langley abandoned, and the escort destroyers were able to take his crew to safety. Of the 300 crewmen, only 16 were lost. The destroyers then sank the Langley before the Japanese were able to capture it

The USS Langley served as a place for the US Navy to experiment with tactics and techniques as they learned to incorporate the airplane into naval operations.  The Langley first served in the Atlantic before moving to the Pacific, allowing numerous early naval aviators to practice landing and takeoffs on the deck.  The Langley is seen here underway off San Diego, California, 1928, with Vought VE-7 aircraft on the flight deck.  (US Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 81279)

Numerous other flight experiments were also conducted using the USS Langley as the testbed.  A Pitcairn XOP-1 (PCA-2) Autogiro can be seen here piloted by Lt. Alfred Pride in flight off the starboard bow of the USS Langley, while the carrier is underway, probably on September 23, 1931, when the XOP-1 became the first rotary-wing aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier.  (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM A-47855)

The USS Langley started its career as the collier USS Jupiter.  The USS Jupiter transported coal for the Navy but was converted into an aircraft carrier in the Norfolk Navy Yard by adding a flight deck and aircraft elevators.  The large holds that were once used to transport coal within the ship made ideal airplane hangers once the conversion was complete.  (US Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 52365)

The namesake for the USS Langley was Samuel Pierpont Langley, aviation pioneer and third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.  Langley tested his aircraft, the Langley Aerodrome, on a houseboat in the Potomac River, connecting him in a way to naval aviation. (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM 2003-30822)

Many technologies still in use on modern aircraft carriers, such as catapults to launch aircraft off the flight deck, were first experimented with aboard the USS Langley.  A Douglas DT-2 is seen here with catapult deck gear preparing to launch in 1925. (US Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 72930)

The large hold of the USS Langley allowed numerous aircraft to be stored when not performing flight operations.  The larger plane in the foreground is a Douglas DT torpedo bomber, with its wings removed. Other aircraft are Vought VE-7s of Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2), including Bureau #s A5936 (marked 2-F-9) and A5938 (marked 2-F-8).  (US Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 72927)

In 1937, the USS Langley was converted into a seaplane tender and reclassified as AV-3.  The flight deck was shortened, and equipment was added that allowed US Navy seaplanes to be repaired and refueled on board while at sea.  (US Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 81918)

As the United States entered World War II, the USS Langley was still operational and was put into service in the Pacific.  On February 27, 1942, the Langley was carrying 32 Curtiss P-40 "Warhawk" aircraft for the defense of Java when it was attacked by Japanese air assets.  The USS Langley was crippled during the attack and was later scuttled by torpedoes from the USS Whipple (seen here) after being abandoned.

 

 On This Date In History

On February 26, 1945, an ammunition dump on the Philippine island of Corregidor is blown up by a remnant of the Japanese garrison, causing more American casualties on the eve of U.S. victory there.
In May 1942, Corregidor, a small rock island at the mouth of Manila Bay, remained one of the last Allied strongholds in the Philippines after the Japanese victory at Bataan. Constant artillery shelling and aerial bombardment attacks ate away at the American and Filipino defenders.
Although still managing to sink many Japanese barges as they approached the northern shores of the island, the Allied troops could not hold the invader off any longer. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Philippines, offered to surrender Corregidor to Japanese Gen. Masaharu Homma, but Homma wanted the complete, unconditional capitulation of all American forces throughout the Philippines. Wainwright had little choice given the odds against him and the poor physical condition of his troops, he had already lost 800 men. He surrendered at midnight. All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila.
But the Americans returned to the Philippines in full strength in October 1944, beginning with the recapture of Leyte, the Philippines’ central island. It took 67 days to subdue, with the loss of more than 55,000 Japanese soldiers during the two months of battle, and approximately another 25,000 mopping up pockets of resistance in early 1945. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500.
Following the American victory of Leyte was the return of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the struggle for Luzon and the race for Manila, the Philippine capital. One week into the Allied battle for Luzon, U.S. airborne troops parachuted onto Corregidor to take out the Japanese garrison there, which was believed to be 1,000 strong, but was actually closer to 5,000. Fierce fighting resulted in the deaths of most of the Japanese soldiers, with the survivors left huddling in the Malinta Tunnel for safety.
Ironically, the tunnel, 1,400 feet long and dug deep in the heart of Corregidor, had served as MacArthur’s headquarters and a U.S. supply depot before the American defeat there. MacArthur feared the Japanese soldiers could sit there for months. The garrison had no such intention, though, and ignited a nearby ammunition dump, an act of defiance, and possibly of mass suicide.
Most of the Japanese were killed in the explosion, along with 52 Americans. Those Japanese who survived the blast were forced out into the open and decimated by the Americans. Corregidor was officially in American hands by early March.

 

Hot Damn ... my new dishwasher just arrived. At first I felt ashamed for ordering a Japanese model and not American, but the American models are too damn noisy and high maintenance. And I got a deal on this one because I ordered the smaller size and I ordered the stripped down model. The big plus on the Japanese model is that it comes with the sammich maker attachment. Can't wait to give it a spin.

 

 On This Date In History

On Jan. 24, 1989, confessed serial killer Theodore Bundy was executed in Florida State Prison’s electric chair and pronounced dead at 7:16 a.m.
Ted Bundy’s death and execution were famously a national event for onlookers outside the prison gates and millions of viewers watching from home. “Burn, Bundy, burn!” adorned protest signs and comprised the chants of hundreds, The whole world was watching, eager to bear witness to Ted Bundy’s death. For a man who brutally killed at least 30 human beings in the 1970s. one of them 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, the desire was certainly understandable, in some respects.
It was Bundy’s time in Florida that arguably put the final nail in the proverbial coffin. There was only one other victim after the Florida State University murders at the Chi Omega sorority house on Jan. 15, 1978.
About three weeks after terrorizing the Tallahassee campus, Bundy kidnapped 12-year-old Kimberly Leach from her school in Lake City, Florida. He killed the girl and dumped her body in Suwannee River State Park.
In February 1978, he was finally caught by a Pensacola police officer who found Bundy’s car slightly too suspicious to dismiss. Not only did the car have stolen plates, but Bundy provided the officer with a stolen driver’s license. After years of killing, Ted Bundy was finally caught.
On July 24, 1979, Bundy was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of Bowman and Levy, as well as the attempted murders of Chandler, Kleiner, and Thomas.
In Jan. 1980, Bundy stood trial in Orlando, where he was convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Kimberly Leach. The evidence presented in court included eyewitness testimony, fibers, and hotel receipts from Lake City.
Like many death row inmates across the United States, Ted Bundy spent years in prison before his inevitable execution. After nine years in Florida State Prison, on Jan. 24, 1989, Ted Bundy was put to death by the state.

 

 

On January 24, 1972, after 28 years of hiding in the jungles of Guam, local farmers discover Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who fought in World War II.
Guam, a 200-square-mile island in the western Pacific, became a U.S. possession in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In 1941, the Japanese attacked and captured it, and in 1944, after three years of Japanese occupation, U.S. forces retook Guam. It was at this time that Yokoi, left behind by the retreating Japanese forces, went into hiding rather than surrender to the Americans. In the jungles of Guam, he carved survival tools and for the next three decades waited for the return of the Japanese and his next orders. After he was discovered in 1972, he was finally discharged and sent home to Japan, where he was hailed as a national hero. He subsequently married and returned to Guam for his honeymoon. His handcrafted survival tools and threadbare uniform are on display in the Guam Museum in Agana.

 

 

 

 
On January 24, 1935, canned beer makes its debut. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production.
By the late 19th century, cans were instrumental in the mass distribution of foodstuffs, but it wasn’t until 1909 that the American Can Company made its first attempt to can beer. This was unsuccessful, and the American Can Company would have to wait for the end of Prohibition in the United States before it tried again. Finally in 1933, after two years of research, American Can developed a can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.
The concept of canned beer proved to be a hard sell, but Krueger’s overcame its initial reservations and became the first brewer to sell canned beer in the United States. The response was overwhelming. Within three months, over 80 percent of distributors were handling Krueger’s canned beer, and Krueger’s was eating into the market share of the “big three” national brewers, Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz. Competitors soon followed suit, and by the end of 1935, over 200 million cans had been produced and sold.
The purchase of cans, unlike bottles, did not require the consumer to pay a deposit. Cans were also easier to stack, more durable and took less time to chill. As a result, their popularity continued to grow throughout the 1930s, and then exploded during World War II, when U.S. brewers shipped millions of cans of beer to soldiers overseas. After the war, national brewing companies began to take advantage of the mass distribution that cans made possible, and were able to consolidate their power over the once-dominant local breweries, which could not control costs and operations as efficiently as their national counterparts.
Today, canned beer accounts for approximately half of the $20 billion U.S. beer industry. Not all of this comes from the big national brewers: Recently, there has been renewed interest in canning from microbrewers and high-end beer sellers, who are realizing that cans guarantee purity and taste by preventing light damage and oxidation.

  

Gottfried Krueger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On This Date In History

On December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.
Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and developed an interest in aviation after learning of the glider flights of the German engineer Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s. Unlike their older brothers, Orville and Wilbur did not attend college, but they possessed extraordinary technical ability and a sophisticated approach to solving problems in mechanical design. They built printing presses and in 1892 opened a bicycle sales and repair shop. Soon, they were building their own bicycles, and this experience, combined with profits from their various businesses, allowed them to pursue actively their dream of building the world’s first airplane.
After exhaustively researching other engineers’ efforts to build a heavier-than-air, controlled aircraft, the Wright brothers wrote the U.S. Weather Bureau inquiring about a suitable place to conduct glider tests. They settled on Kitty Hawk, an isolated village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, which offered steady winds and sand dunes from which to glide and land softly. Their first glider, tested in 1900, performed poorly, but a new design, tested in 1901, was more successful. Later that year, they built a wind tunnel where they tested nearly 200 wings and airframes of different shapes and designs. The brothers’ systematic experimentations paid off, they flew hundreds of successful flights in their 1902 glider at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk. Their biplane glider featured a steering system, based on a movable rudder, that solved the problem of controlled flight. They were now ready for powered flight.
In Dayton, they designed a 12-horsepower internal combustion engine with the assistance of machinist Charles Taylor and built a new aircraft to house it. They transported their aircraft in pieces to Kitty Hawk in the autumn of 1903, assembled it, made a few further tests, and on December 14 Orville made the first attempt at powered flight. The engine stalled during take-off and the plane was damaged, and they spent three days repairing it. Then at 10:35 a.m. on December 17, in front of five witnesses, the aircraft ran down a monorail track and into the air, staying aloft for 12 seconds and flying 120 feet. The modern aviation age was born. Three more tests were made that day, with Wilbur and Orville alternately flying the airplane. Wilbur flew the last flight, covering 852 feet in 59 seconds.
During the next few years, the Wright brothers further developed their airplanes but kept a low profile about their successes in order to secure patents and contracts for their flying machines. By 1905, their aircraft could perform complex maneuvers and remain aloft for up to 39 minutes at a time. In 1908, they traveled to France and made their first public flights, arousing widespread public excitement. In 1909, the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps purchased a specially constructed plane, and the brothers founded the Wright Company to build and market their aircraft. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912; Orville lived until 1948.
The historic Wright brothers’ aircraft of 1903 is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

 

 Orville and Wilbur Wright

 The original Wright flyer in the Smithsonian

 

On December 17, 1944, during World War II, U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issues Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that, effective January 2, 1945, Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast could return to their homes.
On February 19, 1942, 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas “as deemed necessary or desirable.” The military in turn defined the entire West Coast, home to the majority of Americans of Japanese ancestry or citizenship, as a military area. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military in scattered locations around the country. For the next two and a half years, many of these Japanese Americans endured extremely difficult living conditions and poor treatment by their military guards.
During the course of World War II, 10 Americans were convicted of spying for Japan, but not one of them was of Japanese ancestry. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to recompense each surviving internee with a tax-free check for $20,000 and an apology from the U.S. government.

 

Instructions to Japanese regarding Executive Order 9066

 

Posting of the instructions throughout the restricted areas

 

 

 

 Japanese citizens registering for relocation.

 

 
On December 17, 1777, the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, count of Vergennes, officially acknowledges the United States as an independent nation. News of the Continental Army’s overwhelming victory against the British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga gave Benjamin Franklin new leverage in his efforts to rally French support for the American rebels. Although the victory occurred in October, news did not reach France until December 4th.
Franklin had quickly mustered French support upon his arrival in December 1776. France’s humiliating loss of North America to the British in the Seven Years’ War made the French eager to see an American victory. However, the French king was reluctant to back the rebels openly. Instead, in May 1776, Louis XVI sent unofficial aid to the Continental forces and the playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais helped Franklin organize private assistance for the American cause.
Franklin, who often wore a fur cap, captured the imagination of Parisians as an American man of nature and his well-known social charms stirred French passions for all things American. He was the toast of Parisian society, enchanting salons with his wide-ranging knowledge, social graces and witty repartee. Nevertheless, he was not allowed to appear at court.
It took the impressive and long-awaited victory at Saratoga to convince Louis that the American rebels had some hope of defeating the British empire. His enthusiasm for the victory paired with the foreign minister’s concern that the loss of Philadelphia to the British would lead Congress to surrender, gave Franklin two influential allies with two powerful, if opposing, reasons for officially backing the American cause. A formal treaty of alliance followed on February 6, 1778.