The ZiS-E134, a beast from the USSR

In the 1950s the Soviets were looking for a truck that was as good as a normal vehicle on road, and as good as a tank off road. This tall order was answered with the ZiS-E134, a beast of a truck that could quite literally go anywhere.
It was an 8×8 with four-wheel steering, adjustable tire pressures and incredible traction. It proved to be well worth against what was available at the time and an amphibious version covered water-based activities.
However these fantastic trucks didn’t enter service due to a late change in requirements.
After the Second World War the Soviet Union understood that there were limitations with the trucks used in their logistical system. This problem was made even worse in the early years of the Cold War due to the development of guided missiles and much more accurate bombing.
These weapons would likely be used used against roads and transport networks at the start of a conflict with the west, knocking out their supply system early on. If operations were to continue in these circumstances, the Soviets would have to use off-road supply routes instead.
So in 1954 the Council of Ministers of the USSR initiated a project to develop a wheeled vehicle that could be as good off-road as a tracked machine, and as good on road as a truck.
ZiS-E134 Model No. 1

The ZiS-E134 was a large truck, with four axles and eight wheels for maximum traction. It measured 6.6 meters in length and weighed 7.7 tons empty. On top, the bodywork and bed was taken from the ZIS-151-type truck.
The axles were the same as the BTR-152 for parts commonality, and each connected to huge, 1.2 meter-wide tires. These tires were specially designed for high elasticity so they could absorb shock, reducing the wear on suspension components.
Thanks to the ZiS-E134’s very elastic tires, the pressure inside could be reduced to as low as 3 psi and kept there for long periods of time. At this pressure, the tires’ contact area was five times greater than standard.
A transfer case offered low-range gearing for increased torque at low speeds. From here, power was sent via prop shafts to the four axles. The ZiS-E134 could run in four wheel drive, or eight wheel drive.
For additional off-road performance, the differentials were self-locking. This stopped the wheels on each axle spinning at different rates to each other in soft ground. And, for the benefit of wear and the driver, the ZiS-E134 rode on springs and hydraulic shock absorbers.
Steering was achieved through the ZiS-E134’s four front wheels.
ZiS-E134 Model No. 2

 

The success of the ZiS-E134 Model No.1 led to a second version, Model No.2.
This machine used many of the same components as Model No.1, but it was amphibious. It was first hoped that the movement of the tires would be enough to propel the truck through water, but when this didn’t work, it was fitted with a water jet from the PT-76 amphibious tank.
Top speed in water was around 4 mph.
As the tires for these trucks were so springy, designers actually ended up fitting the Model No.2’s wheels rigidly to the chassis, without any form of suspension. It simply relied on its soft tires for shock absorption.
Like Model No.1, Model No.2 also had four axles and stored its cargo in a bed at the rear.
However instead of a truck-like cab, Model No.2 had an open crew compartment that could be optionally covered by canvas, supported by ribs.
Testing began in October 1955, almost immediately after the prototype was completed.
The ZiS-E134 quickly proved to be an absolute off-road king. It was driven late in the year, during the infamous mud season known as rasputitsa. Long distances were travelled in extremely difficult conditions, where things like diff locks, reduced tire pressures and all wheel drive were necessary to make progress.
Its huge 370 mm ground clearance was fantastic over rough ground, and it was even capable of climbing a 60 cm vertical wall. It could ford 1 meter of water, drive through waist height swamps, and cross 1.5 meter-wide trenches.
Incredibly, it was capable of doing all this with 3 tons of cargo in the back and a relatively comfortable driver. The automatic transmission and power steering made his time in the two-man cab much easier than in standard cargo trucks of the day.
The adjustable tire pressure system fed air into the tires via hoses that extended outside the wheels. Reportedly this system worked fine, but one questions how long this would survive while moving through forests, past rocks etc.
In some conditions, the ZiS-E134 actually showed better performance than tracked vehicles as it had a lower ground pressure. In early 1956, it was tested in very deep snow against the best off-roaders the USSR had to offer.
Due to its ground clearance snow had a tendency to build up around chassis, but it proved capable of moving through up to 650 mm of snow. When a plough was fitted to the front, the ZiS-E134 travelled through 1.2 meter tall snow banks.
Despite the capabilities of the ZiS-E134 trucks, they wouldn’t ultimately enter service. This is strange considering they were some of the most capable off-roaders in the world at the time, but this was not the reason for their cancellation.
It was a simple change of requirements that would be their end.
The original requirements stated a cargo capacity of 3 tons, and a towed weight of 6 tons – both of which the ZiS-E134 successfully met. But during the project the military decided that they wanted double the cargo capacity and double the towed weight.
This was not something that could be achieved by simply modifying the truck, so in the end the vehicle was cancelled. Not all was lost though, as the lessons learned during the project were applied to later vehicles.

https://militaryhistoria.com/zis-e134-8x8-truck/

 On This Date In History

On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approves legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress,” thus establishing the Library of Congress. The first books, ordered from London, arrived in 1801 and were stored in the U.S. Capitol, the library’s first home. The first library catalog, dated April 1802, listed 964 volumes and nine maps. Twelve years later, the British army invaded the city of Washington and burned the Capitol, including the then 3,000 volume Library of Congress.
Former president Thomas Jefferson, who advocated the expansion of the library during his two terms in office, responded to the loss by selling his personal library, the largest and finest in the country, to Congress to “recommence” the library. The purchase of Jefferson’s 6,487 volumes was approved in the next year, and a professional librarian, George Watterston, was hired to replace the House clerks in the administration of the library. In 1851, a second major fire at the library destroyed about two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including two-thirds of the Thomas Jefferson library. Congress responded quickly and generously to the disaster, and within a few years a majority of the lost books were replaced.
After the Civil War, the collection was greatly expanded, and by the 20th century the Library of Congress had become the de facto national library of the United States and one of the largest in the world. Today, the collection, housed in three enormous buildings in Washington, contains more than 17 million books, as well as millions of maps, manuscripts, photographs, films, audio and video recordings, prints, and drawings.

 

On April 24, 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute fails to deploy during his spacecraft’s landing.
Komarov was testing the spacecraft Soyuz I in the midst of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Earlier in 1967, the U.S. space program had experienced its own tragedy. Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chafee, NASA astronauts in the Apollo program, were killed in a fire during tests on the ground.
Komarov, a fighter pilot and aeronautical engineer, had made his first space trip in 1964, three years before the doomed 1967 voyage. After 24 hours and 16 orbits of the earth, Komarov was scheduled to reenter the atmosphere, but ran into difficulty handling the vessel and was unable to fire the rocket brakes. It took two more trips around the earth before the cosmonaut could manage reentry.
When Soyuz I reached an altitude of 23,000 feet, a parachute was supposed to deploy, bringing Komarov safely to earth. However, the lines of the chute had gotten tangled during the craft’s reentry difficulties and there was no backup chute. Komarov plunged to the ground and was killed. When the craft hit the ground, it was travelling at 144 km/h.
There was vast public mourning of Komarov in Moscow and his ashes were buried in the wall of the Kremlin. Sadly, Komarov’s wife had not been told of the Soyuz I launch until after Komarov was already in orbit and did not get to say goodbye to her husband.
Despite the dangers, both the Soviet Union and the U.S. continued their space exploration programs. The U.S. landed men on the moon just two years later.

 

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov

 

 Yuri Gagarin, (left) a Soviet cosmonaut, the first human to go into space with Vladimir Komarov. On a hunting trip together in early 1960’s.

 

Soyuz 1 Spacecraft.

Soviet officials observing the remains of Komarov

Valentina Komarov, the widow of Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, kisses a photograph of her dead husband during his official funeral, held in Moscow's Red Square on April 26, 1967.

 On This Date In History

On March 1, 1872, President Grant signs the bill creating the nation’s first national park at Yellowstone.
Native Americans had lived and hunted in the region that would become Yellowstone for hundreds of years before the first Anglo explorers arrived. Abundant game and mountain streams teaming with fish attracted the Indians to the region, though the awe inspiring geysers, canyons, and gurgling mud pots also fascinated them.
John Colter, the famous mountain man, was the first Anglo to travel through the area. After journeying with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, Colter joined a party of fur trappers to explore the wilderness. In 1807, he explored part of the Yellowstone plateau and returned with fantastic stories of steaming geysers and bubbling cauldrons. Some doubters accused the mountain man of telling tall tales and jokingly dubbed the area “Colter’s Hell.”
Before the Civil War, only a handful of trappers and hunters ventured into the area, and it remained largely a mystery. In 1869, the Folsom-Cook expedition made the first formal exploration, followed a year later by a much more thorough reconnaissance by the Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition. The key to Yellowstone’s future as a national park, though, was the 1871 exploration under the direction of the government geologist Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden brought along William Jackson, a pioneering photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant landscape artist, to make a visual record of the expedition. Their images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s wonders and caught the attention of the U.S. Congress.
Early in 1872, Congress moved to set aside 1,221,773 acres of public land straddling the future states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho as America’s first national park. President Grant signed the bill into law on this day in 1872. The Yellowstone Act of 1872 designated the region as a public “pleasuring-ground,” which would be preserved “from injury or spoilation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within.”
For a nation bent on settling and exploiting the West, the creation of Yellowstone was surprising. Many congressmen gave it their support simply because they believed the rugged and isolated region was of little economic value. Yet the Yellowstone Act of 1872 set a precedent and popularized the idea of preserving sections of the public domain for use as public parks. Congress went on to designate dozens of other national parks, and the idea spread to other nations around the world.

 

Ferdinand Hayden

Hayden Survey At Mirror Lake En Route To East Fork Of The Yellowstone River - August 24, 1871

Hayden Geological Survey - Yellowstone National Park - Began 6.8.1871

On March 1, 1966, Venera 3, a Soviet probe launched from Kazakhstan on November 15, 1965, collides with Venus, the second planet from the sun. Although Venera 3 failed in its mission to measure the Venusian atmosphere, it was the first unmanned spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet. Four years earlier, the U.S. probe Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to pass close enough to Venus to take scientific measurements of the planet, discovering surface temperatures in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface.
In 1967, Venera 4 succeeded where Venera 3 failed, successfully ejecting several scientific instruments, including a thermometer, a barometer, an atmospheric density gauge, and gas analyzers, into Venus’ atmosphere. Then, in 1970, Venera 7 became the first spacecraft created by humans to soft-land on Venus, successfully sending back images and data for 23 minutes before succumbing to the extremely high temperature and atmospheric pressure found on the planet’s surface.

 

On March 1, 1971, a bomb explodes in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., causing an estimated $300,000 in damage but hurting no one. A group calling itself the Weather Underground claimed credit for the bombing, which was done in protest of the ongoing U.S. supported Laos invasion.
The so-called Weathermen were a radical faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); the Weathermen advocated violent means to transform American society. The philosophical foundations of the Weathermen were Marxist in nature; they believed that militant struggle was the key to striking out against the state to build a revolutionary consciousness among the young, particularly the white working class. Their primary tools to achieving these ends were arson and bombing.
Among the other targets of Weathermen bombings were the Long Island Court House, the New York Police Department headquarters, the Pentagon, and the State Department. No one was killed in these bombings, because the bombers always called in an advanced warning. However, three members of the Weather Underground died on March 6, 1970, when the house in which they were constructing the bombs exploded.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbQCpUhONtk&t=29s

On March 1, 1692, in Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, are charged with the illegal practice of witchcraft. Later that day, Tituba, possibly under coercion, confessed to the crime, encouraging the authorities to seek out more Salem witches.
Trouble in the small Puritan community began the month before, when nine year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11 year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece, respectively, of the Reverend Samuel Parris, began experiencing fits and other mysterious maladies. A doctor concluded that the children were suffering from the effects of witchcraft, and the young girls corroborated the doctor’s diagnosis. With encouragement from a number of adults in the community, the girls, who were soon joined by other “afflicted” Salem residents, accused a widening circle of local residents of witchcraft, mostly middle aged women but also several men and even one four year-old child. During the next few months, the afflicted area residents incriminated more than 150 women and men from Salem Village and the surrounding areas of Satanic practices.
In June 1692, the special Court of Oyer, “to hear,” and Terminer, “to decide,” convened in Salem under Chief Justice William Stoughton to judge the accused. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem, who was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 10. Thirteen more women and four men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing. Most of those tried were condemned on the basis of the witnesses’ behavior during the actual proceedings, characterized by fits and hallucinations that were argued to be caused by the defendants on trial.
In October 1692, Governor William Phipps of Massachusetts ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer dissolved and replaced with the Superior Court of Judicature, which forbade the type of sensational testimony allowed in the earlier trials. Executions ceased, and the Superior Court eventually released all those awaiting trial and pardoned those sentenced to death. The Salem Witch Trials, which resulted in the executions of 19 innocent women and men, had effectively ended.

On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate. Bickering over land claims between Virginia and Maryland delayed final ratification for almost four more years. Maryland finally approved the Articles on March 1, 1781, affirming the Articles as the outline of the official government of the United States. The nation was guided by the Articles of Confederation until the implementation of the current U.S. Constitution in 1789.
The critical distinction between the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution, the primacy of the states under the Articles, is best understood by comparing the following lines.
The Articles of Confederation begin:
“To all to whom these Present shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States”
By contrast, the Constitution begins:
“We the People of the United States do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The predominance of the states under the Articles of Confederation is made even more explicit by the claims of Article II:
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
Less than five years after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, enough leading Americans decided that the system was inadequate to the task of governance that they peacefully overthrew their second government in just over 20 years. The difference between a collection of sovereign states forming a confederation and a federal government created by a sovereign people lay at the heart of debate as the new American people decided what form their government would take.
Between 1776 and 1787, Americans went from living under a sovereign king, to living in sovereign states, to becoming a sovereign people. That transformation defined the American Revolution.

 

On March 1, 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.
In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. If victorious in the conflict, Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson learned of the telegram’s contents on February 26; the next day he proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. He also authorized the State Department to make public the Zimmermann Telegram. On March 1, the news broke. Germany had already aroused Wilson’s ire, and that of the American public, with its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and its continued attacks against American ships. Some of those in the United States who still held out for neutrality at first claimed the telegram was a fake. This notion was dispelled two days later, when Zimmermann himself confirmed its authenticity.
Public opinion in the United States now swung firmly toward American entrance into World War I. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver a message of war. The United States formally entered the conflict four days later.

 

 

 

 

 On This Date In History

On February 3, 1966, the Soviet Union accomplishes the first controlled landing on the moon, when the unmanned spacecraft Lunik 9 touches down on the Ocean of Storms. After its soft landing, the circular capsule opened like a flower, deploying its antennas, and began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. The 220-pound landing capsule was launched from Earth on January 31.
Lunik 9 was the third major lunar first for the Soviet space program: On September 14, 1959, Lunik 2 became the first manmade object to reach the moon when it impacted with the lunar surface, and on October 7 of the same year Lunik 3 flew around the moon and transmitted back to Earth the first images of the dark side of the moon. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. space program consistently trailed the Soviet program in space firsts, a pattern that shifted dramatically with the triumph of America’s Apollo lunar program in the late 1960s.

 

 

 The first photo ever taken from the surface of another celestial body.

 

 

Oblique view of Planitia Descensus, on the moon, facing north. Galilaei crater is the largest crater above center. The approximate locations of the landing sites of Luna 8 and Luna 9 are shown as 8 and 9 respectively.

On February 3, 1944, American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations.
The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the “Japanese Mandated Islands” as determined by the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War, stipulated certain islands formerly controlled by Germany, including the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (except Guam), had to be ceded to the Japanese, though “overseen” by the League. But the Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. Non-Japanese, including Christian missionaries, were kept from the islands as naval and air bases, meant to threaten shipping lanes between Australia and Hawaii, were constructed.
During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign began with the Gilbert Islands, south of the Mandated Islands; U.S. forces conquered the Gilberts in November 1943. Next on the agenda was Operation Flintlock, a plan to capture the Marshall Islands.
Adm. Raymond Spruance led the 5th Fleet from Pearl Harbor on January 22, 1944, to the Marshalls, with the goal of getting 53,000 assault troops ashore two islets: Roi and Namur. Meanwhile, using the Gilberts as an air base, American planes bombed the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, which was located on Kwajalein, an atoll that was part of the Marshall cluster of atolls, islets and reefs.
By January 31, Kwajalein was devastated. Repeated carrier- and land-based air raids destroyed every Japanese airplane on the Marshalls. By February 3, U.S. infantry overran Roi and Namur atolls. The Marshalls were then effectively in American hands, with the loss of only 400 American lives.

 

 

 SBD Dauntless Over USS Washington / USS Lexington 1944

 

 A B-24 Liberator.

 

F6F-3 Hellcat landing on the USS Lexington, June 1944

 Japanese airfield under American air attack - Wotje Island – Official U.S. Navy photo

Marines and Coast Guardsmen with the Japanese flag. Engebi Island, Eniwetok Atoll, 19 February 1944.

 On This Date In History

On January 28, 1986, at 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.
In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.
In the aftermath of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the disaster was caused by the failure of an “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive loss. As a result, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.
In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.
On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.
The Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011 after its final mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.

 

 

 

Space Shuttle Challenger memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

On January 28, 1917, American forces are recalled from Mexico after nearly 11 months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who was accused of leading a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico.
In 1914, following the resignation of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa and his former revolutionary ally Venustiano Carranza battled each other in a struggle for succession. By the end of 1915, Villa had been driven north into the mountains, and the U.S. government recognized General Carranza as the president of Mexico.
In January 1916, to protest President Woodrow Wilson’s support for Carranza, Villa executed 16 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel in northern Mexico. Then, on March 9, 1916, Villa led a band of several hundred guerrillas across the border and raided the town of Columbus, killing 17 Americans. U.S. troops pursued the Mexicans, killing 50 on U.S. soil and 70 more in Mexico.
On March 15, under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa dead or alive. For the next 11 months, Pershing, like Carranza, failed to capture the elusive revolutionary and Mexican resentment over the U.S. intrusion into their territory led to a diplomatic crisis. On June 21, the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked Pershing’s forces at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 17 Americans killed or wounded, and 38 Mexicans dead. In late January 1917, having failed in their mission to capture Villa and under pressure from the Mexican government, the Americans were ordered home.
Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the government pardoned Villa, but three years later he was assassinated at Parral.

 

 Pancho Villa

 

 

On January 28, 1915, in the country’s first such action against American shipping interests on the high seas, the captain of a German cruiser, the SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich, orders the destruction of the William P. Frye, an American merchant ship.
The William P. Frye, a four-masted steel barque built in Bath, Maine, in 1901 and named for the well-known Maine senator William Pierce Frye (1830-1911), was on its way to England with a cargo of wheat. On January 27, it was intercepted by a German cruiser in the South Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast and ordered to jettison its cargo as contraband. When the American ship’s crew failed to fulfill these orders completely by the next day, the German captain ordered the destruction of the ship.
As the first American merchant vessel lost to Germany’s aggression during the Great War, the William P. Frye incident sparked the indignation of many in the United States. The German government’s apology and admission of the attack as a mistake did little to assuage Americans’ anger, which increased exponentially when German forces torpedoed and sank the British-owned ocean liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing more than 1,000 people, including 128 Americans. The U.S., under President Woodrow Wilson, demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on all unarmed passenger and merchant ships. Despite Germany’s initial assurances to that end, the attacks continued.
In early February 1917, when Germany announced a return to unrestricted submarine warfare, the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with the country. By the end of March, Germany had sunk several more passenger ships with Americans aboard and Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war on April 2, which was made four days later. The first American ships arrived in Europe within a week, marking a decisive end to U.S. neutrality.

 

 

On January 28, 1964, the U.S. State Department angrily accuses the Soviet Union of shooting down an unarmed USAF T-39 Sabreliner aircraft that strayed into East German airspace. The aircraft was shot down by A Soviet AF MiG-19. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were killed in the incident. The occupants of the aircraft were Lieutenant Colonel Gerald K. Hannaford, Captain Donald Grant Millard and Captain John F. Lorraine. The Soviets responded with charges that the flight was a “gross provocation,” and the incident was an ugly reminder of the heightened East-West tensions of the Cold War-era.
According to the U.S. military, the jet was on a training flight over West Germany and pilots became disoriented by a violent storm that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off course. The Soviet attack on the plane provoked angry protests from the Department of State and various congressional leaders, including Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who charged that the Soviets had intentionally downed the plane “to gain the offensive” in the aggressive Cold War maneuvering.
For their part, the Soviets refused to accept U.S. protests and responded that they had “all grounds to believe that this was not an error or mistake … It was a clear intrusion.” Soviet officials also claimed that the plane was ordered to land but refused the instructions. Shortly after the incident, U.S. officials were allowed to travel to East Germany to recover the bodies and the wreckage.
Like numerous other similar Cold War incidents, including the arrest of suspected “spies” and the seizure of ships, this event resulted in heated verbal exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, but little else. Both nations had bigger issues to contend with: the United States was engaged in the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Union was dealing with a widening split with communist China. The deaths were, however, another reminder that the heated suspicion, heightened tension, and loaded rhetoric of the Cold War did have the potential to erupt into meaningless death and destruction.

 

 

 

 

Residents from the nearby town of Vogelsberg in Thuringia erected a memorial to the three downed USAF pilots, in 1998, once the "Iron Curtain" had been lifted.