The United States loses the Hornet on October 26, 1942

The United States loses the Hornet: On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary The United States loses the Hornet in Tombstone, Arizona.

On this day in 1942, the last U.S. carrier manufactured before America’s entry into World War II, the Hornet, is damaged so extensively by Japanese war planes in the Battle of Santa Cruz that it must be abandoned.

The battle for Guadalcanal was the first American offensive against the Japanese, an attempt to prevent the Axis power from taking yet another island in the Solomon chain and gaining more ground in its race for Australia. On this day, in the vicinity of the Santa Cruz Islands, two American naval task forces had to stop a superior Japanese fleet, which was on its way to Guadalcanal with reinforcements. As was the case in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, the engagement at Santa Cruz was fought exclusively by aircraft taking off from carriers of the respective forces; the ships themselves were not in range to fire at one another.

Japanese aerial fire damaged the USS Enterprise, the battleship South Dakota, and finally the Hornet. In fact, the explosions wrought by the Japanese bombs that rained down on the Hornet were so great that two of the Japanese bombers were themselves crippled by the blasts, and the pilots chose to dive-bomb their planes into the deck of the American carrier, which was finally abandoned and left to burn. The Hornet, which weighed 20,000 tons, had seen battle during the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo (its commander at the time, Marc Mitscher, was promoted to admiral and would be a significant player in the victory over Japan) and the battle of Midway.

While the United States losses at Santa Cruz were heavy, the cost in aircraft to the Japanese was so extensive—more than 100, including 25 of the 27 bombers that attacked the Hornet—that they were unable finally to reinforce their troops at Guadalcanal, paving the way for an American victory.

Footnote: The Hornet lost at Santa Cruz was the CV-8; another Hornet, the CV-12, launched August 30, 1943, led a virtually charmed life, spending 52 days under Japanese attack in many battles in the Pacific, with nary a scratch to show for it. That is, until June 1945, when it was finally damaged—by a typhoon.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / Austin Comunity College /This Day In Aaviation / U.S. Navy Institute.org / U.S. Navy.gov / The United States loses the Hornet on October 26, 1942 (YouTube search)
The pilots of Torpedo Squadron Eight (VT-8) aboard USS Hornet (CV-8) shortly before the Battle of Midway. Only Ensign George H. Gay, front row, center, would survive. (U.S. Navy photograph published in LIFE Magazine)

Understanding Military Terminology - Mobilization

(DOD) 1. The process of assembling and organizing national resources to support national objectives in time of war or other emergencies. See also industrial mobilization.

2. The process by which the Armed Forces of the United States or part of them are brought to a state of readiness for war or other national emergency, which includes activating all or part of the Reserve Component as well as assembling and organizing personnel, supplies, and materiel. Also called MOB.

Joint Publications (JP 4-05) Joint Mobilization Planning - Joint Chiefs of Staff

The Old Salt’s Corner

“THE HOLE”

Now each of us from time to time, has gazed upon the sea

And watched the warships pulling out, to keep this country free.

And most of us have read a book, or heard a lusty tale,

About the men who sail these ships, through lightning, wind and hail.

AND MOST OF UBut there’s a place within each ship, that legend fails to teach.

It’s down below the waterline, it takes a living toll -

A hot metal living hell, that sailors call the “hole”.

It houses engines run by steam, that makes the shafts go round,

A place of fire and noise and heat, that beats your spirit down,

Are of molded gods without remorse, are nightmares in a dream.

Whose threat that from the fires roar, is like living doubt,

That any minute would with scorn, escape and crush you out.

Where turbines scream like tortured souls, alone and lost in hell,

As ordered from above somewhere, they answer every bell.

The men who keep the fires lit, and make the engines run,

Are strangers to the world of night, and rarely see the sun.

They have no time for man or God, no tolerance for fear,

Their aspect pays no living thing, the tribute of a tear.

For there’s not much that men can do, that these men haven’t done,

Beneath the decks deep in the hole, to make the engines run.

And every hour of every day, they keep the watch in hell,

For if the fires ever fail, their ship’s a useless shell.

When ships converge to have a war, upon the sea,

The men below just grimly smile, at what their fate might be.

They’re locked in below like men for doomed, who hear no battle cry,

It’s well assumed that if they’re hit, the men below will die.

For every day’s a war down there, when the gauges all read red,

Twelve hundred pounds of heated steam, can kill you mighty dead.

So if you ever write their sons, or try to tell their tale,

The very words would make you hear, a fired furnace’s wail.

And people as a general rule, don’t hear of men of steel,

So little’s heard about the place, that sailors call the “hole”.

But I can sing about this place, and try to make you see,

The hardened life of men down there, cause one of them is me.

I’ve seen these sweat soaked heroes fight, in superheated air,

To keep their ship alive and right through no one knows they’re there.

And thus they’ll fight for ages on, till warships sail no more,

Amid the boiler’s mighty heat, and the turbines hellish roar.

So when you see a ship pull out, to meet a warlike foe,

Remember faintly if you can, “THE MEN WHO SAIL BELOW”.

~ Author unknown

“I’m Just Sayin”

“Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you

to say disagreeable things to your intimates.

The nearer you come into relation with a person,

the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.”

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Thought for the Day”

“Our bodies are our gardens

to which our wills

are gardeners.”

~ William Shakespeare

“What I Have Learned”

“Don’t place your mistakes on your head,

their weight may crush you.

Instead,

place them under your feet

and use them as a platform

to view your horizons.”

~ Anonymous

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

Former Rabbit Hash dog mayor Lucy Lou dies, legacy will live on

RABBIT HASH, Kentucky - Former Rabbit Hash Mayor Lucy Lou has died.

The red and white border collie who served in office from 2008 to 2016 died Sept. 10. She was 12.

Lucy Lou lived her entire life in Rabbit Hash, an Ohio River community that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. She dedicated her time in “the center of the universe” to help others.

Since her political career took off Lucy Lou attended many charity events and served as spokespet for a women’s crisis center.

Her term as mayor ended earlier than planned in 2016 when she voluntarily left office in order to help her hometown raise funds to rebuild the Rabbit Hash General Store. The 1831 historic building was destroyed by fire in February 2016. With the help of Lucy Lou and others, the Rabbit Hash Historical Society was able to rebuild and reopen the landmark within a year.

During her tenure, Lucy Lou also gave many radio and magazine interviews. She appeared on news segments to promote local events as well as a Japanese pet show and shared a “Talking Points” walk with Bill Geist of CBS Sunday Morning.

Celebrity aside, Lucy Lou's favorite thing was to greet visitors to Rabbit Hash, located in western Boone County in Northern Kentucky. She also enjoyed swimming in the Ohio River.

Lucy Lou's secretary and “momma” Bobbi Layne Kayser said that Lucy Lou “was an astounding canine who brought joy to many more people than just her immediate family.”

“I'm so proud to have known her and shared these short years on earth with her”, Kayser posted in a Facebook announcement yesterday. “Run free and easy, sweet girl. Momma loves you.”

Lucy Lou was the first female mayor of Rabbit Hash. Lucy Lou ran on the popular campaign slogan: “The Bitch You Can Count On”, raising $8,087 of the total $21,921 raised that election.

The question Mayor Lucy Lou was most asked during the campaign was: “How does a DOG become mayor?”

Her answer, according to Kayser was: “As with politics in every corner of the earth, the candidate with the most money wins. In Rabbit Hash, we’re just honest about it. Anyone of any age can vote, you can vote as many times as you like, and we encourage drinking at the polls.”

Cincinnati Enquirer (09/11/2018)

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: How Long Does Something Have to Be In the Ground Before It's Considered a Fossil?

Usually, any remains or traces of an organism preserved in the ground are counted as fossils. People are less likely to use the term fossil for remains from the last 10,000 years (the Holocene, our geological period), but that is obviously arbitrary.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of fossil:

Something preserved in the ground, especially in petrified form in rock, and recognizable as the remains of a living organism of a former geological period, or as preserving an impression or trace of such an organism.

Especially in petrified form, not always in petrified form. They also say that “the term fossil is usually reserved for remains older than 10,000 years.”

A textbook on paleobotany (Taylor et al., 2009, Paleobotany, Academic Press) doesn’t give a definition of the word fossil, but it does provide a nice catalog of the various kinds of plant fossils. Those include petrified wood, but they also include compression fossils, which are the result of the original plant material being compressed. No mineralization necessary. Pollen grains are a very common kind of plant fossil, and they are usually preserved unmineralized. Amber can isolate organic material sufficiently that it is preserved virtually unchanged.

Most paleontologists don’t discuss the definition of fossil, because it’s not terribly controversial. In one of my own papers I used the word for remains of the fossil rodent Cordimus hooijeri that are only a few hundred years old and not noticeably mineralized. Nobody called me out on it.

One paper that explicitly discusses definitions: “A New Species of Fossil Ptinus from Fossil Wood Rat Nests in California and Arizona” (Coleoptera, Ptinidae), with a postscript on the definition of a fossil. This was in the context of beetles from woodrat middens, which were preserved as mostly unchanged exoskeletons. The author settled on “A specimen, a replacement of a specimen, or the work or evidence of a specimen that lived in the past and was naturally preserved rather than buried by man.” Again, no reference to mineralization. He discussed using the term fossil only for remains that are more than 10,000 years old; subfossil for remains before recorded history; and nonfossil for remains from recorded history. But that seemed arbitrary and unworkable; recorded history started at different times in different places.

Fossils are the remains of organisms of the past, regardless of their mode of preservation. Where exactly you draw the line between “organisms of the past” and “organisms of the present that just happen to be dead” is arbitrary and it usually doesn’t matter. If you need a definition (for example, if you’re making a list of fossil and nonfossil species), you come up with a reasonable if arbitrary definition. If you don’t need a precise definition, you don’t.

BBC • Encyclopedia Britannica • National Geographic • Quora • Wikipedia How Long Does Something Have to Be In the Ground Before It's Considered a Fossil? (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

ASH Receiver: An “ash tray”. Newbie sailors are sometimes sent all over base to locate an ASH Receiver as a joke.

ASMO: Assignment Memorandum Orders. Mostly issued in boot camp to set a recruit back in training due to poor performance.

Assholes and elbows: The only things which should be seen by a boatswains mate when deck hands are on their hands and knees holystoning a wooden deck.

Asshole of the Navy: Norfolk, Virginia, home of the fabled “DOGS AND SAILORS KEEP OFF THE GRASS!” sign. The cold shoulders from civilians persist in certain Navy towns. See also “NoFuck, Vagina”.

ASVAB: The Navy's enlisted entrance exam. (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery).

ASWOC: Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Center - shore-based briefing/debriefing/analysis/operational control center for VP aviation. See also TSC.

Just for you MARINE

Asiatic: World War II term for eccentric behavior characteristic of men serving too long in the Far East.

Aye-Aye: Nautical term used as a response to orders meaning “I understand the orders I have received and will carry them out”; aye (descended from Middle English yai) dialectical for 'yes', once common in the regions from which the Royal Navy drew its sailors.

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Fighter Squadron Composite (VFC) (VFC-111) - nicknamed the “Sundowners”
United States Navy Reserve - Naval Air Station Key West, Florida - Established November 2006

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Namby-pamby:”  Meaning: Childish and weakly sentimental.

History: The phrase 'namby-pamby' was a nickname given to the English poet and playwright, Ambrose Philips (1674 - 1749).

In 1714, Philips became tutor to George I's grandchildren. The position gave him a status amongst the aristocracy and he took the opportunity to advance his place in society by writing sycophantic sentimental poems in praise of their children. These were written in rather affected and insipid nursery language, of the 'eency-weency', 'goody-goody' sort. This didn't go down well with his rival poets and playwrights and when, in 1725, he wrote the execrable 'To the Honourable Miss Carteret', he was widely derided:

“Thou, thy parents pride and care,

Fairest offspring of the fair

...

When again the lambkins play,

Pretty sportlings, full of May

and so on...”

His contemporaries Henry Carey, John Gay, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift combined the cloying nursery reduplication in Philips' work with his first name and came up with a nickname for him - Namby-Pamby. Carey was the first to put it into print, in the poem Namby-Pamby, circa 1725:

“All ye poets of the age,

All ye witlings of the stage …

Namby-Pamby is your guide,

Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride.

Namby-Pamby, pilly-piss,

Rhimy-pim'd on Missy Miss

Tartaretta Tartaree

From the navel to the knee;

That her father's gracy grace

Might give him a placy place.”

Pope subsequently made similar fun of Philips in his poem The Dunciad:

“Beneath his reign, shall ... Namby Pamby be prefer'd for Wit!”

The term began to be used to describe a style of ineffectual writing soon afterwards; for example, William Ayre, in his Memoirs of the life and writings of Alexander Pope, 1745, writes:

“He [Philips] us'd to write Verses on Infants, in a strange Stile, which Dean [Jonathan] Swift calls the Namby Pamby Stile.”

It wasn't long before the direct insult to Philips became a new form of general disparagement and 'namby-pamby' entered the language to refer to anything weak or ineffectual; for example, The Westmoreland Magazine, 1774, refers to “A namby-pamby Duke”.

Philips wasn't amongst the first rank of English poets, but some believe the fact that his only lasting contribution to the language as the butt of the disparaging 'namby-pamby' is rather unfair. He was socially unpopular and remained unmarried, poignantly referring in print to 'a broken love-promise', and his unattractive appearance (“of lean make and pale complexion and five feet seven inches high” - Joseph Spence) made him an easy target. However, no less a champion than Samuel Johnson came to his rescue in asserting that “Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault”.

Perhaps a kinder epitaph is that 'namby-pamby' was clearly the inspiration for the name of the children's television character, Andy Pandy. The puppet was featured in the classic series Watch With Mother, which was amongst the first television programmes made for children and a mainstay of BBC output in the 1950s.

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

Watch the World’s Largest Jet Come in For a Landing - There is only one “Mriya” superheavy transport flying in the entire world • A Giant Floating Tube Is Headed To Clean the Ocean's Great Garbage Patch - The Ocean Cleanup team is testing their innovative solution to plastic pollution • Offshore Mega-Terminals Are Coming Because Oil Supertankers Are Too Big for Our Ports - Massive tankers and excess oil mean a new infrastructure, but not everyone is excited about the ambitious plans • 72 Hours With the Tesla $64,000 version of the Model 3 Performance Edition • U.S. Wind Turbines Are Getting Less Powerful - and That's a Good Thing - How a lower maximum energy capacity helps turbines perform better • The Air Force Will Treat Computer Coding Like a Foreign Language - A young Air Force intelligence officer is championing the development of human beings who will use artificial intelligence and big data to change warfare

Popular Mechanics

The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

These Dolphins Taught Each Other to Moonwalk

A pod of wild dolphins living Down Under can literally walk on water, thanks to some instruction from “Billie”, a wild dolphin who learned the trick while she was briefly held in captivity, a new study finds.

The feat highlights how dolphins can learn incredible skills from one another in the wild, even when those skills have no known advantage for survival, the researchers said.

However, this so-called tail walking, which the mammals accomplish by vigorously pumping their tail underwater so that the rest of their body is elevated above the water, appears to be a passing fad. Now that Billie and other prominent tail-walking dolphins have died, other dolphins in the pod aren't doing the trick as much, the researchers said. [Deep Divers: A Gallery of Dolphins]

The wild tale began when Billie, an Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus), was rescued in January 1988, after becoming trapped in a polluted harbor in southern Australia. During her recovery, Billie stayed at a nearby dolphinarium for several weeks. At that time, the dolphinarium was also home to five other captive dolphins that had been trained to do various tricks, including tail walking, for public shows.

Billie never received any kind of training herself, but it appears that she observed the other dolphins perform their tail-walking act, the researchers said. In 1995, seven years after Billie was released back into the wild, researchers spotted her tail walking, just like a kid imitating their favorite star.

What happened next was even more impressive: Other wild Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Billie's pod began tail walking too, putting a fresh spin on what arguably looks like Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

In all, the researchers observed 11 bottlenose dolphins - six adult females and five juveniles (three female, two male) - in Billie's pod walk on water. And the pod had a standout star: Wave, a female dolphin who was repeatedly seen walking on water from 2007 to 2014, the researchers said.

Although tail walking now happens rarely within the pod, researchers are still surprised that it happened at all. Dolphins are known to learn specific behaviors from their social group, but usually these behaviors help with survival, including strategies that can help them forage for food.

These learned skills are sometimes, but not always, passed down from generation to generation. In this case, it appears that the skill was short-lived, the researchers said. But they emphasized that it was a unique fad, as they are "not aware of any other reports [of tail walking] in this species," the researchers said in the study.

The study was published online in the Journal Biology Letters.

Live Science (09/10/2018)