Jervis Bay, National Doughnut Day, and Scheduled Release Day

First I have to make sure that you all have your fireworks ready for Guy Fawkes Day, which is of course today. Got ’em? Good.  On to more fireworks.

HMS Jervis Bay started life in 1922 as a Commonwealth Line passenger liner and ended her life as a 14,000-ton barely-armed target for Germany’s large cruiser/”pocket battleship” Admiral Scheer on 5 November 1940 while trying to protect eastbound convoy HX-84.

These are the stark and straightforward facts. But there’s a lot more to this story.

First is the concept of the AMC, or Armed Merchant Cruiser. These were a sensible development of the Royal Navy in the late 19th century when the speed and size of passenger vessels grew exponentially faster than the RN could keep up with. The first AMCs were developed to prove the concept, then quietly retired. When WWI began, the first batch of fast passenger and cargo vessels were modified and used mostly in enforcing the North Sea blockade, where they suffered from submarine attacks but were otherwise successful, if unable to confront German auxiliary cruisers, also called raiders. Notable exceptions included HMS Alcantara‘s success against Germany’s Grief in 1916.

But as a concept, the AMCs were obsolete before that. The Dreadnaught revolution in warship design had invited the development of smaller, heavier armed torpedo boat destroyers, that became simply “destroyers” that were better at surviving, cheaper to build, and faster than most raiders. Aside from that, commerce raiding had mostly passed to submarines, against which the AMCs had very little chance.

HMS Jervis Bay at Dakar, early 1940; Wiki Commons

But in 1939 Britain had very few options, and not enough warships to protect all the convoys that she needed from the four corners of the Earth just to survive, let alone fight a war. Thus, Jervis Bay and another 40+ merchant ships were given navy crews, old guns, and missions more suited not only to real warships but to several of them. The convoy that Jervis Bay was to protect was 37 ships…and she was the only escort.

On that fatal day, Admiral Scheer found the convoy just before 4 in the afternoon, and Jervis Bay dutifully took her place to intercept, even though the issue was never in doubt. The uneven duel lasted 24 minutes, as the doughy AMC fired her old 6-inch guns at the pocket battleship and the pocket battleship fired her new 11-inch guns back. Ablaze and wrecked with most of the officers dead, Jervis Bay stopped shooting and quickly went down, her captain dead on the bridge. Sixty-five survivors of a crew of 254 were picked up by a Swedish freighter.

Lest the reader think it was all in vain, it wasn’t. Knowing that his ship wouldn’t survive, Captain Fogarty Fegen of Jervis Bay ordered the convoy to scatter in the gathering dusk, and only five of the merchantmen were sunk by Admiral Sheer that afternoon and evening. For his heroism, Fegen was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Putting Jervis Bay out there alone was a calculated gamble at that stage of the war, for most convoys were managing the crossing unmolested. The German surface fleet–built and equipped primarily for raiding–was small, and the transit for German submarines was still long before the bases in France were operational late in 1940. Of the 42 AMCs converted in 1939 and 1940, only one was still in service by 1944. The Armed Merchant Cruisers were always a stopgap, and though successful at times, were always meant to be secondary vessels.

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And then there’s National Donut Day, of which there are two: the first Friday in June, and 5 November, though precisely why there are two of them is another mystery of the ages. The earliest with known origins is the one in June, dating from 1938 when the Salvation Army in Chicago chose to celebrate the 200-odd “doughnut lassies” that they sent to the battlefields of WWI. Dunkin Donuts, which is in the process of dropping the “Donuts” out of its name (go figure) observes this June date.

The November observation date may have been around as early as the 1930s’ as well, though exactly where and why is still unknown. Entenmann’s and Krispy Kreme observe the November date. This means, of course, a donut war brews for the stomachs of America.

Celebrate!

No, not really. Donut consumption in the US has been declining for more than twenty years, so no, not really. Dunkin and Krispy Kreme have been expanding their menus in non-fat-pill directions for at least that long, driven by the explosion of Starbucks, primarily, and the general change in American consumer tastes.

And the spelling is supposed to be “doughnut,” but the more common “donut” has been around since, well, Dunkin put up his first sign. Either now is acceptable in most circles, but if the Spelling Police come after you…don’t say I didn’t warn you.

But National Donut Day is upon us, and if these photos don’t entice you to go out and at least think about a cruller…I can’t help you.

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I CAN, of course, help you choose your next WWII-era book: Why the Samurai Lost Japan is now scheduled for release on 15 December. You should be able to go to your fave bookseller, including the online stores and our Bookpatch store, around then. Electronic versions (PDF, Kobo, e-book) should be available in January.

Cover for “Why the Samurai Lost Japan”

For those of you who are new here, for nearly two years I’ve been announcing the reworking of What Were They Thinking? A Fresh Look at Japan at War 1941-45.  My co-author and I have gotten our book back under our control,  reworked and expanded and renamed it into the magnum opus that you will see in December.

Why the Samurai Lost Japan is, as the subtitle says, a study in miscalculation and folly. More than that, it is an object lesson in modernization, industrialization, and what the Star Trek universe warned against with the First Prime Directive: overreaching contamination of a society not ready for tremendous changes in social fabric wrought by advanced machine-age technology. Japan went from a late feudal social organization to an early industrial one in a single generation, and a large and important part of Japanese society–the samurai–failed to understand all the ramifications of those changes. One unfortunate result of that misunderstanding was called the Pacific War of 1941-45. Look for it starting 15 December.

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US Grant and National Vanilla Ice Cream Day

Re-post for the benefit of Linkedin, which disconnected again.

Summer, hot and sweltering and muggy. Just the kind of day in the Great Lakes you need to get something cold and wet as long as it’s not a fish.

On 23 July 1827, the first swimming pool in the United States started operation in Boston; it was almost certainly private or members-only, and no trace of it now exists. The oldest existing pool is probably Deep Eddy in Texas. And on this day in 1904, the ice cream cone was first sold commercially at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis; cones of various descriptions had been privately made from recipes as early as 1823, and patents for cone-making machines date from the 1890s. And, on 23 July 1967, a failed police raid in Detroit led to a riot that, over the course of nine days, would kill 43 people and require the use of federal troops to quell; as a young man living in suburban Detroit at the time, I can attest to the kind of confusion that the riot engendered, but “race” wasn’t the only issue. But today, we’re talking about Captain Sam and plain vanilla.

Young Ulys got sick when he was nine with a fever–probably malaria–that would cause him headaches and “ague” for the rest of his life, and would often be mistaken for other things.

US Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on 27 April 1822 in the little shack by the Ohio River. His father Jessie was a prosperous businessman; his mother Hanna indulgent of her only son. Young Ulys got sick when he was nine with a fever–probably malaria–that would cause him headaches and “ague” for the rest of his life, and would often be mistaken for other things.

He took a volunteer job as a mustering officer and drillmaster, then asked for and got a commission as colonel, and he never looked back.

Young Grant was a smart lad but Jessie was cheap. When it came time for the boy to go to school beyond the reaches of Ohio he was sent to West Point because it was free. When he got there, he discovered that his name was entered as Ulysses Simpson (his mother’s maiden name) Grant, and he stuck with it for the rest of his life. In 1843 US Grant was commissioned in the infantry upon his graduation, 21st out of a class of 39. He went to his first post in Missouri, and from there to Mexico. He served largely as a supply officer in Mexico and later in Detroit, New York, and California while many of those who would be leading lights in the Civil War served with him. In 1854, for unstated reasons that have always been ascribed to drink (there are no surviving official written records of a drinking problem) he resigned from the Army. Grant struggled to support his wife and three children for the next seven years. At one point he was selling kindling door-to-door and felt compelled to sell his Army coat. The outbreak of war in 1861 found him working in his father’s dry goods and harness shop in Galena, Illinois. He took a volunteer job as a mustering officer and drillmaster, then asked for and got a commission as colonel, and he never looked back.

Grant was practically broke when he left office in 1877.

His story after that should be familiar. Grant was breveted a brigadier, then promoted to major general, then the first officer to equal Washington’s rank as lieutenant general, then the first to exceed him as a full general. He was the first American officer to wear four stars on his shoulder. And as often was the case then, he rode that success right into the White House in 1869. But Grant wasn’t a politician, and he was probably the worst personal money-manager who ever took the oath as president. Grant was practically broke when he left office in 1877.

The royalties for his posthumously-published memoirs provided just under half a million dollars for his family in their lifetime.

Always scrambling to make a living, he sold articles to Century Magazine about his experience in the war. In time he attracted the attention of Samuel Clemens–Mark Twain–who persuaded him to write a memoir. He finished those memoirs in a borrowed cottage on Mount McGregor, New York just days before he died on 23 July 1885. The royalties for his posthumously-published memoirs provided just under half a million dollars for his family in their lifetime. Captain John J. Pershing, commanding the Corps of Cadets at West Point, commanded the honor guard for Grant’s funeral.

If you’re driving along the Ohio River on US 52, you’ll probably miss the little state-run US Grant birthplace in Point Pleasant, Ohio: we nearly did. It’s not something that you can get to on the way somewhere else because it’s not near anything else. That about sums up Grant’s life: always on the way somewhere else.

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Called a Giant White, worth nearly $42–not to me, but maybe you.

And today is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day because, again, someone said it was. Ice cream, as everyone knows, predates mechanical refrigeration by at least a century. The easiest way to make it cold is to use an ice cream churn that uses a steel drum and rock salt to reduce the temperature of the mixture. Even before this, the ancient Egyptians and nearly everyone else was flavoring natural and manufactured ice and snow.

Thomas Jefferson is said to have brought a recipe for vanilla ice cream back from France in 1790, but there are records of extant vanillas before then, those introduced by the Quakers as early as the 1750s. There are at this writing more than 30 different flavors of vanilla ice cream retailed in the US…who knew?

So, to celebrate National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, have a bowl or two or, like the young lady above, a cone. Or, like me, just smile and let others enjoy it. I, myself, never quite got the point of ice cream. But maybe you did.

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And today in News of the Future-Past, on 23 July 2018, Dr. Huckleberry Dogbreath of the University of Doodle-Patch in Oregon announced the invention of the pedal-popper, a development of a bicycle that, used correctly, either goes back in time or simply disappears…no one’s sure just which because Dogbreath is the only person who’s ever seen it. At the same time, Professor Dogbreath announced that his government research grant to develop the pedal-popper has so far totaled in the vicinity of $2,000,000,000,000, and he plans to apply for more. Senator Makeme Grabitall (R/D-Everywhere) stated unequivocally that this was the kind of innovation that the US Congress should back.

Take that to the bank, or the poor house.

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Like this post if you’d buy a T-shirt with this printed on it:

History: The Only Test for the Consequences of Ideas

Trinity and National Personal Chef Day

OK, mid-July at last. Now if you haven’t fired up that grill yet, you’d better, because the siege of the mosquitos is about to begin, and you have to have a way to roast the little buggers. And, as we all know, People for the Ethical Treatment of (some) Animals is requiring that all of us homo saps provide food for all living creatures…except the annoying ones.

On 16 July 1790, the District of Columbia was established, carving out parts of Maryland and Virginia on the Potomac River; while Congress was aware that most of the land was still a swampy wilderness, they apparently felt at home there–and still do. And in 1863, the New York “draft” riots ended with the Union Army’s VI Corps patrolling the streets; while the draft offices were the easiest targets, the riot is also attributed to unrest over jobs, the payment of substitutes for the draft, and a general feeling that “outsiders” who included Negroes, Irish, and Germans were taking advantage of war-driven shortages. On 16 July 1940, Philippe Petain, French hero of WWI, became the Premier of the new French government at Vichy; while Petain felt he was only doing duty to his country, postwar Frenchmen would condemn him to life in prison and exile. And on 16 July 1969, Apollo XI launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida; in three days they would orbit the moon, and in four, land on the Sea of Tranquility.  Today is also National Corn Fritters Day because, somewhere in the long-ago past, someone said it was. But today, we talk about mushroom clouds in the desert and personal chefs.

Trinity National Historic Landmark, NPS

In 1933, the legend goes, Leo Szilard conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction, and everything after that was just a matter of engineering. Szilard was also credited with drafting the letter that Albert Einstein signed to President Roosevelt that has been ascribed to have been the trigger for the Manhattan Engineer District and the development of the atom bomb.

Nonetheless, the Americans began official, government-funded research on a nuclear weapon when the Manhattan Engineer District was formed on 6 December 1941. 

The letter wasn’t a suggestion to build a bomb, but a warning that the Germans might be on the way to building one. What no one outside of Germany knew at the time was that, yes there were eminent scientists in Germany working on a nuclear weapon, but their leader, Walther Heisenberg, had the theory wrong and couldn’t have built one based on his work. Nonetheless, the Americans began official, government-funded research on a nuclear weapon when the Manhattan Engineer District was formed on 6 December 1941.

They  made weird-looking explosive bricks and wedges, they turned metals into shapes with tolerances of zero, they watched columns of water change color, they built a tower in a sandy desert miles away from everything.

In the course of the next four years, an entire industry was formed in six states, employing nearly 120,000 people in total. Only a handful of these people knew exactly what they were working on. They extracted enriched uranium and plutonium, they made weird-looking explosive bricks and wedges, they turned metals into shapes with tolerances of zero, they watched columns of water change color, they built a tower in a sandy desert scores of miles away from everything.

The observers were told that when the light beams came together and stopped, they would have ten seconds to turn away–or it would be the last thing they ever saw.

In the summer of 1945, all the pieces were together in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Over the course of a week, the eggheads assembled the big round ball with its exotic triggers, thick wires and that ball of shiny material in the middle. Near midnight on 15 July 1945, the thousands of watchers started to fill the bleachers. At about 2 in the morning of 16 August, two searchlights started to sweep the air over the tower in the desert. The observers were given goggles, and were told that when the light beams came together and stopped, they would have ten seconds to turn away–or it would be the last thing they ever saw.

One member of the Special Engineering Division said that, among his coterie, the only subject of conversation afterwards was “so that’s what we’ve been doing.”

At 5:29 on 16 July 1945, the Trinity site–what the entire effort to assemble and detonate the “gadget” in that lonely patch of desert was called–became like a sun as the implosion-type plutonium-core nuclear device was detonated under those light beams. The explosive power of the weapon was rated at about 20 kilotons–20,000 tons of TNT. Blind persons fifty miles away were said to have seen the flash of light brighter than a star for a millionth of a second. One witness miles away from the official viewing stand–a member of the Special Engineering Division of technicians hired to do scut work–said that, among his coterie, the only subject of conversation afterward was “so that’s what we’ve been doing.”

On the same day, USS Indianapolis left the Mare Island naval station for San Francisco, where they would load parts of the bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima three weeks later.

By the standards of 2018 it would be a large tactical nuclear device, but by the standards of 1945, it was an enormous device. On the same day, USS Indianapolis left the Mare Island naval station for San Francisco, where they would load parts of the bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima three weeks later.

For those of you who might plan to actually go there, you have to want to find it–the Park Service didn’t make it easy to find in 1976 when I was there (in fact, our bus driver got lost). Take your own water, because there’s nothing out there other than the obelisk shown above–not even a gift shop. Fittingly, it’s a lonely, desolate place in the middle of what is now the White Sands Missile Range.

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Today is also National Personal Chefs Day by decree of the folks at the National Day Calendar and the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA).  Now, why it’s on 16 July is still a mystery, but there really has been an (apparently) professional organization for this kind of thing since 1991. Their description:

A Personal Chef is a culinary professional that comes directly to your home to provide you a wide variety of personalized cooking services. Each Personal Chef is an independent business owner who will work closely with you to provide personalized and customized services that fit your specific tastes and needs.

And here I always called them “cooks.”

But if you’ve got a personal chef, do something nice for them today, for it’s their day, like take them out for lunch. Or something.

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And, in News of the Future-Past, on this day in 2018 King Fred of Wahoozistan (also known as Joyce the Broad-Shouldered) launched his campaign against their sworn enemies in neighboring Jeosophat in a lightning campaign that was stopped dead in its tracks by a lone goatherd just inside the border. Surviving accounts attribute the forever-nameless nomad with turning his shepherd’s crook into a dozen Krispy Kream glazed doughnuts with a mere wave of his cell phone. The aroma of these delectable fat pills so attracted the starving army that they started to fight among themselves, causing the ill-starred invasion to collapse.

And now you don’t know that, either. Take that, future researchers.

Ellen Church and National Nylon Stockings Day

Among aviation pioneers, the name of Ellen Church is not exactly up there with the Wright Brothers or Louis Bleriot, Jimmy Doolittle or John Glenn, but she was pretty important in her own quiet way as the first “stewardess”. But the Ides of May (every month has ides, defined as the middle of the Roman calendar month, not just March that Shakespeare and Caesar made famous) is also known for the beginning of the Seven Years’/French and Indian War in 1756, the 1864 battle of New Market in the American Civil War, the birth of Madeline Albright in Prague in 1937, the beginning of the Women’t Army Corps in 1942, and shooting of George Wallace in Laurel, Maryland in 1972. But today, stewardesses and nylons.

In September 1904 Ellen Church was born in Cresco, Iowa, and had an early fascination with airplanes and flying. She studied nursing at the University of Minnesota and took off for San Francisco, where she took flying lessons and managed to get a job at Boeing Air Transport (BAT), the forerunner of United Air Lines.  Though they would not hire her as a pilot, Church had the idea that nurses acting as flight attendants on board (the term stewardess wouldn’t come into use until the late 1930’s) would be good for publicity, making flights seem safer.  Thought there had been stewards on airships since 1910, there were no women before Church first took to the air on a 20-hour flight from San Francisco to Chicago on 15 May 1930–with thirteen stops and fourteen passengers.

After Church’s first flight, BAT hired more “sky girls”–registered nurses, younger than 25, single, weighed less than 115 pounds and were less than 5’4″. The physical requirements saved weight, and allowed the young women to stand up while serving drinks and snacks in the small passenger cabins of the time. In addition to their cabin duties, they also had to help fuel the airplanes and move them in and out of the hanger.  For this they were paid the then-princely sum of $125 a month–nearly twice what most nurses made, and almost as much as the average civil pilot.  While she liked the work, a car accident  ended her career with BAT after a year and a half.  She went back to nursing, and in 1942 she joined the Army Nurse Corps and rose to the rank of captain.  Church was responsible for training evacuation nurses in preparation for the Normandy invasion in 1944. Ellen Church was active to the end of her life, when she was killed in a horse-riding accident in 1965.

Now, as you ladies who read this blog at all regularly (bless you, you poor dears) know,  I have very little experience with wearing nylon stockings myself (though I have done so for a few hours at a time as a preventative against man-of-war stings), so at least some of my remarks about National Nylon Stockings Day (and no one knows why its 15 May) will seem insensitive or sexist or something.  So, as always…get over it.

The DuPont Chemical Company first made their miracle of chemistry dubbed “nylon” in 1935: a woven material made of threads manufactured in chemical factories and thus, theoretically infinite.  The product’s first practical commercial product had been nylon toothbrushes first marketed in 1938.  In 1939, legend has it, that a young woman who worked for at the DuPont Experimental Station in Delaware complained that her silk stockings didn’t fit right.  Seeking a wider market, the company reasoned that weaving nylon threads into a fabric pulled over a mold in the desired (by the makers) shape and color (early formulas could be made in nearly any color by adding aniline dyes) of a woman’s legs would be technically feasible. The rest, as they say, is history…maybe.  Still, legends often have roots in facts, so it sounds plausible.

At the World’s Fair in 1939, DuPont showed their mass-produced ladies nylon stockings to rave reviews, and sales of the more easily-obtainable stockings (more available than silk since Japan’s war with China started in 1937) skyrocketed right up until 1942, when manufacture of stockings was suspended for the duration of the war.  Manufacture resumed in 1945 and has continued unabated, with demand far outstripping supply in the 1940’s to the point of riots in late 1945 and early 1946.

But there was (and is) a catch: nylons weren’t and aren’t perfect.  They are more flexible than the cotton and silk they replaced, but not infinitely: until the 1980’s and the introduction of longer-chain “memory” polymer yarns, they squeezed the leg into the shape of the maker’s dies whether the wearer’s flesh was that shape or not.  This created not just discomfort but, in some cases, pain.  Modern hose are more forgiving of thicker thighs or longer calves but are still very form fitting, so the slightest hair stubble will catch in their mesh.  And shaving legs is not like shaving faces, you guys: leg skin never really toughens up like cheeks and chins…so I’m told. Further, the seams were unsightly (though they were eliminated by continuous weaving in 1965) and hard to keep straight.

Worldwide sales of nylon stockings has always been high and is still mind-boggling.  Since their introduction sales of nylon hosiery has been consistently in the mid-hundreds of millions of units–at first because of their fragility, and then because of population explosions, the introduction of nylons for younger girls, and increasing social acceptability of…well, more exposure of the leg. Since 1958 and the development of panty hose the sale of accompanying garters  and belts has declined: since 1980 panty hose demand has exceeded single hose demand.

The silky wonders of science are still popular, despite the discomfort to the wearers. Demographically, regular nylon wearers have been women under fifty since wearing trousers became fashionably acceptable for ladies in the 1960’s.  I’m told by reliable authorities (better than you, wiseguy) that this has been first because of the shaving requirement, second the expense (better-quality units can run $25 and more, and only last three months of weekly wear), and third because of the general discomfort that accompanies having one’s flesh squeezed into someone else’s idea of what their legs should look like because sizing–even three quarters of a century–hasn’t been perfected.

Ellen Church almost certainly wore nylons: hard to imagine such a trailblazer not wearing them at least once.  One wonders if she stood in one of those outrageously long lines for them. My late mother once said she stood in line for half a day outside Hudson’s in Detroit for a pair in about 1946: she would have been 23 or so, a bride of three years.  Then again, that may be more legend than fact, too.  Still, a bit of personal history for context.

Custer and Gall, Jellicoe and Heisenberg and the Monkey Wrench

This week’s musings are a little more esoteric than usual, but there it is.  While we note the birth of Martin Van Buren on 5 December 1782, of Clyde Cessna in 1879, of Walt Disney in 1901, the patenting of nitrocellulose in 1846, and the end of Prohibition in the United States in 1933, today your intrepid researcher chooses some more closely related persons to expound upon…and things like pipe wrenches that your intrepid researcher and consistently failed plumber owns but cannot use.

By the end of the Civil War he was a major general of Volunteers (a strictly wartime rank) and a reputation as one of the boldest cavalry leaders in the Army.

On 5 December 1839 George A. Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio.  Known variously as Armstrong, Ringlets (for his hair, about which he was quite vain) and Iron Butt (for his stamina in the saddle), Custer graduated at the bottom of his class at West Point (albeit a year earlier than scheduled) and was commissioned a lieutenant in the cavalry in 1861. He distinguished himself with dash and initiative in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862 enough to be brevetted to lieutenant colonel dating from Antietam, and was made a brigadier general of volunteers just before Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, where he led the Michigan cavalry to stop JEB Stuart’s flanking maneuver on 3 July. By the end of the Civil War he was a major general of Volunteers (a strictly wartime rank) and a reputation as one of the boldest cavalry leaders in the Army. After his mustering out, Custer returned to the regular Army at his permanent rank, lieutenant colonel.  For the next decade Custer led the 7th Cavalry on long marches, campaigns and battles primarily with the Sioux in the northern Plains.  His death, with some 200-odd of his troopers at the Little Bighorn on 25 June 1876 has overshadowed the rest of his accomplishments.

After fleeing to Canada for a few years, Gall brought his people back to the United States, surrendered and was sent to the Standing Rock Reservation on the Dakota border.

Very little is known for certain about the early life of Hunkpapa Lakota/Sioux leader known as Chief Gall–who got his name, it is said, after he ate the gall bladder of an animal.  Born around 1840, almost certainly in modern South Dakota, Gall was a war chief by the time he was in his twenties, and was present at the Little Bighorn when Custer met his end.  After fleeing to Canada for a few years, Gall brought his people back to the United States, surrendered and was sent to the Standing Rock Reservation on the Dakota border.  Gall encouraged his people to assimilate to their lot in the white man’s life, and apparently they did for a time. Gall himself converted to Christianity, served as a tribal judge, and died peacefully in his sleep on 5 December, 1894 in Wakpala, South Dakota.  Gall was one of the only Native American chiefs of the Little Bighorn battle to die of natural causes, and ironically on Custer’s birthday.

Jellicoe, called “the only man who could lose a war in an afternoon” because of Jutland, was appointed First Sea Lord after Jutland, and after the war was Governor-General of New Zealand.

On 5 December 1859, John Jellicoe was born in Southhampton, England.  At the age of thirteen Jellicoe entered the Royal Navy, and was in that service for the rest of his adult life.  He was best known as an early advocate of Fisher’s “big gun” battleship and “large cruiser” ideas, resulting in the Dreadnaughts and the Invincible battlecruisers. He was also something of an innovator of naval gunnery, testing early central gun directors. Jellicoe was also the commander of the Grand Fleet, the renamed Home Fleet, at the beginning of World War I and was in charge at the largest naval clash of the Great War, the ambiguous Jutland/Skagerrak battle in late May 1916.  Depending on point of view, Jutland resulted in either a tactical draw, an operational defeat for Britain (who lost more ships), a strategic defeat for Germany (who never sortied the fleet again), and a grand strategic defeat for Tsarist Russia (who was completely cut off from any assistance from her allies).  Jellicoe, called “the only man who could lose a war in an afternoon” because of Jutland, was appointed First Sea Lord after Jutland, and after the war was Governor-General of New Zealand.   Jellicoe died 20 November 1935 in Kensington.

In 1939, Heisenberg was a part of the “Uranium Club,” the German effort to build nuclear weapons.

Werner Heisenberg was born on 5 December 1901 at Wurzburg, which was then a part of Bavaria.  In 1919, though he managed to avoid military service in WWI, he was a member of the Freikorps fighting the Bavarian Socialist Republic. This didn’t seem to have affected his studies: he studied physics in Munich and Gottingen, and met Niels Bohr in June 1922. His work on matrix and quantum mechanics earned him notoriety in the theoretical physics community, earning him a Nobel Prize in physics in 1932. In the early days of the Nazi government, Heisenberg was under examination for his work in “Jewish” (theoretical) physics, but was eventually rehabilitated into the fold of academics on the cutting edge of science. In 1939, Heisenberg was a part of the “Uranium Club,” the German effort to build nuclear weapons. By 1942, Heisenberg told his Nazi masters that 1) nuclear weapons were not possible to produce within the expected timeframe of the war, and 2) they were probably not within Germany’s industrial capacity within that timeframe.  Nuclear research in Germany thereupon switched priorities to energy extraction, which proceeded in fits and starts until the end of the war.  According to postwar interrogations of the leading German nuclear physicists in Allied hands, it seems clear that Heisenberg had miscalculated uranium decay by orders of magnitude, and likely would not have resulted in any practical applications.  Heisenberg died 1 February, 1976, in Munich.  His lasting legacy, it is said, is the “uncertainty principle” which says that a measurement affects the phenomenon.

His 5 December 1876 patent, one of many follow-ons, was for a wrench suitable for both pipe and flat-sided fasteners.  This one wasn’t near as successful, nor near as popular or emulated as his first.  

In the mid-19th century, indoor plumbing was beginning to matter a lot more than it had before.  Cities were growing; the flush toilet made buildings over three stories practical; sanitation was becoming a growing concern.  Threaded pipe, developed sometime between 1850 and 1860, wasn’t easy to tighten and was the only practical way to plumb in tall buildings.  A number of inventors tackled the problem of tightening pipe, but Daniel Stillson, working at the Walworth Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, came up with an innovative idea that took advantage of the relatively soft outside of a steel pipe by gripping it with angled teeth.  Stillson’s first wrench patent, issued 12 October, 1869, shows the familiar outlines of what we have come to call the monkey (for “monkey paw,” an appellation from South African plumbers), pipe, or Stillson wrench ever since.  His 5 December 1876 patent (above), one of many follow-ons, was for a wrench suitable for both pipe and flat-sided fasteners.  This one wasn’t near as successful, nor near as popular or emulated as his first, which made him well-off on royalties.  Stillson was granted a number of other patents over the years, nearly all for something related to pipes or plumbing, including fire apparatus. Stillson died in Somerville, Massachusetts on 21 August 1899. The original Stillson wrench still exists, is said to still work, and its parts are said to be interchangeable with a wrench of similar size manufactured yesterday.  Be that as it may, my wife still won’t let me touch water or gas-carrying pipes with tools, regardless of how much I know about my wrenches. Smart woman.

 

Eugene Ely, Coventry, Possum Hansell and the Consequences of Elections

Today, we celebrate, or at least acknowledge, obscurity, horror, firsts, and aviation…in our own way, of course.  As a natural consequence of today’s missive, your intrepid researcher/correspondent will endeavor as is his wont to bring you, his regular readers, entertainment, history, facts, (limited) opinions, and at least some sober analysis of events that took place on 14 November.  Among many other things, Robert Fulton was born on this day in 1765, James B. McPherson of Civil War fame was born in 1827, King Gillette patented his safety razor in 1904, and the Somme offensive ended in 1916.  But today, we talk about flying…and not.

Since Bishop Wright’s boys flew in the Kill Devil Hills in December 1903, the US Navy had been interested in aviation for scouting around the fleet.  

Aviation was an amateur endeavor in the heady days before WWI turned it into a deadly enterprise.  It was dangerous before airplanes started carrying weapons, but usually only to the intrepid adventurers flying the fragile kites.  Since Bishop Wright’s boys flew in the Kill Devil Hills in December 1903, the US Navy had been interested in aviation for scouting around the fleet.  Naval gunnery was not yet capable of firing over the horizon, but it wasn’t that far off. In 1910, Eugene Ely, a former auto salesman who taught himself to fly well enough to get a job with Glenn Curtis met Washington Chambers, who had been appointed by the US Navy to investigate the possibilities of heavier-than-air flying machines for scouting.  Since radios of the time weighted as much as the airplanes did, the machines would have to launch and land on or near a ship to have any use to battle fleets at sea. On 14 November, 1910, Ely took off from an 83-foot wooden platform built on the deck of light cruiser USS Birmingham anchored in Chesapeake Bay while in a Curtis pusher, the first time a heavier-than-air machine had launched (if barely) from a ship. Ely died in a crash less than a year later.

By the time the all clear sounded at 6:15 on 15 November, about 4,300 homes were destroyed, and two-thirds of the buildings in the city were damaged.

Early in WWII Hitler placed prohibitions on attacking populated areas.  Gradually those prohibitions fell away until they were a dim, if quaint, memory. In the industrialization of the West Midlands of Great Britain ancient cities like the ancient cathedral city of Coventry, with its dense population and proximity to coal, became prime targets for German bombers.  Along with the 14th century cathedral was the Coventry Ordnance Works which made gun mountings for the Royal Navy, and other plants that together supplied a quarter of the RAF’s aircraft. On the night of 14 November 1940, some five hundred German bombers from Luftflotte 3 and the pathfinders of  Kampfgruppe 100 bombed Coventry in an operation called Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata). By the time the all clear sounded at 6:15 on 15 November, about 4,300 homes were destroyed, and two-thirds of the buildings in the city were damaged. Over a thousand people were killed and injured during the attack, and only one German bomber was shot down. It was the first use of pathfinder aircraft equipped with beam-riding navigation equipment and bombing patterns intended to mark targets, and one of the first to use a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs to intentionally start large fires.

Those first six months was crucial for the future of strategic bombing, and for the notions of an independent air force.

Studying Coventry and the other large air strikes in Europe and Asia before America’s entry in WWII was Heywood S. “Possum” Hansell, an American Army Air Corps officer, a man with a long pedigree of service. Hansell was a member of the “Bomber Mafia,” a small group of vocal advocates of daylight precision air bombardment that included Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Ira Eaker and Jimmy Doolittle. Hansell was the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Section in the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps, and responsible for writing two papers known as AWP-1 and AWP-42, outlining the Army Air Force’s plans for strategic air warfare against both Germany and Japan. As a reward for his work, Hansell was given the command of the 1st Bomb Wing, the B-17 component of the Eighth Air Force in England. Those first six months was crucial for the future of strategic bombing, and for the notions of an independent air force.  Hansell was also the architect of the Combined Bomber Offensive with the RAF.  Soon, hansell found himself shifted out of Europe and the Flying Fortresses to Asia and the Superfortresses, the B-29s. But Possum was a better staff man than he was a commander, and the multitude of serious command-level problems on Saipan, with the B-29, and with the completely new command arrangements (Twentieth Air Force was commanded from Washington).  As a result, Hansell was replaced by fellow Mafia member Curtis LeMay.  After the war Hansell held a number of minor, if important posts in training and administration, retiring from the Air Force for the last time in 1955.  Possum Hansell, the architect of the bombing campaigns in Europe and Asia, died in Hilton Head, South Carolina on 14 November, 1988.

History was going to be made either way, but the outcome was, it was thought, in the bag for one side.

And so.  As Barack Obama told the assembled Republicans on 10 October 2010, “elections have consequences.” Last week, your intrepid researcher briefly discussed the then-upcoming election, where the United States was choosing between the first woman presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, from a major party and the first non-politician, non-military candidate, Donald Trump, from another.  History was going to be made either way, but the outcome was, it was thought, in the bag for one side.  Except…it didn’t roll that way.  Much to nearly everyone’s surprise,  the political neophyte Donald Trump won the Electoral College, and rather resoundingly.  One of the (many) consequences of  this election is the almost-certain end of the Clinton family’s quarter-century of influence on national politics. Another will be that Trump, having very few political debt to pay, will be free to choose people who will do their jobs, not kowtow to others just to curry favor.  Once again, we shall see.

Beer Floods and Cast Steel; Trans-Atlantic Radio and RCA

It happens sometimes that coincidental events, years apart, have a great effect on each other.  A flood of beer in London led to the invention of cast steel that was a boon to generations of beer workers who would supply the steel mill dives with brew: Trans-Atlantic radio service would increase the demand for radio receivers that would lead to the creation of the first global electronic firm.  And all on 17 October.  Oh sure, Ivan VI was crowned in 1740, and the Nine Regicides were executed in 1660 (hanged, beheaded, disemboweled, drawn and quartered and all that stuff), and the sieges at Saratoga ended in 1777, and the one at Yorktown ended in 1781, but we’re talking about important stuff here today: beer and steel and entertainment.

The facts of the case in London’s St Giles rookery seem to be simple.  On 17 October 1814, an iron band on a 135,000 Imperial gallon vat at a Meaux Company Brewery broke, which caused other vats to burst, which spilled about 4.14 million bottles of beer into the streets in a fifteen foot wave.  The tidal wave of suds destroyed a tavern and two houses, and flooded innumerable basements around Tottenham Court Road. At least eight people were either crushed by debris or drowned, including mourners at a wake for a two year old who died the day before. In the midst of this tragedy, “lucky” citizens who survived scooped up as much “free beer” as they could.

The tidal wave of suds destroyed a tavern and two houses, and flooded innumerable basements around Tottenham Court Road.

On a brighter note, the elusive process of casting steel from iron (steel is an alloy of elemental iron) took a great leap forward on 17 October 1855, when Henry Bessemer patented his refractory-lined iron converter.  The Bessemer converter was essentially a great, closed pot that allowed air to be blown through molten pig iron.  This removes impurities like silicon and manganese out and introduces carbon, strengthening the ionic bonds in the iron and forming the steel alloy. The ability to cast steel, as opposed to cruder processes of making blister steel by cementation or by pounding out impurities on a forge.  The ability to cast steel shapes like beams, rods, sheets, and blocks made large steel structures like bridges across the Mississippi and the Ganges possible, in addition to skyscrapers and Diesel engines and cooking pots and almost everything else that makes the technological conveniences of modern life possible.  Cast steel manufacturing was later improved by the open-hearth furnace.  And, yes, it did improve the manufacturing of beer because, after all, there’s nothing better than sucking down a cool one with the boys after a 14 hour shift at the mill in July that hasn’t flooded a few streets and basements.

The ability to cast steel shapes like beams, rods, sheets, and blocks made large steel structures like bridges across the Mississippi and the Ganges possible, in addition to skyscrapers and Diesel engines and cooking pots and almost everything else that makes the technological conveniences of modern life possible.

Just as important as steel (arguably) was when Marconi’s wireless telegraph began transAtlantic service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Clifden, Ireland on 17 October, 1907.  Guglielmo Marconi was an inventive genius who was fascinated with wireless telegraphy, following the work of Heinrich Hertz on radio waves, (called Hertz waves at the time).  In the 1890s, when he was twenty, Marconi developed an entire panoply of devices that made a moveable transmitter and receiver work over a distance of two miles.  As power and range increased Marconi’s reputation rose, and eventually commercial interest developed in his inventions.  By the time Marconi’s stations started commercial  network began (with mostly personal messages at first, weather reports and warnings to and from mariners soon followed), transmissions across the Atlantic were still sporadic.  Nonetheless,  his first stations showed that it was not only possible, but at intervals practical. But there was still no real good reason to sit by the radio and suck beer on a Saturday night.

In the 1890s, when he was twenty, Marconi developed an entire panoply of devices that made a moveable transmitter and receiver work over a distance of two miles.

But radio grew.  In 1912, the Marconi stations were instrumental in sending rescuers to the stricken Titanic, and during the 1914-1918 war it became a vital means of communications when the trans-Atlantic cables were cut.  In 1919, the US government, then controlling many of the American Marconi company’s patents, struck a deal with General Electric, which then formed the Radio Company of America on 17 October 1919. As it grew in wealth and influence, including patents on the superheterodyne receiver among thousands of others, RCA bought independent radio stations and formed them into the National Broadcast System (NBC)  Gradually, through the efforts of David Sarnoff among many others, RCA came to dominate everything on the airwaves, in phonographs, and in electrical and electronics technology.  By the time of its demise in 1986, RCA put its imprint on everything from pocket radios to satellites, from televisions to electron microscopes.  Probably even on some beer-making stuff, too.

Gradually, through the efforts of David Sarnoff among many others, RCA came to dominate everything on the airwaves, in phonographs, and in electrical and electronics technology.

Though this entry has a lot of blather about beer, the Great London Beer Flood was no laughing matter.  Industrial safety was becoming a serious problem at the industrialization of urban areas accelerated in the 19th century. There was a molasses flood in Boston in January 1919 that killed 21 people.  Other industrial spills and accidents, increasingly in the developing world, have killed thousands.

Note to my LinkedIn Readers (all five of you), sorry about last week, but something in WordPress (where this column is created) got discombobulated.  My apologies.

 

 

 

Bosworth Field, the Industrial Revolution, and the Irish Mess

The Crown of England, the Industrial Revolution, and the course of Irish politics all pivoted, more or less, on events taking place on 22 August, albeit centuries apart.

Revolutions and civil wars–distinguishable only by critics–often pivot on a single throw of the dice. By 1485 the York branch of the Plantagenet dynasty in England was headed by the ambitious Richard III, who had literally walked past five coffins to set the crown on his own head in a campaign dramatized and fictionalized in Shakespeare’s Richard III.  Richard had probably killed his nephews, who included Edward V, who was supposed to be protecting him, and likely had otherwise deposed all claimants ahead of him.  After Henry Tudor, the champion of the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenets, landed in Wales, Richard and his retainers met the challengers in modern Leicestershire.  After indecisively fighting for much of 22 August 1485, Richard ordered a cavalry charge to kill Tudor that failed, and Richard was killed instead.  The subsequent Tudor dynasty would last just over a century, but would be the most storied of England’s long history.

The Crown of England, the Industrial Revolution, and the course of Irish politics all pivoted, more or less, on events taking place on 22 August, albeit centuries apart.

A little less than three hundred years later, Henry Maudslay was born in Woolwich, England, on 22 August 1771.  While not as well remembered as an inventor as say Edison or Fulton, Ford or Bessemer, Maudslay’s innovations in the manufacture of screw threads made the Industrial Revolution and interchangeable manufacture possible. Until Maudslay built the first practical screw-cutting machines, what we now think of as common threads were anything but.  Individual craftsmen and shops cut their screws by hand, or with individually-made tooling.  Maudslay, still in his early twenties, made a lathe with a rigid tool post, replacing the hand-held tool that did not allow for much precision–defined in this case as repeatability.  WIth repeatability came standardization, and with standardization came interchangeability, and soon after, mass production.

It was a century and a half later Michael Collins,  a fiery and controversial figure in Irish and English politics leading up to the Irish Mess at the end of WWI (there’s no good way to refer to that time and place succinctly and accurately that satisfies all parties and partisans), was killed in an ambush in Cork.  At the time Collins was President of the Irish Provisional Government and representative for Cork and Armagh, among other constituencies. Collins favored the treaty with Great Britain that would both allow an independent Ireland and the separation of the six counties that make up Ulster in the northeast of the island.  He was killed on 22 August 1922 by members of an Anti-Treaty faction in Ireland who disagreed with him.  Because there are no independent witnesses, the ambush has been a matter of controversy ever since.

While Eli Whitney is credited with inventing interchangeable manufacture, Maudslay’s innovations made it possible.

Ultimately, the meaning of the terms “civil war” and “revolution” are solely a matter of taste.  While the War of the Roses that primarily ended at Bosworth has been called a civil war because of its internecine nature, the Irish Mess has been variously called a civil war and a revolution, and–to confuse things–a war for independence, for part of it, anyway.  While most revolutions and civil wars rely a great deal on chance, Henry Tudor was even further from being the “rightful” king of England than the man he replaced. Collins, one of a long line of Irish firebrands leading the fight against England, had no real claim on any office or honor other than what he fought for himself.  And chance, like the final Yorkist charge at Bosworth, played a prominent role in that long struggle.

While Maudslay only perfected what already existed (except he is credited with inventing the bench micrometer), his innovations accelerated the industrial “revolution” that was ongoing when he died in 1831.  While Eli Whitney is credited with inventing interchangeable manufacture, Maudslay’s innovations made it possible. But, unlike other “revolutions,” there was no chance involved.