Thames River Squadron - 03/30/11

7/31/2019 Thames River Squadron - 03/30/11

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Missions for America

Semper vigilans!Semper volans!

The CoastwatcherNewsletter of the Thames River Composite Squadron

GON

Connecticut Wing

Civil Air Patrol

http://capct075.web.officelive.com/default.aspx

S. Rocketto, [email protected]

C/1Lt Brendan Flynn, Cub Reporter1Lt Scott Owens, Paparazzi

Vol. V, No 13 30 March, 2011

SCHEDULE OF COMING EVENTS

For Future Planning

Cadet meetings normally start with drill and endwith aerospace history, current events, andCommander's moment. Blues are worn on thesecond week of the month and BDUs at othertimes. Main topics will be indicated on theschedule below. See website for updates.

01-03 APR-Tri-State SAREX05 APR-Squadron Meeting07 APR-GON AOA renewals-1000 hours09 APR-Annual TRCS Officers Banquet09-10 APR-Orientation Flights12 APR-Commander's Call16 APR-CSRRA High Power Rifle Clinic16-17 Apr Orientation Flights

19 APR-Squadron Meeting26 APR-Squadron Meeting

13-15 MAY-CTWG Great Starts

21-22 MAY-Corporate Learning Course (tentative)21-25 JUN-National AEO School9-16 JUL-RSC-McGuire AFB9-16 JUL-Reg. Cadet Ldrshp School-Concord, NH23 JUL-07 AUG-NESA (two sessions)08-14 AUG-CTWG Encampment13-2o AUG-Reg. Cadet Ldrshp School-McGuire17-20 AUG-CAP Nat'l Summer Conference22-24 SEP-AOPA Summit-Hartford22-23 OCT-CTWG Convention

CADET MEETING NOTES

29 March, 2011reported by

C/1Lt Brendan Flynn

The standard opening ceremonies were conducted.

The Cadets continued with the rocketry program,working on either an Alpha, payload, or multistagevehicle depending upon which of the four stagesof the program which they have reached.

Maj Bourque and C/1Lt Flynn taught anemergency services course on the 24 hour pack.

SENIOR MEETING NOTES

29 March, 2011

Maj Neilson led the Squadron in a planningsession for the upcoming Tri-State SAREX.Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania will

practice an emergency service drill based upon anearthquake and tsunami event.

The Squadron will establish a mission base forsoutheastern Connecticut at GON and will man thesite for the weekend. A minimum of threemembers will run the base, four air crews willstand ready, and TRCS will furnish a ground team


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on Saturday. Maj Neilson will be stationed atDanbury working Air Ops and Capt Noniewiczwill accompany him as mission safety officer.

In addition, a contingent from Hartford's RoyalCharter Squadron will be hosted at Groton.

CORPORATE LEARNING COURSE

ANNOUNCED

Capt Glen Dains, CTWG ProfessionalDevelopment Officer, has scheduled a CorporateLearning Course.

Enrollment is open for the Corporate LearningCourse (CLC) to be held at Wing Headquarters inMiddletown on April 30 and May 1, 2011. Classhours will be 0800 to approximately 1530 bothdays.

The Corporate Learning Course School is acomponent of Level III of the Senior MemberProfessional Development Program. It discussesthe relationship that the CAP squadron has withthe next major echelon of command -- the wing.Specifically, CLC discusses how wing-level

operations help to accomplish CAP's threemissions of aerospace education, emergencyservices, and cadet programs. It describes theworking relationships wing staff officers have witheach other, and their squadron level counterparts.To enroll for the school, submit a CAPF 17, withyour commanders endorsement, to WingHeadquarters no later than April 22, 2011.Applications received after that date will bereturned. Forms may be hand delivered or mailed

to Wing Headquarters at P.O. Box 1233,Middletown, CT, 06457-1233. Please enclose acheck for $20.00 made payable to CTWG CivilAir Patrol, to cover course materials andrefreshments.Prerequisite for attendance is completion ofSquadron Leadership School. Uniform will beblues, corporate equivalent, or polo shirt uniform .

AERONAUTICAL ACHIEVEMENT

TRCS's Maj John deAndrade has earned his typerating in the Boeing 757/767. He is an USAFAcademy graduate who has was assigned to SACand flew Boeing B-52s and KC-135s and the

North American-Rockwell B-1B as well as servinga tour as a Minuteman ICBM Launch ControlOfficer.

deAndrade demonstrating short field techniques in

the 757-332?

Maj deAndrade has been a CAP member for tenyears and has served in squadrons in Texas andGeorgia. His many CAP qualifications include theCommand Pilot Rating, Check Pilot Examiner, AirOperations Branch Director, and a Senior Level inStandards and Evaluation.

MILLER AT MINUTEMEN

28 March, 2011

First lieutenant Edward Miller delivered thesecond lecture on aircraft design to officers andsenior cadets of the New Haven MinutemanSquadron. The topic was The Sound Barrier andIts Influence on Aircraft Design.


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Lt Miller

The lecture's salient point was compressibility, itsdependence on aircraft speed, aircraft shape, andatmospheric conditions. Miller explained how asan aircraft moves through air, it forces the air tocompress in front of it and this, in turn, as theaircraft exceeds the speed of sound, forms a seriesof ever increasing diameter behind the aircraft.

As a result of aircraft geometry, the speed of soundwill be exceeded over a part of the aircraft, such asthe wing's upper surface. This is the critical Machnumber and results in extremely large increases indrag. This transonic regime of flight was oftenentered by World War II fighter aircraft in divesand generated a range of problems in control andstability. High stick forces, loss of elevatoreffectiveness, and buffeting led to a number ofdeaths and strained the ingenuity of engineers whosought solutions to these novel problems.

Miller went on to discuss how the engineersgathered the data and designed aircraft to not onlyfly within the transonic range but exceed it...to gosupersonic. The reason for swept wings was

explained and more radical developments such asdeltas and swept forward wings were also covered.Filleting, wing fences, dog teeth, vortexgenerators, and the selection of suitable aspectratios and thickness to chord ratios completedMiller's presentation on wing design.

ANTENNA INSTALLATION PARTY

26 March, 2011

Six squadron members installed the new VHFantenna on Saturday last. The group consisted ofLtCols Kinch and Doucette, Capts Manner,Noniewicz, and Lintelmann, and Noniewicz, andLt Looney.

LINTELMANN'S LOENING

Capt Willi Lintelmann was presented with theGrover Loening Award emblematic of reachingLevel III of the Senior Member ProfessionalDevelopment Program. Lintelmann is TRCSFinance Officer and Director of Finance at CTWG.He holds certification as a Mission Scanner and aMission Observer.

Capt

Lintelmann

AEROSPACE CURRENT EVENTS

Timidity in Flight Testing!

Professor Mark Lewis, former Chief Scientist ofthe US Air Force and current President of the

American Institute of Aeronautics andAstronautics recently commented on how the USgovernment and industry reacts to risk and thereaction to a failure. In an interview in SecondLine of Defense, Lewis discussed the importance


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of the advanced technologies tested in vehiclessuch as the X-27 and the X-51 but he alsoremarked on the US attitudes towards risk andfailure. He stated that

When we have a small failure on even anunmanned flight test, we spend sometimesyears studying our navel to figure out whatcould possibly have gone wrong beforewe've got enough the nerve to fly again"

Furthermore, he pointed out that we often giveshort shrift to development of adequate testingfacilities but that to do so is a false economy.There are two choices:

You can make the investment up front in thetest facility, or frankly, you can pay for it ina failed flight, but one way or another, you'regoing to pay for testing.

Then Chief Scientist of the US Air Force Lewiswith TRCS attendees at Joint Propulsion

Conference, 2008.

Pentagon Rejects GE/Rolls Alternate Engine forF-35

The Pentagon is satisfied that Connecticut's Pratt& Whitney will be the sole source for the JointStrike Fighter's engines. They ordered a halt to

work being carried on by General Electric andRolls Royce for a competitive power plant. Somemembers of Congress agree that a second productwould be a waste of money. However, thealternate engine has backers who will fight toreverse the decisions, claiming that competitionwill ultimately result in cost savings. The finaldecision must be made by Congress which hasalready obligated funds for the GE/Rolls effort.

Dragon Lady not Draggin'

The planned retirement of the Lockheed U-2 hasbeen moved up to at least 2015. U-2s and theirhuman pilots, equipped with the latest sensing

equipment are proving their worth in Afghanistanand will continue operations until Northrop-Grumman can produce enough of the unmannedRQ-4 Global Hawks. Currently, 32 U-2s in fourvariants are operational and the USAF has some80 pilots rated to fly them.

Spirit Rover Incommunicado

Attempts to contact the Mars Spirit Rover, trappedin soft soil for the past year have failed again. The

operators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory inPasadena hoped that over the Martian winter, thebatteries might recharge but this does not appear tohave happened. Hope is fading that Spirit willcontinue on its mission of exploration.

The vehicle completed its planned mission andoperated for over a half year longer and traveledten times more than planned before getting stuck.A wealth of data has been returned and in itshonor, an asteroid, 7452 Spirit, has been namedfor it. But alas, in the words of a traditional Irishdrinking song:

...it's no, nay, never,No nay never no more,

Will she play the wild rover

No never no more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37452_Spirithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37452_Spirit


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Messenger Imaging Mercury

The Messenger spacecraft has commencedimaging the surface of Mercury. The Debussycrater was the first target and 363 more imageswere recorded and then transmitted to Earth. Theplans are to take approximately 75,000 images andmap out the entire surface of Mercury in order tostudy its geology.

AEROSPACE HISTORY

Executive Action

The Shoot Down of Admiral Isoruku

Yamamoto

18 April, 1943

"Now the reason the enlightened prince andthe wise general conquer the enemywhenever they move and their achievementssurpass those of ordinary men isforeknowledge." Sun Tzu The Art of War

PART ONE

One of the greatest fears of those that practicebusiness or war is that ones' opponent will obtainknowledge of future strategies or tactics. Ingeneral, capitalizing on intelligence information isa murky business at best, beset by uncertainties asto the reliability of the sources, the skills of theanalysts, and the responses chosen by those privyto the final reports. Sometimes, a confluence ofcircumstances occur which result in a wellexecuted plan and successful results. Such werethe conditions which resulted in the death of theCommander in Chief of the Japanese Combined

Fleets, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto.

He is best known as the planner of the PearlHarbor attack but to characterize him by this oneachievement would be a mistake. The Admiralmay have planned the attack but strong evidenceexists to show that he considered it a misjudgment

on the part of the Japanese military and politicians.

Yamamato's Career

Yamamoto spent his entire adult life as a navalofficer. A graduate of the Imperial Japanese NavalAcademy, he lost two fingers during the 1905Russo-Japanese War at the Battle of Tsushima.Afterwards, he attended naval staff colleges andHarvard University and served in a number ofcommand positions. He also became an earlyadvocate of naval aviation and transferred to theaviation branch in 1924. In 1934, Yamamoto wasan advisor to the Japanese delegation at theLondon Naval Conference. He was posted twiceas a naval attache in Washington.

His cosmopolitan background provided him with adeeper insight into western culture than that heldby many of his more insular and ultra-nationalisticcolleagues. He opposed the invasion ofManchuria and the resulting war with China. Healso opposed the tripartite axis pact that Japanmade with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. As aresult, Yamamoto was vilified for his relativelymoderate views and was threatened withassassination by the more radical Japanesemilitarists. However, his obvious competency andhis popularity with the navy gave him somemeasure of protection and promotion to fulladmiral and command of the Combined Fleets.Despite his misgivings, when the decision wasmade to wage war against the United States andthe European powers, it became his duty to serveas ordered.

Yamamoto planned the Pearl Harbor attack but hehad serious misgivings about a war with theUnited States. Acutely aware of Japan's (and its

navy's) reliance on foreign oil imports, he statedthat "I shall run wild considerably for the first sixmonths or a year but I have utterly no confidencefor the second and third years." He had lived inthe United States and was knowledgeable about itsindustrial potential and the character of itscitizenry. He warned that, given the Americanspirit, certain victory would not be obtained by


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taking the United States bastions in the Pacific butwould require the Japanese to "...march intoWashington and dictate the terms of peace in theWhite House."

Yamamoto was right. Victory followed victory inthe first six months of the war. The US fleet waswounded at Pearl Harbor, British, French andDutch colonies were occupied in the southwestPacific and China, and the Philippine Islands wereconquered. Australia was threatened.

(US Navy File Photo)

Code Breaking and the Battle of Midway

Flushed with success but aware of the threat ofUnited States carriers which had been present inPearl Harbor on December 7th, Yamamoto

decided to attempt to draw them into battle. Hedevised a complicated plan which involved anArmy sponsored attack on the Aleutian Islands andthe seizure of Midway Island. Hopefully, thiswould draw the US carriers westward and result inthe destruction of what was left of the US PacificFleet. The order of battle at Midway indicates that

Yamamoto possessed a major advantage intraditional warships; seventeen battleships and andcruisers and 46 destroyers against eight Americancruisers and 15 destroyers. But one of the keys tovictory would be the aircraft carriers. Japan hadfour heavy carriers and two light carriers withapproximately 300 aircraft. US forces consisted ofthree heavy carriers and Midway's ground basedair units totaling about 350 aircraft.

And there was another key to victory: a 'key" tothe Japanese naval codes which rested at PearlHarbor's Station Hypo, the navy's CombatIntelligence Unit, charged with electronic signalmonitoring, cryptology, and cryptographicanalysis. The full story of how the United Statesdeveloped access to Japanese navalcommunications by partially breaking JapaneseNaval Code 25 (JN25) is to complex to relate hereand not pertinent to this story. But it is sufficientto say that during the war, enough of the code wasbroken to give the US commanders vitalinformation as to Japanese intentions and plans.This information allowed the favorable positioningof the US carriers under Rear Admiral RaymondSpruance so as to achieve a major victory,crippling Japanese naval aviation, and ending theEmpire's hopes for domination of the centralPacific. Six months had passed since PearlHarbor.

In the next six months, Japanese plans to invadeAustralia were thwarted when they failed to takeNew Guinea and were driven out of Guadalcanal.As Yamamoto had predicted, after a year, Japaneseforces were no longer "running wild" in the Pacificand morale was suffering. Yamamoto then

decided to make an inspection tour in the SouthPacific as a means to better appreciate the militarysituation and boost the flagging morale of theJapanese forces.

The visit was planned in meticulous detail asbefitted the Commander in Chief Combined Fleet.


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On 13 April, Japanese bases and support unitswere notified by radio using the latest version ofJN25. The pertinent part of the message, intranslation, stated, in part that:

...0600 depart Rabaul on board mediumattack plane (escorted by six fighters); 0800arrive Ballale. Immediately depart forShortland on board sub chaser...arriving at0840. Depart Shortland 0945...arrivingBallale at 1030...1100 depart Ballale onmedium attack plane, arriving Buin at1100...1400 depart Buin aboard mediumattack plane; arrive Rabaul at 1540....

At Pearl Harbor, the Combat Intelligence Unit,now renamed Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC),was listening. The message was decoded andinternal evidence indicated to the traffic analyststhat the message was important enough to receivepriority handling. Navy and Marine translatorsread the deciphered portions and skillfullydeduced the missing elements, especially thegeographic names. The travel itinerary of theCommander in Chief of the Japanese Fleet was

passed on to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz,Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.Operation Vengeance, the Navy's strike at thebrain of the Japanese naval command was set intomotion.

This article about Operation Vengeance, the shootdown of Admiral Yamamoto, will be concluded in

the next edition ofThe Coastwatcher.

MORE AVIATION HISTORY on 18 APRIL

The attack on Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto tookplace on the 18th of April in 1943. Interestingly,this is one year to the day that Colonel Doolittleled 16 B-25s off the deck of the USS Hornet tostage the first bombing raid on the Japanese homeislands.

Also occurring on 18 April....

In 1958, at Edwards AFB, Lt. Comdr. GeorgeWatkins sets a new absolute altitude record of76,932 ft. flying a Grumman F11F-1 Tiger

F11F-1 Tiger atMAPS-Akron-

Canton Airport

In 1916, Nieuport Squadron No. 124 is formedunder French command. This is an all-Americansquadron composed of volunteers. In December,they were renamed Escadrille Lafayette. Fourmonths later, the United States will enter theWorld War I.

In 1986, aeronautical engineer Marcel Bloch,better known by his nom d'guerre as MarcelDassault, goes West.

In 1917, Pacific Aero Products Company changesits name to the Boeing Airplane Company.

The Red BarnBoeing's First Factory

Seattle, Washington

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