9th Cavalry Regiment (United States)
The 9th Cavalry Regiment includes active duty reconnaissance units of the United States Army. It was one of a few segregated African American regiments; the unit served in combat during the Spanish American Wars. During American Expansionism and Manifest Destiny, the unit provided security to the early western settlers and the early American borders against Indian bands, Mexican encroachment, criminal elements, its role is to contribute long and short range reconnaissance and sniper assets to the combat brigade and division level and to locate, gather intelligence and kill the enemies of the United States. The regiment was constituted 21 July 1866 in the Regular Army as 9th Cavalry. On 3 August 1866, Major General Philip H. Sheridan, commanding the Military Division of the Gulf, was "authorized to raise, among others, one regiment of colored cavalry to be designated the 9th Regiment of U. S. Cavalry"; the regiment was organized on 21 September 1866 in New Orleans and mustered between September 1866 and 31 March 1867.
Its first commanding officer was Colonel Edward Hatch. The men enlisted for five years and received $13 per month, plus room and clothing, they were dubbed "Buffalo Soldiers". The regiment's motto was, remains, "We Can, We Will"; the mustering, organized by Maj. Francis Moore, 65th U. S. Colored Infantry, formed the nucleus of the enlisted strength, was obtained from New Orleans and its vicinity. In the autumn of 1866 recruiting began in Kentucky, all the men of the 9th were obtained from that state and Louisiana; the horses were obtained at Missouri. About the middle of September all recruits were assembled in New Orleans, where empty cotton presses were used as barracks. An epidemic of cholera caused 29 soldiers' deaths between October and December, with 46 other soldiers deserting by the end of March 1867; the camp was moved to a suburb of New Orleans. Officer positions did not begin to be staffed until February 1867. By the end of March 1867, the 9th Cavalry was at nearly full strength with a total of 885 enlisted men, or an average of over 70 to a Troop, was ordered to San Antonio, where it arrived early in April for three months of training.
However, Troops L and M went directly to their duty station at Texas. In April 1867, violent altercations between officers and soldiers occurred in Lieutenant Edward Heyl's Troop E and Lieutenant Fred Smith's Troop K near San Antonio as a result of poor morale and poor leadership. Sergeant Harrison Bradford and Lieutenant Seth E. Griffin died and 10 soldiers deserted from E Troop; the soldiers at this point still had not been introduced to the Articles of War, so two soldiers convicted to death were pardoned and restored to duty. In July 1867 the 9th Cavalry was ordered to western and southwestern Texas, to maintain law and order between the Rio Grande and Concho Rivers along a 630-mile line with seven forts from Fort Clark to Fort Quitman near present day El Paso. Regimental Headquarters and Troops A, B, E and K, under Col. Hatch, were stationed at Fort Stockton. Troops L and M under 1st Lt. Hamilton had been sent to Brownsville; the 9th remained in Texas for nearly all of it in the field. While in Texas, the troops battled intermittently with Apaches and Comanches, escorted mail, rescued civilians from native populations.
On December 26, 1867, K Troop lost three troopers at Fort Lancaster by an estimated force of 900 natives and outlaws. The regiment went to New Mexico Military District, which covered parts of New Mexico and Texas, participated in the Apache Wars from 1875 to 1881. Headquarters were at Fort Union. While in New Mexico, duties included constructing barracks and stables, caring for the horse herds, scouting for hostile natives, escorting the mail, surveying uncharted land, constructing roads; that service included the Battle of Tularosa with Chiricahua Apache warriors led by Victorio in May 1880. The 9th Cavalry was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1881, to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1885. On 5 November 1887, Company H, of the 9th Cavalry fought at the Battle of Crow Agency during the Crow War, at Crow Agency, Montana; the regiment was patrolled during the Ghost Dance War with the Sioux around the time of the Wounded Knee Massacre and were the last regiment to leave the Pine Ridge Reservation in the Winter of 1890-1891 following the massacre.
In 1898, the 9th US Cavalry Regiment fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders at the battles of Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. They served as his honor guard during his visit to San Francisco. In 1899 and again in 1904, the 9th Cavalry patrolled Yosemite National Park joining other cavalry and infantry as the first "rangers" of the park system. Under General John J. Pershing, the regiment fought in the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1916; the regiment spent World War I in the Philippines. From 3 April 1921 to 11 October 1922, Brigadier general Edward Anderson commanded the regiment. On 1 March 1933, the 9th Cavalry was assigned to the 3rd Cavalry Division. On 23 March 1907, the United States Military Academy Detachment of Cavalry was changed to a "colored" unit; this had been a long time coming. It had been proposed in 1897 at the "Cavalry and Light Artillery School" at Fort Riley, Kansas that West Point cadets learn their riding skills from the black non-commissioned officers who were considered among the best.
The one hundred man detachment from the 9th Cavalry served to teach fut
Wright Model B
The Wright Model B was an early pusher biplane designed by the Wright brothers in the United States in 1910. It was the first of their designs to be built in quantity. Unlike the Model A, it featured a true elevator carried at the tail rather than at the front, it was the last Wright model to have an open-frame tail. The Model B was a dedicated two-seater with the pilot and a passenger sitting side-by-side on the leading edge of the lower wing. Besides their civil market, the Wrights were able to sell aircraft to the Aeronautical Division, U. S. Signal Corps and to the United States Navy as hydroplanes, in which services they were used as trainers. Furthermore, the Wrights were able to sell licenses to produce the aircraft domestically, as well as in Germany; the deal with Burgess was the first license-production of aircraft undertaken in the United States and most of the one hundred Model Bs produced were built by Burgess. A modified Model B, redesignated Model EX achieved fame as the Vin Fiz Flyer, the first aircraft to cross the United States.
Burgess planned a refined version as the Model G, but this was never built. At least three original Model Bs were extant in 2007. An original Model B is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio; this aircraft was used for flight instruction by Mr. Howard Rinehart at Mineola, New York in 1916, it last flew during the International Air Races at Dayton in October 1924. It was placed on exhibit in the Museum in October 1962 by Eugene W. Kettering, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Air Force Museum Foundation. An original Model B on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, was purchased by Grover Cleveland Bergdoll in 1912 from Orville Wright. A replica of the Burgess-Wright Model F is displayed at Hill Aerospace Museum, Utah. Wright B Flyers Inc. a non-profit organization based at a museum-hangar at Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport in Dayton, owns one replica and one look-alike Wright "B" Flyer. A third look-alike was lost in a crash in 2011. Wright "B" Flyer No. 001 is a flying look-alike nicknamed "Brown Bird".
It was built in the late 1970s. Wright "B" Flyer No. 002 was a smaller flying look-alike known as "Silver Bird". The aircraft had modern aluminum tubing, a modern engine, it was designed to be disassembled for transport to airshows. "Silver Bird" was completed by the organization in October 2010 and began flight-testing at the Springfield Beckley Municipal Airport in Springfield, Ohio in June 2011. "Silver Bird" was lost in a crash on Saturday 30 July 2011 that resulted in the deaths of pilots Don Gum and Mitch Cary. Shortly before 11:00 AM the aircraft crashed into a muddy field near the Greene/Clark County line near Dayton, Ohio. Eyewitnesses at the scene reported hearing the aircraft's engine sputtering and backfiring before the crash; the aircraft had received its FAA airworthiness certificate for test flights the previous fall, had 25 hours TT at the time of the crash. Pilot Mitch Cary was former ` Wright B Flyers Inc.' director. Pilot Don Gum was a retired aeronautical engineer. Wright "B" Flyer A "Valentine Flyer" is a non-flying near-replica constructed by Tom and Nancy Valentine as a flying model for the TV-movie The Winds of Kitty Hawk in 1978.
The aircraft has not flown since being damaged during filming. The "Yellow Bird" is a more accurate replica of the Model B than either 001 or 002. Replicas on display: College Park Aviation Museum at the College Park Airport, College Park, Maryland. U. S. Army Aviation Museum, Fort Rucker, Alabama. United States Naval Academy, Maryland. Virginia Aviation Museum, Virginia. Model B Two-seat sports biplane, powered by a 35-hp Wright piston engine. Model B-1 Civil seaplane variant with two aluminum pontoons. Model B-2 Civil seaplane variant with a single float. Model EX This modified Model B was the first aircraft to cross the United States. Model F This version was built under license by the Burgess Company. Model G Unbuilt version, it was intended to be built by Burgess Company. Model G Aeroboat Two aircraft, built for the US Navy in 1913 and 1914, similar to the Model F, designated AH-19. United StatesUnited States Army United States Navy General characteristics Crew: One pilot Capacity: one passenger Length: 26 ft 0 in Wingspan: 39 ft 0 in Height: 8 ft 9 in Wing area: 480 ft2 Empty weight: 800 lb Gross weight: 1,250 lb Powerplant: 1 × Wright Vertical 4, 35 hp Performance Maximum speed: 45 mph Cruise speed: 40 mph Range: 110 miles Related development Wright 1902 Glider Wright Flyer Wright Flyer II Wright Flyer III Wright Model A Notes BibliographyTaylor, Michael J. H..
Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions. P. 898. United States Air Force Museum. Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Air Force Museum Foundation. 1975. World Aircraft Information Files. London: Bright Star Publishing. Pp. File 911 Sheet 03. Franklin Institute Home of the Wright B Flyer U. S. Army Aviation Museum College Park Aviation Museum Wright Experience Hill Aerospace Museum Just The Facts 1910–1914 Wright Model B Footage of Wright Model B in flight in 1934 Wright B Flyer Inc
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America referred to as the Confederacy, was an unrecognized country in North America that existed from 1861 to 1865. The Confederacy was formed by seven secessionist slave-holding states—South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Texas—in the Lower South region of the United States, whose economy was dependent upon agriculture cotton, a plantation system that relied upon the labor of African-American slaves; each state declared its secession from the United States, which became known as the Union during the ensuing civil war, following the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U. S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Before Lincoln took office in March, a new Confederate government was established in February 1861, considered illegal by the government of the United States. States volunteered militia units and the new government hastened to form its own Confederate States Army from scratch overnight.
After the American Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina—also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The Confederacy accepted Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither declared secession nor were they largely controlled by Confederate forces; the government of the United States rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegally founded. The War began with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. No foreign government recognized the Confederacy as an independent country, although Great Britain and France granted it belligerent status, which allowed Confederate agents to contract with private concerns for arms and other supplies. In early 1865, after four years of heavy fighting which led to 620,000–850,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy vanished; the war lacked a formal end.
By 1865 Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the civil war, lamented that the Confederacy had "disappeared". On February 22, 1862, the Confederate Constitution of seven state signatories – Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Texas – replaced the Provisional Constitution of February 8, 1861, with one stating in its preamble a desire for a "permanent federal government". Four additional slave-holding states – Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina – declared their secession and joined the Confederacy following a call by U. S. President Abraham Lincoln for troops from each state to recapture Sumter and other seized federal properties in the South. Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions adopting the forms of state governments without control of substantial territory or population in either case; the antebellum state governments in both maintained their representation in the Union. Fighting for the Confederacy were two of the "Five Civilized Tribes" – the Choctaw and the Chickasaw – in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona.
Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of martial law. A Unionist government was formed in opposition to the secessionist state government in Richmond and administered the western parts of Virginia, occupied by Federal troops; the Restored Government recognized the new state of West Virginia, admitted to the Union during the war on June 20, 1863, re-located to Alexandria for the rest of the war. Confederate control over its claimed territory and population in congressional districts shrank from 73% to 34% during the course of the American Civil War due to the Union's successful overland campaigns, its control of the inland waterways into the South, its blockade of the southern coast. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal; as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers and laborers; the most notable advance was Sherman's "March to the Sea" in late 1864.
Much of the Confederacy's infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs and bridges. Plantations in the path of Sherman's forces were damaged. Internal movement became difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and limiting army mobility; these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Davis's administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, allegations of autocratic government. After four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. A few days General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant signalling the collapse of the Confederacy. President Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, jailed in preparation for a treason trial, never held; the initial Confederacy was established in the Montgomery Convention in February 1861 by seven states (South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana
Slavery
Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, the word slavery may refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs. Slavery existed in many cultures since the time before written history. A person could capture, or purchase. Slavery was legal in most societies at some time in the past, but is now outlawed in all recognized countries; the last country to abolish slavery was Mauritania in 2007. There are an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of modern slavery.
The most common form of modern slave trade is referred to as human trafficking. In other areas, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, forced marriage; the English word slave comes from Old French sclave, from the Medieval Latin sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος, which, in turn, comes from the ethnonym Slav, because in some early Medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved. An older interpretation connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo'to strip a slain enemy'. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as unfree labourer or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, including Andi Cumbo-Floyd, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language. Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow for.
Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt, it is the most widespread form of slavery today. Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Chattel slavery called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Under the chattel slave system, slave status was imposed on children of the enslaved at birth. Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is rare today; when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government. "Slavery" has been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.
For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens. Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to refer to when an individual is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person; this may include institutions not classified as slavery, such as serfdom and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work, are subject to forms of coercion and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work. Human trafficking involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, India and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Examples of sexual slavery in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery. In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty such as in restaveks in Haiti. Forced marriages or early marriages are considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa. Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in
Fort Martin Scott
Fort Martin Scott is a restored United States Army outpost near Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country, United States, active from December 5, 1848 until April, 1853. It was part of a line of frontier forts established to protect settlers within Texas. A line of seven army posts were established in 1848-49 after the Mexican War to protect the settlers of West Texas and included Fort Worth, Fort Graham, Fort Gates, Fort Croghan, Fort Martin Scott, Fort Lincoln and Fort Duncan; the fort was established as Camp Houston on December 5, 1848, quartered Companies D and H, First United States Infantry. It was located two miles southeast of Fredericksburg on Baron's Creek and consisted of a complex of twenty-one buildings; the soldiers patrolled surrounding area. One mission of the outpost was to protect settlers from Indian depredations; the Eighth Military Department renamed the camp in December 1849 for Major Martin Scott, killed at the Battle of Molino del Rey in the Mexican War in 1847. The forces stationed at the fort began alternating between a company of infantry and one of dragoons.
As the settlers pushed farther west, Fort Martin Scott lost its strategic significance. In 1853, Army inspectors recommended; the Eighth Military Department ordered that Fort Martin Scott close in December 1853. The full text of this treaty can be found at Meusebach–Comanche Treaty. On May 9, 1847, prior to the establishment of Fort Martin Scott, an expedition under John O. Meusebach negotiated the non-government Treaty Between the Comanche and the German Immigration Company; the treaty was limited to the specific area between the Llano River and the San Saba River, only addressed the relations between the Penateka Comanche and the immigrants who came under the aegis of the German Immigration Company. The full text of the treaty can be found at Fort Martin Scott Treaty; the Fort Martin Scott Treaty was an unratified treaty and signed on December 10, 1850 by Indian agent John Rollins, U. S. Army Captain Hamilton W. Merrill, Captain J. B. McGown of the Texas Mounted Volunteers, interpreters John Connor and Jesse Chisholm, as well as twelve Comanche chiefs, six Caddo chiefs, four Lipan chiefs, five Quapaw chiefs, four Tawakoni chiefs, four Waco chiefs.
The treaty was signed in San Saba County but named for the nearest military outpost. On December 25, 1850, General George M. Brooke sent a copy of the treaty to Texas Governor Peter Hansborough Bell, mentioning the treaty had not been approved by the government and was binding only on the part of the Indian tribes; this treaty put the signed tribes under the sole jurisdiction of the United States of America. It prohibited supplying alcoholic beverages to the tribes; the tribes were required to remain at peace with each other and the United States government, to be at peace with other tribes the government deemed at peace. The tribes were to cease depredations; the government made it tribal responsibility to report any suspected activity that might violate the treaty, to assist the government in recovering runaway slaves. In return, the government would establish trading posts and give the tribes blacksmiths and school teachers; the treaty required the tribes to allow Christian preachers to minister to them, to allow said preachers unrestrained travel through tribal territory.
The site was occupied intermittently by the Texas Rangers and the Confederate States Army. In September 1866, General Philip H. Sheridan ordered elements of the Fourth United States Cavalry to Fort Martin Scott to secure the frontier once again from possible Indian attacks. By the end of 1866, the fort was permanently abandoned by military units. Many of the Martin Scott commanders fought in the American Civil War, including William R. Montgomery, William Steele, Edward D. Blake, James Longstreet, Theodore Fink. In the early 1880s, the fort was the location of the Gillespie County Fair. Owned from 1870–1959 by members of the Braeutigam family, Martin Scott was sold to the City of Fredericksburg in 1959. In 1986, the Fredericksburg Heritage Federation began extensive work of reconstructing the site as a tourist attraction. Johann Wolfgang Braeutigam emigrated with his family from Kaltenlengsfeld and arrived at Indianola on Dec 1845. Johann, his wife Christine and their nine children settled in Fredericksburg.
In 1870, the family moved into the abandoned Fort Martin Scott, from which Braeutigam operated a biergarten. On September 3, 1884, Braeutigam was murdered by four strangers in a robbery of the biergarten's cash box; the city of Fredericksburg bought the Fort Martin Scott property from the Braeutigam family. Among highlights of the fort are the post commander's quarters, six buildings of officers’ housing, sutler’s store and warehouse, bakehouse with oven, military hospital, three sets of enlisted men's barracks, quartermaster’s warehouse, a stable with barn, a blacksmith shop; the guardhouse, made of cut limestone, is the only surviving building from the original fort, having been restored to its original design in the early 1990s. It was the Braeutigam's homestead. Fort Martin Scott was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1936, Marker number 10039, added to the National Register of Historic Places in Texas on January 20, 1980; the fort is operated by the city of Fredericksburg and offers self-guided walking tours, pre-scheduled guided tours and school tours.
Located at 1606 East Main Street, the site is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Donations; as of October 8, 2010, the Former Texas R
Adobe
Adobe is a building material made from earth and organic materials. Adobe is Spanish for mudbrick, but in some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, the term is used to refer to any kind of earth construction. Most adobe buildings rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, is used throughout the world. Adobe bricks are rectangular prisms small enough that they can air dry individually without cracking, they can be subsequently assembled, with the application of adobe mud to bond the individual bricks into a structure. There is no standard size, in different regions. In some areas a popular size measured 8 by 4 by 12 inches weighing about 25 pounds; the maximum sizes can reach up to 100 pounds. In dry climates, adobe structures are durable, account for some of the oldest existing buildings in the world. Adobe buildings offer significant advantages due to their greater thermal mass, but they are known to be susceptible to earthquake damage if they are not somehow reinforced.
Cases where adobe structures were damaged during earthquakes include the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, the 2003 Bam earthquake, the 2010 Chile earthquake. Buildings made of sun-dried earth are common throughout the world Adobe had been in use by indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Southwestern United States and the Andes for several thousand years. Puebloan peoples built their adobe structures with handsful or basketsful of adobe, until the Spanish introduced them to making bricks. Adobe bricks were used in Spain from Iron Ages, its wide use can be attributed to its simplicity of design and manufacture, economics. A distinction is sometimes made between the smaller adobes, which are about the size of ordinary baked bricks, the larger adobines, some of which may be one to two yards long; the word adobe has existed for around 4000 years with little change in either pronunciation or meaning. The word can be traced from the Middle Egyptian word ɟbt "mud brick". Middle Egyptian evolved into Late Egyptian, Demotic or "pre-Coptic", to Coptic, where it appeared as τωωβε tōʾpə.
This was adopted into Arabic as الطوب aṭ-ṭawbu or aṭ-ṭūbu, with the definite article al- attached. Tuba, This was assimilated into the Old Spanish language as adobe via Mozarabic. English borrowed the word from Spanish in the early 18th century, still referring to mudbrick construction. In more modern English usage, the term "adobe" has come to include a style of architecture popular in the desert climates of North America in New Mexico, regardless of the construction method. An adobe brick is a composite material made of earth mixed with water and an organic material such as straw or dung; the soil composition contains sand and clay. Straw is useful in binding the brick together and allowing the brick to dry evenly, thereby preventing cracking due to uneven shrinkage rates through the brick. Dung offers the same advantage; the most desirable soil texture for producing the mud of adobe is 15% clay, 10–30% silt, 55–75% fine sand. Another source quotes 15–25% clay and the remainder sand and coarser particles up to cobbles 50 to 250 mm, with no deleterious effect.
Modern adobe is stabilized with Portland cement up to 10 % by weight. No more than half the clay content should be expansive clays, with the remainder non-expansive illite or kaolinite. Too much expansive clay results in uneven drying through the brick, resulting in cracking, while too much kaolinite will make a weak brick; the soils of the Southwest United States, where such construction has been used, are an adequate composition. Adobe walls are load bearing, i.e. they carry their own weight into the foundation rather than by another structure, hence the adobe must have sufficient compressive strength. In the United States, most building codes call for a minimum compressive strength of 300 lbf/in2 for the adobe block. Adobe construction should be designed so as to avoid lateral structural loads that would cause bending loads; the building codes require the building sustain a 1 g lateral acceleration earthquake load. Such an acceleration will cause lateral loads on the walls, resulting in shear and bending and inducing tensile stresses.
To withstand such loads, the codes call for a tensile modulus of rupture strength of at least 50 lbf/in2 for the finished block. In addition to being an inexpensive material with a small resource cost, adobe can serve as a significant heat reservoir due to the thermal properties inherent in the massive walls typical in adobe construction. In climates typified by hot days and cool nights, the high thermal mass of adobe mediates the high and low temperatures of the day, moderating the temperature of the living space; the massive walls require a large and long input of heat from the sun and from the surrounding air before they warm through to the interior. After the sun sets and the temperature drops, the warm wall will continue to transfer heat to the interior for several hou
Jimmy Doolittle
James Harold Doolittle was an American General and aviation pioneer. He made early coast-to-coast flights, earned a doctorate from M. I. T. in aeronautics, won many flying races and most helped develop instrument flying. A flying instructor during World War I and a Reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps, Doolittle was recalled to active duty during World War II, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for personal valor and leadership as commander of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on the Japanese main islands, on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack was a major morale booster for the United States, Doolittle was celebrated as a hero, he was promoted to Lieutenant general and commanded the Twelfth Air Force over North Africa, the Fifteenth Air Force over the Mediterranean, the Eighth Air Force over Europe. After WWII he left the Air Force but remained active in many technical fields, was promoted to general years after retirement.
Doolittle was born in Alameda and spent his youth in Nome, where he earned a reputation as a boxer. His parents were Rosa Cerenah Shephard. By 1910, Jimmy Doolittle was attending school in Los Angeles; when his school attended the 1910 Los Angeles International Air Meet at Dominguez Field, Doolittle saw his first airplane. He attended Los Angeles City College after graduating from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, won admission to the University of California, Berkeley where he studied in The School of Mines, he was a member of Theta Kappa Nu fraternity, which would merge into Lambda Chi Alpha during the latter stages of the Great Depression. Doolittle took a leave of absence in October 1917 to enlist in the Signal Corps Reserve as a flying cadet. Doolittle received his Reserve Military Aviator rating and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Signal Officers Reserve Corps of the U. S. Army on March 11, 1918. During World War I, Doolittle stayed in the United States as a flight instructor and performed his war service at Camp John Dick Aviation Concentration Center, Texas.
Doolittle's service at Rockwell Field consisted of duty as a flight gunnery instructor. At Kelly Field, he served with the 104th Aero Squadron and with the 90th Aero Squadron of the 1st Surveillance Group, his detachment of the 90th Aero Squadron was based at patrolling the Mexican border. Recommended by three officers for retention in the Air Service during demobilization at the end of the war, Doolittle qualified by examination and received a Regular Army commission as a 1st Lieutenant, Air Service, on July 1, 1920. On May 10, 1921, he was engineering officer and pilot for an expedition recovering a plane that had force-landed in a Mexican canyon on February 10 during a transcontinental flight attempt by Lieut. Alexander Pearson. Doolittle reached the plane on May 3 and found it serviceable returned May 8 with a replacement motor and four mechanics; the oil pressure of the new motor was inadequate and Doolittle requested two pressure gauges, using carrier pigeons to communicate. The additional parts were dropped by air and installed, Doolittle flew the plane to Del Rio, Texas himself, taking off from a 400-yard airstrip hacked out of the canyon floor.
Subsequently, he attended the Air Service Mechanical School at Kelly Field and the Aeronautical Engineering Course at McCook Field, Ohio. Having at last returned to complete his college degree, he earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1922, joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Doolittle was one of the most famous pilots during the inter-war period. In September 1922, he made the first of many pioneering flights, flying a de Havilland DH-4 –, equipped with early navigational instruments – in the first cross-country flight, from Pablo Beach, Florida, to Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, in 21 hours and 19 minutes, making only one refueling stop at Kelly Field; the U. S. Army awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross. Within days after the transcontinental flight, he was at the Air Service Engineering School at McCook Field, Ohio. For Doolittle, the school assignment had special significance: "In the early'20s, there was not complete support between the flyers and the engineers.
The pilots thought the engineers were a group of people who zipped slide rules back and forth, came out with erroneous results and bad aircraft. So some of us who had previous engineering training were sent to the engineering school at old McCook Field.... After a year's training there in practical aeronautical engineering, some of us were sent on to MIT where we took advanced degrees in aeronautical engineering. I believe that the purpose was served, that there was thereafter a better understanding between pilots and engineers." In July 1923, after serving as a test pilot and aeronautical engineer at McCook Field, Doolittle entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In March 1924, he conducted aircraft acceleration tests at McCook Field, which became the basis of his master's thesis and led to his second Distinguished Flying Cross, he received his S. M. in Aeronautics from MIT in June 1924. Because the Army had given him two years to get his degree and he had done
