Luke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located 7 miles west of the central business district of Glendale, in Maricopa County, United States. It is about 15 miles west of Arizona. Luke AFB is a major training base of the Air Education and Training Command, training pilots in the F-16 Fighting Falcon. On 31 March 2011 it was announced that the F-35 Lightning II would replace the F-16 as the primary training aircraft at Luke, although the date of deployment of the new aircraft to Luke and reorganization plans were not announced. On 16 July 2013, the Air Force announced that Luke AFB will house a total of 144 F-35A Lightning IIs, it is a designated Superfund site due to a number of groundwater contaminants. Luke Air Force Base is an active-duty F-16 Fighting Falcon training base with 170 F-16s assigned; the host command at Luke is the 56th Fighter Wing, under Air Education and Training Command's 19th Air Force. The 56th FW is composed of 27 squadrons, including six training squadrons.
There are several tenant units on base, including the 944th Fighter Wing, assigned to 10th Air Force and the Air Force Reserve. The 56th Fighter Wing trains more than 700 maintenance technicians each year; the base population includes 15,000 family members. With about 80,000 retired military members living in greater Phoenix, the base services a total population of more than 100,000 people. An integral part of Luke's F-16 fighter pilot training mission is the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range; the range consists of 1,900,000 acres of undisturbed Sonoran Desert southwest of Luke Air Force Base between Yuma and Tucson south of Interstate 8. Overhead are 57,000 cubic miles of airspace where pilots practice air-to-air maneuvers and engage simulated battlefield targets on the ground; the size of Connecticut, the immense size of the complex allows for simultaneous training activities on nine air-to-ground and two air-to-air ranges. The Luke Air Force Base Range Management Office manages the eastern range activities and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma oversees operations on the western portion.
In addition to flying and maintaining the F-16, Luke airmen deploy to support on-going operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and to combatant commanders in other locations around the world. In 2004, more than 900 Luke airmen deployed, with most supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since June 2012, Luke AFB has been the permanent home of Naval Operational Support Center Phoenix of the US Navy. A NOSC is a facility used to provide operational support for training and administrative services to Navy Reserve Units. NOSC Phoenix supports over 750 Navy Reservists in sixteen Navy Reserve units; the new 32,055 square foot, one-story facility is located on a 1.85 acre site at Luke AFB with sufficient parking and a secured perimeter to meet current anti-terrorism and force protection standards. NOSC Phoenix serves a full-time command and administrative staff, a medical unit, reservists during drill weekends, it has a 4800 square foot drill hall, command staff offices, reserve unit administration spaces and dental examination areas, six classrooms, a distance learning center, a physical fitness room, a quarterdeck.
The $11.2 million facility is the first LEED Platinum certified building of the US Navy Reserve Force. The host unit, the 56th Fighter Wing, is tasked to train F-35 and F-16 fighter pilots and maintainers; the wing graduated more than 400 F-16 pilots and 470 crew chiefs annually. Groups: 56th Operations Group The 56th OG has operational control and responsibility for the entire fighter-training mission at Luke. 21st Fighter Squadron, 61st Fighter Squadron, 62d Fighter Squadron, 63d Fighter Squadron, 310th Fighter Squadron, 425th Fighter Squadron, 607th Air Control Squadron56th Maintenance Group The 56th MXG provides aircraft maintenance on more than 79 F-16s and 29 F-35s, for the Air Force's only active duty F-16 and F-35 training wing.56th Mission Support Group The 56th MSG sustains the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-35 Lightning II, provides for the community, delivers responsive combat support.56th Medical Group The 56th MDG is an outpatient only Medical Treatment Facility, which serves more than 84,000 beneficiaries in the Phoenix area.
Tenant Units: 944th Fighter WingThe 944th Fighter Wing is an adjunct Air Force Reserve wing to the 56th FW that trains Air Force F-16 pilots for reserve duty. 69th Fighter Squadron Autonomous Units: US Navy, Navy Operational Support Command Phoenix The public has been more accommodating to the military operations at Luke Air Force base compared to other Arizona installations like the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, according to a 2015 study. This is due to a buffer of public land around it, that helps against encroachment and land use conflicts; the private sector in Glendale has been helping to maintain the buffer of public land, with it the Arizona defense economy. This is because if encroachment impacts a site’s mission, it loses value for the military operation, base closure is more to occur. Luke Air Force Base was named after Second Lieutenant Frank Luke. Lt Luke is a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient and the number two United States ace in World War I. Born in Phoenix in 1897, the "Arizona Balloon
United States Army Air Corps
For the current active service branch, see United States Air Force The United States Army Air Corps was the aerial warfare service of the United States of America between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an important part of modern warfare, a philosophical rift developed between more traditional ground-based army personnel and those who felt that aircraft were being underutilized and that air operations were being stifled for political reasons unrelated to their effectiveness; the USAAC was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926, was part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces on 20 June 1941, giving it greater autonomy from the Army's middle-level command structure. During World War II, although not an administrative echelon, the Air Corps remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was abolished by legislation establishing the Department of the Air Force; the Air Corps was renamed by the United States Congress as a compromise between the advocates of a separate air arm and those of the traditionalist Army high command who viewed the aviation arm as an auxiliary branch to support the ground forces.
Although its members worked to promote the concept of air power and an autonomous air force in the years between the world wars, its primary purpose by Army policy remained support of ground forces rather than independent operations. On 1 March 1935, still struggling with the issue of a separate air arm, the Army activated the General Headquarters Air Force for centralized control of aviation combat units within the continental United States, separate from but coordinate with the Air Corps; the separation of the Air Corps from control of its combat units caused problems of unity of command that became more acute as the Air Corps enlarged in preparation for World War II. This was resolved by the creation of the Army Air Forces, making both organizations subordinate to the new higher echelon. On June 20, 1941, the Army Air Corps' existence as the primary air arm of the U. S. Army changed to that of being the training and logistics elements of the then-new United States Army Air Forces, which embraced the formerly-named General Headquarters Air Force under the new Air Force Combat Command organization for front-line combat operations.
The Air Corps ceased to have an administrative structure after 9 March 1942, but as "the permanent statutory organization of the air arm, the principal component of the Army Air Forces," the overwhelming majority of personnel assigned to the AAF were members of the Air Corps. The U. S. Army Air Service had a turbulent history. Created during World War I by executive order of 28th President Woodrow Wilson after American entrance in April 1917 as the increasing use of airplanes and the military uses of aviation were apparent as the war continued to its climax, the U. S. Army Air Service gained permanent legislative authority in 1920 as a combatant arm of the line of the United States Army. There followed a six-year struggle between adherents of airpower and the supporters of the traditional military services about the value of an independent Air Force, intensified by struggles for funds caused by skimpy budgets, as much an impetus for independence as any other factor; the Lassiter Board, a group of General Staff officers, recommended in 1923 that the Air Service be augmented by an offensive force of bombardment and pursuit units under the command of Army general headquarters in time of war, many of its recommendations became Army regulations.
The War Department desired to implement the Lassiter Board's recommendations, but the administration of President Calvin Coolidge chose instead to economize by radically cutting military budgets the Army's. The Lampert Committee of the House of Representatives in December 1925 proposed a unified air force independent of the Army and Navy, plus a department of defense to coordinate the three armed services; however another board, headed by Dwight Morrow, was appointed in September 1925 by Coolidge ostensibly to study the "best means of developing and applying aircraft in national defense" but in actuality to minimize the political impact of the pending court-martial of Billy Mitchell. It declared that no threat of air attack was to exist to the United States, rejected the idea of a department of defense and a separate department of air, recommended minor reforms that included renaming the Air Service to allow it "more prestige."In early 1926 the Military Affairs Committee of the Congress rejected all bills set forth before it on both sides of the issue.
They fashioned a compromise in which the findings of the Morrow Board were enacted as law, while providing the air arm a "five-year plan" for expansion and development. Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, the Chief of Air Service, had proposed that it be made a semi-independent service within the War Department along the lines of the Marine Corps within the Navy Department, but this was rejected; the legislation changed the name of the Air Service to the Air Corps, "thereby strengthening the conception of military aviation as an offensive, striking arm rather than an auxiliary service." The Air Corps Act became law on 2 July 1926. In accordance with the Morrow Board's recommendations, the act created an additional Assistant Secretary of War to "help foster military aeronautics", established an air section in each division of the General Staff for a period of three years. Two additional brigadier generals would serve as assistant chiefs of the A
Mitsubishi A6M Zero
The Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" is a long-range fighter aircraft manufactured by Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was designated as the Mitsubishi A6M Rei-sen; the A6M was referred to by its pilots as the Reisen, "0" being the last digit of the imperial year 2600 when it entered service with the Imperial Navy. The official Allied reporting name was "Zeke", although the use of the name "Zero" was used colloquially by the Allies as well; the Zero is considered to have been the most capable carrier-based fighter in the world when it was introduced early in World War II, combining excellent maneuverability and long range. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service frequently used it as a land-based fighter. In early combat operations, the Zero gained a legendary reputation as a dogfighter, achieving an outstanding kill ratio of 12 to 1, but by mid-1942 a combination of new tactics and the introduction of better equipment enabled Allied pilots to engage the Zero on equal terms.
By 1943, due to inherent design weaknesses, such as a lack of hydraulic flaps and rudder rendering it unmaneuverable at high speeds, an inability to equip it with a more powerful aircraft engine, the Zero became less effective against newer Allied fighters. By 1944, with opposing Allied fighters approaching its levels of maneuverability and exceeding its firepower and speed, the A6M had become outdated as a fighter aircraft. However, as design delays and production difficulties hampered the introduction of newer Japanese aircraft models, the Zero continued to serve in a front line role until the end of the war in the Pacific. During the final phases, it was adapted for use in kamikaze operations. Japan produced more Zeros than any other model of combat aircraft during the war; the Mitsubishi A5M fighter was just entering service in early 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Navy started looking for its eventual replacement. On October 5, 1937, they issued "Planning Requirements for the Prototype 12-shi Carrier-based Fighter", sending it to Nakajima and Mitsubishi.
Both firms started preliminary design work while they awaited more definitive requirements to be handed over in a few months. Based on the experiences of the A5M in China, the IJN sent out updated requirements in October calling for a speed of 270 kn at 4,000 m and a climb to 3,000 m in 9.5 minutes. With drop tanks, they wanted an endurance of two hours at normal power, or six to eight hours at economical cruising speed. Armament was to consist of two 7.7 mm machine guns and two 60 kg bombs. A complete radio set was to be mounted in all aircraft, along with a radio direction finder for long-range navigation; the maneuverability was to be at least equal to that of the A5M, while the wingspan had to be less than 12 m to allow for use on aircraft carriers. All this was to be achieved with a significant design limitation. Nakajima's team considered the new requirements unachievable and pulled out of the competition in January. Mitsubishi's chief designer, Jiro Horikoshi, thought that the requirements could be met, but only if the aircraft were made as light as possible.
Every possible weight-saving measure was incorporated into the design. Most of the aircraft was built of a new top-secret aluminium alloy developed by Sumitomo Metal Industries in 1936. Called "extra super duralumin", it was lighter and more ductile than other alloys used at the time, but was prone to corrosive attack, which made it brittle; this detrimental effect was countered with an anti-corrosion coating applied after fabrication. No armour protection was provided for the pilot, engine or other critical points of the aircraft, self-sealing fuel tanks, which were becoming common at the time, were not used; this made the Zero lighter, more maneuverable, the longest-ranged single-engine fighter of World War II, which made it capable of searching out an enemy hundreds of kilometres away, bringing them to battle returning to its base or aircraft carrier. However, that tradeoff in weight and construction made it prone to catching fire and exploding when struck by enemy rounds. With its low-wing cantilever monoplane layout, wide-set conventional landing gear and enclosed cockpit, the Zero was one of the most modern carrier based aircraft in the world at the time of its introduction.
It had a high-lift, low-speed wing with low wing loading. This, combined with its light weight, resulted in a low stalling speed of well below 60 kn; this was the main reason for its phenomenal maneuverability, allowing it to out-turn any Allied fighter of the time. Early models were fitted with servo tabs on the ailerons after pilots complained that control forces became too heavy at speeds above 300 kilometres per hour, they were discontinued on models after it was found that the lightened control forces were causing pilots to overstress the wings during vigorous maneuvers. It has been claimed that the Zero's design showed a clear influence from British and American fighter aircraft and components exported to Japan in the 1930s, in particular on the American side, the Vought V-143 fighter. Chance Vought had sold the prototype for this aircraft and its plans to Japan in 1937. Eugene Wilson, president of Vought, claimed that when shown a captured Zero in 1943, he found that "There on the floor was the Vought V 142 or just the spitting image of it, Japanese-made", while the "po
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli War named the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and Operation Kadesh or Sinai War in Israel, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had just nationalized the canal. After the fighting had started, political pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations led to a withdrawal by the three invaders; the episode humiliated the United France and strengthened Nasser. On 29 October, Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai. Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to cease fire, ignored. On 5 November and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal; the Egyptian forces were defeated. It became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack had been planned beforehand by the three countries; the three allies had attained a number of their military objectives.
Heavy political pressure from the United States and the USSR led to a withdrawal. U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned Britain not to invade. Historians conclude the crisis "signified the end of Great Britain's role as one of the world's major powers"; the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 until March 1957. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, which Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950; as a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary. The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, after ten years of work financed by the French and Egyptian governments; the canal was operated by the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal, an Egyptian-chartered company. The canal became strategically important, as it provided the shortest ocean link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
The canal eased commerce for trading nations and helped European colonial powers to gain and govern their colonies. In 1875, as a result of debt and financial crisis, Egypt was forced to sell its shares in the canal operating company to the British government of Benjamin Disraeli, they were willing buyers and obtained a 44 percent share in the canal's operations for less than £4 million. With the 1882 invasion and occupation of Egypt, the United Kingdom took de facto control of the country as well as the canal proper, its finances and operations; the 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection. In ratifying it, the Ottoman Empire agreed to permit international shipping to pass through the canal, in time of war and peace; the Convention came into force in 1904, the same year as the Entente cordiale between Britain and France. Despite this convention, the strategic importance of the Suez Canal and its control were proven during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, after Japan and Britain entered into a separate bilateral agreement.
Following the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet based at Port Arthur, the Russians sent reinforcements from their fleet in the Baltic Sea. The British denied the Russian fleet use of the canal and forced it to steam around Africa, giving the Japanese forces time to consolidate their position in East Asia; the importance of the canal as a strategic intersection was again apparent during the First World War, when Britain and France closed the canal to non-Allied shipping. The attempt by German-led Ottoman forces to storm the canal in February 1915 led the British to commit 100,000 troops to the defense of Egypt for the rest of the war; the canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War as a conduit for the shipment of oil. Petroleum business historian Daniel Yergin wrote of the period: "In 1948, the canal abruptly lost its traditional rationale.... Control over the canal could no longer be preserved on grounds that it was critical to the defence either of India or of an empire, being liquidated.
And yet, at the same moment, the canal was gaining a new role—as the highway not of empire, but of oil.... By 1955, petroleum accounted for half of the canal's traffic, and, in turn, two thirds of Europe's oil passed through it". At the time, Western Europe imported two million barrels per day from the Middle East, 1,200,000 by tanker through the canal, another 800,000 via pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, where tankers received it; the US imported another 300,000 barrels daily from the Middle East. Though pipelines linked the oil fields of Iraq and the Persian Gulf states to the Mediterranean, these routes were prone to suffer from instability, which led British leaders to prefer to use the sea route through the Suez Canal; as it was, the rise of super-tankers for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, which were too big to use the Suez Canal meant that British policy-makers overestimated the importance of the canal. By 2000, only 8 percent of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez canal with the rest coming via the Cape route.
In August 1956 the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a report titled "Britain and the
Monocoque
Monocoque structural skin, is a structural system where loads are supported through an object's external skin, similar to an egg shell. The word monocoque is a French term for "single shell" or "single hull". First used in boats, a true monocoque carries both tensile and compressive forces within the skin and can be recognised by the absence of a load-carrying internal frame. Few metal aircraft can be regarded as pure monocoques, as they use a metal shell or sheeting reinforced with frames riveted to the skin, but most of the wooden aircraft are described as monocoques though they incorporate frames. By contrast, a semi-monocoque is a hybrid combining a tensile stressed skin and a compressive structure made up of longerons and ribs or frames. Other semi-monocoques, not to be confused with true monocoques, include vehicle unibodies, which tend to be composites, inflatable shells or balloon tanks, both of which are pressure stabilised; the term is misused as a marketing term for structures built up from hollow components.
Early aircraft were constructed using frames of wood or steel tubing, which could be covered with fabric such as Irish linen or cotton. The fabric made a minor structural contribution in tension but none in compression and was there for aerodynamic reasons only. By considering the structure as a whole and not just the sum of its parts, monocoque construction integrated the skin and frame into a single load-bearing shell with significant improvements to strength and weight. To make the shell, thin strips of wood were laminated into a three dimensional shape. One of the earliest examples was the Deperdussin Monocoque racer in 1912, which used a laminated fuselage made up of three layers of glued poplar veneer, which provided both the external skin and the main load-bearing structure; this produced a smoother surface and reduced drag so that it was able to win most of the races it was entered into. This style of construction was further developed in Germany by LFG Roland using the patented Wickelrumpf form licensed by them to Pfalz Flugzeugwerke who used it on several fighter aircraft.
Each half of the fuselage shell was formed over a male mold using two layers of plywood strips with fabric wrapping between them. The early plywood used was prone to damage from delamination. While all-metal aircraft such as the Junkers J 1 had appeared as early as 1915, these were not monocoques but added a metal skin to an underlying framework; the first metal monocoques were built by Claudius Dornier. He had to overcome a number of problems, not least was the quality of aluminium alloys strong enough to use as structural materials, which formed layers instead of presenting a uniform material. After failed attempts with several large flying boats in which a few components were monocoques, he built the Zeppelin-Lindau V1 to test out a monocoque fuselage. Although it crashed, he learned a lot from its construction; the Dornier-Zeppelin D. I was built in 1918 and although too late for operational service during the war was the first all metal monocoque aircraft to enter production. In parallel to Dornier, Zeppelin employed Adolf Rohrbach, who built the Zeppelin-Staaken E-4/20, which when it flew in 1920 became the first multi-engined monocoque airliner, before being destroyed under orders of the Inter-Allied Commission.
At the end of WWI, the Inter-Allied Technical Commission published details of the last Zeppelin-Lindau flying boat showing its monocoque construction. In the UK, Oswald Short built a number of experimental aircraft with metal monocoque fuselages starting with the 1920 Short Silver Streak in an attempt to convince the air ministry of its superiority over wood. Despite advantages, aluminium alloy monocoques would not become common until the mid 1930s as a result of a number of factors, including design conservatism and production setup costs. Short would prove the merits of the construction method with a series of flying boats, whose metal hulls didn't absorb water as the wooden hulls did improving performance. In the United States, Northrop was a major pioneer, introducing techniques used by his own company and Douglas with the Northrop Alpha. In motor racing, the safety of the driver depends on the car body which must meet stringent regulations and only a few cars have been built with monocoque structures.
An aluminum alloy monocoque chassis was first used in the 1962 Lotus 25 Formula 1 race car and McLaren was the first to use carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers to construct the monocoque of the 1981 McLaren MP4/1. In 1992 the McLaren F1 became the first production car with a carbon-fiber monocoque; the term monocoque is misapplied to unibody cars. Commercial car bodies are never true monocoques but instead use the unibody system, which uses box sections and tubes to provide most of the strength of the vehicle, while the skin adds little strength or stiffness; some armoured fighting vehicles use a monocoque structure with a body shell built up from armour plates, rather than attaching them to a frame. This reduces weight for a given amount of armour. Examples include the German TPz Fuchs and RG-33. French industrialist and engineer Georges Roy attempted in the 1920s to improve on the bicycle-inspired motorcycle frames of the day, which lacked rigidity; this limited their handling and therefore performance.
He applied for a patent in 1926, at the 1929 Paris Automotive Show unveiled his new motorcycle, the Art-Deco styled 1930 Majestic. Its new type of monocoque body solved the p
Curtiss SB2C Helldiver
The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver is a carrier-based dive bomber aircraft produced for the United States Navy during World War II. It replaced the Douglas SBD Dauntless in US Navy service; the SB2C was much faster than the SBD it replaced. Crew nicknames for the aircraft included the Big-Tailed Beast or just the derogatory Beast, Two-Cee, Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class. Neither pilots nor aircraft carrier captains seemed to like it. Delays marred its production—by the time the A-25 Shrike variant for the USAAF was deployed in late 1943, the Army Air Forces no longer had a need for a thoroughbred dive bomber. Poor handling of the aircraft was another factor; the Truman Committee investigated Helldiver production and turned in a scathing report, which led to the beginning of the end for Curtiss. Problems with the Helldiver were ironed out, in spite of its early problems, the aircraft was flown through the last two years of the Pacific War with a fine combat record; the Helldiver was developed to replace the Douglas SBD Dauntless.
It was a much larger aircraft, able to operate from the latest aircraft carriers and carry a considerable array of armament. It featured an internal bomb bay. Saddled with demanding requirements set forth by both the U. S. Marines and United States Army Air Forces, the manufacturer incorporated features of a "multi-role" aircraft into the design; the Model XSB2C-1 prototype suffered teething problems connected to its Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone engine and three-bladed propeller. In 1939, a student brought a model of the new Curtiss XSB2C-1 to the MIT wind tunnel. Professor of Aeronautical Engineering Otto C. Koppen was quoted as saying, "if they build more than one of these, they are crazy", he was referring to controllability issues with the small vertical tail. The first prototype made its maiden flight on 18 December 1940, it crashed on 8 February 1941 when its engine failed on approach, but Curtiss was asked to rebuild it. The fuselage was lengthened and a larger tail was fitted, while an autopilot was fitted to help the poor stability.
The revised prototype flew again on 20 October 1941, but was destroyed when its wing failed during diving tests on 21 December 1941. Large-scale production had been ordered on 29 November 1940, but a large number of modifications were specified for the production model. Fin and rudder area were increased, fuel capacity was increased, self-sealing fuel tanks were added, the fixed armament was doubled to four 0.50 in machine guns in the wings, compared with the prototype's two cowling guns. The SB2C-1 was built with larger fuel tanks; the program suffered so many delays that the Grumman TBF Avenger entered service before the Helldiver though the Avenger had begun its development two years later. Production tempo accelerated with production at Columbus and two Canadian factories: Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. which produced 300, Canadian Car and Foundry, which built 894, these models being equivalent to their Curtiss-built counterparts. A total of 7,140 SB2Cs were produced in World War II; the U. S. Navy would not accept the SB2C until 880 modifications to the design and the changes on the production line had been made, delaying the Curtiss Helldiver's combat debut until 11 November 1943 with squadron VB-17 on Bunker Hill, when they attacked the Japanese-held port of Rabaul on the island of New Britain, north of Papua New Guinea.
The first version of the SB2C-1 was kept stateside for training, its various development problems leading to only 200 being built. The first deployment model was the SB2C-1C; the SB2C-1 could deploy slats mechanically linked with landing gear actuators, that extended from the outer third of the wing leading edge to aid lateral control at low speeds. The early prognosis of the "Beast" was unfavourable. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, 45 Helldivers, most of, deliberately launched from extreme range, were lost when they ran out of fuel while returning to their carriers. Among its major faults, the Helldiver was underpowered, had a shorter range than the SBD, was equipped with an unreliable electrical system, was poorly manufactured; the Curtiss-Electric propeller and the complex hydraulic system had frequent maintenance problems. One of the faults remaining with the aircraft through its operational life was poor longitudinal stability, resulting from a fuselage, too short due to the necessity of fitting on to aircraft carrier elevators.
The Helldiver's aileron response was poor and handling suffered under 90 kn airspeed. The 880 changes demanded by the Navy and modification of the aircraft to its combat role resulted in a 42% weight increase, explaining much of the problem; the solution to these problems began with the introduction of the SB2C-3 beginning in 1944, which used the R-2600-20 Twin Cyclone engine with 1,900 hp and Curtiss' four-bladed propeller. This solved the chronic lack of power that had plagued the aircraft; the Helldivers would participate in ba
1948 Arab–Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, or the First Arab–Israeli War, was fought between the newly declared State of Israel and a military coalition of Arab states over the control of former British Palestine, forming the second and final stage of the 1947–49 Palestine war. The first deaths of the 1947–49 Palestine war occurred on November 30, 1947, during an ambush of two buses carrying Jews. There had been tension and conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, between each of them and the British forces since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine. British policies dissatisfied both Jews; the opposition by the Arabs developed into the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, while the Jewish resistance developed into the Jewish insurgency in Palestine. In 1947, these ongoing tensions erupted into civil war, following the 29 November 1947 adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned to divide Palestine into three areas: an Arab state, a Jewish state, the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
On 15 May 1948, the ongoing civil war transformed into an inter-state conflict between Israel and the Arab states, following the Israeli Declaration of Independence the previous day. A combined invasion by Egypt and Syria, together with expeditionary forces from Iraq, entered Palestine – Jordan having declared to Yishuv emissaries on 2 May that it would abide by a decision not to attack the Jewish state; the invading forces took control of the Arab areas and attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The 10 months of fighting, interrupted by several truce periods, took place on the former territory of the British Mandate and for a short time in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon; as a result of the war, the State of Israel controlled both the area that the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 had recommended for the proposed Jewish state as well as 60% of the area of Arab state proposed by the 1948 Partition Plan, including the Jaffa and Ramle area, some parts of the Negev, a wide strip along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road, West Jerusalem and some territories in the West Bank.
Transjordan took control of the remainder of the former British mandate, which it annexed, the Egyptian military took control of the Gaza Strip. At the Jericho Conference on 1 December 1948, 2,000 Palestinian delegates called for unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity. No state was created for the Palestinian Arabs; the conflict triggered significant demographic change throughout the Middle East. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, they became Palestinian refugees in what they refer to as Al-Nakba. In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, with many of them having been expelled from their previous countries of residence in the Middle East. Following World War II, the surrounding Arab nations were emerging from mandatory rule. Transjordan, under the Hashemite ruler Abdullah I, gained independence from Britain in 1946 and was called Jordan in 1949, but it remained under heavy British influence.
Egypt gained nominal independence in 1922, but Britain continued to exert a strong influence on the country until the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 which limited Britain's presence to a garrison of troops on the Suez Canal until 1945. Lebanon became an independent state in 1943, but French troops would not withdraw until 1946, the same year that Syria won its independence from France. In 1945, at British prompting, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen formed the Arab League to coordinate policy between the Arab states. Iraq and Transjordan coordinated policies signing a mutual defence treaty, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia feared that Transjordan would annex part or all of Palestine, use it as a steppingstone to attack or undermine Syria and the Hijaz. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, the City of Jerusalem; the General Assembly resolution on Partition was greeted with overwhelming joy in Jewish communities and widespread outrage in the Arab world.
In Palestine, violence erupted immediately, feeding into a spiral of reprisals and counter-reprisals. The British refrained from intervening as tensions boiled over into a low-level conflict that escalated into a full-scale civil war. From January onwards, operations became militarized, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns, they consolidated their presence in Samaria. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni's tactic had paid off. All of Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.
The situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the isolated Negev and North of Galilee was more critical. While the Jewish population had received strict orders r
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