Midway

Blog Post
Larry-Lambert

Caption: The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. It was very much a turning point because of the destruction of the primary aircraft carrier striking force of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

 

Aircraft Carriers

The U.S. built 151 aircraft carriers during World War II. Of these, 122 were escort carriers, meaning they were smaller than the fleet carriers and primarily designed for protecting convoys.

Japan completed the construction of four new aircraft carriers during the war, but only two ever saw sea duty, and only one, the Taiho, operated with the fleet.

 

Submarines

Japan began the war with 63 ocean-going submarines and completed 111 more during the conflict, resulting in a total of 174. They lost 128 submarines due to combat.

The United States had 288 submarines available for service during World War II. Some of these included the 51 S-Class boats already in service before the war. The US lost 52 submarines during the war in all theaters.

 

Bullet Points:

** Targeting the tariffs.

** Colorado arsonist Mohamad Soliman’s family is being deported immediately, per DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

** Green card holders from enemy countries, while here legally, should have that status revoked and should be deported. Let them return home.

** Don’t give up the ship, EdB! Can EdB’s boat drive itself? There is video evidence. This video of EdB loading his boat has been on VM before, so in case you missed it…

** Appalachia? Okay, but the same is true in much of rural Arizona. It’s also legal to bury dead humans on your property in Arizona. Here’s the dodge. Yes, I’m looking for a volunteer. Is cornbread cake, a muffin, or bread? Adam Carolla weighs in on the muffin debate. Then there’s the whole name-calling thing and the lack of ability to spell.

** Peterson on strategic dating.

** Airport security woes. It also happens if you’re carrying shrapnel. The VA will give you a card, but TSA isn’t required to respect it.

** Hanging out with Carolla – $100K a month in rent. What a bargain. The People’s Republik of Kalifornia.

** The latest and current generation of successful whores discuss payments, business and re-virgining when they leave prostitution as a profession. I hadn’t heard of re-virgining, but I guess it’s a thing with washed up whores these days. Maybe that’s what Kamala did?

 

Will the Ho Run in CA?

Kamala Harris’s voice rang out across a convention hall packed with California Democratic activists, and she wore a beaming smile.

But the former vice president was not in the room where 4,000 party delegates had gathered in Anaheim, Calif., to prepare for next year’s elections. Instead, she spoke to them through a three-minute video address that drew tepid applause.

Ever since Ms. Harris (also known as “the whore” because of her previous occupation) returned home to California in January after losing last year’s presidential race, Democrats have wondered whether she would run for governor in 2026. Her entry would shake up the race, and many observers believe she would be the front-runner. But she has made few public appearances and offered little indication of which way she is leaning.

Her absence from the hall in Anaheim this weekend loomed over the state party convention like the pair of large video screens that carried her message. And that left many party activists questioning just how seriously she was considering running.

At age sixty, she’d be better off staying home and staying drunk or loaded. She scammed enough money so that she doesn’t need to serve in public office, where she’d only be further publicly humiliated. Fat and drunk worked for Hillary. It will work for the Ho.

 

RQ3

The Lockheed Martin RQ-3 DarkStar was an experimental unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed in the 1990s as part of the U.S. Air Force’s Tier III program. Designed for stealthy, high-altitude reconnaissance, the program was cancelled in 1999 after determining the UAV was not aerodynamically stable and was not meeting cost and performance objectives.

 

Is Hamas Running Out of Sinwars?

You might remember that Yahya Sinwar was the leader of Hamas until the IDF caught up with him last October. He ran into an apartment building in Gaza, where an IDF drone filmed him throwing a stick at it (rumors that he threw like a girl are confirmed, and hilarious) before they assisted him in assuming rubble temperature.

Yahya had a younger brother named Muhammad. (Unexpectedly!) He had helped plan the October 7th massacre, and he had taken his brother’s place as a Hamas leader. On Saturday, Israel announced that earlier in May, they had struck an underground compound near a hospital in southern Gaza, thus sending Muhammad to his eternal reward of 72 virgins.

The Israeli defense minister with the most Israeli name ever (Israel Katz!) named the two most likely senior Hamas successors to the unlamented Sinwar brothers as Izz al-Din al-Haddad and Khalil al-Hayya, and warned them, “You are next in line.”

If you’re keeping score at home, two Sinwars have been retired, the Katz is out of the bag, and the hyphenated Izz and Khalil are on deck.

 

Average Annual Spending on State Lotteries

The odds of winning any state lottery are approximately one in 300 million. That’s about 1 in 292.2 million for Powerball and 1 in 302.6 million for Mega Millions. It means that a win is ‘possible.’ A fool and his money are soon parted. Vegas wasn’t built on winners.

 

The Corpse Garden

As of 2024, more than 330 people are known to have died on Mount Everest since climbers began attempting to reach its summit in the early 20th century. The death toll has steadily risen over the years, with common causes including avalanches, falls, extreme cold, altitude sickness, and exhaustion.

Many of the bodies remain on the mountain, particularly above the “Death Zone” (8,000 meters or 26,247 feet), where the dangerously low oxygen levels make recovery missions extremely challenging and hazardous.

 

There are Signs

Seen in Eagle, Idaho

 

Identify the Aircraft from the Midway Campaign

Identify and evaluate their effectiveness, if you’re able.

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66 thoughts on “Midway”

  1. 1 is Martin Marauder B-26

    Air Travel
    Two people I know have pins from ankle to lower back from explosions (friendly 105 mm in Vietnam and ied in Iraq). Have major hassle’s every time they are in the USA.

    1. Members of this blog, including myself, have discussed at length (ranted) on the topic of the US Transportation and Safety Administration’s abuses. They’re not all abusive, but there’s enough to form a pattern. They take delight in harassing elderly veterans and people who’ve had surgical intervention. They do it because they can. See Secretary of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s experience and that of others who were harassed in transportation because of their lawful voting decisions.

      1. Airport security in Australia is by private companies with some Federal Police and Customs Service in the international area.

        I walk up mention my knees (one replaced and one in brace as I keep putting off second replacement).
        Get directed to body scanner and if in shorts thats it. Wanding or pat down of brace for long pants. About 30 seconds on average.

        Haven’t been to USA since operation but numerous friends including the above are not impressed.

      2. MrsPaulM has titanium plates in her wrist and foot…special scan line, sometimes a pat down. Asinine. But that’s what WTP get because some nutjob from The Motherland had a shoe bomb…and after that “incident” it was “power & control” downhill from there with little oversight, showcased when TSA picks on some 90yo grandmother in a wheelchair, like she’s Taliban. But hey, we have a “white” (per MSM) asylum seeking’ flaming-throwing Egyptian lunatic with an axe to grind…he’s allowed in without suspicion or vetting…but you, with a plate or pin in your leg….anarchist.

        1. I have no metal but dental fillings in my body .
          Last trip something was spotted in my groin area by the scanner. This trip in my shoulder. Virtually the same clothing, certainly the same body.

          1. They just didn’t like your look so came up with some excuse to wand you…TSA doesn’t always hire the brightest bulbs in the drawer.

          2. I’ve got some hardware from the Great Femur Fracture of 2023. The Doctor gave me a nice, laminated card, but also said “Good Luck!”….

  2. Identify the Aircraft from the Midway Campaign:
    1. Martin B-26 Marauder: gallant but ineffective
    2. Boeing B-17: ineffective
    3. Douglas TBD Devastator: gallant but ineffective
    4. Aichi D3A Val: effective
    5. Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless: very effective

    2. #2 is either a B-17C or D model. The tail gunner and still a solid glass nose without a chin turret and time of the battle would make it a C or D.
      –
      As Surly said, ineffective at targeting moving targets. The range and altitude ceiling of the B-17 would have made it an excellent recon plane, but they tried to high-altitude bomb a fleet composed of lots of fast moving and maneuvering ships, which didn’t work as actual targeting hits, but did mess with the ships’ crews’ minds.

      1. The enemy crews waited for the bombs to be released and then maneuvered (successfully) to miss the falling gravity bombs.

        1. The advent of guided bombs, either autonomous or remotely steered, has changed the high altitude bombing picture.

  3. Japan commissioned several CV and CVL conversions during the war, that saw service with the fleet.
    – Kle.

    1. The Shinano was sunk as it cleared Tokyo Harbor by USS Archerfish (Yamato hull carrier). I think that Taiho was their only CV to be constructed during the war and to see active service. Some of their seaplane tenders were converted to CVL/CVE style carriers.

      1. Hiyo and Junyo weren’t commissioned until ’42, and there were a bunch
        of CVLs and CVEs. All conversions, and yeah, it wasn’t even close.
        *
        Of course, the war was over as soon as it began, the Axis never had a
        meaningful chance. All the Allies had to do was bother to fight. It was
        3 American State-equivalents against the 4 largest countries on Earth,
        and a bunch of others, too
        – Kle.

      2. Our CVE fleet carried almost the same plane load per ship as England’s fleet carriers and Japan’s light and escort carriers. Beyond carrying actual carrier aircraft, the CVE fleet did a lot of ferrying land-based planes to island bases in the Pacific. And did wonders for anti-submarine warfare.
        –
        The F8F Bearcat was specifically designed to give light carriers the ability to carry a ‘modern fleet fighter,’ that being a fast, maneuverable fighter with great climbing ability. The decks of the CVE were too short and the speed of the ships too slow to handle the F6F Hellcat or the Corsair, so they were stuck flying the less able F4F Wildcat. The Bearcat and the Hellcat were two Grumman products produced to specifically beat the more maneuverable and fast Japanese fighters.

  4. Airport “security” and shrapnel: Come on over for an MRI. I’ll remove that shrapnel for you “toot sweet”. (And they’re Freedom Fries, dammit! We don’t use the language of countries where they condone Presidential spousal abuse, not to mention pederastic grooming.) Shrapnel can be a real problem. I once DID remove shrapnel from a man with the lowest left ventricular ejection fraction that I’ve ever seen, 11%. (Normal is around 60%.) Very nice guy, extremely nervous due to what turned out to be severe claustrophobia, answered “No” to the routine screening questions about metal in the body. Came out of the scanner dripping blood from his left forearm. “I forgot I had a piece of shrapnel in there.” The powerful magnetic field of the scanner [1] literally pulled it out of his body [2]. That didn’t significantly harm the patient, but there are case reports of permanent harm; one metal worker had shrapnel in his eye. The shard torqued in the magnetic field and severed his optic nerve, blinding him in that eye.
    —
    [1] The magnet is ALWAYS on. YouTube has many safety videos about MRIs. General Electric has a video where a claw hammer punches through a sheet of plywood placed in front of the scanner bore. Things like oxygen tanks become missiles in the scan room. (There is an emergency shutoff, always a big red button or switch in the scan room. This will however “quench” the magnet by venting the cryogenic liquid helium that keeps the system superconducting. It will cost something north of $50k just to refill the helium. The big red button is a last resort sort of maneuver.)
    [2] Dental implants, fillings, artificial hips, prosthetic heart valves, etc are okay. They will not get pulled out of your body. They are likely to cause image artifacts (degradation of image quality) but are not dangerous. Implants that are powered (e.g. pacemaker) are most likely safe, at least modern ones, but “safe” and “compatible” are terms of art in this context. Safe means it won’t hurt you (like catch fire or get ripped out of your body) but there is no guarantee the device will work properly after being subjected to the MRI. Compatible means safe AND it will work after MRI (though it may not function properly during the actual scan).

    1. So Tony Stark could have just gotten a MRI and his problem would have been solved.

      1. Always thought that too, instead of installing a flux capacitor in his chest. But hey, makes for a good story springboard. No MRI’s for me, rather have “Bones” wave that little lighted entabulator type thingy over me to find out what’s wrong.

      2. Very true. Tony would have been beyond worrying about ALL his earthly problems!

  5. Cornbread….I grew up (Texas) eating a lot of cornbread . Usually we ate it with beans , pintos , navy beans, white beans , or black eyed peas . I still eat cornbread on occasion . I’ve had it as muffins , in a cake pan ,in an iron skillet coated with bacon grease (a pone my favorite) . My Dad would mess it up he made cornbread with a can of creamed corn , jalapenos, and cheddar cheese mixed in . I had cornbread in Tennessee several times and it was flat disc like a pancake , batter poured onto a griddle I guess , it was good . My Dad would also eat leftover cornbread in a bowl with buttermilk and a little sugar . He was from the Ozarks . I like it all , my favorite way is with butter and sorghum molasses . I wouldn’t want it everyday, kinda like liver and onions , when I want some I want some .

    1. I’ve eaten some very good Johnny Cakes in the South. Frybread done right of any sort (bacon grease a must) – add a little butter and maybe honey is an unhealthy treat. In my neck of the woods there is Navajo fry bread that will make your arteries crackle.

      1. We have the first fry bread exit marked in my wife’s phone from when we used to visit her parents in sun city west.

    3. My wife still eats cornbread as a ‘breakfast cereal.’

      The secret to a good cornbread is melting the butter in the pan you’re cooking the cornbread in. And then mixing the now very hot melted butter in with the cornbread mix. This makes for a very good bottom and side crust.
      –
      And, of course, absolutely no sugar to be found. Cornmeal (self-rising or mixed with a self-rising flour), eggs, milk, butter. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.
      –
      We cook it for eating with vegetable soups or chilis or beans (and, yes, our chili has beans in it, along with some corn kernels.) Leftovers either get eaten for breakfast or get made into cornbread dressing.

      1. I learned from the ladies while they were making apple butter the “proper” way in the cast-iron cauldron over a wood fire that the sugar is put in since we went from full-kernel sweet corn stoneground into cornmeal to the modern steel-ground corn meal from degerminated yellow #2 dent corn (which is shelf stable). The older corn meal was much sweeter, and so it’s perfectly acceptable to put a pinch of sugar in the terrible storebought cornmeal to make it taste like it ought, just as you put a tiny pinch of sugar in the starchy green peas from the store to make ’em taste like fresh sweet peas out of the garden.
        .
        That said, they had *opinions* about city folk putting lots of sugar in and making it cake. I have never cottoned to making cake like that – if you want sweet cornbread from me, I’ll hand you the honey jar along with the butter. And yes, if you don’t have a proper jar of bacon grease, you can put butter in the cast iron skillet when preheating it in the oven before pouring the batter in. But really, life is better if you take the time to cook up some bacon and render out the fat… some for the jar, and the rest for the cornbread in the same pan.

        1. That sounds like a delicious method to make proper cornbread. Yes, a properly seasoned cast iron skillet is the only way to cook cornbread. I’d argue that standard pancakes come out better on a cast iron skillet too. It has to do with conducting heat in the best way possible.

        2. Now I know to add a pinch of sugar, much appreciated for the excellent ProTip. never knew Big Ag Science Guys were messing with something as simple as corn meal. Might need to whip up a batch tonight. As for the ‘fit’ (Danish for bacon grease in a crock by the stove)…yes, yes, and more yes.

    1. I don’t know, but I’ve been told that Eskimo women are mighty cold. (Jody call – cleaned up for the blog)

  7. At the mathematics department of Texas A&M University, students are taught that pi are round, cornbread are square.
    .
    It is, of course, traditional to make fun of Aggies in Texas and selected other states, not to mention the People’s Republic of Austin, and not without occasional very good reasons for doing so, but take a care to remember that A&M produced more orificers during WWII than all the service academies put together, and that the assault on Pointe du Hoc by the 2nd Ranger Battalion during the Normandy invasion was led by one LTC James Earl Rudder, USAR, class of ’32.

  8. Deporting a terrorists family: Never should have been here in the first place. Pretty sure everyone would agree prevention is 9/10’s of the law…except that activist Boulder council member who refused to sign the “official statement” denouncing the act (what officials do after the fact to make themselves feel important). Her bio starts: “Taishya Adams (she/her) is an educator, environmentalist, climate and social justice expert,…” Goes Full Lefty downhill from there…maybe she can be the deportees personal deportation escort…one-way.
    ***
    Everest, proving Gaia is unforgiving no matter how prepared or – in the last 20 years – money to burn to buy your way up the mountain…especially at such heights (or like the Nintendo controlled homemade sub, depths). No thanks, no mountain top is worth stepping over trash, gear, and dead people strewn about.
    ***
    Peterson: Funny bit. Mediocre guy with a room stopper on his arm = fat wallet. Some things never change.
    ***
    Boat ramp follies: Exactly why I avoid the general public on weekends.

    1. I avoid the ramps on the weekends and holidays. Usually a bunch of drunks who act counter to good manners concerning the launch lanes. I once had to be restrained by my wife from cutting a guy’s rope and beating the crap out of him.

      1. At least we know you’re a normal male then…I refrain from conflict unless provoked, and even that is very rare…but yeah, sometimes you feel the need to step in and straighten out the idiocy.

  9. “cancelled in 1999 after determining the [RQ3 DarkStar] was not aerodynamically stable”
    General question to all the aerospace types here: Why that funny (to my ignorant eye) tail-less shape in the first place?
    —
    PS Dark Star the 1974 sci fi comedy, was a pretty good movie, I vaguely recall.

    1. Didn’t TG:Maverick call their Mach-breaker ‘DarkStar”? (A cool movie sequence nonetheless)

    3. Low-observable (stealth) tries to eliminate all inclusive angles in the design. Inclusive angles create a radar signal bounce, or reflections, in that region. By nature, a vertical (or near-vertical/canted) tail has an inclusive angle where it attaches to the fuselage. The YF-23 prototype combined the vertical and horizontal tail elements, eliminating a major source of radar reflection.
      The YF-16 (F-16) was and still is dynamically unstable, requiring a computer to keep the aircraft from rapidly departing controlled flight. The same electronics were adopted for Have Blue/F-117. There were enough dynamic instability problems with the XB/YB-35 and YB-49 aircraft (pre-B-2 bomber) that they were quickly cancelled.
      I simply cannot imagine the amount of energy, computational speed, and surface-reaction time that the Dark Star/RQ-3 would require to maintain stability, with such a huge wingspan and short fuselage.

  10. I wonder if the Lottery Spending per capita is proportional to the desire to get out of the state? The highest states seem to be Rhode Island, South Dakota and Massachusetts, in that order. Of the top three, South Dakota seems like the outlier but I’ve only been there once for about a week and I’m sure I know nothing about what it’s like for the majority of people. The next two appear to be West Virginia and Delaware.
    ~~
    It seems like a reach to say it’s the states that are worst in math…

    1. SD is loaded with retirees last I knew, and WV is poverty driven…thinking they can win their way out of decades of low income. That aside, WV is still fairly inexpensive and the people are incredibly decent. SD Black Hills was on the radar for a “next chapter” move, but the tourism aspect was a no-go for us.

    2. I am in Oregon now and I am making ready to move back to South Dakota by at least fall if we are not “glowies” by then. It is a different way of life, unhurried and with winter the way it is, keeps most of the riff raff out. I like the Black Hills, Badlands area, but not during the late spring/summer, too many out of state visitors/retards vacationing there.

  11. Did the Sinwars get virgins or revirgined virgins? Or are there 72 for each or only 72 for everyone and they don’t get to participate until all the other have joined in martyrdom?

    1. Also, this brings up advice for seducing virgins: “Hey baby, if you die a virgin then you’ll end up in the harem of some Islamist martyr. I’m generously offering to save you from that fate!”

          1. Coastal Virginians? Well, that’d be basically handing them regular virgins.
            –
            Non-Coastal Virginians? I’d pay to see that.

    2. I don’t know, I’m not a mullah. I’m sure they have all the answers.

      1. The Radical Muslim mentality is a locust plague upon the world and needs eradicating. The Boulder guy, under an asylum gambit, escaped Egypt for the very “oppression” he was enacting upon a group of older Jewish lady’s. (Does saying this truth get me banned from the internet now?)

  12. Boulder guy
    What pisses me off the most were the people pulling out their phones and taking videos instead of stopping the mayhem. Supposedly a retired policeman tackled the doer; scant coverage of that, if true.

    1. Today, recently released video shows a uniformed officer ordering the terrorist, at gunpoint, to the ground. Once on the ground, the officer handcuff him. A 2nd officer enters the scene with his AR15 at the low ready.
      I guess the retired LEO didn’t occur….

  14. Have always found the time line of Midway most interesting. Mistakes were made on both sides. Our attacks came off poorly coordinated, but had the unintended benefit of keeping the Japanese guessing, and using up precious time at they maneuvered to avoid those attacks. And USS Nautilus was in the right place at the right time. As a German general said, “War is chaos. Unfortunately, the American Army practices this daily”. True, but we learned, and we got better. All branches.
    ——-
    Mt. Everest. If geography were a bit different, from the top you would have looked down on most of the allied bomber stream in Europe.

    1. As I understand it, the poorly coordinated attacked pulled the Japanese fighter cover out of position, making it easier for the last wave of attacks.

    1. 100% correct! And a Happy Killdozer Day to you, too!
      Also, check out Theodore Sturgeon’s short story “Killdozer!” A very appropriate read, today being the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, and the “Killdozer!” story set during WWII in the Pacific islands.

  16. “I don’t know, but I’ve been told that Eskimo women are mighty cold. ”
    And our response to that was :
    I don’t know, but It’s been said, Chinese chicks are good in bed!

  17. Just a reminder today is when Marvin Heemyer, 6/4/2004, used an armored bulldozer in Granby, Co.

  18. “Airport security woes. It also happens if you’re carrying shrapnel. The VA will give you a card, but TSA isn’t required to respect it.”

    Stop, stop, stop.
    I don’t need any more reasons to not fly or have anything to do with Boeing, Airbus, or TSA :)
    (or crowds, unsuitable seating, overhead bins, banged-up knees, middle seats, lessons in seatbelts, gate seating, boarding process, airport ambience, check-in procedures, baggage problems, customer service, over-priced food/beverages, CNN on TVs all over the place, airport parking, departure lines, arrival lines, etc, etc, etc)

  20. Most of those “Appalachia” things are also the case in Rhode Island.
    *
    State Lotteries – … and another thing R.I. is the best at – stupidity.
    – Kle.

  21. Although the ‘map’ lists it as Eastern Island, when we were out there in the early 70s, it was simply known as East Island. And we were able to get over there and spend the day. It was eerie, even 30 years later, as the military had walked away from the island after WWII, and done no cleanup. The remnants of hangars, barracks, AA pits (with guns), spent cartridge cases, etc. were everywhere, along with a ‘trash heap’ that probably held the pieces of destroyed aircraft. It literally gave me the cold shivers to see it.

  22. I’m a bit surprised. How many US POC Admirals and Captains were involved in our Midway victory? Answer: All of them. You might have made that clear.

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